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!

Let There Be Light!!

Every day without an ounce of thought we walk into a room, flip a switch, or perhaps ask Alexa, to turn on a light. We give little thought to how our electrical power is generated. Electricity in the U.S. is relatively inexpensive and as a result we tend to overlook the process involved in generating the electricity or the impact it may have on our environment.

We've owned our property since 1999. During that time we have burned gallons of white gas in our Coleman lanterns. Burning candles may be romantic but try actually reading by one and it will be a short lived romance! We are also collectors of flashlights and we are well-qualified to write reviews on how well they perform at -30F. During our building process we used a Honda 3500 watt generator for running our larger tools and for charging batteries for our cordless tools. New developments in lithium batteries have resulted in some pretty amazing cordless tools.

We've grown accustomed to not having power in our shack, but we wanted to add more creature comforts to our cabin.

For our remote property grid tied power (that power that comes with the beautiful green boxes) was simply not an option. After a lot of research we installed a 2.66Kw off grid solar system. We have 9 SolarWorld 290 watt solar panels, which are ground-mounted next to the cabin. We chose a ground mount system because climbing up a ladder onto the roof in the dead of winter to pull snow and ice towards you with a roof-mounted system just did not seem wise. The downside of the ground mount is that the panels are more visible as you approach the cabin.

For those of you versed in solar systems, here are our Off Grid Solar Tech Specs:

• 9 SolarWorld 290 watt panels
• 4000 watt Magnum Pure Sine Wave Inverter MSPAE4024
• Midnight Classic 150 Charge Controller
• 8 Crown CR430 6v batteries wired 4x2 for a 24v DC system 860Ah
• IronRidge Ground Mount 
• Honda EU2000i backup generator for battery charging when the sun's not shining

We ordered the package above (except the generator) from Wholesale Solar online. We bought the inverter and charge controller factory prewired. Wholesale Solar tech support was awesome to work with!

The IronRidge ground mount system mounts on 3" galvanized steel pipe (purchased locally). The pipes weighed in at 120 lbs each. Drilling four 12" holes in rock was no easy task but we lived to tell about it. (Thanks Wayne!!) Mixing the cement to fill those holes was relatively easy since Mkay is a proud owner of a bright orange cement mixer gifted to her from her loving husband a year previously. True love ...

Ground Mount Solar Panels

The batteries are stored in a custom sealed box (gray box in the picture below - Mark built it at home in his copious spare time) in the basement (controlled temperature). It's power vented to the outside to exhaust the hydrogen gas during charging. The exhaust fan is programmed and controlled by the charge controller. Midnight has the worst product documentation possible (!) but their YouTube videos are helpful.

Custom Battery Box, Inverter, Charge Controller, Power Vent

All that was left was to figure out all the wire sizing, correct wire type, which conduit to use, how deep to bury it, torque settings for screws and bolts, concrete encased electrode grounding, labeling, NEC required disconnects, etc, etc ... and your "good to go"!!

We wired the entire cabin ourselves and ... sitting down ... we actually PASSED the electrical rough in inspection with only a couple minor changes required. <<Insert happy dance here>>

Next it was time to install the breakers into the main electrical panel, which is fed by the inverter. Coming off a high from the rough-in inspection, what could go wrong??? Well Mark plummeted 30,000 feet as he struggled to understand how combination Arc Fault breakers work. As it turns out, if you wire them incorrectly they DON'T work!!! I was tripping AFCI breakers faster than dog snot sliding off a freshly sliced onion. The fault diagnostics indicated a fault to ground. Later I figured out that the fault was between my ears - I had misread the AFCI installation instructions! I read them TWICE. Regardless, Mkay has enrolled me in a ESL course for improving my engwish.

Main Electrical Panel 100A 24 Space

After most of the summer doing some sort of electrical work, imagine for a moment what it was like for Mary Kay and I to be in the middle of Superior National Forest as we switched on our basement lights for the first time! It was AMAZING!!! Amazing to have light! More amazing that our off grid solar actually worked!!! 

Although we will not have a monthly electricity bill, our electricity is not "free." The system has the obvious initial monetary costs. The batteries have a limited lifetime of charges. The PV panels have a 25-year warranty but they are made using precious metals. Bottom line: off grid solar also has monetary and environmental impacts.

Only time will tell how we did at sizing our off grid solar and electrical needs. We'll need to put the system into use to see how we manage across multiple seasons. For our latitude we have a mere 2.1 sunlight hours for generating solar per day during the winter. 

Now go turn off your lights ...

Fall Pic (Photo Creds to Courtney)

The Insulating Crew Sporting Tyvek Suits & Masks

Is it done yet?

Mark places the last piece of siding

There’ve been two persistent questions this summer by our faithful followers. First, is it done yet? And Second, why haven’t you written a blog post?!

So here’s the long awaited blog post (!), and no, we’re not done yet! This summer has been mostly about installing the solar electrical system, inside and out. This past week, Mark filled out the paperwork requesting an electrical inspection. Yay! When that’s done, we’ll be able to insulate and hang sheet rock - then things will start looking like they are coming together.  We also finished the siding this summer. The picture above is of Mark hanging the very last piece at the highest point of the cabin. It feels so good to have that done. Thanks to friends Al and Dave for helping the last of that big job!

We’ve actually taken time off from the building project periodically this year. We’ve spent time paddle boarding, swimming, canoeing, and sitting our butts in our teak rocking chairs on the screen porch. Alisha, James, Alex, and baby Avery came up for Labor Day weekend - it was Avery’s first visit to the cabin.

We’d love to say we have SOMETHING complete, and the screen porch is close. We still need to install cedar tongue and groove on the ceiling inside and finish the outside peak. How to finish the outside has been an unanswered question until recently. I really wanted cedar shakes, and Mark really wanted to use up the leftover siding. The latter is practical and the former is a lot more work. Yesterday, Mark came home with four bundles of cedar shakes, bless his heart (that “bless his heart” was for you, cousin Connie!). Today we stained them in preparation for their installation.

In August, we started a fun project. We are using reclaimed hardwood for our flooring, which will give us a very rustic look. We bought it last year, and it’s been sitting in our way. So, while typically we’d install the flooring after doing the walls, we need it out of our way. So we started the installation. We had our friends, Al and Kathy, up for a few days and Kathy taught Mary Kay how to install the flooring. Kathy and Mary Kay finished the bedroom in 2 afternoons, and then MK got a start in the main room after they left.

That’s a bit of an update. Perhaps Mark will write a blog post all about the electrical system - that’s beyond MK’s pay grade! The good thing about not writing a blog post since the beginning of the summer is that I realized how many people are reading them and enjoy seeing our progress.  Thanks to all who prodded us to get another entry written - we promise it won’t be so long before the next one!

The Perfect Day

Mary Kay and I ventured north for Memorial Day weekend. I had been up the weekend prior with my brother Al and what a difference a week can make. A week ago we had frost on Sunday morning. This trip we had temps in the 80's and the bugs were awakening from their slumber.

This weekends plans were to screen in our porch that we built last March. As usual, the truck was packed with supplies. To screen the porch we framed the openings with 2x2 cedar. Then we made our own screen frames with heavy duty extruded aluminum. We used black aluminum screen and splines to complete the project. The main porch screens are 80"x42". The came out great ... not perfect mind you, but well within our tolerances. The black colored screen blends in and is nearly invisible.

Sunday turned out to be a "Perfect Day". We completed our screened in porch .. DONE! We then unwrapped our paddle boards to take them on their maiden voyage. You'll see we were donning our life jackets expecting some pretty cold water if we fell into the lake. After a short trip on the lake with Minnie as our paddle board Captain we decided it was war
m enough to attempt a swim. To our she-grins the water was warm! We floated in the lake and laid in the warm sun on our boards to dry off. 

The day flew by and before you knew it was Happy Hour! Mary Kay decided it was due time to put her feet up and use that porch that she has worked so hard to build. Since I cannot sit still (nor read), I decided to try my luck at fishing. Minnie was torn ... stay with Mkay or go with Mark, stay with Mkay or go with Mark ... she decided to stay. For a golden, it is pure torture to have to choose between your peeps. In the end, Mkay had to listen to her whining on the porch and I missed my ballast in the canoe ... but we all survived.

My happy hour in the canoe was interrupted by a nice trout. My first out of the lake. We added the trout to our walleye for dinner which was fantastic!

All in all ... it was simply ... a Perfect Day!

We are almost ready for our electrical rough in inspection. Plumbing supply lines and vents are also nearly complete with the drains remaining. If we are not careful we'll be able to insulate the walls soon! We've purchased our complete PV solar system from Wholesale Solar and we are working on the off grid installation. We're installing a 2.6kW solar system that should support all of our conservative electrical needs. For those interested ... we're installing a 4000W Magnum Inverter, Midnight Classic charge controller, 9 - 290 watt SolarWorld panels mounted on a ground mount. We'll have 8 Crown 6-volt 430Ah batteries to supply our power. The batteries will be installed in a custom made battery enclosure that has a 24v DC powered exhaust vent.

Enjoy!

M&M

Next time maybe Mark can take a few photos to include Mkay!!