Closer and Closer

Being away from a project that is near and dear to you is tough, but it does have its upsides.  Every time I check my email and I get one that's slow to load I have my fingers crossed that it's from our contractor, Brian Shelton, with pictures attached.  And today I got lucky.  I was rewarded with a great leap of progress.

I guess the counter top guys that called me feeling lost on the 16 miles of dirt road managed to find the place.  The counter tops are installed and look great, if a bit dusty.  The backdoor trim looks terrific, as does the trim at the junction of the knotty pine ceiling and walls.  And those cute little shelves at the end of the overhead cabinets are already being put to good use.

The heart of the house.

The laminate floors look great and should stay looking great for a long time to come, no matter how many dogs and grandkids tear through the cabin.  Look at those gorgeous baseboards!  And the beams are even more handsome now that they've been oiled.   

Future home of the wood burning stove

We have windows galore -- we insisted.  Maybe not the best thing from a design perspective, but we are raving amateur naturalists and are in love with the outdoors and the beautiful views -- of the red rocks out the back as much as the sweeping views across the valley.

As engaged as we've been with this project both from being there and from afar, the end is kind of sneaking up on us.  A few more weeks and it will be done, the last of the bills will be paid, and when the phone rings at 6:45 AM it most likely won't be our contractor.  The guest room here in Tucson is piled with things I want to take up when we go in less than [can it be???!!!] four weeks for our first stay in the cabin.  As I said to my husband this morning, we'll never trump this for a Christmas present to ourselves.

Giving Thanks

I'm here in Tucson, which has finally cooled down (high in the 60's today), and am nursing a chest cold which has had me feeling a bit low.  I'm sipping hot tea and popping OTC drugs and still finding a lot to be grateful for:

1) My daughter called me -- that ALWAYS goes on the plus side.

2) We're looking forward to sharing Thanksgiving with friends at an Orphan Party for those of us who aren't with family this holiday -- it's a potluck with all of the feasting and little of the fuss...I'm taking a roasted squash dish and cranberry tart (which I've made before and is as beautiful as it is delicious).

3) Tomorrow is the much anticipated Desert Museum bird walk, part of my docent training, and I'll crawl if I have to.

Sun Wash for counter tops

4) I had a call from the counter top folks which was immediately dropped -- so I knew they were on their way to the cabin and were lost.  I can be happy about this because they did call me back and I was able to give them directions -- as in "you have at least ten more miles of dirt road...just follow the signs," -- and they said the contractor was expecting them and that yes, the counter tops came out great!  Maybe installation is complete, provided they found the place.

5) A hand embroidered piece I bought from Vintage Threads, an online Etsy shop came in the mail this afternoon.  It is absolutely charming and truly handmade and will make a great top for a pillow for our slightly too butch denim & plaid quilt bedroom.  I was always a sucker for Bambi -- this is clearly from a part before "Your mother can't be with you anymore."

In our bedroom Bambi's mother will ALWAYS be with her

6) A good friend, and fellow wildlife habitat gardener from the neighborhood, left a basket on my doorstep that included four adorably cheesy (and perfect for the cabin -- not Tucson) Let It Snow snowman mugs and an old, but very beautiful, family afghan that they were parting with for simplification and downsizing sake.  She's also a wonderful artist -- you can see her work here, at Fountain Studio.  This afghan will warm us in more ways than one.

7) We leave in a month for our first stay in our finished cabin, a dream in incubation for many years, that has consumed -- in a good way -- us for the past year, and one we'll live in for many, many more.

Gould's Turkey from the nearby southern Arizona mountains

There's so much to be thankful for -- Happy Thanksgiving.

Home Stretch

We're at that point where we can hardly draw a full breath from the excitement.  Our contractor, Brian Shelton, sent us the pictures for this post, and in the words of my husband after I forwarded the photos to him at work, "Wow, Wow, Wow! I'm overwhelmed by the beauty of what we've created, the knotty pine ceiling and beams, the window trim, the fantastic kitchen cabinets. I also love the light coming in."  I couldn't have put it better myself.

Sun-filled cabin in mid-November

I love the cabinets.  Check out that sweet little set of shelves at the end of the overhead cabinets.  The first gap you come to is for the dishwasher (yea!), and the kitchen sink goes in the next section.  The stove is the gap on the left and there's a narrow cabinet to its left and beyond that the fridge.  Brian says the honeyed butter walls change all day with the light, and that even on a 22 degree day with no heat, the cabin was warmed enough by the sun to be comfortable enough to work in without any other heat source.  Amazing since those are low-E windows and we're still over five weeks from the winter solstice when the sun will climb even further up the back walls.  Thankfully this will NOT be the case during the summer when the sun's trajectory is much higher, but I do think it would be grand to be sitting in glorious sunshine inside with a couple of feet of fresh snow glistening outside.  Sunglasses indoors in winter?  Bring it.

Brian has done such an amazing job staining the trim so that it would be complementary to the spiced hickory cabinets.  And it all picks up the knots in the pine ceiling.  As Brian said, by hook or by crook, with some planning done on site and some planning done remotely, it's looking like we know what we're doing.  Sort of the cheery retro look I was going for.  All the goodies I've been collecting -- the hammered aluminum, barkcloth fabric for pillows, the 50's table linens, the woodland artwork -- it's going to be unique and wonderful and very, very welcoming.

The high peaked knotty pine ceiling from the loft

Brian's laying the floors next -- the ceramic gray slate-look hearth tiles for the wood burning stove (going in the front corner in the top photo), Sand Hickory laminate floors in living room/dining area, nice retro Armstrong vinyl tiles in a color they call Granny Smith (really more of a mottled sage) in the entry, kitchen, bath, and our bedroom and both closets, and -- don't laugh -- Martha Stewart carpeting in a multi-color tweed called nutmeg (the prison years, and much nicer than the photo in the link depicts) that manages to go with everything for the staircase and loft (and nice for grandkids to play on).  The lights are all bought and waiting for installation.  The countertops (appropriately retro Formica that captures all the colors of the cabin in a soft pattern) will be installed this coming week. Once the floors are laid Brian can finish the trim work (his wonderful signature) and we can have the wood burning stove installed.  The appliances arrive December 2nd, the propane tank will be filled and hooked up to the stove, and then...well, then we might have a cabin instead of a building project.

View from the front door...check out the sun on the wall!

Leach field down the driveway, before backfilling

For those of you with more practical interests, check out the septic system.  As Brian told the engineer, "for a family that's used the same outhouse for almost 50 years, don't you think this is a little bit of overkill?"  Yeah, but code is code, and we should NEVER have to worry about it, not ever.  Frankly, I'd have liked running water in the trailer's kitchen (as I'm sure they'd have enjoyed in the original cabin as well), but I was never too fussed about using the outhouse, even in the middle of the night -- a good way to get in some star gazing -- until we had our nightly visits from the bear.  We'll still do plenty of night skies watching...it's just part of what we do wherever we are...but we won't have to associate them with bare bear gauntlet runs to the loo.

Weather permitting, we'll head up to Colorado a few days before Christmas for our first stay in the cabin through the New Year.  We don't have any furniture, but somehow I don't think we'll mind.  We're hoping to warm that cabin anyway with the help of family and friends.