I know I said I was going to try and do some blogging out here at the lake but it hasn’t worked out too well. The fact of the matter is, I’ve been busy. Since last Thursday we have:
Leveled the ground with a trackhoe (around the house)
Finished the gravel driveway and culvert
Finished wiring the cabin
Had our electrical inspection
Fixed the garage doors from an earlier installation
Painted the exterior of the house
Installed gutters on the house
Painted some of the trim on the house
I’m very happy with the progress over the last week. I had hoped to get all of this done but I wasn’t sure if it was realistic. Of course I didn’t do all of this by myself. I paid a friend of ours to come out and spray the house. (We’ll do all the trim to save money). I hired a company to come out and install the gutters. Past experience has taught me that you really don’t ever want to try to install your own gutters, especially when one of the runs is 44 feet long. I rented the trackhoe and my friend and I did all the dirt work. We also bought 10 yards of crushed rock to spread on the driveway and to fill over the culvert/ditch. By doing all the wiring in our house, we saved a TON of money. I estimate it would have cost me $7-8K to have the place wired. I think we ended up doing it for about $1000 in materials. Same deal on the plumbing. I’d guess the plumbing cost me about $1200 or so and it would have probably cost about $3-4K to have a professional do it. I only had a rough idea of how to do the wiring and had to think back to how I helped my dad wire their cabin a few years ago. I was happy to find out that we only had to fix a couple very minor things in order to pass the inspection.
Once we have the power hooked up permanently (have to call the PUD to have them come out and connect the house now that the electrical has passed), we’ll get the framing/mechanical inspection out of the way and then we’ll be ready for insulation and sheet rock. I can’t wait to get to that point. It will be nice to have heat/cool in the house and I expect that we’ll spend the winter completing the inside.
We’ve had a great week out here. We even took some time to go out and play in the lake and had some great bonfires and drinks with friends that we’ve met out here. I can’t think of anywhere else on earth I’d rather spend my vacation. (Which is a good thing since I’m rather committed to this area now unless I sell the place).
Here is a photo of the outside:
