Tundra

It was -18 degrees outside this morning. As Dave pointed out, that is 50 degrees lower than freezing. Your breath practically freezes in the air in front of you and splinters when it falls to the ground. How cold is outer space? It must be close to this. It sucks the moister right out of your skin. It hurts to see.

But, when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. The outhouse takes on a special crystalline brittleness in this weather that is beautiful. The gossamer spider webs that dangle from the ceiling accumulate delicate pearls of frost that drape and shiver in the air over our heads.

It seems that people want to know how it is to use an outhouse in January in New England – when the spit inside your mouth freezes if you don’t shut it. A lot of people spend most of their time indoors during the winter. It is snowing, or it is too cold, and they rush from their house to their warmed-up cars to scoot off to a warm workday inside. There is little need to connect with the reality of winter unless your car breaks down.

Here at the shack, the day starts with a breath of fresh air and a quick look at the outdoor thermometer as we zip up our jackets and pull on our boots. Twenty below. Some might consider it painful, but it is surprisingly electric and satisfying to breathe in that cold air and crunch down the walk to our little outhouse. Honestly, it is not that bad. The seat is cold, but not painful. I chalk it up to my experience as a teenager using an outhouse in the winter. I was familiar with the situation and I don’t remember the outhouse ever being too cold to use (the only thing I really remember is being embarrassed to have friends over because they might ask to use our bathroom!)

I wondered how Dave would do, not having grown up with an outhouse in New England. In the fall, before it got cold, Dave mentioned some scheme about putting a space heater in the outhouse. Friends suggested warming the seat next to the woodstove and bringing it out with us. Impressively though, over his years in the northland, Dave has built up his cold tolerance. Like a true New England Swamp Yankee, he now swears that the cold seat and the bitter temperatures do not disturb his morning reverie.

A morning reverie in an outhouse can include many contemplations and entertainments. The artwork and poetry on the walls has been evolving and changing since we moved in. We both add new pieces now and then, and we used to get visitors who would scribe their name or a clever limerick to entertain us – though in the past few months, we have had no visitors to entertain us with pithy scribbles. We depend on each other for outhouse art in the winter months. We also enjoy reminiscing over the bits and pieces of writing that we accumulated this summer from friends and family. This week the colored markers are frozen, so we have to wait for better Sharpie weather.
The other morning Dave reported that a chipmunk poked his head in through a little hole in the outhouse door. They contemplated each other for a moment, and then the chipmunk slipped back out. Apparently he likes his privacy on the can as well as we do.

This morning, the hoarfrost had collected in a ring around the seat. Even now, in the heat of the day (8 degrees) the crystals are still collecting. There is something very pure and clean about this kind of cold though. Pure and clean is something that you can appreciate when you are talking about your outhouse.

Some seem concerned about our wellbeing at the shack because of our lack of plumbing. We’ll be frank and say that we miss toilets least of all. There was once a time when it was considered course and uncivilized to use the loo inside where you lack privacy (and the ventilation is poor.) There is nothing we appreciate more than our connection with the wilderness of Deerfield.
No, what we miss is definitely not a toilet. What we dream about most is a shower. I get to the gym almost everyday and shower there after exercising. Dave enjoys my parent’s shower across the lake. We both frequent my parent’s house for the lively conversation as well as their running water. Now that the lake is frozen solid, we are wearing a track through the snow across the lake to their house. Walking over there feels like crossing tundra. There are few places left in the world where you will find complete nothingness for such a long distance. We feel like Arctic explorers every time we make the trek. My parents and I have been working on educating Dave about northland ice. It is very different from what you get south of the Mason Dixon Line.

Several years ago, in the winter when Dave and I were first dating, I brought him out to my parent’s house to meet my family. My father seemed to like him right away and took him out on the ice for a walk across the lake. Upon discovering that Dave was from Maryland and had a healthy suspicion of any body of frozen water, Dad took it as his duty to rattle Dave’s nerves a little. They walked over a mile on the ice while Dad told Dave stories of people who had gone through the ice. I imagine Dave watching with increasing apprehension as Dad jumped up and down to demonstrate the integrity of the ice. Even ice that is twelve inches thick will boom like a gong if you pound on it enough. They returned from their walk safe enough, though. Later, when I asked Dad about how he liked Dave, he grinned and said that Dave seemed like a pretty good guy. On the car ride home, Dave told me about their walk and admitted that he was pretty nervous just being on the ice, my father’s stories and demonstrations only put him more on edge. I told Dad about it later, and he laughed and said that there is no harm in putting a little bit of fear into the heart of the man who is dating your youngest daughter.

This winter Dave has been learning a lot more about the ice. Three weeks ago, he was still suspicious. But now that we are into the bitter weeks of January, he has gained a lot of confidence. Soon the ice will reach a new level of frozen. Trucks will be driven out onto it and occasionally pilots practice landing their planes on it. When it is cold enough, the ice sings a song that is out of this world. Something like the sound of a family of blue whales combined with a darbuka drum circle.

The ice is the defining feature of the lake in the winter. It makes the world around us completely different. We now have a front yard that is nothing like it was a month ago. I hope that you will keep reading our blog this winter, because the adventures of living in the shack on a frozen lake have only just begun.

Here on the lake, there are only a handful of people who stay through the winter. We call ourselves “year-rounders”. It is hard to hold that title without being a bit pompous about it. It is one thing to be here for the summer: those three perfect months when the water is warm, the days are long, and friends are plentiful. It is another thing to live on the lake in January.

Year-rounders may try to observe the good points of the lake in the long winter months. We have no neighbors, the noisy jet-skis are all in storage, and we get to watch the flames in the wood stove. Though, in the cold months around the Winter Solstice, the wind is bitter, the view is colorless, and the lake is a frozen tundra.


It is slightly surprising then - when we look out our front window on the frozen ice-scape that is now our front yard – and see our new neighbors. They are an odd breed. Mostly they keep to themselves. Though they seem to be lacking in productive purpose, they are relentless. We watch their little huts sitting on the ice like a cluster of kid’s clubhouses. We imagine them huddling over the holes they have drilled in the ice and drinking beer. There doesn’t seem to be any garbage accumulating anywhere, so we can only imagine that they chuck their empties down the ice hole. First thing in the morning we hear their gas-powered ice augers drilling. Some stand guard over one hole from within their bob house. Some drill a series of holes across the ice and stake out homemade contraptions. When a fish bites under the ice, an orange flag snaps up and it’s owner comes running across the ice with unaccustomed haste.


These are the ice fishermen. They keep to themselves mostly. I spent a morning shoveling off a skating rink on the ice in front of our house. I did this partly so we could skate, but also to mark our territory. As the ice gets thicker, the ice houses spread out appearing closer and closer to our house. Perhaps the fishermen would even start drilling holes in “our” ice. So, I shoveled a huge area to stake a claim on a little bit of ice that we could call ours. I spent hours on the ice with a shovel. The fishermen, who were not more than a hundred yards from me, watched, but continued to keep council with their own. I imagine their resentments towards me – a new year rounder. Dave and I have claimed prime ice real estate by occupying the Shack. Our house abuts the only lake access for the fishermen: the boat launch. In past year, these men may have staked an ice claim directly in front of the shack. Likely they would march up the concrete stairs that lead to our house and gloat to their buddies about the facilities (our outhouse.) Perhaps they even came inside the shack through the broken door and used it like a bob house on the hill, watching their little orange flags from inside where the wind did not blow so hard.

If that was the case, it is no wonder that they might resent us. When we got here in June, our summer neighbor, Shawn, gave us our first bit of advice: “Just don’t put a lock on your outhouse! The ice fishermen will just break it off and use it anyway.” So, we followed his advice and did not lock the outhouse. We wonder if some time we might pull open the door to find a surprised fisherman on the pot reading Field and Stream. It has not happened yet, but the ice has only just frozen.

Determined to break down the barrier between us and the fishermen, on Friday, I marched into their midst. There were a dozen of them and they glanced at me as I approached, and then turned away as though if they didn’t acknowledge me, I wouldn’t exist: a year-rounder. Then one man stepped out of the crowd and called out with a thick Yankee accent, “Hi there! Cold day, isn’t it?”

First contact.

I replied, “Yeah, it’s freezing cold!” Then ventured a question, “How thick is the ice you are drilling over here?”

He grunted and replied, “Five or six inches. It is even up to seven in some spots.”
He even hefted up a core chunk to show me.

I observed, “It’s a inch or so thinner in front of my house – I think because of our stream.” Note: I am claiming a little territory here with my possessive nouns. “It is only five inches thick and you are driving ATVs on it?” I asked.

He shook his head, “I’m certainly not! Those guys are.” He pointed at some younger looking ice fishermen a few bob houses down with an ATV parked next to their bob house on wheels. I theorize a sort of rift between the older and younger sects of ice fishermen. Perhaps my conversationalist-ice-fisherman thought that those impulsive youngin’s might have to fall through the ice a few times before they would be seasoned veterans.

I continued, “Have you been catching anything?”

He laughed and pointed to a fish lying on the ice next to a folding chair. It was about eight inches long. “A kid just pulled that one out. The trout are biting today.”

“Wow.” I observed. “Well good luck!”

“Thanks!” he replied.

Despite our previous assumptions, it seems that we can talk to the ice fishermen. The only thing I have thought of to ask them about is how thick the ice is and if they have caught anything. I asked another guy the same two questions this morning when I went out to take these pictures.

My hope is that was can co-exist with these cold-weather-lake-dwellers. I have made first contact. We will see how this new lake population evolves as the winter progresses.

The Ice Storm

I guess no one in NH was really prepared for such a storm. We lost power on Thursday, the 11th. After eight days without electricity, we were restored around midnight last night, Friday the 19th. Going around and talking to everyone who has lost power in New Hampshire, Dave and I came to realize that in this situation, we are at a real advantage. Having no power at the shack is not largely different from normal shack life. We had already figured out our water, cooking, and heating problems months ago. So, here the shack is: warm and toasty, we can cook on the propane stove easily, and we were stocked with water for drinking and washing as well. The only big difference was that we needed candles to see at night.

It really did not make that much difference from the way we've now been living for months now! I must say that it was even MORE charming in here cooking, eating, and reading by candle light.

The biggest downside was that Dave could not stay here. He had a lot of work to do and could not accomplish any programming without electricity or the internet. So, he was in Vermont working at the office for the majority of our blackout. He did come home yesterday in time to enjoy one of our rustic nights in the shack.

I spent the week decorating the shack for Christmas and reading Gone With the Wind. Now that the power is back on, I can post to the blog and see what is going on with the rest of the world, but I already miss the rustic peace and quiet of a world without the hum of electricity.

For the amount of time that we were without power, there really wasn't that much damage around here from the ice storm. I took some obligatory photos of the most impressive damage. The biggest limb that fell down around us hit our mailbox. Don't worry, the mailbox was just fine.

Waking up on Friday morning, the sound of cracking branches got me out of bed to see what was going on. I stood outside listening to branches breaking and falling throughout the woods. I could stand in one place and just watch branches come crashing down. Lucky, the Shack and all the camps around us were just fine.

Being unable to go to work that morning, I traipsed over to my parent's house to see if they had made it home from their "film-makers shindig" the night before. Of course they were fine. We wandered out into the freezing rain to get a good look at the destruction around the lake.

The driveways were a mess of bowed over birch trees. It seems that Mom and Dad got caught in one here.

We continued on down the road and wondered if perhaps it was the end of civilization and we were the only ones left.

Then a few cars went by and we were disappointed that the adventure was not quite as drastic as we had imagined.

What we did find was that the power was out everywhere, and from what we could tell, it would be some time before it came back on. What fun. There really is nothing quite so exciting as a test of our mettle like this. How would we fare in such circumstances for such a long time?! Quite well, in fact. With Dave out of town for the duration of the adventure, Mom and Dad and I took turns hosting candle-lit dinners at our houses. We sat on the couch and stared out at the lake at the few lights we could see from other people's candles (or generators.) We discussed life and pondered great mysteries. We debated the pros and cons of different flashlight models. We enjoyed our situation immensely.

Rebbecca, my sister-in-law, and my nieces came over to my parents for a night because without electricity their house was cold. We drank wine and stared out across the lake some more.

But, now that the power is back on, we have yet another fortuitous reprieve from the outside world because we are in the middle of a blizzard. For those of you who don't live in New England, I tell you, you are missing out on a luscious and rustic lifestyle that just can't happen anywhere else. These are the few times when the outside world is not always pressing in and forcing you to commute, make money, and be on time.

Today, we are celebrating the Winter Solstice with the family and will be going on a horse-drawn sleigh ride this afternoon in the snow. Happy Solstice - the light is coming back.

We're still here!

I said the end - I lied. I spent all this time transferring the blog over to this darn site, so I feel obligated to post something contemporary to prove to you that I will really continue to write about our life here.

I may find a picture or two to stick into my little narrative here, but today, what I really want to address is our purpose here on the lake.

So, I have noted lately (and this may be purely my imagination, but I think I am not completely bonkers) that some people seem to think that we might be living in this tiny (16 x 28 ft) shack because we have somehow become destitute and cannot manage any other lifestyle. Perhaps no one thinks that and I am just addled. Never-the-less, I want to try and tell you the "why" about the Shack.

Dave and I decided that we would do this mostly because we wanted to see if we could. The plans for this adventure were much different than the result. When we were visiting my parents on the lake in May this year and we were sort of tossing around alternative living ideas. My father said, "Well, there is a camp across the lake that needs renovations and the owner will let you live there in exchange for fixing it up."

We kind of laughed. "Ha ha ha, sure, why not. Let's check it out."

So, we went for a walk around the lake to get a look at this camp. We traipsed down the dirt driveway and saw it sitting there: small, slumpy, and forlorn. We went inside (by reaching in through the broken window to unlock the door.) It smelled like a hamster cage. There were acorns and squirrel poop everywhere, and there were obviously many holes in the roof. Dave and I looked at each other, we looked around this little smelly place and we said,
"Let's do it."

Originally, our plan was to spend the estimated repair time (three weeks) living at my parent's, and then we would enjoy the summer basking in the sun on the dock and enjoying the financial freedom of not paying rent for a few months. Once it got cold, we would find our next home/adventure.

But, it turned it to take a little more than three weeks. The deeper we got into this project, the more committed we were. The summer passed and our wedding was approaching and we were still working day in and day out on this place. It was obvious that we would not be in before we got married.

Our plans were now changing as we realized that in order to make this endeavor worth it, we would really have to live here - for a few years. We'd have to insulate and make the place tight enough for a New England winter. All this would take even more time. We started planning how to get our water once the lake froze.

The result is that we are now living a type of "homesteading" life that we had not planned for initially, but we are finding to be a very intriguing challenge. We are really getting a chance to see what elements of modern life we miss. We are also discovering what we don't miss. Running water has soared to the top of the "missed" list. But, we've hardly noticed that we don't have a toilet. The outhouse is simply charming, and we enjoy getting to write or draw whatever we want on the walls.

The wildlife is always interesting and we get to live close to my folks, but the space is small, and sometimes Dave and I are at each other's throats. We are working on staying cheerful though, because we have a long winter ahead of us.

But the whole point is the challenge of it. How will we manage to navigate all these difficult hurdles? How much will it change out perspective about life? We are already certain that we will not take the modern conveniences of hot running water for granted ever again! (If we are at your house and we turn on your faucet, note the look of awe on our faces.)

We may come up with new schemes and solutions for these obstacles as well as unseen ones that we will undoubtedly encounter through the winter. You better keep checking to see if we both emerge from the spring thaw intact and ready for another summer at the shack...

The End...

Are you still waiting with baited breath to find out if we made it in? Well, your wait is over. We've been living in the shack since October 29th! Yes, we got in before November hit us. It was our goal. A total of four months of working on the shack, living in tents, basement, neighbor's houses, and under mosquito netting, we finally found a place to call home. Let me go way back to where I was at the last update.

Dave did all the wiring and then I tackled the insulation. It took me about eight hours to insulate the whole place with the fluffy pink insulation. When I was finished with that, I jumped right into drywall. I did the calculations and then Dad and I went to Home Depot to pick up our bare-minimum of 22 pieces of drywall. Yes, we took Eddy (the Astro) and Rusty (the trailer)...

It was another adventure with Rusty and Eddy when Eddy blew a tire. Dad and I were sure that something else had happened to the poor trailer - it was lucky that it was just Eddy with a flat. It added that familiar flare to the rides that my Dad and I tend to go on when we are doing construction projects.

Well, we recovered and got home in one piece and brought all the drywall into the house. It was ready to start looking like a real house!

Then I hung drywall! Yay. (sorry, no photos were taken during this time.) And then I mudded the drywall several times (sorry, no photos.)

The big hurrah was when we moved the wood stove into the house. It had been waiting patiently in the storage container and we finally got to bring it home. Yes, this is the beautiful wood stove that we bought with all the generous contributions we received at our wedding.





Here is Dave working on starting our very first fire. We needed this so that the mud on the drywall would dry since it was very cold out. (Notice in the background the drywall in progress and the fancy baseboard trim I crafted.) It took some work, and a little practice, but we've gotten really good at building our fires. Here is the first one after we really go it going.




Ain't she a beauty!!!! And look, the smoke comes right out the chimney like it's supposed to!




The leaves are still really pretty in this picture.

Okay, as far as our photographic records show, the next accomplishment was the standoff that Dave built for our electric service. It pained him to bore a hole up through our roof, but he tied it all in quite nicely and it looks pretty smart.




Notice that we have curtains on our windows! Yep, the second I was finished with the sanding of the drywall, I painted the walls white and moved the couch in. Then came the bed, the dresser, and our long lost kitchen (much missed!) We moved in the next day! We had recently gotten a delivery of two cords of green wood which I quickly stacked.




It is green wood, but it is ash, which burns relatively well even when green. We discovered that it was difficult to really get the green stuff started, but once we got the hang of it, it wasn't too bad. We were just so happy to be living in warm house! A few weeks later, we got a delivery of two cords of drywood. I took a picture of our completed woodpile so that anyone who might be worried about how warm we are can rest easy. We have been burning this wood for a month now, and we find that the toughest thing about it is keeping the temperature down! We have a very efficient stove and it sometimes keeps us a little TOO warm. We aren't complaining, though. We are toasty and content. Here is our woodpile - it is stacked four rows deep, so you know we won't run out any time soon.




We have found that a big perk to living on the West side of the lake is that it is protected from the high winds that are always blowing on the East side. Because of that, the ducks and other aquatic birds like to spend time in front of our house.




We see dozens of different kinds of birds hanging out here. There are a bunch of adolescent loons that like to do their diving practice where we can watch them too.

WAIT! You say, what about the shack?! What does it look like inside?! How is life without running water? What have you done with the furniture. Yeah yeah, I know you're all dying to know. So, I took some pictures so you can envision us in our little tiny lake house.

First off, you come in the front door and see our little sitting area where we like to watch movies and stare into the flames of the fire.




As you will notice, the drywall is just beautiful (almost flawless if I do say so myself) but the trim has not been done. this is because we decided that the trim was not a crucial element to our happiness and that it could wait a few months. I may be working on it during my down time after the holidays.

Across from the couch is our little wood stove, which is always cheerfully chugging away and keeping us warm and toasty.




Here is the full view of the front of the house, over looking the lake (and the ducks.)




If you walk up to the front windows and turn around, you'll see the kitchen, where Dave is cooking his lunch/breakfast.




Hmm, where does that ladder lead to. Well follow me and I'll show you! It goes up up up to our loft bedroom.



This bedroom is quite cozy. Sometimes it gets a little too cozy if the fire is really cranking. But, it is mostly just comfy. We have a nice soft carpet on the floor, our reading lamps, and a great view of the lake. If you look closer, you'll notice that the window up here is trimmed. I decided that our bedroom should be completely finished before we moved in, so I trimmed out the window and the walls.




It's nice to feel like part of the house is finished.



Would you like to see our kitchen? I'll tell you how it works. First off, here is what it looks like.




I cleaned it up a lot before I took this picture. The biggest deal about this kitchen is that it has a sink with a drain! Dave did the plumbing of it, so we can pour water in the drain, and it just goes away! Pretty cool.

If you don't think it is cool, try not having a drain for a couple of days and then you'll think it is the best thing since sliced bread.

You may be wondering what water goes down that drain considering the fact that we don't have running water. That is a good question. See the seventies-motif water-heater with a spout that sits on the edge of the sink? That is our "faucet". We keep it filled with water and use it to wash our hands and our dishes. Mostly, it is just a handy spout. The water comes from my parent's well. We fill up these twenty-gallon plastic water barrels and drive them around the lake to our house. We pull water from them to fill the "faucet" and we pay a lot of attention to how much water we use to do dishes.

For drinking water, we have collected several gallon-size glass jugs and fill them from my parent's drinking water faucet.

We are enjoying our experience to the fullest, but we agree by far that water is the biggest pain in the butt. As far as washing goes, we are still using my parent's shower pretty often. I got a gym membership at Planet Fitness in Concord, and Dave nicknamed it "Planet Shower." It is pretty nice to get to shower after a workout!

So, the water seems like a pretty temporary solution, but it is the long-term solution for the time being. Good thing we're adaptable!

Back to the shack, though. Let's focus here. Okay, here is our front door and our indoor woodpile,




And here is us, in front of our wood stove on a sunny Saturday in November.




Oh, I almost forgot! Last week, I did one last building project before the big bad winter hit. I built our front porch. We needed to build it so that the Dorket was not resting on temporary posts on the ground. Once the ground freezes, it can "heave" and push up on the Dorket, which would compromise our roof, so I built the porch.




The porch is built on Sauna tubes that go four feet into the ground - this is deep enough to prevent frost heaves. We are really enjoying the porch. It would be nice to have steps, but I ran out of time, and so we are sticking with our ramp for the winter. Here's our entire little house with it's little porch attached.




So, it is the end of November, we've been living here for a month. We are still waiting patiently for the power company to hook us up, and in the meantime, all of our shack is being run on extension cords. It is not really a problem, except that the cable company won't hook up our internet until the power company hooks up the power. That is my excuse for taking so long to tell you how the house was doing - I had to bring my computer to my parent's house and borrow their internet. It is good to have parents! We owe a lot to them, and will continue to . So, thanks Gary and Liz, for everything that you have given and loaned to us. And for all that water! Thanks to our friends and family who encourage us to use their showers too! We appreciate it way more than you know. We like to say that this winter we won't freeze and we won't starve, the only real danger we are in is of being stinky. We're pretty clean so far, though.

I guess that is about it. Thank you for being such loyal shack fans. We have loved all of your feedback. We feel like you've all been here building with us. Come and visit. Until next time, this is the shack updater signing out.

Nippy - October 12th

Brrrrr! Autumn is sure here in New England. The nights are cold and the days are brisk. We are still constantly at work on the shack, but we can't control everything. The floor is dry, but sometimes events just happen that force you to slow down.

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

Chickens - October 5th

Heya kids. Wondering where we've gone to? Yeah, well, we are too. If you ask us how we feel when we wake up in the morning, the answer is "weary". It is October now and this is the first week that it has really begun to get cold. The leaves are all changing now and it is frosty in the night. We promised ourselves that we would take our weekends off from working, and this might be the first weekend that we have actually stuck to that pact since we got married. Well, I guess that isn't true since I was in there for a couple hours yesterday morning trying to get the finish on the floor before we left for my grandmother's 90th birthday party.

You might get a kick out of the fact that, although the lake temperature is only in the high 50's right now, Dave and I are both still swimming pretty much daily. Here is a picture of Dave a couple of days ago. He had worked on the floor all day long and came back for his clean-up swim after the sun had set. I had to use the flash to capture it properly.





you can faintly see the horizon above the far shore. Dave is being a really good sport here because we generally don't spend much time in the water now that is really cold. We are in it just long enough to get that brisk clean feeling, and then we're out.

Now that you know how we get clean after we work a hard day, I should tell you what sorts of things we have been working on. Dave spent three days burning the junk wood that had come off of the house. The yard is just really clean now. He also put down the plywood floor in the front of the house. Oh, and we spent a half-day installing the "spine" under the belly of the building so that the floor would stay nice and solid and not develop a bounce. We have really gotten bad about pictures of all of this stuff lately because we are just plain tired. We keep getting closer to our goal of actually getting in the shack, but it still seems like there are many many things left to do.

For my own piece of mind, I took a side-jaunt into a building project that had nothing to do with the shack. My mother and I have been scheming and researching about chickens. We decided that we were going to get some laying hens. So, this week, I scrounged up enough materials to piece together a chicken coop. It took me about a day of working on it and it was done. It was refreshing to get to build something that wasn't quite so critical as a house to live in. Chicken's live simple lives and don't have high expectations for their house. So, in one day, I built a chicken palace.




What fun to do something so whimsical as a chicken coop! Here is the back view. This is where we can reach in and pull out the theoretical eggs they will lay.





Mom and I were so excited that I went out the next day to get our chickens. They are four-month-old Rhode Island Reds. Five hens and a rooster that are currently free-ranging in my parent's yard. We have found it endlessly entertaining to watch them peck around the yard. Bean, our bold black cat, is terrified of them. Every time he has to walk past them they chase him. We are just glad that he doesn't seem to be thinking about eating them.




Ahh, yes. chickens, you say. That is nice. but what about the shack? What phase of construction have you reached? Let me see. I painted the beams white before Dave put in the floor (because I can tend to be a sloppy painter) so, any questionable paint that may be on them is sealed up with a heavy coat of oil based paint. It looks quite grand inside with the white beams, I don't think a picture really does it justice, but I'll show you anyway.





This picture also captures the loft a little bit. (it is hard to take a picture of a loft) We have found two little windows for each side of the house in the peaks so that we can be well-ventilated. That is easier to see from the outside.




This is the back view with our little loft window nestled up in the peak. Here is a view from the lake side.



As you can see, the leaves are all turning as we are well into autumn. Our little chimney is poking out all ready to have the wood stove attached to it. The current "shack state" is that all of the roof is done, the walls our finished and wrapped in Tyvec, and we are now buttoning up all the little holes. The new plywood floor is a real improvement. Here is a picture from this morning that I took from the doorway. the floor has a red mahogany stain that this photo does not do any justice. It is a rich warm color if you were to see it first-hand.




We are currently waiting for the finish on the plywood to dry so that Dave can start running the electrical wires back in the walls, and hopefully, insulation will be next. These cold nights are certainly making us think about buttoning down and getting moved in. Our firewood is being delivered this week, and we will definitely post a picture of that, as it will be our heat in this quickly approaching winter. We are excited about getting it all stacked and ready to burn.

The trees are getting to the point where everything is overwhelmingly colorful, but we are not quite there yet. A couple more weeks and it will be stunning. Hopefully, we'll be moving into the shack by then. Meanwhile, think warm thoughts for us! We'll keep on trucking.