Floor Installation and Squirrel Relocation Project

Well the floor is installed in the warm room,

with lots of measuring and lay out we cut the roll of flooring then loosely rolled it up and carried it inside the building.

Fitting the flooring took some time but once we were happy with the fit we smoothed it out and trimmed along the walls.

Looking into the large end of the room.

Small end of the room.

Now that the flooring is complete, I will start the design and construction of the computer countertop work station in the large end of the building and bunks in the small end.

With today's nice weather we also worked on outside details

finishing the fence and post layout along with more painting.

After the layout was complete the fence was removed for painting.

Along with observatory work I have been running a

Red Squirrel Relocation Project

Since we fed the birds all winter we are over run with red squirrels,

so out came the Have-A-heart live trap.

Every squirrel gets a 2 mile 4 wheeler ride to Bill's Branch of Murmur Creek,

I have made 7 of these trips so far.

Here is number 5 we will call him Bob and he is waiting for his wheeler ride.

If any locals around Grand Marais or Lutsen are looking for live red squirrels just email me and I'll save you some and deliver them for free!

Indoor Work Weather Spent Painting

Rain, windy and cold.

We did get a short break in the weather to set up our 1st fence layout.

Once happy with the layout the fence was removed as one panel, taken inside and painted. The long corner post will be shortened when we decide how they're going to be topped.

Once this 2nd coat is dry we are going to glue 1" yellow smiley face marbles in the top holes.

Here is one we just pushed into the wet paint to get a feel of how it will look.

Also painted the inside of the door.

More Wet Snow and Indoor Block Sign Work

Woke to 2 more inches of very wet snow. (Lucky us!)

Here is the view at the top of the driveway looking down the road.

So up to the warm room for some more indoor work on the ABC jumbo blocks.

Here they are in a split photo,

we reinstalled them on the temporary post so Pat could lay out the images on the open faces of the blocks.

We then pulled it back a part and started the decoupage.

We have applied 2 of 6 coats of glue over the art which will then get a final coat of poly.

Mud Season and Warm Room Detail Work

A 64 Degree sunny day,

the nicest day of spring so far which inspired us to do the 2 mile walk to retrieve the 4 wheeler from the storage building. The walk gave us a close look at the road and the frost boils squeezing up to the surface, it's going to be quite some time before it dries enough to drive on it with out rutting the crap out of it.

On Saturday the 23rd we woke to another 2" of wet show and there is more snow in the forecast this week, so it looks like Pat is going to win the snow prediction. There is some signs that spring might be here though, her daffodils are starting to poke up although some are pushing through snow.

Not the best photo but here is our 1st Daffodils.

We have also been working on some of the warm room details including hanging the celling fan and lights, installing electric switches, plugs and lighting.

Outer space celling fan.

Our building design has a very large roof cantilever that we temporarily supported against snow load with a 2X6. The ultimate plan was to support this corner of the roof with extra large custom made ABC kids wood blocks.

Well, thanks to North House Folks School for supplying the 6X6 inch wood timbers that were scrap ends from their timber framing course. They were even kind enough to cut them into the block shape.

We then loaded them up for a run down to Lutsen were a very helpful guy by the name of David Woerheide, owner of Border Designs Signs, did the carving of the letters on 2 sides of our blocks and he did an exceptional job, Thank You, Thank You, David.

After picking them up from David we started the layout and drilling the blocks to fit on a 3/4" steel rod that will support the roof.

Here is a temporary stand built to hold the blocks which help us see the design and insured the holes went in the right spots.

So one side has MURMUR CREEK on it and OBSERVATORY is on the other side. The entire stack is 6 feet tall.

After getting the stack back to the project site we pulled it apart and Pat primed and painted. There are 5 colors Yellow, Red, Green, Blue and Purple, they look great.

We are now looking for images that can be decoupaged onto the other 4 sides of the blocks. They will be finished with poly coating.

We also started the trim work both inside and out,

We're experimenting with crooked looking trim around the window and installing this self watering window flower box.

We started painting our huge steel flowers

This flower is 2 feet in dia.

Last but not least,

our article was in the April 16 Cook County News Herald, it was called Making tracks through the backwoods. A full page article about our tracked vehicles and our business dealing in tracked vehicle solutions for remote access to difficult properties. It's a fun read, our thanks to Jane Howard the writer of the piece (it was a fun afternoon) and also the Cook County News Herald for printing her work.

Clean Up, Interior Paint and We're Still Waiting for Spring

Finally done with the sheet rock work which left us with a day of wiping down walls, sweeping and vacuuming all that sanding dust followed by masking and taping everything we didn't want to paint.

We then sprayed 2 coats of primer, a total of 5 gallons, over the complete interior and turned up the heat. We let it dry for 2 days.

So on goes the paint,

pastel green covers everything but the back and one end wall that are a soft yellow.

The yellow doesn't show well in the photos but looks great in person and the purple vertical beam splits the back wall up beautifully.

Looking from the larger space into the smaller end, the end wall with the sun spot is also yellow.

It's a small and hard to photograph building but I think you get the idea.

We painted both colors in one day, then did a 2nd touch up coat the next day.

While the paint was drying, it was also time to clean up.

The fire ring had poked out of the snow along with a lot construction debris so we started a fire and burned all the wood scraps along with making a dump run for the non-burnables, the snow was dropping fast and it even smelled like spring.

This was the Rodeo parked right in front of the warm room Thursday covered in mud. The gravel driveway was just about clear of snow and things were looking good so we headed to the cities for the weekend.

Here's the road Sunday afternoon as I am heading back in, what a difference 2 days makes.

Sunday's view of the observatory and warm room.

Long Winter and What the Hell Is A Red Room

You know it's been a long winter when

a pair of ghost twin girls show up in the cabin talking about a red room.

Pat was able to get this photo,

they scare the crap out of me and what the hell is a red room?

then there's the neighbor...

Pat and I went for a walk yesterday and ran into him and he doesn't look so good.

I think he might be bipolar and should maybe buy one of those special lights,

he didn't seem to want to talk so I'll bring it up again in the spring.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to know how our winter's been, just rent this movie

This winter will not quit.

On of the last day of March we pulled down all of our 3M window film that has covered every window and the front door since Thanksgiving.

We then put the chairs and grill out on the deck, even cleaned the front windows and installed screens, our timing was perfect, it then snowed for the next 3 days.

Since the last heavy wet snow we have been getting highs in the upper 40's and things are finally starting to melt.

Haven't seen the rock wall for a long while.

We have all the interior primer and paint and hope to be painting the warm room this weekend, there are just a few touch up spots in the plaster to fix first.

Also started cutting out the sheet metal flowers that will be part of our "garden" in front of the warm room

Now for some north woods competition.

#1 last snow fall.

Stan- April 21

Pat - April 27

#2 last frost.

Stan- May 18

Pat -May 6

#3. snow off our road.

Stan-May 8

Pat - April 29

#4 Ice off the lake.

Stan-May 13

Pat - May 9

#5. Tracks pulled of the rodeo or the first time we can drive in on tires

Stan-May 27

Pat - May 20

One last thing to mention,

a Lynx sighting!

I've been up here all my life and it's my first Lynx. We were coming back from town and it crossed the road in front of our truck and then walked 10 yards into the woods, stopped and let us watch for a short time, very cool!

Almost Done Mudding & Taping and Still Married

I guess we can put sheetrock mudding, taping and sanding on our resume, even though we never want to do it again.

Pat read the book on drywall so that made her foreman,

and as a foreman, all she demanded was her own way all the time and a work pace that would have killed a normal man.

I have to say it's looking pretty good but it's fussy work with a lot of drying time between coats of mud broken up only with sanding, lots of sanding.

We also had a visitor.

Jane Howard is a writer for our local paper, The Cook County News Herald, and she came out to do some research, and take a ride, on tracked vehicles. There is a very fine line between breaking trail in really deep snow and possibly getting stuck and we put the tracks to a real test.

The results even shocked me! I have just under a 1000 miles on the tracks, but never really put them through snow as deep as we did for Jane. We picked some roads that have not been plowed or driven on all winter and were close to the storage building in case things went bad.

Well some of the snow we drove over was waist deep and we were able to break trail without

working the truck hard or ever feeling like it was close to getting stuck. It was very impressive and exceeded all my expectations.

Photo Jane Howard CCNH

I have to make a trip to the cities this weekend so I'll look for the paint, counter top, lighting and carpet. When I get back up I have a little plaster touch up then 2 coats of primer and paint, can't wait to get all the sanding dust cleaned up and paint on everything.

Spring still feels a long was off, below zero the last two nights but that big snow missed us completely.

Good Progress in the Warm Room

Work in the warm room is going nicely,

still not as fast as I would like but all the little detail work always take longer than planned.

We rented a panel lift to fit the high ceiling sheet rock and it worked out great! We had never used one before so there was a little leaning curve, but it ended up taking longer to run it back and forth to town then it did to hang the rock.

Here it is in action.

Back wall with the cedar ceiling beam installed

Front wall and a window with a great view of the lake.

Front door and small end of the room.

Back wall of the small end of the room, it's hard to photo a little building.

We haven't decided on what we want for windows above the header, so that space is un-rocked for now.

We also started on the outside detail work. Pat has designed and cut out the picket fence parts, and is working out the paint scheme and picking out the carpet and lighting.

Just a reminder of what we're building.

The snow continues, last weekend we had 3 straight days of lake effect snows that put down another foot, but the sun angle is improving and the days have been getting warmer which makes the snow pack settle down some.