Yeah, I like the stacked stone veneer, but cost is a consideration. That would be my first choice.

Thanks. It's a labor of love, and a lot of work on the weekends when I could be hunting, or fishing, or laying around drinking beer and watching football.

Check out some of the images here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=concrete+block+stained%3Alike%3Astone&oq=concrete+block+stained%3Alike%3Astone&aqs=chrome..69i57.12698j0j7&client=tablet-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=-7ZAU2Zdx-QbXM:

Great job Irish. It is a LOT of work, but is so much more satisfying to build it yourself. I know you and Mrs. Irish will enjoy it in your glory years.

Hopefully there will be a lot of glory years.

Well... This makes 2 weeks in a row we have worked our asses off up at the cabin, but it's paying off. Got the rest of the painting done this past weekend. Pretty much missed the first half of the Iron Bowl, although kept peeking in the door when I hear cheering. The good news is that my free antenna picks up CBS from Atlanta really good now.

I got the siding painted the green color and Mrs. Irish finished up painting all 5 exterior doors red.

I was up on a ladder painting the north wall and she was painting the door near me, we had Jazz playing and the sun was out on a beautiful day and she looks over at me and says, "I'm so happy." Can't get much better than that fellers...

Here's the (pretty much) finished pics. I still have to build a little roof for my grills over on the grilling deck, install the stainless triple wall chimney, the gutters, apply a clear sealer to the cedar siding and do something about the cinder blocks to make them nicer looking. (Still thinking about what to do about that last one.)

Looks dang good brother.

Awesome work, y’all are blessed!

Nice job Irish guy. And if your wife his happy then Id say mission accomplished! A happy wife = a happy life!

Thanks guys. We are having the time of our lives.

Thank you.

What you say is true. Sometimes keeping your wife happy is as simple as doing little things with her.

There's a size joke in there somewhere, I'm sure of it.

I've enjoyed following this thread. Hell of a job I'm jealous.

It is coming along awesome.

I know with projects like this they're never truly done but how many hours do you estimate are in it currently and how many until "completion"

Very, very nice.

I don't like it one bit...because it isn't mine!! Very nice Irish. I'm very happy for you.

Thanks guys. I hope to have an aldeer cookout up there one day and invite some of you guys.

It's interesting you would ask that question. Let's think about that:

We've been working on it for 20 months now on the weekends.

We've only probably worked on average every other weekend.

There's 4.3 weeks in a month and 2 days per weekend so...

(4.3x2x20)/2 = 86 days at an average of 8 hours a day = 688 hours for two people so that's a total of 1376 man (woman) hours spent. And if you figure Mrs. Irish and I are (On a good day) worth about $20 per hour as carpaplumbatricians then we've invested about $27, 520 in sweat equity in the damn place.

And that doesn't include time I've spend drawing the plans, sketches, figuring out stuff, shopping for supplies, packing and unpacking stuff that we have to provision every time we go up there.

Hell... Now I wish you hadn't asked that question. That's a lot of man-hours!

I haven't posted much lately, but it's a milestone (Sort of) today because my plumbing is getting started today. My buddy Skipper that acts as a contractor for a bunch of cabin projects up there has a fellow available who is a cabinet maker, carpenter, plumber and electrician. And if Skipper's happy with his work then I'm sure I will be too.

He came over last Saturday and we discussed plans for the plumbing and we planned everything out, marked where all the drain pipes will go and he also completely went over my and Mrs. Irish's rough in electrical work and pronounced it all good! Whew!

So today he and his helper got started on the drain piping and vent piping, basically everything that's going to be PVC. Mrs. Irish and I will probably tackle the PEX plumbing ourselves, but may let him do it depending on how many hours it takes him and how good of a job he does. He seems like a pretty good tradesman. We'll see...

I had to grab a tub/shower from somewhere and who knew that Tractor Supply carried those!

I had to text a pic for Mrs. Irish's approval...



Here's the final location. I will be insulating the bottom 2/3rds of the tub and building a platform all the way around it about 2/3rds of the way up so she can set fancy soaps, candles and what-nots on there. It will be finished off kind of like a cabinet.



This is kind of what we're going for in the upstairs bathroom...



The other big development is that WE NOW HAVE RUNNING WATER! No more rain water collection and I don't have to worry about spending thousands to drill a well only to find out the water has iron in it. I got the plumber to go ahead a plum this freeze proof spigot outside and of course the water is run under the house into the crawl space ready to be plumbed for indoor plumbing. This is a huge deal for us not only to have the running water, but our property values have gone up tremendously because of this. Construction is still underway for a large portion of the surrounding mountain and canyon properties, bu we were one of the first ones to get ours.

I built a box around it and pit in some crushed stone so I would be standing in mud every time I got some water or hooked up a hose.