Staining the logs

Staining the cabin was one of the few things that went better than expected. We purchased 30 gallons of stain and rented an airless sprayer, we were able to put 2 coats on the entire cabin, inside and out in about 6-7 hours.
It looks a little darker than we had planned, but we expect it to lighten up a little bit over the next couple of weeks, and with the chinking in place.

Blasting with Walnut Shells

It has been too long since we last posted our progress.  I guess that its better late than never.  The interior framing is finished.  The floors and are in as well.    We have been faced with the difficult decision on how to clean the logs.  Most people have been using an angle grinder and abrasive sanding disks to do the job.  I tried about every grain of sanding disk, and wire wheels.  The results were not that good.                

We then decided to use walnut shells and "blast the logs.  As you can see from the pic's, the shells did a great job.  I had Bryce, Penny, Austin, and one of my  sons friends (Joseph) helping out .  We rented a massive diesel air compressor and that really did the job well.  It took 3 days of hard work, but it was well worth it.  Would I rent the compressor and equipment again, to clean the logs??  Yes, I absolutely would!!     I won't ramble anymore.  The pic's tell the story.  BTW, staining and chinking are next!      

From Brown to White! (These are Engelmann Spruce) 

 The Diesel Air Compressor

 The hopper held about 75 pounds of Shells.                                    50lb. bags

 My truck was loaded!  Since we sifted and re-used some of the shells, we used 50 instead of 100 bags.  I am sure glad I had my truck!

 Our fancy "sifter"                                                               Bryce and Austin saved me $$ by sifting!

 Time to sweep!

Flooding...

We had a long winter in 2011, it lasted into June, but then it warmed up way to fast and caused lots of problems for our little town. Not only were all the reservoirs full, and over spilling the banks, the ground was also so saturated, that there was no place for the water to go, but up! Many people had flooded basements from ground water seeping up through the floor. We were lucky, since we don't have a basement, (only a crawlspace) we had 3 sump pumps going 24 hours to keep the level under 10".

With the reservoirs overflowing, we also had issues of that water coming to town. as you can see in the pictures below, the Cabin was spared thanks to an observant neighbor who noticed the water going around the cabin. Our culvert was smashed on one end, so we were able to pull it out, and then put a berm of dirt around the property and we were OK. But we did have some fun, and let the kids float down the burrow on the pontoon!

metal roof

Finally an update on the Cabin (I hope) I have tried several times, but kept having issues, so I just gave up! Now it is almost a year later... anyways, we have made tons of progress, so I will put a few posts up, starting with this one.

This was last spring, We finally got the metal roof up, it was actually easier than we thought it would be, it still took longer than we thought it would, but that is ALWAYS the case!! We had tons of help, from friends, family, and some of our local neighbors.

we had the sheets cut to length, so installation went smoothly, we just screwed them onto the roof (after we pre-drilled the holes)

Our Oldest and youngest sons helping to pre-drill the holes. (we did this on the ground to make it easier.) Also our Dog Jessie was there to help... or play fetch!

putting the tar paper down.

Almost done!

Screwing all the screws in turned out to be quite a job!