Weekend Re-cap

Towards the end of last week we FINALLY decided on the loft railing design so this weekend our goals were simple, put some finishing touches on the screen porch (springs for the screen doors, put the knob on, put up my new solar christmas lights, find a LOCAL lumber yard to order the wood for the railing, and complete the screen that would be on hinges.) Dave and I are both avid target shooters and one of our first projects after purchasing what would someday become S-wood, was create a shooting lane. We wanted to be able to open a screen and shoot. I am happy to say we accomplished all of our missions AND had some time to hang out with our dogs - side note - thoroughly enjoyed watching me try to get a picture of the attack hummingbird which i failed miserably at.

What you are looking at on the left here is Dave's version of the best place on earth. A local lumber yard. Yes folks not only were the prices reasonable and the staff accommodating, but the words "beautiful" must have come out of Dave's mouth at least 15times. Now before you say HEY WAIT! Thats not recycled. Part of our "green" outlook is yes, using recycled materials but our other hopes is when we have to purchase wood, or materials, we stay local. This is 8 miles from our door!






This is just probably something only I will enjoy, but to me, this is the epitome of "kid in a candy store". We got our wood ordered for our railing and we hope to start building it next weekend. Not only is it one of the things that we just need to do (aside from walls) but it will give us piece of mind. With the dogs at night wanting to be near us, and us being on the second floor, there have been several sleepless nights.

















Please ignore the great dane, he was not cooperating, focus instead on the hinged screen window above the dog :)






I am sure dave will update in a later post but one of our coolest accomplishments besides all of the above, was we hooked up 2 small Solar Panels to charge our deep-cycle batteries that we run our lamps off of. I have some pictures too.

We did have one not-so-pleasant experience which I am surprised we have not encountered before. Now that the porch is done, we are happy to be able to extend the living area in this hot weather. We are in the middle of nowhere, no electricity so no outdoor lights. Our dog Frankenstein alerted to something outside. Normally this could mean anything from a neighbor stopping by to him thinking a neighbor stopped by so we removed him from the situation and I went to the front to see if there was anyone in the drive, there wasn't. I went to the back to see if there was a deer or something in the rear. When I stepped out onto the porch, I could clearly hear what sounded like a small dog barking about 150 feet from the back door. We could hear it but not see it. I asked Dave what it was (only there may have been some colorful wording in there) and he said Coyote. JUST as he said it, more "barking" and suddenly howling as well. We figure there were about 6 or 7 of them. What was scary about it was that our dogs were going nuts, i mean with all that howling, our dogs were making alot of noise.Our dogs are big, about 350 pounds together, yet the coyote started to advance TOWARDS us and our house. We are staring towards blackness and listening to the howling and yapping of many coyote. The hair was raised on my neck. It sure was scary that they were NOT afraid of us, or our dogs.

So thats my "critter encounter" story for the weekend, not one that I want to experience again. I like the woodchucks, turkey and moose stories WAY better.

Energy Consumption - From Dave

A thought from the editor in chief of SW... we have really tried to stop being such energy hogs and although not all of our appliances are energy star, some of them are relatively new (3 -4 years old) and financially we cannot replace them at this time. We are leaving this afternoon so I hope to have new photos and an update for you by Monday!

OK, back to your regularly scheduled program...

Some quick thoughts about the Renewable power system and where we would like to be.

One of the items I neglected to mention in the previous post was a very helpful tool in gathering the necessary numbers (in order to size the system). I'm sure they are available on the web, but we got our Kill-a-watt EZ P3 from Northern tool. Its a small device that plugs in-line with the 120V AC electronics that you want to monitor. Sure, many of the books or calculators tell you to check the back panel of an appliance which is fine for say a radio or light, however if you want to check the power consumption of an appliance that goes on/off throughout the day, the kill-a-watt is a must and will stay running for as long as you want and continually update itself for current and total consumption. Our 7 cu ft chest freezer is a great example. Over the course of a 24 hour period the freezer (which BTW is in our basement which stays pretty close to 75 all the time) will consume 1 KWH. Multiply that out by 30 days and you've got 30 KWH per month required ;-)

Instead of spending 5X the money on a DC freezer, our intention is to use all 120V AC Energy-star appliances at camp. Current plan is to move our existing freezer to camp and attempt to make it even more efficient 1) by putting it in the stable/lower temps of the basement and 2) building a box around it made of high density insulated foam panels from lowes or home depot. Course we'll keep the vents open so all heat from the compressor is removed but in theory this should help at least a little.

Honestly we haven't done very much in the way of comparison with what the average American household uses for electricity for a family of 4. There is so much info on the web its difficult to know, so we are looking at our own numbers and using our previous usage with our current (more mindful) lifestyle as a baseline. We live in what I would consider a well insulated 1900 sq ft house, 100% CFL's, Oil Heat/Hot water, Well pump, Full Time Telecommuter and some appliances are Energy Star as all the normal things that you would find in any US household (TV's,Video Games, Computers, AC etc). Prior to making any attempts to conserve our normal monthly usage was in the 800-900 KWH per month range. Now that we have replaced all the lights with CFL's, Turned of Phantom loads, and are paying attention to lights and waste, our numbers have dropped to between 600-700 KWH per month. This was NOT difficult at all and we are not sacrificing comfort, we are just not wasting.

Our goal at the camp... 100 KWH per month and 100% renewable. Of course this is going to be somewhat skewed as we're not running big screen TV's, Oil Furnace, Oven, Dishwasher, Video Games, Telecommuting, however that is exactly why we are there.....so that we can escape from those things ;-)

Potty Wood

We really have been focused in the last year on making things more comfortable at shmoopywood cabin. Trust me, we have come a LONG way from the air mattress in a 10 x 20 uninsulated hunting cabin with 2 great danes and a wood stove at -6 temperatures. I wasnt even going to mention the thawing out of the pottywood with a portable coleman hand warmer heater and luke warm water ;). We still have a ways to go though because we are still using the pottywood facilities as we have yet to plumb the "big house".

Here is our current facilities in the form of potty wood, which i mentioned before is just a toilet in a shed on top of our already in place septic system. We use the facilities, and we fill the tank of the toilet with water that we have hauled from the stream and stored in an empty trash barrel. It functions like a real live toilet and is comfortable unless you are dealing with bees, spiders, mice, frozen toilet or opposite: the sun beating down on the outhouse and heating it up to about a buck fifty.

Who Are You People?

I thought I would create a post that would help you get to know us a little bit, see who we are, what we are doing and why. When all the work is through for the day, we usually cut loose with some of our hobbies, a hike with Django in the woods, collecting blackberries for jam, a ride on the ATV, watching the gorgeous sunset, sitting out there in the dark listening to the critters running around on the property, shooting (paper, not animals) or just a general goof off.




Here is Django on "look out" for big mean attack hummingbirds.

Saskwatch hike

Dave killing the attack pumpkin with my 12ga emergency shotgun. He is actually standing in the area that has become our house.
















Me and my friend Sterling hiking with our Great Danes (django is the freakishly large one)







We are headed back to S-wood this weekend and hope to get a few things done. We still have yet to dig the posts for the dog fence off the back of the house for our "smaller" dog Frankenstein who has a bad habit of running away, a railing in the loft for those mornings when DJango decides the thunder is too scary and runs up the stairs at light speed, and yes... plumbing.

A little about me: I am 37 year old mom of 2, Tarynn 15 and Andrew 12. I used to be a property manager for condominiums until I burned out, got tired of the city and the demanding schedule and left that to become software support for a property management software company. In my vast free time, I am the vice president of a great dane rescue based in Maine and New Hampshire ( http://www.aabgdr.org ). Django and I also do Meet and greets and recently we were given a high honor of making a wish come true for a nursing home patient in MA who wished to the Twilight Wish Foundation that he could spend time with danes. Dave works for a large communications type company from our house while he takes care of our boys Frank(enstein) and Django ages 2 and 4 Great Dane doggies. Dave also volunteers occasionally at Liberty House which is transitional housing for homeless vets as well as support me with the Rescue work. He and I have been married for almost 2 years and we are both previously divorced. I am so lucky to have him in my life. There is nobody else on this planet that I could possibly work this closely and this hard with. Its good honest work and we both enjoy it, even splitting wood! We hope to someday, maybe, move to S-wood on a more permanent basis, so when we do things there, we are constantly thinking along those lines so we wont have to do it twice. We are both VERY environmentally aware and have made a ton of changes in our daily life such as hanging our laundry, using cloth bags for shopping, having a no-napkin rule (we use cloth), using friendly cleaners, detergents etc, CFL's, composting and now we want to take what we have learned and put it into our off-grid green as possible, recycled cabin. We hope to also have animals, grow our own food and live a sustainable lifestyle, but these things take time. My kids think we are nuts, because we are so aware of "enviro crimes" and I think they are rather tired of it but we hope that they will continue to live this way or better in their future lives.

Anyway, thats us.
Thank you for joining us on our ride thus far, i hope that you stick around to see where we end up. Its going to be very exciting :)






Django helping daddy measure for railings to keep him safe.
















Our puppy (Great Dane)Frankenstein and my 15 year old daughter on the deck relaxing.





















Tarynn being silly

Post by Dave

Well. I got hubbster to put together some solar information about what we are looking for, what we have discovered etc. Here goes:

The solar wish list and moving to the Big Leagues:

Up until this point, we have made do with candles, the occasional oil lamp, propane lamps (common to camping) and a small scale battery/inverter combo. The Battery combo that we had been using (seen under the table on the left) for a single CFL or a very small table fan has served us quite well and had reduced our need for the propane/oil lamps. We have two 12V deep cycles that we purchased (with trade in of old cores) at Tractor Supply. Each is 105 amp hours, tied to a small 150W DC to AC inverter. This allows either a CFL to be run or tiny tabletop fan that we have used at night. System is to be charged off two 15W PV panels and a 7amp charge controller which we got from Northern Tool. Pictures to come shortly. This was a great way to reduce the need for other light sources as well as start the sometimes daunting task of learning about everything solar.

Depending on how things go in the next week, this is the gear that we hope to purchase.

Heart of the system will be a Xantrex XW6048 which is a 6000 Watt DC to AC inverter that will tie everything together. Next up is the Battery bank. So far the plan is 4 concord 12V 255amp hour AGM's, to be wired together producing a bank of 1020 amp hours and 48 volts.

The inverter will be tied into our generator as well as a PV array, at this time 4 x 200W panels should do it.

More detailed info and pics to come!

Our temporary power source

Since we are gearing up to start our solar panel, inverter, whosimiwhatsis purchase, I thought it would be good to visit what we use for our source of power currently during the build.

It all started about 30 days after we purchased the land. We had intended on running power up the driveway, in fact, we chose the lot carefully with many things in mind and one of them was the closeness of power at the street level. Right at the corner of our lot, is a pole, so hey it should be easy to bring power up the driveway right? WRONG! We soon learned that there was much more to it and after a $10,000 estimate to put 3 poles on our driveway or 13,000 to trench the wires, we were in a real pickle. They wanted us to pay $10,000 to put poles along the TREE line on the side of a mountain in a very wooded area which means if we lose a pole due to limbs or trees, which is a likely scenario, we had to pay them to come back up and do it again PLUS a monthly bill. Since we had already started trucking up there with coolers, water jugs and candles and really were not uncomfortable, we considered not including power in our plans. One afternoon at the cabin, Dave got the gleam in his eye and I knew something interesting was going to come out of it.

So began the research of the solar installation... To be honest, the solar install would actually be right around the same price but we had the added bonus of no monthly bill. Neither of us knew anything about solar power at the time, and i am not overly interested in kilowatts and ampage, Dave got the tap and began his research process. Two years later, Dave has come up with what we think is a viable plan and we are both eager to get it underway! In the interim however, we needed to come up with a solution for the building process. Lets face it, building a house without any power tools would take MUCH longer no? We wanted something that we could use in an emergency for back-up power (we live in New England and there are great stretches that do not include sun, and wind power wouldnt work for us where we are located). We needed something that would run the well pump that we would EVENTUALLY install (we are so far off from that its not even worth talking about) plus all the household needs. We got our generator and dave set off to house it.

Captain over-engineer made the coolest little shed for it, where all the walls lift up to allow proper airflow on hot days, plus it locks up tight and conceals it. I believe (and I could be wrong) that it is 8,000 watts and although it does consume gas (we are really trying to stop destroying natural resources) it is used so infrequently that it has not been significant. My friend's husband (licensed electrician) came up for a week or two and wired the entire house to a panel that is run off the generator with some gadgety things so that switching to our solar plan would be simple as 1-2-3. (famous last words).

As you can see from the pictures however, our careful planning did not allow for major erosion and now we are faced with the eventuality of some sort of stone walk or moving the generator entirely ;) Ahhh well, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Two weeks on the grid - whiney update

Normally we spend every weekend available at the cabin. When we are up there we work hard and I know I have said this before, but we (or at least I) really enjoy splitting wood, lighting candles, washing dishes in a bucket, hauling water, doing construction, planning the progress, searching for recycled items etc. At the end of the day, we are tired but we wake up in the morning ready to do it all again. This weekend, husband is on call for his job and this means he has to be within arms reach of his computer and the internet. Since we haven't worked all that out, we have to stay here.

I am whining now so I apologize... but...

In the mornings at the cabin, I wake up and immediately go sit on our front porch with my camera. I have been accosted by humming birds, watched giant woodpeckers, turkeys etc. One of these days I want to see a moose and that is my goal. (we have seen moose scat on our property and we have witnessed a moose with a full rack having lunch in the river across the street so we know he is there). So on the eve of "independence day" and the long weekend, I find it ironic that we are stuck here lol.

and not here:

Erosion

We have encountered a few "challenges" or as my old annoying boss would call them "opportunities".
Among other things our big challenge is erosion.

When we dug for the foundation, nestled in the side of our mountain along side a babbling brook (shown on the left after the rains yesterday) that we intended on using for our hand washing, dish washing and sanitary purposes, about 100 feet from the 800 foot well that was dug prior to our purchase we discovered an underground stream. We had to bring extra drainage into the foundation plans to avoid water problems. We were really surprised by this discovery because the previous owners had dug the well 800 feet to hit water, what a surprise to us that only 10 feet down, we had a spring! Trucked in earth, rocks, sand and a house built on a fairly steep grade it would only seem logical that eventually this problem would arise. I think denial kept us from considering the problem because we had so much to do already! Well *sigh* this weekend we had torrential downpours and can no longer avoid this issue. Not only is the area around the house deteriorating but our driveway is washing away. The driveway is 400 or so feet long and straight up the mountain. It was very well done with a drainage ditch along side and redirected to the stream that feeds into the Baker river overflow at the dam. Blackberry bushes that I love so much for jam and birds, have grown dangerously close and with strong winds, debris have gotten tangled in the bushes causing a dam of its own and thereby washing out one of the most crucial parts of the driveway.

Dave and I spent much of our pre-breakfast hour digging, redirecting and redamming that area and I think we are okay -other than really sore muscles, but the question remains how best to collect the water coming off the roof and save it for watering or the aforementioned needs. We have a "tank" and gutters have been considered but being an ex-property manager in the northeast, I also know that gutters can cause more problems! Any ideas would be welcomed and appreciated! Perhaps some sort of removable system that would enable us to safeguard the house from ice dams in the winter but collect the water in the other seasons. (even though the white mountains really only have 2 seasons, winter and summer lol)






This is a picture of the wooded side of our house and it illustrates the 'overhang' that was created when the foundation was poured sideways (another long story) in order to preserve the floor plan we had created. under this overhang it is difficult to see, but there is alot of run off and it is causing some erosion which can be seen along the wall area.























Here is a rather sad and understated picture of how the driveway is falling away from the strong rains and the run off from the house and mountain.









And here, if you can possibly tear your eyes away from the incredibly cute, smiling 200 pound, 40mph doggy, is a shot of the erosion on the other side of the house.





And here, is a picture of yours truly and Dave enjoying the birds singing down the sun on friday evening.

my first construction project

We are back! So many pictures, so little time :)
We worked our butts off yesterday trying to get the screened porch finished so that I could stop being attacked by the nasties up there ;) and We accomplished our goal! Dave spent alot of time with chisels and other instruments, notching the beams for the back door (the dog pen door) that we got from Craigslist last week. The door is at least 50 years old and makes that neat SLAM noise when you let it go! LOVE that. I have so many pictures of the weekend and so many topics to discuss and update on so I will do it one day at a time because we are unable to go back up there until after the 4th of july :( because Dave is on call for work.
Ok, so in this picture is the frame and I had just finished stretching screen over it. The wood is actually left over from building the house, and the screen is just something we happened to have laying around the house!

Here Dave is, notching one of the beams to fit the door. It came out awesome! He put alot of time into it and the workmanship really shows!





























This picture you can see a bit closer how snug the beams are.














Here is a picture of the really cool $15 door from craigslist. It needs a coat of paint and it needs to air out a bit too ;) it smells musty.





























Here is the finished product from the inside!















And here it is at night, we thought it would look cool and it did!
Well all in all, it was about 2 days work but really well worth it as we sat in there and got no buggy bites!

What we have gotten so far

I can't believe this week has already passed and we are preparing to head back up to the cabin already! This weekend is the first weekend of the season that the whole family is going (kids this time!). The season started so late due to massive snow fall and we had so much to do most of our time up there has been on weekends where the kids are with their dad. I am excited for the extra help but skeptical. Something about getting a 12 year old and a 15 year old to help build a house is difficult. ;)

Our plan is to complete the screened porch, Dave has been hard at work preparing the frames for the screens after work each night and I am to install them. We also hope (maybe) to start the plumbing process but it really depends upon how everything else goes. Dave drove to Milford yesterday to meet a guy about a couple doors. He had these old salvaged doors and screen doors that he was "trying to get rid of". We scored 2 screen doors for $30! One of them will be for the other half of the screened porch, the part that will eventually lead into the dog's fence and the other is hopefully going to fit the front door. The whole thing really works for me, its not that we cannot afford to buy a screen door, I mean they are relatively inexpensive. The point is, we have set ourselves this goal to use as many salvaged materials as possible and we are pretty adamant about it. You would think that it would be crap and have to be redone completely and in some cases that is true, which I am totally willing to do. There is a guy there who runs a "dump shop" where he sells these items that we have below at an extremely reduced price. Most of the items we have gotten though are in practically PERFECT condition. We have also unintentionally began decorating the house with early 1900's furniture.

Last weekend I took a little time off on a union break to get some photographs of the furniture that we have salvaged read: rescued from landfills. I thought it might be interesting to show you what we got, what it is intended for and where we got it.

This Chair was recovered at the dump store. It was rickety and missing a support, which we replaced and intend on staining. We also re-upholstered the seat with a scrap yard of cloth from walmart and some cotton batting that was left over from my great dane bed making experiment.

This is the vanity that the chair goes with. We found this at the D-store as well and intend on plumbing it and making it our bathroom vanity complete with (someday) running water. This vanity was also a dstore find!






















The chicken cabinet (right) is just fun, all wood, and another d-store find!

The large polka-dotted wooden box (left) was an ebay purchase by me wayyyy before the house was a glimmer in our eyes. We had thoughts of off-grid living and this box is actually an ice-box that someone tried to redo themselves. We grabbed it from them for a very low cost and I am still trying to figure out what I want to do with it.






















This chair is actually part of a pair. We love these chairs and the original intention was to make new cushions for them but after some time, we grew fond of the pattern and felt it really fit with our other 1900's stuff. The pair was recovered from the d-store.























Ahhh the hutch (left). Gosh I love this hutch... its gorgeous. It is also a D-store FIND!! I know... crazy... it even has felt lined drawers (perfect condition).























And below, you have an armoire that we are going to use as a linen closet in our fancy bathroom ;) I got this off of craigslist for $50! It is early 1900's and very sturdy. Again, perfect condition complete with the original leaded glass.

There are more items of course, a craigslist chest of drawers that I just love that we scored for $25. It is also 1900's period and a cedar hope chest dave got at the d-store that is in the bedroom housing our blankets but these ones are my favorites.

We will be back on Sunday and hopefully I will have alot of updates and pictures. Perhaps we will even get some stuff done!

Screened Porch

We are back from our wonderful extended stay at shmoopywood. As you know, we intended on getting some of the porch framed and hoped to move the eventual process of screening in this porch up on our list of things to complete this summer. We have very limited time up there so alot of the work was completed last week. We basically designed the porch around this very cool door that we had found at the dump... yup thats right... the dump!
SO here is the "before" picture taken only mere moments before we began swinging our hammers.
(keep in mind, I never have built ANYTHING before hehe)

As you can see the door is already framed with some 2 x 4's. AFter this shot was taken, I was given the job of removing the nails from the newly removed 2 x 4's because it was framed in the wrong spot ;)






Proof that I actually built the railings!


I had forgotten to take the telephoto lens off the camera so in order to get this shot, I had to climb up the incline so my apologies if it is not the best. The perplexed look on Dave's face is a direct result of my meandering up the side of the mountain so I could get the whole porch in the shot instead of changing lenses. ;)








Dave then spent some time notching some beams in order to fit in for the new door jamb, You can see the notch in the top of the new beam in the above picture.
And a closer look.
I really think these extra touches are making a big difference in the quality of the job done. It may have taken us all day to complete but we really enjoy putting the extra effort into the work we do plus recycling building materials as much as possible.





















The challenge will be when we build the frames for the screen. The purpose behind making the porch this way was because it will be easier for us to replace WHEN the great danes wreck the screen. (notice the WHEN).








And our final picture for the progress on the porch demonstrates that even the most well thought out plan can go awry. We decided (at the last minute really) that we were going to build a fence off a portion of the porch so that we could have a safe place for our dogs as well as a visitors dogs. Not every dog can be as well behaved off lead as Django, and we wanted to be prepared for any guests that may want to get away from it all by coming out to our almost solar powered haven. So the big gap on the right side is left to fit the next salvaged door we locate hopefully this week.
In a later post, Iw ill show you what we do for "utilities" at this time and be more specific.

Another small project that I worked on a bit was removing the old fixtures (oh and sent them to the salvage yard to be recycled to someone else who may want to save them from a landfill)
The new fixtures were located on ebay. The tub was salvaged as well.

Time flies <-- get it?

Well its the big birthday extravaganza this weekend. This is not a real thing, BUT we are going to the cabin on friday morning to start the screen porch transformation. We will be back on sunday evening and hopefully I will have many pictures to share. Its an exciting weekend because not only will we be up there but so will our other off-grid neighbors on each side (its like an off-grid love fest) one of which we hope to have over for some food.

THursday we hope to go "finding" some more recycled products at salvage yards. Its green because we are not buying new items that use energy to create PLUS we get to have neat furniture and building products that have a story. As you can see from one of our pictures, all of our bathroom furniture is salvaged. We found the neat vanity and intend on plumbing it into the house in order to create a functioning sink! Its very exciting to me to go 'finding'. You can do this too by going to a salvage yard, flea markets, the dump, and even craigslist! If you get something that someone else no longer wants, you save it from going into a landfill and therefore you are doing your small part in keeping our planet safe!

Please also check out some of the links on my list!
L

Successful Friday Trip!

Well, Dave got everything accomplished yesterday that he planned (i think anyway) and was even able to bring about 50 gallons of water up to the cabin. He built a "platform" for the storage tank and even plumbed it a little so that we can get the water out. We bring water from home because the stream dries up in July/August and it makes it difficult to haul water. Bringing water from home in containers is not an option because one never really can gauge how much water is needed... and this is why:

Earlier I mentioned that the house had a well dug and a septic system. Back in the beginning we found it a necessity to use the "facilities" so dave built a small outhouse on top of the septic system and put a real toilet in! All we have to do is haul the water and fill the tank and we have a flushing toilet. The plan is, to move that lovely torture chamber into the house, ok well not the whole thing, just the toilet part.

When we built the house, and poured the foundation we also had them connect to the septic tank, now all we need is plumbing!
You would think that we would prioritize the potty over the screened in porch, but if you were thinking that way, you probably never spent a 90+ degree day with no air conditioning or fans unable to open the door because of the afore mentioned deranged black flies! ;)

Our Plans - this helps us carry them out!

Dave took the day off to bring supplies up to the cabin today and measure for the screened porch inserts. I think it just might be a ploy to spend the day in the beautiful sunshine!

Anyway, he will be bringing up some of the crap we have collected over the winter to live in the cabin as well as bring up the water tank we purchased (with water) and some wood. He will also be bringing back the supplies we got for the screened in porch and hopefully he will be building the porch here at home. He will be building it at home, in parts, and then we can install it up at the cabin. It has turned into a necessity due to the deranged black flies and monster sized mosquitoes that live in that area. It would be awesome and it is our plan, to leave the back French doors open at night in the summer to facilitate some AIR in the house as well as let Django sleep cooler. There will be a door (that we can latch so nobody can get out) and there will be “dog safe” screen. This just means that we need to create something that will keep the dogs from running THROUGH the screens if a critter meanders by. This is a likely scenario. Although I trust Django to stay put, Frank is a loose cannon and can (and has) run through a screen without even realizing there was anything there!

You can see above in the pictures, the full back of the house (picture was taken in april when there was still snow) and a closer shot of the porch from yesterday. I will try and get some pictures of Dave building the porch inserts (porch is not even framed – hard to see in the picture) and then post pictures of the progress next weekend at the cabin. I do believe that we will be spending 2 weekends in a row up there and hope to accomplish quite a bit. Riveting isn’t it?

I know its alot of work, but we are also very able to enjoy this work and spend the time there. We allow for some play and some work, although the work is hard, its FUN! ;)
Here is some comic relief:
Over the winter, NH had more snow than we have in 100 years or some such crazy shit, so D and I drove up to the cabin just to make sure it was okay. We have a HUGE driveway and it is very steep, which makes it impossible to climb in a car when there is snow on the ground. We had to park, and walk up. We also have a metal roof, and had not considered the amount of snow that came flying off of it! THere were snow banks until MAY! Here is a picture of me trying to navigate the snow banks and one of me deciding the easiest way down that driveway was on a cardboard box!
wee