Rough-in/First Meal

An interesting week. This is the weekend the electrical contractor, Glen Kemper and his brother, Shannon, were going to do the rough-in electrical for the cabin. Dick, Patrick, and Nathan were there along with Bob, Matt, Chris, and John. Glen and Shannon had left Melrose at about 4 a.m. and got to the cabin about 8:30 a.m. This was the first time many of us had seen the inside of the cabin and many of the partners have yet to see it. I'm hopeful that these pictures help you visualize the inside of the cabin.

When we started, we had extension cords from the old cabin. The power lines that had been trenched from the yard pole to the cabin site had not been touched. None of us knew at the beginning of the day what we would have at the end of the day.

Hopefully these pictures will help you see what we did.




Glen brought everything we needed for electrical rough-in. Chris and Matt brought all we needed for the low voltage stuff.



Just a picture of the shed roof. We plan to have an entry that would be about 8' X 12'.


Here's the south end of the cabin and a door which would lead to the 10' X 32' future deck.




This is the east side. The Tyvek covers the large window in the area above the kitchen. The OSB board on the lower left covers the area where the patio door will be. This has been left out so we can use sissor lifts for insulation and sheetrock.

This is the South end of the cabin. These windows really let in a lot of sun.

We are just getting started. Here you are looking through the kitchen into the mudroom. To the left of the mudroom is the full bath. On the back side of the mud room is a 3/4 bath.

This is the lower level and the bedroom on the northwest corner of the cabin. You can see here we have started pounding boxes in. Glen did a great job giving all of us jobs pounding boxes, pulling wires, etc.

This is the lower level west bedroom which is next to the stairs.

This is lower level northeast bedroom.

This is lower level northeast bedroom looking south into the mudroom.

As you walk into the cabin from the west, the stairs go up to the loft.

This the loft area called the "Tree Stand". The leftmost 2x4 is the area and you can see the size of the window that's yet to be installed (it came cracked and has recently been replaced).

This is the loft area. When we were starting the rough-in process we realized we really need to define the rooms in the loft to allow us to provide proper wiring. These three 2X4's roughly show the two 3/4 baths we will have in the loft.

The loft area showing where we put temporary bottom plates to outline a bedroom in the northeast corner of the loft.

You can see the pile of sheetrock in the loft area. They do this when it's easy to forklift it up to the loft. Behind this pile will be another bedroom in the northwest which will be a mirror image of the one in the northeast corner. There will be a hallway which will go between the bedrooms and out onto the deck.

This is an area next to the stairs. We decided to build a 48" stub wall and will leave this area open. The stub wall will allow us to have electrical hookups should we decide at a later date to convert this to a bedroom.

This is starting to show the wiring. We will have fan/light combinations in all the bedrooms. Each bedroom will also have electric baseboard heat in addition to radiant floor heat. Each bedroom has double hung windows along with electrical service to a room air conditioner. We also wired smoke detectors for each bedroom. These smoke detectors are interconnected so if one goes off they all go off. Additionally, we will have CO detectors in the hallways in the bedroom areas. Here you can see that Glen hooked the power up to the meter box on the yard pole and viola! we have some lights.

More lights

More lights. Not a lot of the breakers are in; I think just enough to allow us to have the inspection.

Here's the mudroom. You can also see the white low voltage panel on the right.

So if you look at the picture below we have fast forwarded a week. We decided we should have our first meal in the cabin. We set up in the kitchen area and although we didn't have heat, limited furniture, and lights, we had a great time.

Kyla and Paige waiting for food.

Nick, Leah, and Benjamin

We cooked a "Kenneth Berg" turkey. Years ago Kenneth showed us how to do a turkey on the grill. We implanted a half dozen slivers of garlic into the meat. Rubbed the bird with peanut oil and finally covered it with season salt. Along with this we had tin foil potatoes and onions and corn. But we are not done, Tom Baker wrapped some of last year's tenderloin chunks with bacon and cooked them on the grill. It was really good!

Here you can see Juli cutting up the turkey and John dishing up his plate.

Do you remember our annual meeting when we gave the approval for the cabin and Peggy said we better hurry? I think she's happy with the progress we are making but I can almost hear her say, "but you are not done".

Nicole and Nathan dishing up.

Paige, Matt, Sarah, Kyla, and Leah

To think this started when Floyd told us there was an 80 for sale.

Jamie and Darin

Bacon wrapped venison tenderloins. Mickey, Tom, Tom Jr, and friend. (I'm sorry I don't remember his name).

Dick. Dick found the perfect guy to get the rough-in electrical stuff done. None of us imagined we would have completed all this work in one day! We had invited Tom Vig out for this meal but he worked all day and wasn't sure if he would be able to join us. He wasn't able to.

Jamie, Bob, Floyd, Nicole, Nathan, and Darin

Leah, Benjamin, Bob, Jamie, and Darin

The first supper.

Tom Jr, Tom, Floyd

So that's it. Lots of stuff left to do but lots of good work done already.

Cabin Updates

As you can see it has been a while since this has been updated. The value of this update is to provide some pictures from the last three months. Additionally, Peggy and Floyd get hard copies of the pictures for the scrap book(s) they are putting together.


The more time you spend up around the cabin the more you see all the things like this Pink Lady Slipper. In this case these were growing in the ditch along the township road going north from the cabin.



Here's a shot of the east side of the cabin (the mud room) where we hand trenched the two power lines and the power from the well pump. Additionally we added an empty conduit to feed a future garage.



Here's one of the many smiles that happens at the camp. This is Sean, son of Nathan and Karen.

Here is the trenching crew (Floyd, Bob, Nathan, Sean, Dick, and Patrick). Somewhat bitten up, somewhat wet, but all happy that this job is done. We wanted to get up and do this before Tom Vig had to set up the forms for pouring the slab.

This is Tom Vig. We are lucky to have him for this project.

We used a string line to go directly from the old cabin to the new cabin. Dick had the tractor out to move some of the gravel piles to allow us to complete the the digging.

This was a busy day. Floyd, Sue, and I planted 71 pine and spruce trees thanks to Denise Westerberg. As you can see this was done May 21st. Last week when we drove by only one of these trees didn't make it.

Taking a little break.

These are called sonotubes and they'll be filled with cement and will subsequently support the slab. We added these four piers to support the load bearing wall inside the cabin. When I checked the bottom of the sonotubes yesterday I noticed they had a little moisture. We really did the right thing by elevating the building site.

Just a shot so you can see the 2" polystyrene which insulates the edge of the slab. You should also be able to notice the edge of the slab is roughly 12" by 12" which is typical for a floating slab.

Here you are looking east and can see the south end of the cabin on the right of the picture

Looking east again but here you can see the north side of the slab.

Here are Tom Vig and his brother Bill along with two of their nephews setting up the slab.

The new camera works! Thanks to Chris. Everyone seems to be happy with the result.

We were able to carry on a conversation with Pat Christenson with this camera.

Here's the township road on the way into the cabin. I think you are looking north about 50 yards north of our crossing.

Here's the road just before our crossing. Glenn Anderson hauled class five gravel and filled a soft spot by Israelson's crossing and a soft spot by our crossing. He charged us $65 for the gravel he used to fill the spot in our crossing.

This is the road looking south.

This is the road going south as you past Gay Allen's crossing.

Just a close shot of how the forms with the polystyrene foam.

Looking south with the west side of the slab visible on the right side of the picture.

How about this buck? Tom Vig gave us a tour of his deer farm. Pretty amazing.

Some of the pictures are out of order. Here they are starting with the forms

PKM came out and replaced the old transformer with this one. They also ran new power lines to the pole by the cabin. The removed the power from the yard lights so we will have to reconnect later this summer.

Hard to tell from the old one but this is the new Sanchicam

Here Dick is using the new plow on the 120 acres. It is very difficult to do this in ground that may have never been plowed but you have to start someplace.

I drove around the pasture to check to see if Mike Vagle had completed all the dozing we had asked. He did complete the dozing for Jeff and John but I didn't see any for Tom or Dick. As I was coming from Dick's 80 towards Tom's stand I saw this Tiger Lilly and thought I should take a picture of this as well

This is rough-in plumbing being done by Mike Whitlock and Keity Schmediberg(sp).

More rough-in plumbing as it is today. I think they need to add a couple more lines and add extensions to any verticle pipes to be above the level of cement.

Dick and I were out spraying CRP. It actually went well.

I hope a week from now we have a complete slab. I'd expect Bruce Steen to have complete his bid package (lumber, steel, windows and doors) from which we'll pick our supplier. In two weeks I would hope we are ready to start framing. This would mean the cement has been poured and has had a chance to cure for one week and we have signed papers for the construction loan and have money for this part of the project.

Bob