10/28

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The forecast has improved and it's only 48 this morning. Rain today and a cold night, then a long string of sunny days with average temperatures - 60s/40s. Tonight we'll cover beds 8 and 9 with the 4 mil plastic to be safe. The low is now forecast for 35 tonight so it won't be a hard freeze - may not freeze at all.

Yesterday was cloudy with a light on and off rain all day. It progressively got colder as the day went by. On rainy days the garden doesn't get fertigated, dishes aren't done [they're set in a bin under the roof by the door to collect runoff and soak] - very little if any work is done outside so it's kind of a break from the usual chores. So instead we worked on cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen, and taking anything we don't use and storing it in boxes out under the barn. The kitchen is being step-by-step permanently moved over to the northwest side of the cabin under the bedroom side of our loft area.

I've finally got a pretty good gameplan of how to develop the lower story of the cabin, with built-in counters and open shelves on the garden side of the kitchen; the fridge along the west wall; then a U counter on the addition side of the kitchen. The chest freezer will be put on casters and will slide under the counter to take less space. The one stretch of counter that comes out from the addition wall towards the cookstove will have an overhanging corbelled counter with barstools for eating; the kitchen table we hardly use will go out to the barn; the loft ladder will move over against the east wall and be put at a steep angle rather than vertical as it is now; the corner where the kitchen is now under the 'library' side of the loft where I'm sitting will become a small living room with 2 couches, coffee table, and rocking chair. The french doors out to the addition will be removed, and the walls on either side out to the addition will be cut down to demi-walls [with the post and beam frame none of the walls are load-bearing].

Since we have composting toilets in both bedrooms, there's no real need for us to build a bathroom - I'd like to get a rubber 30 gallon stock tank I saw on one farm website [only $37], and just bring it in and set it in front of the stove when we want to bathe like they did in the old days. The galvanized stock tanks are not shaped very comfortably like a tub and all the galvanized stuff we have tends to rust up rapidly. There are a couple of nicely shaped heavy-duty plastic stock tanks that look much like a tub but I hate the idea of bathing in plastic [hot water and plastic usually a toxic mix]. We may have to special order the rubber one I found from a Co-op since Tractor Supply doesn't carry it. Once the large porch is built along the garden side of the cabin we'll store the tub out there - might make it permanent out there if the porch gets screened in.

Opening up the addition wall will make the inside of the cabin feel more spacious, and allow a better flow of heat from the stove. But the girls may not be thrilled about less privacy even though we'll build them canopy beds [of course we don't have any more privacy up in the loft with only the loft railing]. The girls ultimately want to move out to the upper story of the barn once I get the board and batten siding up. I could frame out a couple of bedrooms for them out there with a safe baseboard heat. I don't know, we take it all one step at a time . . .

When the addition is not used for bedrooms, the east side of it will be an indoor greenhouse for seedlings, the west side a living room, and a large kitchen table will go where now we plan on having a small living room. I'd often thought of adding on a whole wing to the cabin coming off the addition to the west for a master bedroom, with patio, and french doors - but who knows, just an idea. Depends on where the barn is.

It's raining and probably will all day [70% chance]. Today we're going out to Oak Ridge for Home Depot, and to Walmart for muslin to face the insulated curtains. Here's the list:

Quadra cut mower blades 25

Case of caulk 15

12 rolls of R 19 insulation 180

Staples (18 gauge) 5

Gauge for chainsaw sharpening depth 5

Truck air filter 5

Insulation wands 5

Tobacco 20

Bolt of muslin 20

[280 + tax = 310]

GROCERIES

Vegetable oil
Butter
Tortillas
Milk

After a lot of back and forth emails and phone calls with Northline Express, our chimney order is now almost entirely shipped. The 5' DuraVent 7" stainless steel chimney pipe came on the truck yesterday, the DuraVent support box had been sent to them but was in the wrong box and they didn't know they had it - now shipped. The HeatFab stove pipe Selkirk had said they sent, but hadn't, and is now going to be directly shipped to us from Selkirk. So the rest of the chimney parts should be here early next week and we can install the chimney. I'm nervous about cutting a hole in the roof, and the support box should be interesting to install with the ribbed metal roof - I've also got to reconfigure the rafters to center the stove. Connecting the stovepipe to the chimney once the pipe is here should be a breeze. Then we can finally start heating the building - though as long as it's sunny with all the windows the cabin is warm.

We took two loaves of bread over to Vic and Jo and visited for a while - potato and sweet potato. Both came out very well, but the toaster oven is almost dead.

Rain is light now, hopefully it'll get heavy at some point and fill up the barrels.

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