Every country homestead needs a barn. It's hard to argue that point. Where are you going to store the tractor? And the garden tools? And you need a place to build and repair things, right? Well Katy & Vern have been in their house since spring and have decided that's long enough to live without a barn. Hoping to get it done before the snow flies, Vern is putting all his spare time into this construction project. As of late September, the foundation is done and the floor is about to be poured. Check here occasionally to see what progress has been made, and check with Vern if you have a spare weekend and want to help.
Click on the picture here to see more photos of Vern's barn project.

When you've got 20 acres up north, you're never lacking for a project. Trail maintenance is a continuous task. With three creeks running through the woods we have several places where trails cross them. We've used various scraps of lumber and downed trees to fashion walking bridges. Some fairly rustic but quite usable and some rather crude. There have been no bridges to accomodate the ATVs, so we decided to build some. The first one we built is just a handful of timbers laid the width of the wheels of the ATVs. It's crude but works and is not too bad to walk across. The second one is completely decked with 4' boards. It looks and feels like a much safer bridge to walk or drive over. We'll probably end up adding similar deck boards to the first bridge. Click on the picture here to see more photos of the project.

We recently spent a week at the cabin on the Betsie river and built a storage shed while there. It's 10 x 16 feet with a 5' wide door to allow easy entry and exit of the ATVs. Having this storage will allow us to move yard tools out of the campsite shed, ladders out of the cabin and to store kayaks and other bulky items. It's not quite done, but dried-in enough to keep stuff protected until we get back to finish it up. Have a look at some pictures here.

Update 9/24/09- We had three beautiful days at the cabin and with Jeff's help, were able to get shingles on, doors built and hung and soffit installed. Jeff brought his Gorilla ladders, scaffold pick, roofing nail gun and his expertise, all of which were a great help in getting the roof done. Thanks Jeff!

Still to be done are installation of the window, trim boards and a ramp to the door. I should be able to manage those on the next visit. We may not get paint on until spring. Anyway, there are a few new pictures to look at.

It all started with the noise from the old refrigerator. It was still working well, but it was getting noisy and having served for over 20 years, we figured it would soon be time to replace it. Thinking that it would be better to shop for a replacement now rather than when the old one has quit and a new one is needed within a day, we started shopping. We found that we liked the side by side style, but we couldn't find any that would fit in the narrow space that the old one occupied. When we found a really good deal on a scratch and dent model, we bought it knowing that we would now have to rearrange the kitchen to accomodate it's 36 inch width. We could have stored the new fridge in the garage until the old one gave out, but... hey, we got a new fridge and we were excited to put it to use. Anyway, cabinets got moved, counters got cut and the kitchen project was begun with the installation of that new fridge.

That was more than a year ago. Since ten, a lot of thought has gone into the issues of
cabinet door style, cabinet finish, counter top material, backsplash material, flooring material, and of course color choices for all of the above. We thought about lighting and decided to enlarge the window to get more natural light. That was a fairly major project on its own, involving opening up the side of the house to reframe the window opening.

With the window replaced, it was time to start building cabinets. Having never built kitchen cabinets before, I studied long and hard to understand the ins and outs of cabinet construction so I wouldn't waste too much lumber in the learning process. Although not installed yet, we now have a mostly complete corner cabinet with lazy susan turntable. This was probably the most difficult cabinet to build, so I figure building the rest will be easy.
I could go on with details of construction of this cabinet, but that might be a better article for the woodworking page.

For now, check out some pictures of the evolution of Kate's kitchen