Shed Updates

I finally got around to building my drill holder!  I have been saving this spot on the pegboard ever since I built it, and I finally put it to use.  I also put the second "loft" in, which you can just see in the top right of this picture.  Finally, I built a shelf at the end of the workbench to hold the Greenworks charger, which cannot be hung on the wall.  You can just see that in the bottom right corner.

New French Door

I was finally able to take the time to reverse the swing on the new French doors.  It turned out very well!  The only thing that I need to address now is the astragal, the white strip that goes down between the 2 doors.  This one is not reversable, so Home Depot has ordered me a new one.  This one will work until it arrives, it just will not seal at the top or bottom of the doors.  
 

We now have blinds on every window in the house, blackout in the bedrooms and light filtering in the rest of the house!

We bought these blinds before the tree fell, but we never got time to install them.  Now that the trim is hung, it was finally time to get the blinds up.  We made our bedroom window much bigger, so we did have to replace those blinds, but the rest fit.  
 

New French Door

This is door number 4 in the back of the house, and I really hope it is the last.  We started off with the 6-foot slider that was there when we bought the house.  We shrunk it down to a 5-foot slider so we had room for switches and lights on the back of the house.  Then we decided to put in a French door instead.  Now, this one has blinds in the glass.  The problem is the swing is the wrong direction!

Dock Anchors

We've had a problem with the dock moving in the spring, after the ice melts but before we get it hooked up to shore.  Last year, it moved far enough to wind up on the neighbor's beach and the 2 pieces got ripped apart!  These 8 new anchors total about 1800lbs, which is what we have in the water right now. The new stainless chain will be here soon, so we should get these in the water this weekend.

Shed Loft

OK, so it's not as much a loft as a shelf.  As small as this shed is, it will be really nice to have additional places to put stuff.  I put a set of mounts on the other end of the shed so I can put another "loft" on the other side as well.  I just need to get the shelf board and cut it to length.

Tree Trimming

We had the pine tree on the lake side and the locust on the left trimmed yesterday.  The branches were starting to touch the roof, so we decided to have them cleaned up a bit.  We took the bottom 2 rows of branches off the pine which opened up the view from the bedroom window.  We also had a bunch of dead wood cut out of the locust. 

Barstools

Our new barstools showed up last week.  We were not able to spend any time at the cabin this weekend, but I needed to run up there to cut some starter strips for the siding at the house on the table saw.  While I was up there, I put the stools together and got a few things cleaned up.  It will be so nice to have these so folks can sit at the bar while we are in the kitchen.

More Trim!

We got more trim work done at the cabin this past weekend.  The top boards on all the windows and doors are now hung, nail holes filled, sanded and primed.  All we need to do now is caulk and paint everything.  Since this board is 5/4 MDF, my nail gun would not set the nails fully.  After fighting with it for a while, I went a picked up a new gun and knocked it out pretty quick after that.

The only door that is not finished is the one leading out to the back deck.  As I said in my last post, we are going to replace it.  In fact, the new door will be here this week!  We ordered it early last week and they have a 5-7 day turn around right now.  With any luck, we will get the new one installed and trimmed out this coming weekend.

Trim!

I spent the weekend working on the trim inside at the cabin.  I have all the windows wrapped except for the top board.  I need to stop at the lumber yard and get some 5/4 x 4s to make those.  I also have the doors and closets wrapped, again short of the top board.  The only door not wrapped is the one leading out to the deck because it is going to be replaced with one that has blinds between the glass.

The framing on wall facing the lake in the master is some of the worst I have ever seen.  The header above the window is off over 1-inch from one side to the other.  You can see the spacer I had to make just to get the trim to fit!  The wall also has a bow toward the lake, so the sill is touching the vinyl cladding on the ends and there is a nearly 1/4" gap in the middle, despite my best efforts to force it into place.

 

Deck Upgrades

After 7 years of using our "temporary" $10 dining table on the deck at the lake, we finally picked up a nice high-top table firepit with a lighted umbrella.  Before we put it together, I pressure washed the whole deck and railing as well.  While the deck does not look perfect, I think it will do for the next 5 years, while we work on other projects.
 

Bathroom Storage

One of the biggest things we struggle with in this house is storage.  It is so small, there is no room to store all our stuff.  Today we made that problem a little better, at least in the bathroom. We picked up a hanging cabinet to put over the toilet.  Now we don't have to keep all our stuff sitting on the already small counter. 

Water Slide!

We picked up a water slide off Facebook Marketplace a few weeks ago for $75!  It needed a little work and we had to finish the dock before we could get it setup.  Today was the day!  The girls are having so much fun with it. The ladder still needs some work and we need to hook up a sprayer to keep it wet, but they are using a bucket for now.

Shed Floor and Workbench

While the deck boards for the approaches were drying, I decided to take some time to stain the floor and workbench in the shed.  I go in there with wet feet all the time, so the floor was starting to show some ware already.  We stained the floor in the boat house, and it is holding up really well.  So, I decided to do the shed too.  
 

New Floating Approaches

I spent most of the weekend cutting, staining and installing the decking on the new floating approaches.  While it works, they are not terribly stable.  I think I'm going to use some angle-iron to permanently connect the 2 sections together.  That will help with the bouncing at least.
 

New Floating Approaches

The 10-foot floating approach we had hooked to the dock last year, broke off this winter and disappeared when the ice thawed.  We wanted to build a second one to push the dock out, so the water is deep enough for the boat lift anyway.  Instead of just building 1, I built 2 new 12-foot sections and pushed it out 14 feet farther.
 

Grass

We finally got the sprinkler system working, which means we can fix the grass at the top of the retaining wall.  I'll let this root up a bit and then I will go back and patch some of the low spots and over-seed the whole thing.  It will probably take a year or 2 to really get the grass looking nice.
 

New TV

A while back, we built the recess in the wall for the TV and mounted the little one temporarily.  Today, we finally got around to running all the cables and hooking up the bigger TV and mounting the soundbar on the wall.  The black mark on the plywood below the soundbar marks where the mantle will sit.

Retaining Wall

I was finally able to make it up to the lake today to get the rip rap out of the trailer and placed at the base of the wall.  We still have about 10-15 feet of wall to cover just out of the frame on the right.  That is the strongest part of the wall with the most sand covering the base, so I will likely leave it until next summer. 

Retaining Wall

I went to the lake today in order to put the rip rap at the base of the new wall, but when I got there, the neighbor was working on backfilling the wall for us.  So rather than working on the rip rap, I helped with the backfill.  You can tell just how much grass we added at the base of the stairs, this will be huge!