I didn’t really meet my aim of blogging regularly from the cabin build, nor did I have much success documenting things with my audio recorder and doing radio updates. Once folks started arriving, the assembly of the shed and managing camp logistics took the forefront and plans changed.

What I can report is that 20 people and 5 dogs came and stayed some portion of the time. There were lots of hikes, trips to funs spots around, great meals, and lots of amazing help with the building. The night sky did not disappoint, either. We had a couple nights of clouds, but for the greatest part of the week there were amazing stars and meteors. The weather was unusually hot, but the nights were pretty comfortable and most important, the rain let up for nearly the whole week when folks were making camp with us.

Among the many highlights of the week for me is when we just managed to get the walls and roof sheathing wrapped before the lone rainstorm of the week blew through. All the kids and a few adults took shelter inside, even though there were no walls besides the thin fabric of the vapor barrier. But it kept us all dry right when we needed it to do so.

When Tracy and Millie arrived, I had a deck constructed but nothing more. When they left, thanks to the help of so many capable hands, I had walls, a roof, windows, a door, and stairs to the porch. The siding was nearly all up, save the highest parts of the bearing walls and the triangle of the gable ends. Everything was water tight and I even had locks in the door to secure what little we left behind.

Tracy and I made a trip up again this past weekend (Labor Day) and got some more siding up. We also came up with a plan to correct for the one fairly major mistake I made (so far). On one gable end, where we started the roof panels, I left only about a 2 inch overhang, when really it should have been more like six inches to account for the siding, the fascia, and the shadow board. There is no way I’m taking the roof off. For one thing, the likelihood that I could match all the holes on the ridge cap to the holes that exist in the roof is pretty slim. So to avoid either buying all new roof material, or the high potential for a leaky roof, Tracy helped me come up with another plan.

We had left over a 1 by 12 inch sheathing board that was 16 feet long. From that, we used the 2 by 6 fascia boards as a stencil and cut new 1 by 6 fascia for the end where the roof overhang is too shallow. And I’ll either not put up the shadow boards at all (most likely) or I’ll leave them off that one end of the roof. This way, water and ice will still slough off I hope, and we can still have uniform trim around the top of the structure.

The other late decision Tracy and I made was to install one more window near the top of the rear gable end of the building. The good news is that the shed is very, very tight. The bad news is that it needs a little more air exchange to ensure that mold won’t grow. So we’re putting in what is actually a basement window just over the top beam on the back wall. I plan to build a loft back there, so it might also be nice to open a window and get a night breeze over the loft and perhaps see those stars.

Here’s a quick photo of the progress we’re making. We have maybe 6 more weekends possible to travel up before the snow stars flying. I think we might be able to make three of them to do more trim installation. If you’d like to see some great fall leaves and do some camping, reach out! Always glad for the company.