Weekend Mud & Missteps

I made my weekly pilgrimage to Home Depot Saturday morning to get items to hookup the main floor heat -- an larger electrical box to house the relay.  And four 2" angleiron posts for the stair railing, which will need to be set before we install the permanent staircase.

If course, when we arrived at the Haus, I realized that the electrical box hadn't made it through checkout at Home Depot. Not sure how that happened.

The drywallers finished what we believe is their final coat of mud on the walls.  Looking really good. Final steps should be some PVA primer and a light texture and their done.

2nd coat of mud on the main floor.

2nd coat of mud on the kitchen wall. 

Katie also discovered that the drywallers put the drywall in the garage a little too close to the top of the door, preventing it from opening. The picture below shows the drywall with my saw cut, which allowed us to open the door.  We will need to put some sprayfoam the gap created by the removal of that strip.

Because I couldn't hook-up the thermostat and heat due to a lack of supplies, we only stayed about an hour.  But in that hour, it snowed several inches on our car....

Date/Time	Snow Depth (")
11/24/2019 21:00	7.6
11/24/2019 20:00	7.6
11/24/2019 19:00	7.6
11/24/2019 18:00	6.9
11/24/2019 17:00	4.4
11/24/2019 16:00	0.7

White or Biscuit?

We're at the point where we need to purchase our farmhouse kitchen sink. The pressing question is: "White" or "Biscuit"?

Here's our color pallette in the kitchen and family room:

Beetle stain pine, Web gray door color, Rough-sawn alder cabinets.

Beetle stain pine with vinegar+steel wool stain.

Birch plywood.

Concrete floors.

As are reminder, heres' the kitchen layout.  Instead of upper cabinets, floating shelves.

Got an opinion on whether we should go with "White" or "Biscuit"?  Leave a comment.

Muddy Walls

We took another evening trip up to KnArrow Haus this evening to setup some additional heaters and fans to make sure the first coat of tape and mud will dry.

Looking really good. Although not entirely apparent in my pictures below, I'm doing a "trimless" installation -- no baseboard or door moldings. A littlle more expensive to do with the drywallers, but virtually no trim material or work to put it in. Ahhhh. I think it all nets out to the same cost but less work and less time (for me).

Kitchen wall.

Family room wall.

Bunk room.

Master bedroom.

Master bedroom.

Basement.

I think there's one more coat of mud to go, then a very light orange peel texture.  And just in time: Snow's in the forecast this weekend.

Drywall Delivery

A bit out of order in terms of blog posts, but videos are more work to compile.

Beautiful Mess

The drywall is UP. Katie and I drove up Tuesday evening to inspect and make sure they did everything the way we wanted. We found only a couple omissions in a couple barn door doorways and the mudroom closet ceiling -- should be easy for them to correct.

But what a MESS. A beautiful one.

Someone's in the kitchen with Katie. 

From the mudroom door looking in to the kitchen and family room.

From the North corner looking toward the kicthen.

The closet and toilet room doors from the airlock door.

The mudroom/entry.

Kati eand Sammie in the master bedroom.

The master bedroom from the door.

The master bedroom in panovision.

The bunk room.

The bunk room in panovision.

The basement from the bottom of the staircase.

Looking upstairs from the bottom of the basement staircase.

The basement bathroom.

The basement utility room.

The garage.

You'll notice insulation showing on ceilings and on some walls. That's because we're going to put beetle-stained, tongue-and-groove pine on the main floor ceiling, and on accent and window walls. Birch plywood will be going on the upstairs and basement ceilings.

Tape, mud and texture up next.

Schneewagen

For the attentive follower, you'l recall we had to dig out a snowmobile this last Spring that was burried under 6 feet under the snow. It was just the wrong approach, in my opinion, to transporting in to the cabin during the winter months. 

I've been plotting, planning, and scanning for the right side-by-side that we could put snow tracks on to use for transportation (and play) at the cabin. Friday after the door delivery at the cabin, I got a call from a Honda dealer South of Tacoma who was willing to sell me their demo unit at *my* price. 

A 2018 Honda Pioneer 700-4.

It's a 4-seater with all while drive. Should immeasurably more reliable and useful for transitting to and from KnArrow Haus this winter. The back seats also fold down turning it into a quasi pickup truck bed that we can use to haul materials and supplies in over the winter.

It proved a bit of an ordeal to actually get it home. We already had Norm's truck so we reserved a UHaul trailer, because the side-by-side is too wide and long to fit in a standard size truck bed. I picked up the trailer at UHaul in Renton late afternoon and braved Friday evening, Veterans Day traffic South to Tacoma only to discover when I arrived 30 minutes before closing time that UHaul had given me the *wrong* trailer -- too small by about an inch on the sides. I paid for the UTV, drove back to UHaul in holiday traffic, exchanged to the correct trailer and drove home (because the dealership was now closed for the evening.)

Katie and I left at 8AM Saturday morning and drove back to the dealership South of Tacoma with the correct trailer attached. Hauled the UTV back home. Offloaded it into the garage.

Unloading Schneewagen

Schneewagen in it's temporary resting spot to await snow tracks and an enclosed cab.

Then we drove back to UHaul in Renton to return the trailer before noon, then returned Norm's truck and went up to the cabin to hang the interior doors. Too much driving.

I ordered the snow tracks (Camso 4S1 tracks) and the OEM cab enclosure on Monday. So there's a garage project waiting for me after everything arrives. 

This is approximately what Schneewagen will look like when it's ready for service.

Door installation

Ok...so...installing prehung interior doors in harder than it looks.  We had 10 doors to get installed before the drywallers come on Tuesday.  Normally, you wait to install doors until *after* the drywall, but I'm doing a "trimless" drywall installation, so the frames have to be set before. 

It took both Katie and me working together with a lot of discussion, trial, and error to finally get our system down. And of course, each door and each door rame is different. 

Our first hung door: The bunkroom.

The toilet room door.

The bunk room door from the inside.

The master bedroom door and closet door.

The 8 ft. mudroom closet and toilet room doors. 

We finally finished hanging the doors on the top two floors at 11 PM saturday evening. We didn't arrive home until 12:30 AM. Exhausted.

We had to return after church on Sunday to hang the 3 basement doors and get things cleaned-up for the drywallers: Take all the doors off their frames and store them in a safe place so they aren't destroyed by the drywallers. We made sure all the door shims were cut flush. We removed the stair stringers from their perch atop the temporary wall brackets agains the wall and put them back on the floor so we could remove the wall brackets. Then lots of general cleanup to move everything away from the walls.

We arrived about 5 PM and left about 10:30 PM. Once again: Exhausted. Third straight day working at the Haus. 

Ceilings and Doors Delivered

We borrowed Norm's truck Thursday night and picked up 40 sheets of beautiful finish-grade birch plywood at Home Depot in Redmond.

The forklift pushing in our plywood.

Our plywood leaving our home on Friday morning.

If you're wondering what the plywood looks like, it's the same color and grain pattern as the plywood that Chiptole uses in their stores. My plan is to cut the 4'x8' plywood sheets down to 2'x8' sheets and mount them on the ceiling in the basement and on the top floor.

After we unloaded the plywood in to the garage at KnArrow Haus, we only had to wait a few minutes for Husky Doors to deliver our custom-color painted solid core doors. The color we chose is from Sherwin-Williams called "Web Gray".  The color is a little darker than Katie wanted and a little lighter than I wanted. The color swatch was a very neutral gray, but on site they have a slight blue-cast to them. A fine compromise.

The master bedroom doors.

Closet doors in the master bedroom.

Upstairs toilet room door. 

The sliding bar door for the hall bathroom on the left, and the bunk room door on the right.

There are only three doors that didn't arrive yet. They're special order and delayed until early December:

• The 8ft glass door separating the mudroom from the kitchen / family room. 
• The odd sized stair door in the basement. 
• The angle cut door beneath the basement stairs. 

Will the serious snow hold off long enough to allow for onsite delivery...?

Concrete floor reveal

We came up Friday morning to drop off 40 sheets of finish grade birch plywood (which will go on the upstairs and basement ceilings), and had our first opportunity to see our new concrete floors. 

The floors are not yet in their finished state. When we get a little closer to finishing, we will sand all the floors to get them to a smooth matt finish. Depending on their color, we may add some stain at that point and then seal them.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome. 

Entry room and toilet room.

Toilet room

Entry from the doorway of the toilet room.

Kitchen / Family room from the entry.

Kitchen / Family from the NE corner

A couple of blemishes that will need to be patched later.
(I actually like blemishes because they make it more rustic.)

Bunk room.

Bunk room.

Upstairs hall bathroom / sink area.

Upstairs toilet room.

Upstairs hallway from the bunk room door.

Master bedroom.

Master bedroom.

Master bathroom.