Right now, I'll catch you up on the more entertaining aspect of our lives before I delve into the Shack.
This week Dave announced that the water might be getting too cold for him. We got back from a kayak expedition in the swamp last Sunday. We took a quick swim together before we went in for the evening.
I am making the weirdest face, but I swear that I was just trying to get Dave to smile. The water was chilly - I'll admit that - but it has gotten colder and I am STILL SWIMMING every day. In that picture, the water temp was 60 degrees. I went swimming this morning after my run and the water was 55. I don't think it is too bad, and I bet I'll last until November - maybe right up until we have ice. It is an invigorating way to start the day. Dave says that was his last swim. Perhaps so, but I'll be sure to post a picture if he gets in again.
On another topic not shack-related, our beautiful robust "laying hens" are looking more and more like roosters. In fact, we have identified at least three, and in the morning, the cacophony of cock-a-doodle-doing leads us to believe that we may actually have four or even five roosters. Please understand that this is our first time with chickens; even now as they run around the yard they are tough to distinguish. Juvenile roosters look pretty much exactly like hens.
Here is the only one we think is a hen - for sure.
She looks like a hen right? Yeah! Say yes! The poor girl is dealing with sharing her house with an awful lot of men, though. Most of the other chickens are in different developmental stages but seem to be starting to look like this guy (our biggest rooster, named Hero.)
Don't mess with this guy, he keeps all the others in line. He is starting to try to keep us humans in line too!
Okay okay, roosters and hens aside, the shack is still progressing mightily and we are trying to keep up this exhausting pace so that we beat Old Man Winter. The shack is looking fine amongst the fall foliage.
It may be hard to see at this vantage, but I have finished trimming out the windows on the outside with rough-cut one-inch lumber which looks just smashing. I spent a lot of time working on the outside of the house because the floor took such a long time to dry. It DID finally dry though. But while I waited, I did window trim. I am proud to say that I trimmed the entire outside of the house using only boards that came off of the former roof. After a good belt sanding, they looked good as new.
There are no pictures of the dry floor, but it looks great too. Come see it sometime.
As soon as the floor was dry, I drilled all the holes in the walls for the wiring that Dave would be doing.
Last week, I found some kitchen cabinets on the side of the road for free (perfectly good), and the Kaufholds generously gave us a couple of cabinets as well. I spent some time trimming these all up to the same hight to go under the kitchen counter top. As soon as Dave is finished the wiring, I may start getting down to business and setting up some of the more "housey" parts of the house while Dave is working (when I say he is working, I mean on his REAL job - the thing he used to do before we decided to renovate the Shack.)
Wiring! That is right, Dave is wiring as I type this (on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.) It is very exciting to see just how much electrical work he can get done in one weekend. Here he is yesterday mapping out our electrical layout.
And here he is today, all the wires have been run and he just has to hook them all up. (oh, look, you can see some of the beautiful floor there!)
It is a small house, but it is no small task. Dave, having had to do day-job stuff lately, hasn't had a weekend since our honeymoon (which, technically, was four week DAYS not a weekend.) Yet, as you can see, he is still smiling. If you see him, give him a pat on the back, and buy him a beer. He deserves it.
I should tell you all that we are working almost exclusively with found objects, salvaged goodies, and reusing the good wood that we removed from some unusable part of the shack. We are pretty darn proud of what we've put together. With the exception of the unsafe or non-salvageable materials we got rid of, we have managed to incorporate a huge amount of the "what-once-was" of the Shack into the "What-will-be" of the Shack. This experience in "shacking up" will be one that we draw upon for the rest of our lives - construction experience and relationship experience.
Curious to know if we make it in before the snow flies? Will our fire wood be delivered? Will we find a refrigerator? You'll just have to tune in for
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