Summer finally began and now it seems it is already wrapping up.
Work on the Shack has continued in bits and spurts since the ground appeared again.
Though the snow was gone by the end of March, the woodstove in the shack continued to crank for a few months off and on.
The last burn in the stove happened on a cold and rainy day in July!
Despite all the rainy weather, bit-by-bit the Shack has been becoming more and more of a finished home.
I borrowed my brother’s table saw and began trimming out the interior windows. The change has been breathtaking.
If you had been living in here for the last year with Tyvec covered framing around your interior windows, you would be just as excited with the new view. This is my début as a finish carpenter and I am pleased with my work.
Recent events have lead up to the procuring of shack siding. We are hoping to have the siding up before the end of August. It was a big event to just get it on the premises.
Taxi is non-plussed to have been coxed up on the pile of siding for this picture, but I wanted a Vanna White dog to demonstrate that this is indeed an exciting pile of lumber. For the past year, driving directions to the Shack have concluded with “Look for the Tyvec house.” Now perhaps we can have a house color that isn’t a trademarked brand name. When you are building a shack, it takes much time and every step is earned.
In between Shack projects and my daily jobs, I have been entertaining myself with whimsical projects of
my own. You will remember Swampy, my old grey Volvo. Swampy has been transformed into the machine that I have always wanted. It was a half day’s concentrated effort of taping and trim-removal before I could even open a 
can of spray paint. The results speak for themselves, I believe. I am thinking of quitting my career as a carpenter and going into customizing cars. It is difficult to see in the photos, but Swampy has been infused with glitter in addition to the green paint. I am pretty sure that this is a one-of-a-kind Volvo, so if you see a 240 of this shade out on the road, it is probably me.
Getting back to the shack, I recently acquired a claw foot bathtub from a generous soul who had recently renovated his 1920’s bathroom. This will be the bathing facility for the coming winter.
Any of you who heard from us this past winter know that getting clean was the toughest past of living in a house with no plumbing. So far, the tub is just sitting on the porch, but I have cleaned it out and soon you will see it’s next incarnation as the Shack Tub.
In preparation for the new shack tub, there has been much scheming and planning on how to get running water into the house and how to keep it running all winter. Yesterday, Solon, my brother-in-law, and I embarked on a trench-digging endeavor. 
The purpose of the trench being to bury a water pipe beneath the frost line. We decided that it would be fun to dig a three-foot-deep twenty-foot-long pit on a ninety-degree day in August.
It actually was fun. We got it done in a couple hours with two shovels, a couple of beers and some cold seltzer water. Being able to jump in the lake every few minutes helps too.
The finished product is very impressive. It is hard to tell just how deep this trench is. I fell in it twice this morning and I can say with confidence that it is clear up to my thigh.
While I was falling into the trench, I was working on finishing the eves on the front of the house. Several wasps nests had been established between the rafters. The project I was dreading involved squirting angry bees and wasps with poison spray, knocking down their nests, and then finishing up the trim and covering so that they could not reestablish.
Solon (who seems to be game for some of the most unsavory of jobs) volunteered to spray my varmints 
for me, though. So, I closed the windows and sat inside with the dog while he squirted the angry winged beasts out of the air. This morning, I went out with an ice pick and scrapped the remains of the nests off of the eves and was pleased to find all of the denizens dead. So, I finished enclosing the eves and the lakeside of the house looks better than ever. Solon, Haley and Orrin arrived this morning in time to help me hold up the trim while I secured it to the building (I am a bit out of practice, so I don’t have as many illustrating photos as usual.)
This evening, Taxi and I worked on insulating the water pipe and filling in the trench. It is almost finished, but there are a few parts that I need to procure before I can cover the entire pit up. Besides, Taxi and I were tired and hungry after a full days work.
There are several more projects docketed for this week, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile, we always remember to look out over the lake and appreciate it’s calming cooling presence in our lives.
The last few days have been all about digging. I borrowed Dad's pickmattock and armed with a shovel, clippers and an axe, have struck my way through the front embankment to create a substantial trench. The idea is to create a hole that is deep enough to protect the water pipes from freezing when the ground is rock hard in the middle of January. I never thought that this would take me a full eight hours, but it has. Over the course of the past two days, I have been up to my armpits in dirt and sand and angry ants.
in making a trench that is satisfactory in depth. In this lovely trench, I have set my pipes, one is for water (it is a small pipe within a bigger pipe for the extra layer of insulation) and one is for the electrical wire that will power my pump. Once the pipes were set into my trench, I surrounded them with rigid insulation to protect further from the cold.
At the end of my trench, I have taken a big bite out of the embankment for the pump-house. I have hopes for the pump to be settled in a cute little stone structure that is strong, insulated, AND attractive. I haven't set out to build it yet, so we will see if it becomes any of those things.
