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.

Wall Raising

June 1st

What a difference a day makes.  After the long holiday weekend -- which we put to good use with hiking, reading, and snoozing in our anti-gravity chairs or the hammock in the shade of the ponderosas -- we appreciated the drama of raising some walls.  

After our little Florissant excursion on Friday afternoon -- ooh the excitement of visiting the Joe’s Philly Cheesesteak trailer, the library, the post office, the feed store, and getting bread and milk and an ice cream sandwich at the gas station stop ‘n’ shop -- we arrived back to find the subfloor completed.

Nothing is quite so exciting in the building of a framed home as when the walls are raised and you suddenly can walk around in your rooms and gaze our your windows.  Our contractor Brian is usually a one man show at this point (though he is appreciating Bob’s help, especially with the hauling and lifting) and has developed lots of strategies for working solo, such as building the sections of framed walls up on sawhorses and then almost virtually tipping them into place.  

It’s great for everyone that we’re onsite now.  Even though there are building plans, we have the option of last minute changes, such as deciding to add back a window we’d taken out; the view from it will be too wonderful to miss.  Mostly it’s just minor tweaking of an inch or two here or there or deciding where to put the access to the crawl space, but it’s great to have the chance in real time.  After living in this cabin in my head for most of a year, I realize the time was well spent as there are very few things I haven’t already considered and feel confident that any decisions are well thought out over a period of months, not minutes.  I’ve worked with contractors before who made it seem like a federal offense if you asked for the most minor, non-structural adjustment, but Brian is so engaged in our build that he’s looking for clever ways to make our cabin even more unique and wonderful without adding costs.  At less than 1,000 square feet of interior space, this is the smallest home he’s ever built, and has encouraged me to “get creative” in the kitchen especially to make best use of the space I have.  A meticulous and exacting builder -- no, make that carpenter -- he knows little details will stand out even more in a smaller cabin, and wants this to be a little gem.  And we have no doubt that it will be.

And forget “onsite”.  It’s just lovely to be here.  I am so very aware that when we’re sitting outside reading, needing a fleece to keep warm enough in the shade, that we’d be holed up inside if we were in Tucson.  Not that there aren’t strange reminders of the desert here -- downy woodpeckers swoop through the pines, reminding us of gila woodpeckers flitting from mesquite to saguaro, and we hear the call of the great horned owl at night as we sometimes do in the desert.  The pussytoes are starting to bloom here, the loco weed is appearing overnight, and yet we occasionally run across cactus (at nearly 9,000 feet)!  Several of these mountain pincushions dot the more exposed saddle of our five acres, and we run across shin-dagger type yucca on some of our hikes.  Reminiscent to say the least.  I do wonder about the fruiting of the saguaro, the blooming of the ironwoods, and just big those baby quail are now, but if you are going to split time between two wonderful landscapes, it’s best simply to love the one you’re with.

Bob’s readying himself for another day of wall raising, but alas, I must do the Woodland Park run -- we’re out of clean clothes and dinners have gotten quite creative -- so I’m off with five loads of laundry to do at some charming (NOT!) laundromat and a big provisioning (needing everything from bread to bat house paint).  That sort of chore needs a reward, so I’ll stop in at The Hungry Bear for a pile of Blue Bucks (buckwheat pancakes with blueberries) and peruse an antique-y shop or two during the spin-cycle.

The only one more excited about our cabin is Happy, Brian Shelton's dog who comes to the site every day.

We're ON!

After all the years of "that's crazy, the trailer's good enough", the yearning for a wood burning stove to cozy up in front of, the desire for a bit more of a kitchen WITH running water (the outhouse never bothered me), and wanting enough space to have family and friends join us in a way we could all actually enjoy, last summer we made the decision to rebuild a cabin to replace the one that stood on this land from the mid-60's until the Hayman fire claimed it in 2002.

Honestly, there were a few things that made the decision easier.  My husband is no more than two years from retirement, and hopefully only one.  We'd spent enough years there in longish vacations in the trailer to know we both loved it and would be happy with the simple life of puttering, hiking, bird watching, and star gazing -- and sharing all of that with family and friends -- for the rest of our years to make the investment in money and the commitment in time.  Perhaps the clincher was my husband's grandsons, at five and seven old enough to know if they enjoyed their time in the mountains, and it was oh-so clear that they did -- from fort building in a rock outcropping down the hill to tirelessly hiking to the meadow and Karen's overlook and trails beyond, to crying half way back to Denver when it was time to leave, this was a way to give to them what my husband's children knew their whole lives, at least until the Hayman fire.  More time to look like something out of Where the Wild Things Are:

Our contractor, Brian Shelton, called this morning to say that the building permit would be in his hands come Monday and that work on the foundation would begin this coming week.  It's been over seven months since we first met with him up at the trailer, thinking then that we'd not be building until next year and later deciding not to wait.  This year will be the building year; next year the occupying year.  Hopefully we'll get a bit of time in the cabin before summer's end and are planning a week at Thanksgiving, but we have our fingers crossed that next summer will be the first summer of the rest of our lives, with months of time spent in the Colorado Rockies, getting used to the wonderful rhythms of life spent enjoying the long days at 8,600 feet.


By the time we get there, four weeks from today, there should be a foundation fully decked and lumber staged for the framing of the walls.  My husband will get to help raise those walls just as he did over four decades ago with his father, other family members, and neighbors.  After the nightmare of losing the original cabin, being part of rebuilding of the new cabin will be the fulfillment of a dream.