We Think We Did It!

January 14-17, 2011

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of the beginning of our cabin adventure! It's hard to believe that last January 15th we had the closing for the lot and the construction loan! We went out for lunch with Carl Kvale, our realtor, and then out to the lot for day #1 of work. Wow, one year ago today...

January 15, 2010

Here's how the lot looked when we drove up, so excited that it was ours.

Before...

January 15, 2011

And here's how it looks now...After!

We had a very successful weekend of work, thanks to the wonderful help of several people. Sandy's sister and her husband, Mona and Stan, came from Duluth, and our longtime friend and mortgage banker, Jim Holm, came from Ramsey to offer their assistance. 

We couldn't have done it without them! Thanks, guys!

We also hired a wonderful young man named Leslie, who was recommended to us by Bill from Hilltop Lumber in Brandon. He has worked with his Dad for many years and was a huge asset to us. He and Doug hung the bead board on the ceiling of the porch.

Thank goodness they did the outside work, since it was hovering around 0 degrees! Surprisingly, Leslie is only wearing a sweatshirt, oh, AND Carhartt bibs!

The rest of the day we focused on hanging the remaining doors upstairs...

And installing door and window trim and baseboard throughout.

We got so much done on Saturday that we didn't need to do much else. Stan and Mona were able to join us for dinner at Doolittle's in Alex and then stayed overnight for a great, relaxing evening. On Sunday Doug called the appraiser (who needed to give his final approval before closing) to confirm our appointment with him for Monday. He said he wasn't available until late afternoon Monday, but could stop over that day and would be right over! So, we ran around cleaning (and installing the baseboard in the upstairs bedroom!!!!) before he arrived. He said that everything looked great and he would be able to check "YES" in the little box indicating that we had completed everything on the Appraisal Completion Report. Yahoo! 

As soon as he left, we plopped down and did NOTHING for the rest of the weekend! Actually, we did sit and listen to the silence and Sandy read her book and Doug pulled off a long-overdue 11-hour night's sleep! We hope to be doing a lot more of that nothingness in the days to come! 

So, here are the latest views, and how it will probably look for a very long time...(Note the awesome trim!)

Praise God, we are done! We've done all we can do for now and await word on the closing later this week.