Inspiration

Cabins are the result of our cultivated inspirations. One of the beautiful aspects of building a cabin is that there are no "rules". We all have memories of family cabins, lake cabins, and vacation retreats. We designed and built our cabin based upon our memories of those special times with family and friends. Your vision of a cabin may be significantly different than ours, but again, that is the beauty of designing and building a cabin is that you make it yours. Cabins are personalized. 

Combining our past memories with the reading of a rather large pile of cabin and small home design books and magazines resulted in what we feel is our version of a cabin. Truth be told if we were to build again it would indeed be a different design. Favorite authors were Sarah Susanka and Dale Mulfinger. Just paging through one of their cabin books and you soon forget your day job! 

I think Dale Mulfinger said it best when he stated 'cabins are sometimes a dream waiting to be dreamt.'

Our pace of construction has slowed as we spend more time enjoying the outdoors and our time unplugged. That said, we have made good progress this past year and many of the things we are working on are finishing touches and the cabin is beginning to feel livable! To really appreciate indoor plumbing you must first endure carrying drinking water and enjoying an outhouse. We've been there, and done that for 20 years.

We're now at a point where we have finished walls, finished wood floors, a working bathroom, heat, and functional kitchen. Imagine for the first time in 20 years you are actually sleeping on a real bed rather than a blow up mattress! Throw in a comfy leather chair and we are pretty darned thrilled with what we have. We're pretty amazed with what we have built and filled with gratitude to all who have helped us along the way. It's humbling to sit in that leather chair remembering the friends and family who have helped us. 

Our neighbors are building their cabin and it's wonderful to see their dream come to reality. To see and hear their excitement and anticipation in having their family retreat. We are blessed to have a wonderful family as neighbors as we share a little slice of paradise. 

We continue to be amazed by the number of people following our blog. Your interest and words of encouragement are wonderful. We had some recent visitors who not only read but remembered in great detail the information we have posted in our blog. 

Below are some pictures of our cabin progress. 

Enjoy!!

M&M

Barn Lights

Entry Tile

Bathroom T&G Ceiling

New dishwasher 😳

So that's what those tiny windows were for!

J&J Cabinet Installation (James & Jordan)

Please don't tell them until they are finished that the wood stove weighs 575lbs!!!

Removing the outhouse from our septic tank. 

No it's not photoshop ... the sink actually works!!

Mother Nature's October decoration.

Left, Right, Repeat

 Left, Right, Repeat ... it's slow but we are making progress!!

We've made some major steps forward over this summer and the cabin is beginning to look livable!

One of the earlier projects this summer was to complete the screen porch. We installed shakes on the exterior and tongue and groove cedar on the interior ceiling. We added a barn light on the cabin wall in the porch, and outside over the deck, and then stood back and marveled that we actually had one room of the cabin finished!!

You may have also spotted the slide, which was added for our granddaughter's entertainment; we also hung a swing inside the cabin (temporarily of course - the things we do for our granddaughter!) There are advantages to having unfinished ceilings!

Next we evaluated our life expectancy and decided to hire the remaining drywall to be completed. We hired Arrowhead Drywall and their work is impeccable! We're so excited to have the walls finished that we forgot to take photos to share with you!

We enjoyed taking breaks this summer spending time biking, canoeing and paddle boarding. Mark survived another boundary waters trip in September.

Not quite as exciting, but we needed to replace our solar inverter to fix a battery charging issue. We had great technical support from the companies we worked with, and the inverter was covered under warranty. Everything was back up and running in a couple of hours despite the days and nights of dreading the task of replacing the 70lb beast and rewiring the inverter.

Next up ... finishing the reclaimed barn wood floors! In our typical style we installed the floors before the walls were finished. "Why you ask?" The simple answer ... we found the reclaimed hardwood on Craigslist for a decent price and purchased it. Now we had 800 square feet of flooring sitting in the kitchen area of the cabin. We could either work around the flooring or install it. We chose the latter. Mkay and a friend Kathy started in the bedroom. Their work was amazing!! The flooring is multiple widths from 3" to 7". It has screw holes, saw marks, knot holes, and came with a sufficient supply of chicken poop on top. The flooring installed easily but it took us some time to complete the project. The engineer on the install team (aka Mark) needed significant consulting in order to install a random floor pattern (that's a joke, by the way!).

We finished the floors in September. We spent a weekend sanding the floors to prep for the finish. We rented a floor sander and spent an entire Saturday sanding away. Remember the floors are not meant to be perfect ... the goal is to retain the rustic appeal. However if you are interested in a game of marbles there's definitely a home court advantage! 

The following weekend I (Mark) had a solo weekend at the cabin and applied FIVE coats of oil based Varathane polyurethane floor finish. I sanded after coats 2 and 4. That's approximately 600 square feet of flooring sanded with a 5" random orbit cordless sander. You do the math. It wasn't as bad as it sounds ... it was more like an early morning yoga workout stretching across the floor with the sander. The five coats took five gallons of polyurethane which I applied with a lambswool applicator pad. We LOVE the results!

Ta Daaa!

I think I can, I think I can ...

Our precious little shack was feeling neglected so we gave the little "Mouse House" a fresh coat of barn red paint this fall. The little thirsty 10x20 tiny cabin soaked up 5 gallons of paint!

We hope this blog arrives to find you safe during this bizarre pandemic time. We've found our little slice of paradise to be the perfect place to social distance from the rest of the world. The fall colors are now past peak in northern Minnesota but we had beautiful fall color to enjoy this year.

Stay safe ... 

M&M

Ordinary Miracles

It’s been a long time since either Mark or I have written a blog post. That’s mostly because life has been very busy. And as we look forward to another build season, the excitement for time at the cabin grows. Even as we think ahead to what we might accomplish this year, I find myself reflecting on the ordinary miracles of last year.

We have water in the cabin! Our plumbing isn’t quite finished yet (soon!), but the well is functioning and we can fill the pressure tank that sits in the basement. We tap the water through a faucet at the tank and one outside the cabin. It was so amazing to me to be able to go to the outside faucet and fill a bucket (we were tiling the bathroom), rather than hauling it from the lake.

The second ordinary miracle is electricity! We have a solar system, whose intricacies I will never understand. But I can flip a switch and lights come on. Small, ordinary, miracles!

We take for granted water and electricity - elements nature provides for us. It’s a privileged, first-world luxury to take these things for granted. And after 15+ years of carrying water with us (or pumping it from the lake) and reading by lantern, flashlight, or candle (and working via loud generator), I pray I will never take for granted the gifts of water and electricity. Indeed, we’ve been so accustomed to their absence that we forget their presence. The first weekend Mark turned on the solar system, I came into the basement and found him crawling on the floor, in the dark - a flashlight his only illuminating source. I asked him what he was doing - it wasn’t a question of why was he crawling around on the floor, but rather why was he in the dark? His response clearly spoke to the former interpretation of the question, and I said, “might this help?” and flipped the light switch!

Walking from our old tiny cabin (that we lovingly call “the shack,”) to the cabin we’re building, I often catch myself stopping to marvel at the dwelling that now stands quietly in the middle of the forest. I marvel at a human’s ability to build a dwelling. It’s been important to Mark to build something that will stand the test of time. To make that happen, he likes to over-engineer, and I appreciate that (for example, our roof system can withstand hurricane-force winds, just in case we were to ever have a hurricane?!). 

It’s important to both of us to be gentle on the land and our environment. This past year, we installed the hardwood flooring throughout the main floor of the cabin. Mark just finished it during a winter trip up a couple weeks ago. We chose reclaimed hardwood flooring that was removed from a barn somewhere in Wisconsin. It’s minimally processed, as attested to by the chicken or bird poop still on its surfaces (that will be removed during a light sanding this spring)! Not only do I like the rustic look of it, but also I appreciate the care many hands took to dismantle an old structure in order to put its parts back into the world.

When I catch myself reflecting on the cabin that now stands quietly in the middle of the forest, I marvel at the ordinary miracle of humankind working with nature to create something that can co-exist and provide every basic human need. As I look forward to this summer, I know we are in for more ordinary miracles and I can't wait to experience them!

Perhaps another ordinary miracle - actually taking time out to play,
which we did some of last year! This is me, MK, with a friend -
my sister's lifelong bestie, Karen. It was an ordinary miracle that
she and her husband Tom showed up at our place,
having found it with little direction!