It was a busy week at the cabin with a ton of progress. Here is a recap of the week’s activities:

Demolished the two masonry chimneys. One was for the boiler and an old wood burning stove in the basement and the other was at one time used for the stove in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the boiler chimney was right in the way of where the new hallway will be placed and we did not want or need the maintenance of a masonry chimney. It will be replaced with a stainless steel stack for the boiler.

We laid down the Ecowarm subfloor paneling in the new bedroom, master bath, closet, and mudroom areas. The unique panels combine multi-layer plywood with an aluminum coating on the top and are pre-notched for laying down the Pex radiant heat tubes.

Began the new stone wall around the front and former bait shop side. We are using full stones for this to make sure it matches up with the stone wall that made its way about 1/2 of the way around the front of the cabin. Willie and crew also took apart of the stone wall on the main concrete slab by the front door, so the slab can be re-poured and pitched properly. Once Nate refinishes the logs behind where that wall was, then we will have Willie rebuild the stone wall there with pins going in to the logs to keep everything from shifting around.

Our cabinet maker, Scott Peterson and his wife stopped up to do some final measurements in both the kitchen and laundry rooms to update the cabinet, locker, and countertop plans.

Electrical work with a new pedestal being installed for the upcoming burial of our service line and installation of a full house transfer switch to be connected to a new Generac Standby Generator (once grading is done). This will run on LP and probably a separate LP tank than the rest of the house and will give us some peace of mind as we have already lost power 8 times in 8 months. See more about the generator setup in a post coming soon.

Burying the electrical lines coming in will help us in four ways:

• No more pipe going through the roof for the overhead wires. That means one less “hole” in our roof.
• We can relocate the meter from the side of the house (currently) to the pedestal at around ground level.
• No more pole and cable in the yard where the lines currently come in and make a jog.
• Less chance of the many trees casting a branch into the overhead lines.

Key WE Energies tip. When asking to get your lines buried, it is always good to plan for the future and ask for “upgraded” service in terms of the amps supplied. We are moving from a 200A feeder line to a 320A feeder line. We may not use it all, but it is actually cheaper to “upgrade” your line as then WE Energies picks up more of the expense. Our cost to bury is actually $600 less by upgrading to 320A service coming in.

Up for Next Week:

• Pex tubing, radiant manifolds, and stainless chimney stack go in
• Complete the stonework on the bait shop wall
• Begin construction of the mud room entry way and the cricket to go behind the masonry fireplace chimney
• Begin tearing off the current shingles, add ridge venting, lay down the Grace Ice and Water shield, and begin shingles!