Logistics

What a year to try and do a rehab.  My father bought my grandfather’s cabin next to mine in Minnesota last year.  He built it in 1974. It was time for an update while maintaining the original integrity of the place. There was quite a bit of sentimentality over certain things and we tried to save as much as we could.  However, these things aren’t museums so you need to rethink and change things.  We spent the entire winter planning it out.  We had it set.  The order of operations was set. Then COVID hit.  Then the riots hit.  That meant getting anything out of Minneapolis was out of the question.  The closest big town of Duluth doesn’t have all the stuff we need.  Heck, in our small town or Grand Marais they can’t get a lot of things they normally can because of the stress on supply chains worldwide.  I am still waiting on delivery of 12-foot wolmanized decking they can’t seem to get.  We are putting a floating dock on our cabin since the ice crushes the old one year after year.  Last winter, the ice did a number on my grandfather’s dock too.  Rehabbing is always frustrating with its own twists and turns but this year is especially challenging.

The good news is so far, it’s gone sort of smoothly.  We were able to run our electric/internet line.  Our contractors actually were tremendous.  We were able to finish the demolition, which went down to the studs in almost every room. Let’s just say the guy that runs our local dump and I got friendly.

We had to replace subfloors in both the bathroom and the kitchen. Because the cabin is built on land that “moves”, sometimes they shift. They actually sit on a foundation above the ground. We had to jack up the back part of the cabin and put in more support for it. This is a photo of the bath. The shifting made it so the drains ran backward. We had to rejigger them by digging so they ran the right way.

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Putting in a new bath. Old floor was rotted and the drains were slow. Cabin heaved and threw em off

A post shared by Jeff Carter (@pointsnfigures) on May 21, 2020 at 1:22pm PDT

Running electric is no picnic. My grandfather had a solar system that ran lights but wasn’t robust enough to run appliances and things like fans/hair dryers.  The ground up there is basically huge boulders with some soil between them. I have no idea how trees grow in it but they do. They used a backhoe to dig a very deep trench.  We had to spend a lot of time outside.  Unfortunately, it was black fly season and those little buggers are a humongous pain.  We wound up wearing nets over our heads outside so we could get stuff done.  The season lasts a couple of weeks until the dragonflies come out. I cannot tell you how happy I was when I was driving down the road and saw one of the first dragonflies flying around.  Literally, in two days the black flies were gone.

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A post shared by Jeff Carter (@pointsnfigures) on May 27, 2020 at 9:33am PDT

Here is what it looked like after we filled it back in. We moved 16.5 yards of gravel to cover it all up.

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Start of the day. Spreading gravel today. 16.5 yards

A post shared by Jeff Carter (@pointsnfigures) on May 28, 2020 at 8:17am PDT

Meanwhile, on the inside, we insulated walls that weren’t insulated and started putting it back together. The cabin is a bit quieter and sounds solid.  Having electricity means ceiling fans in a couple of rooms to keep you cool.  Our original plan was to keep all the older wood and try and match it while painting over some of the other stuff. Turns out it was cheaper to rip it all out and just start over. We went with pre-finished knotty pine and a beadboard ceiling.  We installed a waterproof vinyl floor throughout.

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Got a bit further.

A post shared by Jeff Carter (@pointsnfigures) on May 22, 2020 at 1:58pm PDT

In the putting back together, you have to rebuild a kitchen.  One thing we did was get rid of all the old propane appliances and rethought how to do it with electric.  That meant a new electric refrigerator. You can’t imagine what a difference that makes.  We also did an induction cooktop.  Instead of a range, we put in a convection microwave.  We also did an electric tankless hot water heater which will make opening and closing the cabin a lot easier.  It also freed up a lot of square footage in the bathroom.   We ripped out the old shower which was 30×30 and rejiggered things to have a 36×36 shower.  When you are glamping, it’s really nice to have a great shower at the end of the day.

The old kitchen had handmade cabinets that my grandfather made.  We saved some of those and they will be put to use somewhere else.  We wanted an IKEA kitchen since we had done two of them before.  Holy cow, the supply chain problems are giving us gigantic headaches.  Our contractors in Minnesota told us that everyone was taking their stimulus check and spending it on their homes.  Our local ACE Hardware up there said their sales were up 500%.  Menards and Home Depot no matter where we have been crowded and out of stock on a lot of stuff.  We are having to go to three different IKEAs to try and get all the cabinets and hardware we need to finish the kitchen.  Then, we have to haul it ten hours up, unpack 2000 lbs of stuff and assemble it all.  Those damn IKEA boxes are heavy.

We are heading back up Thursday to continue and get closer to finished.  We still have to paint the entire outside and put a new roof on this year.  There is a loft that we will redo next year.

My grandmother was a tremendous gardener.  My wife also spent a ton of time in the garden doing rehab.  My grandmother had planted Bishop’s Weed, also called “Snow on the Mountain”, and it is incredibly invasive.  She wanted to get rid of it but by the time she wanted to get rid of it she was in her nineties.  I think my wife finally crushed it this year but we will see.

I will tell you that I think this is my last rehab.  My body can’t take it anymore.  I have been home for a week and I am still sore.