Winter Projects

Hi all!

After we got the logs all peeled and put up, we took a little time to just relax. We spent a some more time at the cabin, and had a blast with my sister and cousin when we finally closed it all up. Then came the holidays and we spent a lot of wonderful time with family, and even had our son visit from Texas for two weeks.

Now in January, we've gotten back on the wagon to do a lot of the prep work for next spring. Scott is more accessible during the day, so he's been tracking down trades people and getting quotes for things like the foundation, and looking for an electrician so we can get all those people lined up.

A while back we got the sanitary permit, and the land use permit - but now we  have to do the building permit.  That's been a BITCH. So much technical information we needed to come up with, and so many things that don't really apply to our situation that made it that much harder to answer.  But we persevered, and we faced down RESCheck, and we emerged victorious!!

We have completed the massive application and I will be putting it in the mail tomorrow after I scan a copy for us. (WOOHOO!!)

A couple of weeks ago, we went out to the property to check on things and just enjoy some fairly moderate winter weather. It was in the low 20's and actually pretty nice with a fire going.  So we sat around for quite a while drinking beers and admiring our place.

Mother nature very generously provided custom made beer tables:

I'm very happy to say that, so far, our logs remain safe and untouched. (Hopefully that continues to be the case now that the temps have been sub-zero quite a bit). We're planning to go down again next weekend to see how things are doing.

In the meantime, I have been studiously peeling bottles, and getting ready to start the production of bottle logs. (I've also been drinking a lot of Riesling in blue bottles, and giving gifts of booze with the one rule that I get the bottle back.)

So! Although I have many more bottles to soak, and we still have to go get the original stash from the property (with all those great Tanqueray 10 bottles)(In case you don't know, the old ones had octagonal bottoms. I don't think they do anymore), I will shortly be starting the process of assembling the bottle logs.  (Scott is ecstatic and MORE than anxious to get all these boxes of bottles out of the apartment).