What a week it has been up here at the cabin. As I hunkered down to “work from cabin”, the crew has been super busy and things are really beginning to take shape in a visible way. Here are some highlights:

Completed the shingles on the majority of the roof. Just waiting on the new entryway to be completed to wrap up the remainder.

Shingles on porch side of the cabin all completed after the overhead electrical service was buried and overhead feeder pole was removed from the roof.

WE Energies worked on removing the overhead electrical service and burying it underground. Was a bit disconcerting to see a guy with a chainsaw beginning to drop the power pole about 25 feet from where I was sitting and watching. I was hopeful this wasn’t his first rodeo and the pole would fall where he wanted it to go (it did).

A bit of a tip. WE Energies likes it when you bury the feeder line as that means (in theory), less outages, less trees to trim, etc. If your run is 100 feet or less from the main line to your house, you are gold and there isn’t a charge. There is a charge per foot after the 100 feet. But, the charge is less if you tell them you want to “upgrade” your service to the next amperage level. Only downside is that your new pedestal (which you have to buy) is more expensive. But, that cost is offset by the savings. Had we kept the 200A service, our price to bury would have been around $2300. By moving to 320A service, our price to bury was less than $1500 and should we need more power for the future sawmill, heated swimming pool, and indoor, air conditioned tennis courts, we will have it available to us.

WE Energies chopping down the power pole which was used for the overhead power coming into the cabin.

Completed shingles on the garage roof and trimmed out the remainder of the windows (on the log sided part of the cabin)

Began applying the white cedar half log siding from Northern Log Supply (highly recommend them…”For all your log and timber needs, call Daryl at Northern Log Supply”). The crew also began building the new covered entryway.

White Cedar half logs going on. White cedar is great for taking stain better than red cedar and has better rot resistance. These will be pressure washed to remove the mill glaze, dried, and then will get two coats of Sashco stain and Sashco semi-gloss clear coat.
Logs going onto the back side of the cabin along with the beginnings of the new covered entryway. That will receive some full log columns and cross bar and some Trex decking. Footings were poured for the columns when the stone wall footings were poured.

Nate Demers (Weatherwize), our “log guy” will be onsite with his crew beginning July 27, for three weeks to begin the log blasting, cleaning, staining, sealing, and chinking process. He dropped off the “blast” trailer which is what they will use when they media blast the existing full logs to remove all of the old stain and get them down to bare wood to begin their process.

The Blast Trailer now onsite to begin blasting the logs to remove the finish in a few weeks.

And our cool finds of the week were from a group of avid can and bottle collectors who were onsite to check out the landscape for old cans and bottles. Being a resort from the 1920s, they found some cool cans and bottles such as a 1930 Miller High Life “Girl in the Moon” can and a 1930s PBR can as well. The coolest find was buried in the hill behind the garage which were the remnants of the old wooden row boats that the resort made available to its guests. To my surprise, the side of the boat was reasonably intact and still had a DNR registration sticker (expiring in 1972) with Bernard Otterpohl’s name on it. He was the father of Willie, Sam, and the other 8 kids who lived in this very cabin while running the Otterpohl Resort.

Remnants of the wooden boats that were made available to resort guests. The registration numbers are somewhat visible.
Original DNR Registration Certificate from the wooden boat. Typo in the last name as should have been Otterpohl.

On tap for next week:

  • Finish the entryway over the side entrance area
  • Finish the roofing on the new entryway
  • Keep on siding
  • Await the arrival of our cool and new Duragroove interior pine T&G paneling. More on why we chose this and where it will be installed in a future post.
  • Get everything prepped and ready for the log crew to be onsite soon!