Category Archives: Uncategorized

We still had a few more things to do before Matt could pour the concrete footings. The main tasks were digging the footings and the electrical trench. The electrical trench was no small feat. It had to run from the panel behind our hot tub, across the driveway, through the woods, down the hill, pastContinue reading “Can You Dig It?”

The area around the shop is looking more and more like a junkyard. Plus, rodents are getting into many of our vehicles. Mice seem to think air filters are comfortable death beds, and I lost track of the number times squirrels have chewed through a wire in the scissor lift. So, we are building aContinue reading “All in a week’s work”

Please remove your reading glasses and don’t zoom in on the photos. I did not clean the steel columns and floors, nor did I touch up the walls before this photo shoot. Douglas was a tremendous help with the baseboards. He had the skills and tools (and knees) for baseboards. Similar to the pine windowContinue reading “All About the Baseboards”

The window and door trims are finally complete! It only took us two years. They look nice, but we would never make our own trim boards again. Never. Next time, we’ll look past a stack of beautiful free wood and head straight for the moulding aisle at Lowes. But, we thought it would be specialContinue reading “All the Trimmings”

“What is that? A Hershey Kiss sculpture? A storage tank? A kiln?” Sam and I pondered over this sight for several years, unable to guess what the steel object actually was. Pictured above is the google “street view” image- the same image we saw from Hwy 35 every time we went cross country skiing orContinue reading “What is that?”

By the end of the summer our concrete patio had safely cured, and our lumber was dry enough to use. It was time to frame the pavilion! Framing the pavilion was one of our fastest and most satisfying projects to date. We used timber from our property to frame the structure. Early this spring, FredContinue reading “Looking Like a Pavilion Bucks”

We finally tore down the wall and built ourselves a door! As you may recall, we built the first half of the shop door in January… (blog part 1) The door project was on the back burner until August when we resumed working on it. First we had to make room to build the secondContinue reading “It’s In!”

Although we finished the stairs to the office over a year ago, we never installed the railing. Sam and I designed the railing and went as far as ordering the balusters and newel posts during an online New Year’s sale. The parts sat, unopened, in their original packaging all this time. It wasn’t until thisContinue reading “No More Blank Stairs”

That’s what we said when we called Matt, the contractor who poured our concrete slab nearly three years ago. We hired Matt and his crew again for a quick project… A pavilion! Sam and I live in a beautiful place, yet we never spend any time outdoors unless we’re working. We typically enjoy the viewContinue reading “Pour Me Another One”

I had been dreaming of setting up a garden at our new residence, but we never had the thyme. Sam and I picked a sunny location for the garden a few years ago and installed power and water when we dug the utility trenches for the whole building. It wasn’t until this year that weContinue reading “Where’s the Basil Hidin’?”