The Drunken Bear

Steve and I have been working on the cabin frequently this summer and our efforts are definitely paying off!  We finished off the remainder of the sheet rock hanging in mid-May.  I went back to visit my family in Montana for a little over two weeks in late May.  While I was gone, Steve went to the cabin and started the taping and mudding process.  People had been stating that the sheet rock hanging was the easy step in the process and I now understand what they mean.  When I got back from vacation we went to The Drunken Bear and jumped in where Steve had stopped.  He continued applying the tape and mudding in those areas still needing it and I started the first sanding process.  We did this for over a month.  Sanding, remudding, sanding, remudding and finally, the last sanding.  We had planned on adding an "orange peel" texture to the walls, but by the time we finally finished, we were pretty happy with our results and have decided against...

     Steve and I decided to go up to The Drunken Bear at 2:00 p.m.  Friday afternoon, May 4th, to get a few things done before our volunteer work group of friends showed up the following day.  It had been a relatively nice day, but when I got to Steve's the sky opened up and the rain came pouring down.  Steve had a large barbecue/ smoker he wanted to take to the cabin.  By the time we got it loaded into his truck, we were drenched!  The rain continued pounding down most of the drive to Monroe and traffic was already heavy for this time of the afternoon.  This is what is called "white-knuckle" driving.      We stopped at Lowe's in Monroe to get some needed material and then again at the Sultan Bakery for an early dinner.  This is the first time we have stopped at the Bakery for dinner.  We both ordered chicken fettuccine.  For $9.95 you got a plate full of food that neither of us could finis...

     The daunting task of sheetrocking was our next task, and one I was definitely not looking forward to.  Much to my surprise, we had and will have, help dealing with this...and it was all volunteered.  First, Rick and Heidi, Steve's son-in-law and daughter said they would come up and help put the sheetrock up over the weekend.  Steve got in contact with a company in Monroe and arranged to have the sheetrock, the mud, the tape, and the screws, delivered to The Drunken Bear.  We went up on Thursday, the 19th of April and made room in the cabin for the sheetrock.  We had parked the truck across the road so that the truck bringing the sheetrock would have room to maneuver on our property.  We had the cabin all arranged for the sheetrock and were waiting for its arrival when Steve went to get something out of his truck.  And lucky for us, he did.  As he was heading to the truck he looked up the road and saw t...

A friend recently told me I needed to update this blog, so here it is.  Steve and I have been going up to The Drunken Bear on a somewhat regular basis except for the first three weeks of March.  In that time period, Steve went to Hawaii and I wondered across the border to Canada.  Although I love my Canadian friends and Canada itself, I would have loved to have been in Hawaii...just to be away from the miserable weather we had been having.  Thankfully the work we were doing on the cabin had been on the inside and when we had to do some work outside, there were breaks in the weather to do that.  We finished putting in the rigid insulation as described in the last post.  Next came the rolled insulation.  Now you would think that if the requirement for insulation is now R49, there would be an R49 insulation.  Wrong!  First we would cut and hang R30 kraft faced insulation.  Following the R30, we would then add the R19 non-kraft faced insula...