A little less boring

My last post lamented the lack of "major events" around the cabin on Mossy Point. This post? Not so much.

For some very odd reason, a person or persons found the need to steal our "Big Ugly Truck".
Big Ugly is/was a 21 year old Chevy 1 ton duelly with 150,000 miles, no working A/C, headliner, rusty, dented, torn, oil leaky, no brake havin' truck. We used it only to pull the trailer and what-not.

We heard it drive off about 0400hours Thursday. We thought it was odd, but that it must have been a neighbor. In the morning, we found that our truck had been stolen. The Sheriff was called, report filed and that about it. The folks on our road have gotten together to tighten-up the look-out for vehicles that drive in and around for no apparent reason.

Here's the good news, we are looking forward to a replacement truck.

Something along these lines will do nicely. It's a good thing that God is our source.

So I had last week off from work and did some work on the cabin. Bats had taken up residence under the wavy siding of the cabin and garage. They stunk! The poop that is. I spent several hours tighting up the siding that had "cupped" and shrunk over time.

That's not all, we had camping guests over the weekend. KS and daughters with other guests stayed in the woods behind the house. Hiked, fished and in general had a nice time.



CS caught the only fish. For some reason, they were not biting that day.

AS cuts bait.

Cutie pie


On leafy pond

Miss AS sitting on Mossy Point

A little along ........

There just aren’t enough major events going on around here to amount to anything. That’s most likely a good thing. Other people I know are having Earthquakes, hurricanes and babies, and having them all one right after the other.


The onlyest accomplishment here on Mossy Point, that would not otherwise put you to sleep, is some progress on the barn. Currently, our loft is occupied by 7 cats, Miss Jerri Johnson and her kittens. We call her “Miss” because, if she is married, you couldn’t prove it. He’s not been around, does not help her in any way and must surly be an absent father. So Jerri has sole custody and has been getting by on the assistance we provide. At least she’s not a drain on the local economy. There are few things cuter than a loft full of kittens.


The barn has been sitting there for three years without the first door on it. We’re determined to have the loft closed in before Winter, and this was the first step in that direction. The track and all costs about $100 and we’re paying for everything in cash, (No credit in our lives) so one door at a time is fine. Please take note of my non OSHA compliant work platform.



I made it from left over poplar boards from the bridge. Just enough too. There are no battens on the door, but I did cut a lap joint in each to prevent weather from coming in.
The whole thing is 48” wide and 74” tall. It’s heavy. Too heavy for me to lift alone, and since I work mostly alone, the real feat was to get it up and into place within help.


Without help that is, but with my friend John Deere. It took a few steps but I got the thing up and leaning on the barn, and the wheels slide into the track. the rest involved a rope, the lawn mower and some grunting. Suffice it to say, I got the door installed without damage to either myself or the door. Next weekend, another loft door!

Mossy Point Cabin photo shoot

Yes, I know it has been close to two months since I have put anything on the site. This blog is about the cabin and frankly, it’s been far too hot to do much outside, thusly, no posts either. We’re expecting a high of 89 today and 84 on Tuesday with some rain. Time to go back to work.

In June, we took part in an annual event here in Brown County called, “The Log Cabin Tour”. Five to six houses are selected that rage from small, (900sqft with no electricity) to the huge. (5,500sqft with all the bells and whistles) Our cabin fell somewhere in the middle. The money that is raised by the tour goes to educational programs and food for those who need it.

Shortly after the tour, we were again selected by a magazine named “Country’s Best Cabins”, to be featured in their publication. They sent a photographer named Joseph Hilliard out last week to do the shoot. To say it was interesting would be a huge understatement.

http://www.josephhilliard.com/index2.php?ver=v1

I have added Joe’s web site here in case you’re interested in seeing his outstanding work.
If you choose to visit his site, you can select “Log Homes” in his gallery listing and see some of the architecture he photographs. Most of these “Cabins” have front doors that cost more than our entire house! And, after viewing Joe’s site, I am wondering why I submitted ours for consideration.

If you are like most of us, looking at a 2 million dollar house is interesting, but not feasible, or maybe not even desirable. I think this is why we were selected. Our house is more normal in size and doable by most anyone, specially in price if you’re doing it yourself.


This is Joe.

I am happy to say that Joe uses a Canon camera and so do I. Are you impressed? Mine cost over $400. Joe’s was a bit more. (20 times more) He was kind in allowing me to shadow him during the process. I learned a few things, most of which I can not use because it takes proper equipment, of which I am not likely to purchase. Needless to say, lighting is a big part of it.

This thing below, is a controller for flash units. It allows a photographer to control the intensity of the flash and so much more than I can describe.




Large lights and what-not.

I would have liked to have a large format photo to post, but all I have is a small one Joe e-mailed to me. It’s a wide angle picture showing the whole back ‘Yard” for the first time in one picture.

I encourage you to go to Joseph Hilliard’s site and look at his photos. Awesome! And the log “cabins” are really something to see.

Janie paints again

We've just come off of a three day weekend (four for me) spending each day getting ready for the Log Home Tour, a scant four days from now. Jane keeps coming up with more things to do, on top of the all ready long list of things to finish. I cleaned the screen porch, cut grass, fixed fence, split wood and more. Janie cleaned, arranged, modified, painted and decorated. One thing she painted was our mail box. she's wanted to paint it since we bought it. Here it is.




A close up view shows us, sitting at a camp fire amongst the trees.


I enjoy her ability to paint and am looking forward to a time when she can dedicate more time to it.




Two weekes ago, my sister and brother-in-law came to help with the flowerbed and to move the wood rack. They were a huge help and we were happy for the visit. JD did most of the heavy lifting while we held the rack from tipping.




The rack's finial resting place, behind the garage.


Mulch provides cover.


It's not a well established garden, but it's only our first year.


Ok, we're done with it. Janie has flowers and plants for other locations all arund the place. eg: in a coffee pot, an iron pot, baskets and an old Corned Beef box from Argentina.

A tree fell in the woods, ... and I heard it

Last time I said I’d have a finished picture of the bridge, here it is.


Not many days after, a storm passed through and brought down a large oak tree real close to the bridge. The tree’s roots turned up the dirt around it and looked like this.



The top of the oak tree hit our barn and bent down part of the metal roof.
Not very bad, but still, not the kind of mess we wanted, just a few days before
the Log Cabin Tour in June.



We, along with our brother-in-law set about cutting and cleaning the area.
It took a hour the day it happened, the whole next day and into the third a couple hours. I did most of the cutting while standing in the bucket of the JD, while Janie spend hours picking up branches, hauling them to the paddock to burn at some future date.

When we cut the trunk, it, and the dirt it was connected to flipped back to it’s
original position. (almost) It left a gapping hole to fill. We bought 3 tons of
dirt and to fill it in.

What a mess. Our place is easier to see from the road now. We don’t like it.

A bridge real close

We were wanting to have a bridge over the Eastern arm of our little pond. The barn is on the other side and it seemed the convenient thing to do. So, in the Summer of 2010, Kevin and his son came to help me lay-out the posts that would be the main weight bearing members.

We found two polls that were the same size and all. Got'em free too. We like free. I figured getting the polls to straddle the pond would be the thing that took the most effort but, with a little help from my friend John Deere, I had'em in place in 30 minutes. Wonderful!

Janie caught me acting up while crossing over on one poll. the bridge will run right out of where the porch door is.

If you read back in October, you'll see where we had a guy dig out part of the pond. He was able to work around it with little problem.

Sorry, this is a phone picture. Here I've got the "Trusses" started. They took a lot of the bounce out of the polls. There will be three sections to the bridge. the polls, of course, and an approach on each end. This is all flat and everything, but we're going for a gracefull, sweeping look, which is difficult when you've only got utility polls to work with. It stayed like this all of the Winter.

Come Spring of 2011, I got to work on the walking surface of 2x6's. This angle shows how the approachs spread out, preventing a square, streight look for the bridge.

So you can see how the log railings tie all three sections together and make it one bridge. Now I have to add all the little sticks and limbs to fill in the opening in the railings, and then nail on the wavy siding to hide the utility polls.

A finshed project picture will follow.

This man has an Island

From the begining, our kitchen was to have an island in the middle. It has taken a while but we have it now. Here's a shot during construction. No island. Since we did most everything ourselves and, couldn't do everything all at once, there had to be a priority. The island's number has come up!

We used this little antique table for these last two years while we were finishing other things. It's nice and all that but didn't funtion well as counter space.

We bought a couple more cabinets from Lowes, put them together and covered the sides and back with our favorite bead-board paneling, then built the top like the rest of the counter using red oak flooring. That leaves it up to Jane to paint, stain and water proof. She likes using Spar varnish, 3 - 5 coats.

So here it is, we like it. That's 13.5sqft of counter space we didn't have before. Now the project will be to finish the bar chairs in black like the cabinets.