Basement bathroom

Bar stools made from wine casks

Decks!

Goodbye foam walls

This weekend we finally finished covering the styrofoam walls in the basement. Probably not exciting to most, but a big step for us. We now just have a little more to do in the loft, and ten the walls are done. Still have ceilings to do in the basement, but we will take our time with those.

Monitoring

One of my projects for the winter has been to build a computer system for monitoring the systems in the cabin. I now have a small Raspberry Pi computer set up with an array of temperature sensors that I built. These record the outdoor temperature, the hot water tank, and the radiant floor temperatures and upload it to the internet to get a better idea of when the system needs to heat. The goal is to eventually be able to control the heating, both to minimize the amount of energy used when we aren't there and to be able to heat the cabin before we arrive, since it takes quite a while to heat up the cabin once we arrive. The data can be viewed online at: https://cosm.com/feeds/96148

I also have another little computer in the works for interfacing with the solar controller so that we can get a better sense of how much energy we can expect to generate in various weather conditions.

Never ending drywall

For most of the weekends we've been at the cabin this winter, Jen and I have been busy hanging drywall. We've hung most of the interior walls in the basement and are now working on the last sections of wall around the windows. We're hoping to have this part ready for inspection later this spring.

Catching up

Sorry, we haven't posted anything in a bit, I'll try to catch up now. We had a bit of a setback in January when some pinheads broke into our cabin. They took most of our tools and random other assorted stuff, but didn't do much damage (other than breaking the window). We've since added several security cameras that email us every time someone approaches or enters the cabin, so hopefully that'll help in the future.

Weekend before last had at least a foot of snow on the ground. Colin scraped snow off the solar panels so they could take advantage of the brilliant sunshine.

The Klickitat River valley last weekend.

A most boring photo

Hard to think of anything more boring than a photo of a shower curtain, but it's actually a bit more exciting than that, because behind that curtain lies running hot water. So, very boring photo, but it represents a great step forward (running hot water also means the radiant floor heating system is operational).

United Nations of Ikea

Sorry, no photos, but how crazy is this: We bought our cabinets from Ikea, so of course every part comes in a different box, resulting in probably 50 or more boxes. As I was assembling things, I started paying attention to the manufacturing origin of each box. Here's what I noticed:

• Cabinet carcasses - USA
• Cabinet doors - Hungary
• Cabinet hardware - Austria
• Sink and faucet - Hungary
• Cabinet feet - India
• Pull out drawer unit - China
• Wall hanger rails for cabinets - Lithuania

And of course, everything designed in Sweden. I probably missed a couple of boxes, so there might have even been other countries. Pretty amazing job of sourcing components from around the world.

Despite a couple of hiccups assembling the cabinets, I've got to say Ikea has really designed some very clever systems for assembling them. They actually make it pretty difficult to assemble things incorrectly.

Kitchen progress

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been working on getting the kitchen built out. It started with a visit to Best Buy and Ikea:

We loaded up the truck with a new fridge and then picked up all of the cabinets from Ikea. We forgot to think through whether everything we were ordering would actually fit in the truck, but fortunately with enough shoving, everything fit in.

Out at the cabin we started replacing our bare bones kitchen. We built out some of the cabinets and hooked up the refrigerator, which resulted in:

Cold beer! It's been nice to have a way to store food that stays cold for more than a couple of days.

The next weekend we built out more of the cabinets, so most of the kitchen is set up now. We also got the farmhouse sink in place. That weekend was also the first weekend we had (cold) running water, so we actually have a functioning sink!

Still a bit of work to do to finish off the kitchen, and we're still waiting on our stove to be delivered, but it is coming together nicely. I think for this winter we'll be making do with plywood countertops; we'll figure out how to finish those off next year some time.

Gee, what's that bright light?

We have power. Pretty cool, to have electricity straight from the Sun.