Terrariums - fun project for a snowy afternoon

Give me a day off of work and I can easily find things to do. Was inspired to build some terrariums today when I found some really fun glass pieces at a thrift store.  Does anyone remember making these as a kid?  I'd get so lost starring at mine - I could imagine a whole separate world in that container.

 Got some great advice at Jung's Garden center and they set me up will all the proper materials including pea gravel, charcoal, Zippy potty soil, moss and some cute little plants.  With the cover, it's already warm and nicely humid - Just what plants love.

For this terrarium, I put an elephant in for one of my favorite books as a child - Horton Hears a Who.

And of course I'm already wondering what is going to happen to Horton in his new habitat.

Make lemonade.....

Remember back in 2009, when we lost the beautiful 40 year old Locust from a nasty lightning strike?  Well, we cut the tree down ourselves later that fall and stacked it next to our house to let it age for a year.

That bonus pile of wood inspired us to retrofit our drafty fireplace with a wood-burning insert the next year.  Since we had all this free wood now, might as well burn it.  The wood burning stove was one of the best investments we've made with the house.   What a difference it has made on our heating bills.

The beautiful Locust kept us nice and toasty warm last winter and provided us with beautiful fires.  The last two logs of the tree we decided to do something different.....

If all goes well, we'll have lots of cute little coasters to give to friends at Christmas.  They are drying on the rack as I write....

So when life gives you lemons.......

Kitchen cabinet redo

Am working on the sanding and staining the recycled kitchen cabinets which were the infamous honey oak color from the 90s. These cabinets, reclaimed from a remodeling job, will be in our downstairs kitchen.  The sanding was easy-peazy because the original stain was so light.

Now I'm onto the color portion of this project.  I'm going for a darkish brown color on the oak wood.  The middle panel has one coat of my mix, while the bottom one has two. I mixed two parts glaze to one part paint and the two coats seem to do the trick with a finishing rub of walnut Watco Oil.  I am looking for the warmth of a rich color while still showing some wood grain.  Working with the glaze/paint method gives me more color choices than just staining alone.   I got the idea to "paint" the cabinets from a cute little DIY blog called anythingpretty.com.  Just a few more doors to stain and they will be ready to put back on.

Remodeling project updates

 

The granite counters were just installed yesterday for our on-going DIY project downstairs.  We've been slowing building out a second kitchen area to use for parties and summer outings in our backyard and pool.  

We started the project about two years ago, with salvaged cupboards, and a gently-used dishwasher and refridgerator.

Now all we have to do is finish the drywall, hook up the water and heat vent, install the wall tiles, paint the walls and FINALLY we'll be pretty much good to go.

Beatons August 2011

Agreed.  Not much has happened at Beatons this summer.  Todd and I decided to focus on Madison projects as well as taking a bit of a break from work, family and life.  However, we did head up this weekend for the annual Beatons Lake Riparian Association Meeting.  To make a long story short, we should have set out on Thursday night, but didn't leave Mad-Town until 10am on Friday....

 So,  We packed three people and two dogs in a station wagon with a few inches to spare.  Good sport, Ryann, held the back seat with the pups.

On Saturday, I stained Cedar wood shingles for a little bit, but the bigger part of the day was spent at the annual picnic of lake property owners - known as the Beatons Lake Riparian Association.  The Sheriff of the county failed to show, but the lead U.S. Forester, Melanie, was on hand to tell us her decisions that will affect the Ottawa National Forest (of which Beatons sits in the middle of) for the next 20 years.

WOW...pretty amazing, that with millions of acres of forest, she truly cares about our little area and the beavers wreaking havoc in her jurisdiction.    I loved her comments to the group about "Don't like the federal roads (which are non-existent or in poor shape) in the forest around you?  Well, this is your tax paying dollars...going to work"  Great woman and we love her!

 We managed to finish the back side of the Sauna Haus on Saturday night.  Finally, the back side of the building looks finished!!.  Here's Eric staining some of the shake, but wishing he was in his sailboat...:)  We still have a bit of work inside to finish off the space, but dang, let's take a moment to appreciate what is....

Here's Todd, putting up Cedar Shake on the lake-facing side of the Sauna Haus. 

And here's our friend, Paul, who is always ready to nail a board, lift a beam and otherwise enjoy a great weekend up north.  

Prost!

Beatons is meant to be shared!  Come up with us!  Enjoy the beauty that is the Northwoods!

Final push at Beatons

Amazing what  a bunch of people can build over two years.  In August of 2008, we started building the Sauna Haus with just Todd, my dad and I putting the foundation posts and beams into place by hand.  Many weekends later, we have a closed-in building. Yay!

The first weekend of October, with another work crew consisting of Todd, Eric, Paul, Peter and me, we completed the cedar siding.  All that is left on the outside is the cedar shake in the gables.  

Here's a good photos of the Streicher boys nailing in the cedar siding. 

This summer we also got the windows installed, rock wall completed, the well dug, water to the building, insulated inside.  With the sauna stove installed and the firewood cut, we can actually work inside this winter, if we so wanted...  Not sure about that yet.   

Love the look of natural wood.  I think we did a good job this summer!

Working weekend

Lost a great tree last summer due to a lightning strike.  We took the tree down ourselves, and "aged" it for the past year.  This weekend, we rented a hydraulic wood splitter and chopped the tree up for fire wood.  

So our investment of a wood burning furnace last fall made a lot of sense.  And what a difference it makes on the gas heating bill.  This totally efficient stove really warms our downstairs basement/living area (in total about 1400 sq. ft)  By heating the basement level, the first floor benefits from the heat as well. But in order to use the wood burning stove, we need wood.  We can order it locally, haul it back from the UP or take advantage of a lightning strike. 

So here's the wood pile we stacked this afternoon after painting that side of the house earlier today - told'cha it was a working weekend. And this is minus the big woodbox I stuffed to the gills yesterday.  While I'll never say "bring on winter", at least this year we'll save about $300 with our "free" wood. 

We are now prepared for winter

After living in our house for a eight years and freezing every winter because half of our living space is in the exposed basement which stays a constant 50 degrees, we finally bite the bullet and decided to do something about it.

Enter the wood-burning insert for our fireplace. This 300lb bemoth was placed in the back of the truck by a forklift. We, deciding to save $1,000, unloaded it and installed it on our own. Ouch....

After a couple of hours and a trip to Menards, we had fire. We also had lots of little cuts on our hands from man-handling the damn $600 steel tube liner that goes down the chimney to keep the fire safe.

But, wow, what a difference! Instead of a fire racing right up the flue in the old fireplace and not projecting any heat, we now have actual warmth toasting our little toes in the downstairs TV room.

I say bring on the artic cold, we're ready for this winter!

A new room

Todd and I purchased our first dining room set ever and set it up in what used to be a living room in our house. Since the living room was never "lived" in, we decided to start over and make it a room for eating, crafting, thinking and talking. We think this will be a great addition to the house.

Bonus, I now have a place to actually put the cranberry glass I started collecting when I was 13 years old.

Helping out a friend

Spent most of the weekend at Paul's house helping him put siding on his garage. Paul is always the first to offer a helping hand to us at Beatons, so we thought it good to return the favor.
Most of Saturday was spent figuring out the angles, leveling and foundation of the siding project. By Sunday afternoon we had the garage sided almost half way up.
Saturday night, after a great steak dinner, we had a little fire. Paul works for a commercial washing machine manufacturer and these stainless steel tubs make great fire pits. And I'm all about "reduce, reuse, recycle".
And of course, no weekend would be complete without throwing something for Teiko. Here the boy is resting in Paul's backyard. Teiko got to run for hours. Which is good, since it was his first time since surgery over a week ago. The boy was very happy!

Continuing Home Improvements

This winter and spring home improvements include the finishing of the sauna room downstairs which now has a new cedar floor Todd put down before Christmas. Finishing work is a wood ceiling, lighting and final trim work to make the room complete. We started the work in this room last year when we put in the new shower, added the wall tiles and stained the concrete walls.
Another DIY project we'll attempt, is adding a second kitchen to the house. Using recycled kitchen cabinets and relatively new appliances we think this feature will be a nice addition to the downstairs and relatively inexpensive. This room leads right to the pool area outside and will make summer grilling and entertaining more easy.

Publish Post

The sauna building is up!

It is amazing what six people can accomplish when they put their minds to something. With only the lifting power of three guys and a little extra help from three others, 10 beams, 3 posts, and 6 rafters where hefted into the air and up 16 feet to be put into place.

Adding the next layers of timbers, (king posts, side beams, ridge beam and the rafters) to the "dead nuts" foundation built last weekend by Todd and my dad, the building is almost completely framed in. There was some doubt by the elders if it was even possible to life 500 lb timbers with only three guys. But determination, teamwork and engineering ingenuity got that baby built over the course of the weekend.

When I wasn't helping to lift timbers, I hauled rocks to make some more retaining walls, landscaped a "fern gully" to help with erosion control, cooked food for the hungry workers, played with the pups, and painted all the beams with preservative.

Beatons Labor Day 2008 - The Build

To see the whole weekend of timber raising madness, double click on the photo above to go to the photo album.

Going to put up more timbers this weekend

Heading back to Beatons tonight to continue the timber raising that we began last weekend. One of the reasons we choose to go with a timber framed structure, is it's enduring nature, durabilty and strength. While we'll get plenty of use out of the sauna and future cabin, we are really building it for the next generations.
Pictured above is a 400 year old timber framed building in Bremen, Germany. Nestled in with other centuries-old buildings, these buildings really stand the test of time. I so fell in love with the Altstadt (Old City) when Todd and I visited.

Crafty family members

I come from a long line of crafters. My grandmothers could sew, knit, crochet, paint, and DYI just about anything around the house/farm. Pictured above is my Uncle Bear's contribution to the craft world. The bench above is made from head/foot boards of old metal beds. What a great idea to recycle the metal into a modern yet country-cute bench.

Barn raising good time

Amazing.

That pretty much sums up last weekend's work at Beatons. My Dad and Todd worked their butts off raising the timber foundation of the sauna haus. With six posts glued into the concrete foundation, plummed and squared, they then proceeded to lift the several hundred pound cross beam timbers to their 8.3 foot high ledges.

From this foundation, the rafter and ridge beams will be placed next weekend to start to frame in the roof. The pictures don't really show how much physical labor was involved, but wow, My Dad was just an amazing master of the timbers. And Todd was no slouch either.
I was the chief painter this weekend. That involved, cleaning, baking and painting the hundreds of metal connectors that will be used. We went with a matte black finish on the metal work. It contrasts very nicely with the reddish colored Douglas Fir timbers. I also got to seal/paint all of the timbers to protect them from the elements.

Click on the gallery below to see larger pictures of our timber raising weekend.

A long weekend 'Up North'

Raine, me and the dogs headed up to Beatons last Thursday night for a long weekend. Todd and Ryann joined us late Friday night. Friday was Bonnie's birthday and she invited us out for a fish fry at the Root Cellar on Lake Gogebic. As you can see we had a pretty great time .
Bonnie's best birthday present is her new pup, Niinimoshenh or Moosha for short. The name means 'my sweetheart' in the Ojibwa language. Moosha is a Golden Retriever and is just a cutie-pututie. She latched on to Teiko right away.
Teiko was very gentle with the pup and was pretty fascinated by her. He even taught her where to go "potty" outside and had a few teaching moments of canine etiquette. This would happen when Moosha began doing something that Teiko didn't want her to . It wasn't a growl but more like a deep-chested rumble that was very quiet, but had Moosha obeying immediately. It was really interesting to watch how Teiko spent time with the young pup. Bonnie even asked if she could keep Teiko for a week to help her train Moosha. But it wasn't all play this weekend. Todd and Eric spent three days getting the timbers ready for the sauna house. The timber raising and buildout will be over Labor Day weekend. This weekend the guys cut all the rafter and beam pieces so the timbers will be ready to fit together. I spent Sunday morning re-staining the shed and outhouse while Beth hauled tons of rocks for a new stair well.On Monday, Beth and I built a log and stone stairwell into the side of the hill that leads to the new pier. It's so totally north woods! And couldn't have been any cheaper to build - All it took was several hours of hauling logs and stones and digging out trenches to set the logs. the material is free for the taking on the property, it's the labor and aching muscles that has a cost....

So a busy and fun-filled 'Up North" weekend. I've posted more pictures from the weekend at my picasa gallery. Click on the photo below to go there.

Beatons August 2008