Living the Dream

I am pleased to report that the flooring of the main cabin ground level went very well. The start was delayed because I chose to wait until my friend, Ron Cavers, was available to help me and that gave me time to get all the wood prepared (squared off and best side selected). Ron is a professional floor installer and he very kindly offered to help me lay the floor. Being a professional, he has all the knowledge and specialist tools that I lack and therefore it all went pretty flawlessly (lol) and took much less time than it would have taken me to do it by myself.

I managed to get all the preparation stuff done before Ron arrived, so little time as wasted. We made a pretty slick team as I cut the lengths and handed them to Ron who nailed them to the floor. There were a few places where some jig-saw cuts were required, around the fire place and air vents etc, and this slowed things down a little but in the end it took us only three and a half days to actually lay the floor. The preparation took about the same time so all in all it took about a week worth's of work or 10 man days. I'm guessing but if I had had to do it all by myself I honestly believe it would have taken my at least four weeks. Thank you Ron.

The view of the Great Room from the landing.

Looking from the study area across the Great Room to the kitchen.

From the dining area to the Great Room ….

…. and back again.

From the prow into the kitchen.

And finally from the Bar into prow

I have already filled the small gaps that needed filling and tomorrow I plan to hire a floor sander to sand it all down and then I will clear stain it. I estimate that it will take me a week to get all that done.

I also finished constructing the Island top and cut out the opening for the gas (propane) cook top.

Note the prototype stool for the Island.

I am going to stain the top a mahogany colour to provide some contrast in the kitchen. If I don't like it, I can always darken it. 

I have trial fitted the cook top and it fits very snuggly into the hole. I'll get that connected up as soon as I have sanded, stained and finish coated the top

As concurrent activity I also managed it little more work in the main bathroom.

I have started work on constructing the vanity cabinet where the hand basin will be .…

and finished the ceiling, including …..

…. staining the beams, caulking the joints and installing the light/fan over the shower.

This weekend has been full of fun and games and it was our turn to have some flooding. Wednesday it decided to rain all day and all night when it was so heavy it woke me up and kept me awake for two hours. With the ground still frozen and snow still on the ground the water had nowhere to go but run off the mountain. It came down in cascades, flooded across the Development road in several places and onto some peoples' properties. Two owners had their basements flooded and two had their garages inundated. I had a tiny amount of water in my garage, which seeped under one of the doors but, I was able to sweep that out without difficulty. I also had to shovel some wet snow away from the garage apron and that stopped the water coming into the garage. I had more water in there from the snow on the quad tyres after bringing in another load of firewood.

I was very lucky but spent much of Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday helping others and organising earth works to divert water away from peoples properties. We were very lucky to have Ryan Gillard, who ploughs our road on hand with his excavator to dig channels and build berms because without him others would have been flooded.

This is Lyle's front yard today. You can see the water mark on the trees that tells you the water level was more than a foot higher than it is here and flooded his basement and garage. Lyle was pretty philosophical about it and remarked 'so much for living the dream'.