Fur,

The first couple of times it is honestly kind of weird because your mind is thinking one thing and your feet are doing something else, but once you go up and down them a few times it starts to feel strangely natural. I'm diggin' them now. I can't wait to get the loft finished so I can have my drafting table, library, and study up there. I hope to start next weekend.

Yep... I'm going to bolt a galvanized pipe to the wall.

Stairs ain't easy... looks like a good job

Very nice!!!

A few final pics from this weekend and I'll quit boring y'all with this stuff for a few days. We got some more furniture moved in. These old leather chairs are in need of a little refinishing and I'm going to try my hand at that later, but for now they are comfortable and the "den" is small but cozy...



Some cool old mahogany water skis some friends gave us found a place in the stair well... These were made in Pennsylvania by a subsidiary of General Tire. Interesting... And in very good shape too.



My old '94 Saddle Ring Trapper, sits at the ready for some dinner to walk out of the woods or some meth head attempting a home invasion.

Very cool.

Looking good!

Looking good

Awesome place. I know y’all will enjoy it for years to come.

Really sort of a chill weekend up here. It has rained most of the time. So Saturday we went to Valley Head and did some pickin' for cabin stuff and found a few neat things to hang on the wall.

An old pair of 1959 wooden snow skis. On the back side they have a thin metal edge about 1/16" thick and 3/16" wide screwed to the outer edges of the skis with little countersunk flat head screws. Pretty cool. $25 I put them above our closets in the bedroom...



I've had this relief map for a few years, and finally got to put it up. I made a frame for it and put it in the hallway between the guest bedroom and the upstairs bath. This way guest can look out at the view and know what mountains they are seeing in the distance...



Probably the find of Saturday was this wooden sled. Not only is it unique in the fact that it's all wood, but you fold that metal cross brace and the whole thing folds up. I think it was for carrying stuff and being pulled behind a horse. It's got to be the only one like it in Alabama. The brand is "Snocraft" and it's made in Norway, Maine. I thought it looked good in the stairwell beneath the "Flexible Flyer." $35



It wasn't all goofing off this weekend. I got to designing some shelves in my mind for the kitchen and thinking how I could basically hang them from the joists above and use stuff I already had. So I took the Acadia butcher block 12" x 36" slabs I had and measured 1 1/2" in from the corners and drilled some 3/4" holes with a spade bit. Then I drilled some 1/8" holes perpendicular to those for some trim screws. I used 1/2" conduit for the hanger rods and drilled holes that matched the holes in the shelving and pinned them in with the trim screws.

I didn't want the whole shelving unit to sway, so I measured and cut up some left over 1/4" steel cable I had and made some tension bracing by drilling 1/4" holes on an angle about 1/2" in from the back edge of the shelving and just like the conduit hangers. I threaded the cable into the holes and then pinned the cable in using perpendicular trim screws. it worked like a charm. I now have some minimalist, industrial, open shelving for the kitchen. All we need to do is finish the wood and hang them. I built 2 sets for either side of the sink and these turned out so well, I may do 2 more sets for either side of the stainless range hood.

When you envision something like this in your head yo never know just how it's going to turn out so you try to curb your enthusiasm.

Not a lot of comments... You guys saw the shelves and thought I have lost my mind. "Irishguy made kitchen shelves using electrical conduit and steel cable?" Its probably hard to envision the shelves, but you guys will have to trust me until I can get back up here, finish the wood and hang them. They're going to look cool when I get finished.

Some more cabin pics... We still have a lot of stuff to do, but we're mixing fun stuff in with the "need to do " stuff to keep our spirits up and keep the weekends fun. We cut out vacation in the mountains short to come back to the mountains and work on our cabin and to chill out and have fun with friends. Here's some pics of the kitchen with the finished hanging industrial shelves that I built a few weekends ago. I finally sealed, sanded and then sealed again. Mrs. Irish helped me install them...





Here's a few general interior shots of where we are now...





When we were in Blowing Rock, NC this week we met two artists. One was a watercolor artist and we bought these fly watercolors from him. Very nice work. We also met this other artist that carved all kinds of stuff but we really liked this stringer of speckled trout and the ducks...

Sharp

Dude, I can't envy/desire what you have. But I sure do like it!! You should be very pleased the both of you Irish couple!! like the cross!!

The weekend that we closed on this property, it was really something that we didn't think we could ever afford, we drove from the lawyer's office in Centre to the liquor store and then to the thrift store where we bought something to toast the occasion and a blanket and a couple of glasses to pour the toast into... We drove up to the property and found a place to lay our blanket. We poured a drink and toasted. And then we held hands and bowed our heads to pray, and I thanked God for the blessing he had allowed us to earn and buy and then I asked God to bless our land. Then we sat down had a few sips of our drinks looked around at all the fallen trees, and the brambles and the rocks and we both looked at each other and wondered what in the Hell had we gotten into...

It has been a long journey and a lot of hard work and there is still a lot of work to do, but at least now we have a comfortable place to stay and we can chill some days and not do anything.

👍🏻👍🏻

Well said, Irish! Thanks for sharing the journey with us.

Some fun stuff the past couple of weekends:

I built some more Thomas Jefferson stairs for the other bedroom loft. Notice the neat landing at the bottom... This is what you do when you build the exact set of stirs you built for the other bedroom, except you screw up somehow and build them one riser too short. Mrs. Irish was helping me install them after they were already cut, the dado joints routed, glued and screwed...

"Where are you going?"
"Down stairs to get a beer."
"Why?"
"Because I'm about to throw these %^&$#@ stairs off the back deck and start over!"

So I had the beer got over being pissed at myself and came upstairs with the idea to build a little landing exactly the height of the missing riser. Mrs. Irish says:

"It looks great! It looks like you meant to do it that way."
"Well... We just won't tell anyone I screwed up."



So as you all know the ceilings on the second floor are pretty high, almost 16'-0" in some places. This makes for weird high ceilings in these little closets. So I framed floors in the smaller closets and added another closet above each one for long term storage. Well until now they didn't have any doors or a way to get to stuff up there. I fixed that now. I had some old deck boards from our deck in Trussville that we demolished and rebuilt about 10 years ago. Did I tell y'all that I never throw anything away? So I re-purposed some of those deck boards into a sliding barn door for the upper closet. Sunday morning project...

Check out my cross country skis on the wall. Mrs. Irish says I'm about 3 parts Chip Gaines and one part Joanna Gaines.





Of course a closet 7'-6" off the floor ain't no good without a way to get up there, so I built a little ships ladder to get up there. Plus the ladder had to look neat so we coudl hang it on the wall somewhere up stairs and it had to be sturdy and light weight. Not a bad couple of hour project on a Sunday...

Sketched it up...



Used some 1" thick wood that had aged to a nice patina, routed all the edges with a 1/4" bit and dadoed all of the steps into the stringers, glued and screwed it all together...



And then we found a place to hang it in the upstairs hallway, tucked behind the opened bathroom door.



Of course had to say goodbye on Monday morning to head back to reality, but not before saluting the sun over Shinbone Valley...

I have thoroughly enjoyed following this project from day one! Great job, Irish! Thanks for sharing with us.