Cabin Work is Mostly Done

Time to actually live here

For the past five weeks, I’ve been trying to make this tiny cabin (320 square foot plus sleeping loft) into a full time home. The cabin was built in 1972, modeled after a miner’s cabin from the gold rush era. The previous owner refurbished it nicely during the Scamdemic, but because the cabin was a vacation rental, it wasn’t set up as well as it could be for full time use.

I was also downsizing from a 1500 square foot house with a garage and a basement, so I got rid of nearly of all of my furniture, gave away a dozen boxes of books, and gave away more boxes of stuff like kitchen utentsils and clothes. But I kept my seven foot grand piano, so I knew that creating space for living here would be challenging.

Here is a partial list of the things I’ve done so far:

• Removed the built-in storage boxes in the tiny living room to make space for the piano. (I did this the day I arrived, after a 450 mile drive that morning.)

• Made window screens for the four openable windows that didn't have screens. (The mosquitoes were pretty bad the day I arrived; I don’t know how anyone could live here in the spring without screens.)

• Installed a magnetic screen door on the front door.

• Installed two shelves in the cabinet next to the mini fridge.

• Installed a shelf above the kitchen sink window.

• Installed a metal hanging pot rack in the kitchen ceiling for hanging pots and pans.

• Installed two shelves in the bathroom cabinet.

• Installed two shelves below the bathroom cabinet.

• Installed a second shelf above the toilet.

• Installed shelves along the edge of the loft.

• Made a corner bookcase for the piano room.

• Cut down my homemade desk to fit, and cut down the dining table that came with the cabin so it could move to the kitchen area.

• Installed a second phone line to the desk.

• Fixed a broken casement window crank mechanism (today’s project).

• Installed a 9x12 canvas tent on the deck (50 yards from the cabin), complete with full size bed and some furniture, for guests to use.

• And the really big one: rebuilt the front porch roof, because carpenter bees had destroyed half of the beams and rafters. This took a week by itself.

I finally feel free to relax a little and enjoy living here. A couple of hours ago, I saw some butterflies flitting about on the tiger lilies that are blooming right now. That’s one of them in the picture above.