The kids were out on fall break last week, so we loaded a U-Haul with tools and building supplies, and headed up to our new weekend homestead to get started on the renovations. I had big hopes of getting the cabin closed in on this trip, but the weather had other plans for us. It pretty much poured the entire time we were there. So, we tweaked our plans, and we still managed to get quite a bit done. Here’s a look at our progress:

This is what the front of the cabin looked like a week ago.

And here’s what it looks like now, after bush hogging and the first wave of construction.

Direct your eye to the right end of the cabin, and you’ll see that we have a new front window. But wait; that’s not all …

because if you walk through the front door, you are no longer met with this surprise.

Yep. We have four walls. Aren’t we fancy? We spent the first two days closing in the living room, so we’d have a place to stay while we worked.

We also brought up a wood stove on this trip. After we pick up one more piece of stove pipe, it’ll be operational. This stove model is supposed to heat 1,000 square feet, so we should be nice and cozy this winter.

And here’s the exterior side of the new living room wall. We have a shipment of cedar shingles arriving today. They’ll go over the tar paper that you see now. And that window … it was a $10 yard sale find. How awesome is that?

We also ripped up all of that yucky flooring in the cabin …

and we’ll be replacing it with pressure-treated plywood as soon as the joists dry out. Unfortunately, someone swipped several sheets of roofing tin last year while the cabin was sitting empty.

We tried to get there before the rain to get the roof tarped, but no such luck.

At least we got the roof patched on this run. And with all the rain, it’s been well tested.

Whenever there was a break in the rain, I fired up the bush hog and got to work taming the overgrown field.

It’s starting to look a lot better.

If things dry out fast enough, we should be able to work on the flooring and back wall on our next trip. I’ll keep you posted.