Plugging Away

Our truck isn’t fixed yet, the body shops have been too busy.  But we have done all that was asked by the insurance company.  We have an appointment for its repair during the week after the 4^th of July weekend.

Meanwhile, one of our summer projects for the cabin is complete: the interior wall was rebuilt, re-painted, and three doorways were re-trimmed.  The job looks pretty good for a couple of amateur laborers. 

 

Our remaining project is more physical and time consuming.  We have bought new carpeting to replace what has been there since sometime in the ‘60’s.  The original carpeting doesn’t look too bad – it doesn’t show dirt or wear, but one seam has been slowing coming apart every time the vacuum cleaner gets a chance to pull up another thread.  The replacement carpet won’t have a seam there, so maybe it will last another 50 years too. 

What is taking our time is pulling up the old stuff.  The carpet, itself, comes out fairly quickly.  It is the glued down foam backing that takes time to scrape off.  This reminds us of a lot of our Nomad project work: we couldn’t do this for a living, but we will volunteer our own labor.  We will continue doing a couple of square yards at a time, since the installers can’t put the replacement carpet down until mid-July.

We haven’t been “all work and no play”, however.  Last weekend, Dave, LeJoy, Valentina, Brayden, and Kaelyn spent the weekend with us.  Brayden and Kaelyn had not been to the cabin before.  They had lots of “firsts” – sauna, paddle boat, golf cart rides, fireworks, and using the outhouse (yuck!).  We all had a great time and they are coming back over the Fourth weekend.

 

For the past 2+ weeks, we’ve been dog sitting Stella, Brett’s family dog.  Brett and family are enjoying a trip to Italy for 3 weeks.  Stella has adjusted well – enjoying her daily tennis ball retrieving in the lake, the 2 mile walk around the loop, and golf cart rides.  Brett’s family returns on 7/30 and the girls want to come up over the Fourth also so we’ll have Stella here for another week plus a couple days.

 

The weather is finally warming up and we’re enjoying the outdoors.  So it’s a good combination of work and fun now. 

 

Oh, Deer!

It has finally happened: Thursday we were attacked by Bambi.  She tried to imitate a linebacker and run us off the road, but she failed.  We stayed on the road and she bounced off the driver’s side.

We lost a mirror, the front fender was pushed in, and both doors are rippled.  Neither of us was injured, but we can’t say the same for the deer. The situation is just one more little “opportunity”.

Other than that incident, we have been busy dog-sitting.  Brett and Jen took the girls on vacation and left Stella, their 3 year old chocolate lab, with us for awhile.  We have had her swimming in the lake and going for walks around the cabin circle.  When Brett was up here last Saturday, he brought his chainsaw to take down a dead tree by our garage.  It went very smoothly and we now have more room to get in and out of the garage.

We have also stayed busy with our remodeling.  The old paneling had been glued to the drywall so both came down and were hauled to the landfill.  We have just finished hanging the new drywall, along with taping and mudding (our own little Nomad project).

The paint was bought earlier today so we will have something to do this weekend – final photos later.

The weather has finally gotten sunny and warm.  We’re sure enjoying that!  On Wednesday, Paige’s mom came up for the day and our friends, the Buerkle’s, took us for a long ride on their pontoon.  It was so relaxing and Joyce really enjoyed seeing other parts of the lake.

Back and Forth

We have been up at the cabin, down to the Twin Cities, and back again to the cabin, all in the last two weeks.  We’ve enjoyed spending time with the granddaughters, family, and friends!

Paige had some dental work done and we had the truck serviced in Duluth before Memorial Day.  Brett and his daughters brought Stella, their Chocolate Lab, up to the cabin for the long weekend.  It was her first visit here and she really enjoyed the lake.  That’s a good thing since we will be caring for her up here while Brett and Jen and girls are vacationing later this month. 

Our summer improvement project has begun, and has already grown.  We had planned to replace the carpeting that has been unraveling for a couple of years.  We have picked the replacement, but the installers are so busy that it will be over a month before we have it.  In the meantime, we started to remove some paneling from an interior wall and found that it had been both nailed and glued to the drywall.  Removing the paneling now means removing the drywall too.

       

This gives us a chance to change some lighting and move some switches before installing the new drywall.  We hope to have all that done before the new carpet comes. 

Last weekend we brought Paige’s mom down to the Twin Cities for a graduation party, and a get-together with Ty and his family.  It was a great time and we got to see lots of family that we hadn’t seen in a long time. 

 

Thursday we take the motorhome into Duluth for some work on one of the slides.  Soon after leaving the Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa, we developed a nasty noise when bringing the slide in.  Bummer!  Hopefully the fix won’t take much time.

Otherwise, we’ll be working on our projects at the cabin for a few weeks.  Looking forward to Dave, LeJoy and kids coming up later in June.