Crank Table Finally Crosses the Finish Line

The crank table is the final project across the finish line completing my original design intentions for the cabin. It's also the last Summer project of the year before we settle in for the l-o-n-g Winter cozy. I covered most of the construction in these earlier posts from July 2024 and October 2025.

My design objectives have always been to save space by being able to use the table as a traditional table but also be able to raise it up to counter height for food preparation. 

Table in the lowered position

Table in the raised, counter-height position

Looking Northwest

Looking Northeast

Looking West

Looking down from the staircase

I'm really pleased how the maple slab turned out. There was a fair amount of rot in both ends. For the UV-cured finish, it required 2 coats of primer, then 3 coats of satin finish, all with sanding inbetween. The pimer coats were sanded with 320 grit. Then the finish coats were sanded with 320, 400, and 600 grit paper.

Smooth Belly for the Live Edge Slab

Finally making some stides in finishing the maple live edge slab for the dining table. I've had the slab for several years. Sanded it the first year. Poured epoxy last Fall. Broke off the epoxy molds and rough sanded the epoxy last month.

I bought a new orbital sander and a course of sanding disks ranging from 40 grit to 600 grit. To make finishing tolerable, I elected to use a UV-cured finish - Clean Armor 710 and 700.  A bit of an investment for both the finish and the handheld UV light, but it's SO CONVENIENT.

The Clean Armor 710 is a sealer, and since the maple slab has some rot on it AND I want a satin finish, I used the 710 first to seal the underside, per the manufacturer's recommendations.

Starting point with the underside sanded to 400 grit.

After sanding the underside with 400 grit, I applied the 710 sealer. Then cured the finish with a handheld UV light. Works pretty slick! No fumes and fully curred after running the light over the surface for 10 minutes.

710 sealer applied and cured, with the UV light shown.

The sealed slab sanded with 400 grit prior to applying the 700 satin finish.

Then I sanded again using 400 grit paper to clear off small imperfections before applying the 700 satin finish and curing it with the light. 

 

Underside of slab with cured finish.

Then attached the metal braces to prevent the slab from warping over time. 

Finished underside of slab with cross-grain steel braces attached.

Very pleased with the result.  And really looking forward to getting this slab on the crank table base that's been squatting on the main floor taking space. 

Remaining are (a) finishing the live edge sides, and (b) sanding and finishing the top. I'll be a little more OCD on the top, making sure it's smooth and has several coats of finish. 

Stay tuned. 

2025 Outdoor Projects at KnarrowHaus

A quick update on the Summer projects.

New bed rack by Thumperfab

The rack arrived last Fall. I assembled all the pieces shortly after it arrived, then stored them in the garage until Summer when we had time and fair weather to install them on the bed. (Of course, there were a few specialized mounting bolts missing I didn't detect until a few weeks ago. Amazon to the rescue.) 

Thumperfab bedrack with the rear door swung open.

The only problem with the bed rack is that it has a tray on top with sidewalls. When we cover it with a tarp, the rain and the snow press down on the tarp turning it into a swimming pool and making it impossible to remove the tarp without ripping on the rack's sharp corners. I came up with a solution using a sheet of HDPE plastics and some supports. (See further below.)

Oil changes for the snow machines

The side-by-side ("Schneewagen") and the quad ("Schneezeug") both got Amsoil powered oil changes along with new oil filters. 

(Those Amsoil kits are pretty slick: Exactly the right amount of synthetic oil, the correct oil filter, a new washer for the oil drain plug, and even a disposable funnel.) 

The engineers who design these offroad utility vehicles design them to be anti-DIY! Both units' oil filters are buried in, underneath and between the most difficult-to-reach locations. Clearly designed to discourage the average DIYer and foment paying exorbitant shop fees from your friendly neighborhood dealer's service department. 

I am undettered by their Rub-Goldberg-esque shenanigans.

Mackenley's slender fingers and narrow bones managed to reach the oil filter on the side-by-side avoiding having to take out the back seats, the battery cover and engine bay wall. I was solo on the oil change for the quad. Three hours for a "simple" oil change.

New synthetic winch lines

Removing the existing steel cables from the winch spool was difficult, mostly because it's tight quarters reaching in from the front to the winch spool. Had to remove both vehicles' rollers fairlead and replace them with fairleads designed for synthetic winch lines.  Removing the cable necessitated the use of a dremel with a variety of attachments to cut off and smooth over the frayed steel linces. Tedious and frustrating.

Tensioning the synthetic winch line on Schneewagen

Mackenley and I got the new synthetic lines installed and tentioned last week. We tensioned the winch lines by pointing the side-by-side and the quad on the road facing each other about 75 feet apart. Then we successively put each vehicle in neutral and winched in to the other vehicle. One person drives the machine and runs the winch; the other guides the line so it tensions evenly across the spool. 

Rear rack lights

I had so much trouble placing the initial order for the Thumperfab bed rack, that the owner had pity on me and threw in a set of lights for the rack. These should help us see at night when we're trying to back in up the driveway. 

The installation instructions were sparse, to be kind. I spent an evening on Youtube looking for guidance from others who have installed similar lighting systems in Can Am Defenders. Mackenley mounted the lights in their designated positions on the back of the rack, four in all. 2 that point to each side, and 2 pointing back. 

Mackenley installing the rack lights

The wiring was plug-and-play, but I had to figure out where and how to route everything from the back of a tilting dump bed up through the floorboards in to the dash in order to mount the switch and tie in to keyed-power. Thanks, Youtube.

I count the day's effort as completely victorious, as evidence by these pictures.

The new rear lighting switch mounted between the stock lighting switch and the winch switch.

The rack lights are near the top of the rack pointing to the sides and to the back.

The lights are switched "on" in the picture above.

Bed Rack Tray Cover

The cover over the bed rack's top tray is my own design. I bought a piece of HDPE from a local Tap Plastics shop, along with some scraps of 1"x1" offcuts to use as supports. Last week, Katie sanded  the ednges of the HDPE sheet, rounding them prevent tearing the tarp. Then she drilled 10 evenly-spaced holes on the sheet for mounting the 5" inch pieces of 1"x1" supports to keep the sheet flat when it's under snow load. I secured the sheet at the corners and sides with zip ties. 

Now we should be able to pull the tarp off in the winter time when snow is piled on top without destroying it.

Stay tuned for two indoor projects... 

...that need to be done before Winter sets in:

• Finish the live edge slab for our kitchen table. Need to sand this outside.

• Replace noise/buzzing relay for the heat on the third floor with a quiet, solid-state relay. 

When the fan hits the poop...

It's early Sunday morning, and Katie and I are still drifting in and out of sleep cycles in bed. Our son-in-law is showering down the hall in the upstairs shower. Our daughter bursts into our room, "Mom, Dad, the toilet is overflowing into the basement shower."

"Did you try to unplug it with the plunger?!"

"I can't get it to work!"

I run downstairs and attempt to unplug the toilet with a plunger myself. Nope.

Poopy water slowly flowing out of the basement shower and leaking on to the bathroom floor and basement EVERYWHERE. Katie and Eliza scramble for every towel in the house. "Grayson, get out of the shower!" We all spend the next 1/2 hour cleaning and mopping, and I focus on unplugging.

Clearly the plumbing must be plugged downstream of the toilet.

I call a 24-hour plumbing service, and they show they can send someone out between 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM. Ok. Cool. 

"Nobody flush the toilets or use the shower or the sinks until we get this figured out!"

I drop everyone off at church in Leavenworth, and continue on to Home Depot in Wenatchee to purchase a 25' drain snake. And a fan to dry out the floor.

After arriving home with drain snake and fan and my churchy occupants, even the 25 foot snake won't clear the clog. We wait for the on-call plumber to show up. I get a text at 4:00 pm telling me he's on his way.

...plumber never shows. 

(Turns out, when you call the afterhours/weekend emergency plumbing service, their number and the actual technician's number aren't connected.  Texts were going through, but no calls to my phone. Apparently, he attempted to call before coming (because we're a long ways "out") but I never got the call, so he just didn't come.)

No text. Nothing. 

For the next day, we make use of the construction port-o-potty up the street and a very kind neighbor's cabin a few doors down; our garden hose and a 5 gallon bucket became the dish washing sink.

My son-in-law and I have to leave Sunday evening to return home because we both have to work on Monday. 

Monday morning, my wife talks with the plumber, and he's up there early afternoon, and quickly determines that somehow the septic controller box (that controls the pump and the alarm) has come unplugged.

So, there was never anything to unclog. We just needed to "plug in" the septic system. 

(My strong hunch is that at some point in time earlier, our septic alarm may have been going off, and "someone" heard it, couldn't figure out what to do, and just unplugged it. We'll never know. There's no security camera over on that side of the house.

However, the original contractor who wired up the septic a few years ago also NEVER should have wired it with a plug on a GFCI. It should have been hardwired in to our panel.  ...grumble.)

The plumber service call was a cool $150.00. Katie immediately got on the phone with a septic pumping service, and they had a truck up the next morning.

$433 later, our septic system is pumped out. 

Knowing Summer is the time to get issues like this resolved--before snow renders the road impassable--I feel a compelling need to restore full confidence in "the system." 

So I schedule an electrician who specializes in these kinds of things the next morning to make sure the pump switches and electrical are in good working order. I drive back up to the cabin after dropping my son-in-law at the airport Tuesday evening to meet the electrician the next morning. (Katie and the kids are now gone boat camping to Lake Chelan.)

He didn't find any problem with the float switches or the pump. Thankfully the electrical box IN the float tank had not gotten flooded. 

Be he did find a few problems: In addition to the whole system being connect with an easily removable plug: Both circuit breakers in the septic controller box -- a 10 amp and a 20 amp -- were connected to a single 15 amp breaker. Anyone see a problem there...?!! They were cross wired, and the wires between them were getting overloaded and corroded...

The electrician installed an additional circuit so that the pump and the controller are now on separate, 20 amp circuits. And he took out the GFCI outlet and hardwired the controller box in to the panel. 

He also found that the controller breaker in the septic controller box was going bad. It's a bit special, and he didn't have one, so I ordered a new replacement by mail and replaced the funky one a week later. 

$1,954 later and I have now restored confidence that our septic system will function properly in to the coming Winter season.

For those of you keeping track, that's a cool $2,537 of unplanned expense to restore confidence that we can flush our toilets. But I'm grateful we actually found a few sleeping problems and got everything properly installed now, albeit a few years late.

A vigorous bleach mopping followed by an aggressive floor fan appear to have abated the smell in the basement. 

Tschau, Schneewagen. Grüezi, Schneezeug!

We said goodbye to our dear friend, Schneewagen.  

Schneewagen has been with us at KnArrow Haus since the beginning, the year we worked on finishing it prior to occupancy. After our early failures using an old, heavy snowmobile to transfer from the parking area to the cabin in Winter months, I bought a Honda Pioneer 700-4 and installed tracks and an enclosure. It has been a steady and reliable workhorse. Our list of extended family and friends who visit KnArrow Haus continues to expand, and includes a growing stable of young grandkids. We needed more space. 

When I took Schneewagen to the local dealership for its annual maintenance in August, I bumped into a Can Am Defender MAX Limited. I'd seen them before, but this time I opened the door and sat inside.

With two full rows of 3-abreast seats, a built-in heater (and air conditioner), and a cargo bed -- it's the UTV equivalent of my Jeep Gladiator. More space. More power. More heat. More convenience. More money... 

Within a day I had a buyer for the Honda Pioneer, and then got to work foraging tor the right-priced replacement. Anyone who has shopped for a power playtoy since Covid reared its head, knows that discounting by dealerships is now extinct. But with a little persistence I was able to find a dealership in Oregen that had temporarily marked down a couple units in their inventory to make room for some 2025 units. 

I borrowed a flatbed trailer from a friend and took a Saturday trip to Sublimity Oregon -- with a lunch stop at the Wooden Nickel Pub.

A few hours later and Schneezeug (Snow Thing) was sitting in my lowlands front yard.

The savings were substantial and well worth the drive.  Now I ordered the snow tracks from the local dealership and decided to improve our Schneezeug parking space in fron the KnArrow Haus while waiting for the tracks to arrive.

This lone tree did not survive the root damage inflicted when the power and water utility lines were buried during constructions. It's tilting in the middle of the ideal summer and winter parking area just off the front driveway. So I broke out my chainsaw gifted to me a couple Christsmases ago.

After I downed the tree, I was unable to get the saw restarted. As chance would have it, a truck was driving by at that exact time with one of my (few) blog fans and a partner in-tow with chainsaw experience.

The gentleman on the left is a Navy pilot who flies fighter jets and was visiting the area for the holiday weekend. He's read my blog and aspires to be a Yodelin homeowner some day. His friend on the right, has previous chainsaw experience, and took the opportunity to inspect the saw and make sure it was setup correctly. He helped me restart the saw, and I was able to finish the job. Katie gave them a quick tour inside KnArrow Haus. 

I trailered Schneezeug to Wenatchee last weekend. The tracks were installed on Wednesday. And I picked it up on Saturday, then docked it in its newly cleared stable in the KnArrow Haus driveway.

Bring on the snow!

Double Live-edge Slab Table

My design vision is brilliant and multifaceted: Have a table that functions as both a table and as a counter-level food prep station. (A floor wax and a dessert topping!) 

I purchased the crank table base during Covid. (It got stuck in the Evergiven-Suez canal debacle and took a LONG time to arrive.) It sat in my home garage that winter, then migrated to the KnArrow Haus kitchen last Fall.  At over 200 pounts, it's not the type of thing you want to move more than once. Being able to raise and lower the table will eliminate the need for two different-height surfaces thereby conserving space. Bonus points if I can get the base up on casters that roll easily on the floor -- but based on the minimum height of the base, it's not likely that will happen as the table top would likely be too tall.

Somewhat accurate facsimile of the crank table base I ordered

The only reason I installed the industrial retractable power cord in the ceiling is because I knew the table would be going up and down and also potentially moving.

Ceiling mounted retractable extension cord waiting patiently for the crank table

 

I bought the maple slab at SecondUse.com a couple years ago for only a couple-hundred bucks. It was kiln dried, but has some rot in the crotch at one end and some softness at the other end that might be rot, but I'm not educated enough to accurately diagnose.

Maple slab from SecondUse.com

I proceeded to remove all the bark from edges, and to clean things up in general. A long day of work got things pretty cleaned-up. I also routed channels on the underside for metal, c-channel bars to help prevent warping. After my initial work, it sat for a over a year in our house waiting patiently.

In process cleaning up the slab

Classial crotch rot

Slight soft (punky?) end

Slab with steel stabilizing bars installed on the underside

I finally brought the slab and the base up to KnArrow Haus last fall, where both have hybernating patiently, taking up space. I began the next phase to stabilize, epoxy-fill, and finish the slab by treating the entire slab with wood hardener, specifically designed to stabilize rot.

maple slab treated on both sides with wood hardener.

The slab really drank up the wood hardener -- 3 of these from HomeDepot! I felt like I should go ahead and treat the whole thing keep it uniform in appearance. 

Next step will be to fill the holes and rotted areas with epoxy.

Backup Power

What was billed as "very reliable" power delivery when we first purchased our KnaArrow Haus property has gradually deteriorated into more-frequent-than-we-expected power outages, during both inclement Winter weather as well as during fairer weather. Although all the community power service is all underground and unaffected by rain, wind, or snow, the major feeder lines servicing our community and Stevens Pass are above ground and less impervious to the elements. 

KnArrow Haus survived (thankfully), with flying colors, the 10+ day power outage a couple seasons ago, when Leavenworth received record snowfall and US Hwy 2 was closed both directions over the pass due to snow, ice, wind, fallen trees, and then heavy rain. 

Regardless of the time of year, when we're enjoying KnArrow Haus with friends or family and the power goes out for more than a few hours, I want to smooth out the bump by running lights, Internet, and some selective heat and large appliances.

I bought a dual-fuel generator and two 40-pound propane tanks on wheels to smooth over the inevitable power gaps. At a slight sacrifice to peak power, the propane tanks remove the concer n for old or fouled fuel in between usage.

My friend helped me acquire the necessary provisions and gave me the plan for connecting the generator socket in to the panels. I waited until the weather was warm before shutting off power to the cabin's panels to hook things up. 

Crude schematic for hooking up the generator to both panels

The power panels before hooking up the generator connection

Implementing the schematic required that I move the current circuit breakers from the top right of each panel in order to install 50 Amp circuit breakers for the generator along with the needed shutoff-interlock mechanism. The interlock prevents the generator breakers from being on when the power from the grid is also on.

For all but one circuit breaker, there was enough slack wire in the box to move the breakers without a hassle. However, I had to splice one additional wire on to the septic pump breaker to move it down to the bottom.

One panel showing the 50 Amp generator circuit breaker installed on the top right.

Routing the heavy gauge wires through the top of each panel, stripping, and splicing them took much longer than I planned.  The entire project took 6 hours, mostly because I was purposefully slow, careful and methodical. Translating and implementing a schematic in the real world is always more work, especially for a DIY-er like me. 

The panels with generator circuit breakers and interlocks installed

I also took the opportunity to re-label the chicken scratch on all of the circuits using a label printer. They are much easier to read now. Very pleased with the end results (below). 

New generator with propane tanks and panel plugg-in. 

The next step will be to figure out which combinations of circuits, appliances, and heat can be used successfully when on generator power.