Saturday, May 26, 2012

Back to work today

Well, we haven't even stepped foot in our cabin since our last post. Business has been busy and that has taken away our energy from any other physical activities!   ;) But today, we are back at it and going to take advantage of the cool weather.

Goals for this weekend:

- finish framing bathroom
- frame for fireplace
- frame for Windows
- line out electrical

We'd like to have all the electrical and I'm hoping the plumbing too by next weekend!  We will see!  :)

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Week flew by!

This week has absolutely flown by!  Sunday was very tiresome!  We tried working on the cabin but poor Alan feel asleep in the camping chair waiting for me to cut the ceiling panels for the bathroom.  We decided to take the evening off and have a relaxing dinner with friends and then to a movie.

In the midst of all of this we have gone in with some friends of ours and are now leasing an office/shop, which we got the keys to on Tuesday.  So our time this week has been spent getting that together.  So excited to get the office out of our home!

Since we haven't done much this week, YET......I thought I could share some of the plans & drawings we have for the cabin so far.  Some of these are still a work in progress and are changing often as we are in the space and getting a feel for what is going to work and what might drive us crazy!  :)

Here is the kitchen layout.  Leaning towards a green color and hoping to do the pantry with a chicken wire front panel.



If you haven't checked out our Pinterest page yet here are a few of the ideas I have found that I would like to copy for the kitchen.  I love the finish on these cabinets and the chicken wire fronts.  Kind of liking the backsplash too.  Not quite sure what I want for that.

                                                                                                           
This is the idea for the Utility Closet


Pendant for above sink
country kitchen
Farmhouse sink


Pantry ideas





Next I'll be working on the bathroom layout.  Off to the drawing board!  Nighty night!




Sunday, May 13, 2012

The Blog has been Hi-Jacked!!

Don't panic, Its not hackers, Its just Alan.
Its 11:24 on Saturday night and we spent 16 hours today working on the cabin. Minus a trip to the Depot to get some more lumber and a slight detour to Sequoia Sandwich for one of the greatest sandwiches in Bakersfield. And minus a trip to Chili's for Dinner... So I guess its not really 16 hours but more like...13.5.

Let's give today a theme: How about "EXHAUSTING CHANGE OF PLAN."

Lets step back a minute so you can get the whole picture. When we started this idea over a year ago, we started drawing plans. 18 changes later, we had our shell delivered as you have read.
Note: What looks good on paper, doesn't always work out perfectly in reality.
Once the shell arrived we quickly realized that the bathroom and kitchen design, wasn't going to work.
It would have left the living room too small and well... there were other things too. SOOOOO, what did we do?
Same thing everyone would do right? Tossed the plans in the trash and started from scratch!
We kept the overall feel concept but started changes dimensions real fast. Some of those as we were framing things.
Those caught up with us tonight. Not in a bad way but in a good way.
One of the dilemmas we were dealing with was the bathroom. We had originally drawn in an "L" shaped cabinet arrangement based on a picture we say on Pinterest. However, we just couldn't get it to layout in a way that we feel would allow us to take advantage of the space, serve in a function fashion and not cost an arm and a leg to have built.
Soooo, while at the Depot today we took a look at the custom order Bathroom cabinets and I think we have come up with a concept. Rather than do a custom built "L" shape vanity , I think we're changing to a straight 48" Vanity with a 15" Linen closet.

So where does that leave us?
Well, today we framed the bathroom walls, minus 3 studs against the outside wall. I just did this to give me room to move in and out with tools, etc. as well as the shower base.



The shower is framed from Pressure Treated Lumber. Its 42" Tall and will have glass from the top of the rail to the ceiling. Something along the lines of THIS. We'll be adding a Rain style shower head. We got the drain plumbing in today as well as the first part of the vent line.
The 12" Tall curbing at the bottom is because we will have the shower pan hot mopped in. I use a gentleman that comes in, lines the inside with felt, hot mops the pan in and sets the drain. Its almost 100% leak proof.

I also got the sheeting on the top of the bottom half of the closet.

From here I will frame the top half of the closet, to fit the vanity / chest of drawers combination.
I will resemble something like THIS. Ours will vary because the front bottom open spaces will have shoe holders / organizers in them. The right and left lower sections will have doors for storage and the top section will be out closet slash entertainment center. Out TV will go above the drawers.
Its hard to see the vision now but as we make progress, we'll update you for sure!

Im not as witty as Kinley so sorry for the lack of funny facts!
However, I got lots of technical mumbo jumbo that I can throw at you as we'll see if anything sticks or if you end up thinking Im a construction nerd!

We haven't really given you a feel for what we want the inside to look like to both Kinley and I have started a Pinterest Board with thoughts and ideas. You'll find out what we go with as we update you.
Here's a couple links to help you follow the design ideas:
KINLEY PINTEREST
ALAN PINTEREST - Sorry, I'm not as organized as my wife!

Let's see...Tomorrow's Schedule. 9:30 AM we have a brief meeting before we head out in the Ministry for a few hours and then we're back at it.

SUNDAY's GOALS:
1) Finish frame missing section of bathroom wall.
2) Finish framing the shower section.
3) Frame the ceiling of the bathroom
4) Start the closet. I would like to believe I can finish it tomorrow BUT I don't even know what Im going to be completely do on it so.. Looks like we're shooting from the hip on that one.

Anyway, its now almost 1 AM and I have to be up at 6:30 so, I'm going to sign off and we'll talk soon!




Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Update from the weekend!

What a crazy couple of days this has been!  We survived the weekend and a long Monday night working on the cabin with only one real snag when Alan was working on the beginning of the stairs/loft.  One of the beams he put in the wrong way and it seemed to take forever to get it back out without tearing down the whole wall area we so proudly put up.  I knew to get out of the way at that moment or possibly be the brunt of a large crow bar being thrown!  But he managed to get it out and install it the correct way and we moved on to working some more on the closet in our bedroom.

Here is a picture of the beginning of the stairs/loft area.


This is the start of our built in closet which will have drawers up the center and an area above to hang our TV. 


Monday night we got more help from Ethan.  Here he is marking out the sheeting for the bathroom and kitchen floors.


And here is Bryan, our brother-in-law helping bring in that day's lumber purchase.  Thanks Bry!


By the end of Monday night we were beat but we felt like we got a lot accomplished! This is the bathroom and kitchen floors with the view into our bedroom.  Next we will be finishing up the loft supports, framing the rest of the closet and framing the restroom.  We had more changes to the floor plan since I laid out the cabinets for the bathroom and kitchen so I hope to post those soon. 


We've had quite a busy couple of days and haven't had a chance to even step foot in the cabin but we hope to get back to work next week!

Lastly, I promised to post a pic of me doing some cutting, so..............ta da!!!