More wiring

I'm back from a quick weekend run up to the lake. We ran up Friday (7/25) afternoon and returned home around 9pm on Sunday night. We managed to make substantial progress on the electrical work. I would have never dreamed the wiring would take so much time. At the beginning of this year I estimated it would take 3 days to complete the wiring (for the rough-in inspection). Wow was I wrong. I figure we have one more long weekend and then we should be able to get the inspector out. We now have all the wiring for all the circuits in place. All of the interior outlets are "pigtailed" together like this:

I also managed to re-hookup the outside faucet from the well tank so that there are no leaks in the line.



I never realized how much wiring a typical home must have. My cabin is only a little over 1000 sq. feet and I've installed over 800 ft of various electrical cables. I also never new how expensive the wiring is. I had to run 6/3 (a big black wire) cable for the electric stove. That one 50ft cable cost $114 alone.

The one last thing we did was to take down a tree that was growing right outside where our patio door is. The boys did an excellent job of chopping off all the branches and moving them (small price to pay for two days of Nintendo).

We are hoping to return next weekend and finish all the work so we can have the rough-in inspection soon. We've asked Grandma an Grandpa to watch the kids for the weekend so that Mom and Dad can really focus on the work. No answer yet from the Grandparents on if they will or not. I guess we will soon find out.

I've also updated the 2008 photos in the slideshow on the right, so take a look.

July 4th week

We returned to the cabin for an entire week during the 4th of July. I had huge plans to get all the electrical, a bunch of plumbing, and other misc tasks completed. Well, as it always turns out, I did not get done nearly as much as I wanted to. We did hit some major milestones though. The week before we went up, the septic system was installed on the property.



So that was a major deal (and a major expense).

The first full day we were there got the well hooked up! We now have running water. You can see the blue well tank.

During the week there were many distractions but I did manage to get about 75% of the electrical installed and I installed an outside water valve for a hose hookup. We also completed the rest of the interior framing. We had to bring in a one-piece shower prior to framing a couple of the walls due to it's size.

The next trip up should be in a couple of weeks.

Framing the interior

At the end of 2007 we had one big empty room in the cabin. My first goal for 2008 was to get the interior walls in place. It was a very cold spring in Minnesota so I was not able to get started until June. This was a major set-back for me. Anyway, around the 2nd weekend in June I loaded a trailer of 2x4's and headed up to do some framing for 3 days. The other thing I loaded was a patio door I had bought from someone on craigs list. I managed to get that installed too. We did not get all the framing completed, but the majority of it was done. Here's how things looked after that weekend.




Also worth noting is the slideshow I added on the right. I will continue to add photos to it as I make more progress.

In the beginning...

Hi everyone, I've decided to detail my attempts to build a lake cabin. Here is a little history on the project.

Work began in the fall of 2006. Our property had an existing house trailer on it. There was a large roof structure built over top of the trailer house. I hired contractors to remove the trailer and to add footings to the roof structure. I also had a contractor install a floor joist system. When the contractors were done we basically had a floor joist system cover by a large roof.




























The following spring (2007) we got busy installing the flooring system and getting the exterior walls framed.






By the end of the summer we had the exterior walls up and windows and doors (except for the patio door) in. We also got the exterior wrapped with house wrap.




We also got the main electrical service panel installed. That is where work ended in 2007. I will update this blog with our 2008 progress soon.