About Us

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Indiana, United States
Empty nesters...ready to stretch our wings. Life is good and we plan on making it even better. This blog is mostly about our trips to Vieques Puerto Rico, with a few odds and ends thrown in about our life after the mortgage.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Unintended consequences.....


What little time was available this weekend was spent working on trimming out the interior of the cabin. It was  a beautiful weekend with clear blue skies and temps in the 60's, feels like fall. I decided to just take my time and walk back and forth from the cabin back to the house making necessary cuts to the trim. It would take me 30 mins or so to walk back to the house, make the cuts and then walk back to the cabin (I was having to route some boards to trim out along the ceiling). On one of the trips back  I noticed something laying on the deck of the cabin. As I got close I could see what it was, a female scarlet tanger and that bothered me some. Based on where she was laying I could tell that she had ran into one the large sliding glass doors, killing herself on impact. I had introduced something alien to our little patch of woods and this was one of the unintended consequences. As is the case when your that close to something so very beautiful your just in awe of it. I picked it up and cradled it in my hand, so perfect. I took a few shots as I stood there.




I wish that wouldn't have happened, maybe there's some way I can help to prevent it in the future...I don't know.

On one of the last trips back to the house I noticed this  lone clump of asters out in the east prairie. It's amazing how the stuff is spreading after Jessica and I planted the wild seeds we gathered.



When I got close to the plant I noticed all the bees on it. Each one had these huge clumps of pollen clinging to their back legs. I grabbed a shot of one:




As I was taking shots of the bees this painted lady came by.

Color and beauty you just can't describe or capture.

5 weeks till our trip to the island. We've now ordered 2 different sets of fins for snorkeling and neither set has fit, nor has either set been  sent back. We also got new dive socks, dive masks and goggles ( yes the dining room is beginning to look like a dive shop or something.)  I placed another order last night for  fin set number 3, hopefully this one will work. We are both soooooo...ready to be back.

:-)

Monday, September 3, 2012

Cabin update....





Yep...another cabin update. I've been lax in taking photos and getting them uploaded. So tonight, in the waining light, I took a few. We've finally gotten to the point were we're working on the interior finish.  For a long time I was unsure how I would finish out the inside. Lorrie and I both wanted to introduce some color. We especially were wanting some sort of signature wall with a bold statement. This almost necessitates drywall, but in an unheated space I worried about joints cracking. It wasn't until Lorrie pointed out that with all the windows there really would be very few long joints, other than the corners, that drywall was chosen. I had totally missed that...not seeing the forest for all the trees sorta thing. So it was onto   hanging drywall next.


Lorrie snuck this picture in somehow. She caught me leveling the sill line across the sheet. As you can see from the picture I kept the joints very small. The reason the sheet to my right is up so far off the wall was because I bought only 10' sheets (on sale)  and knowing that we would have 6" base, any butt joints would end up hidden.

Oh, I seem to have gotten ahead of myself here. I forgot to mention what we did with the ceiling. Because of the way the overhang is on the front of the place, tongue and groove cedar, we decided to carry that into the inside ( a suggestion from my mom that made perfect sense). But inside we've got the smooth finish of the cedar. It's really beautiful to look at:



Ok...after we got all the drywall up and finished it was time to pick some colors out. Since Lorrie does all the painting (she won't let me paint because I'm so terrible at it) she found a palette for us to work from.



So far we've used the chilled wine for our signature wall. It's a rich deep color. The rest of the walls are painted in the Olive Gray, which in the above snapshot looks tan, but it's not. It's a  gray/olive color and goes nicely with the natural cedar. Here's  a pictue of it on the  north wall below:



That picture is more representative of it's actual hue. You can also see that we decided to trim the windows out in cedar too. It just seemed to help tie the ceiling in with the rest of the place. Lorrie is going to put a clear finish on them.  The only other picture I have is of the little alcove where we plan on putting a small library and desk:






So that's about where we're at. Haven't yet decided on the flooring. I still have a sink base to build and a storage cabinet. We're also putting a wood stove in the place. All that to do before our November trip to the island, in 8 weeks....jeez.