A Bit of Madness
I reckon it’s a bit of madness for us to be doing what we are presently doing here at Empty Mountain. And what we are presently doing is attempting to install the flooring and walls inside our small cabin, before we head south in two-weeks back to Deer Park Monastery for the winter months.
It’s rather a lot to take on in terms of a project, especially when considering we have a lot to do to prep for being gone for the winter. When you factor in our seasonal situation and dropping temperatures on top of it, well, the madness of our decision to get one step closer to finishing our cabin comes into fuller view.
Fortunately we have a covered porch, which is right now hosting all of our cabin’s belongings. Because, as it turns out, in order to install such things as flooring and walls, one kinda needs everything out of the way. The colder temps have pros and cons. Pro: our small refrigerator can live outside without being plugged in and none of the food is spoiling. Con: we have to remove the woodstove to work on the flooring and every time we come & go with a new board to throw down, our cabin gets a little colder. We have to bundle up and keep moving.
We are now in the 3rd day of most of our belongings living outside, with me needing to piecemeal what I need inside the cabin to cook & prepare food, one meal at a time. I also need to make sure all of our water doesn’t freeze outside, and that we bring in any free floating food items, lest we attract critters to a feast in the night. Today is slated to be perhaps our last warmer weather fall day. Starting tomorrow, our highs will be in the 40’s and snow is a distinct possibility. We figure if we can at least get the floor done, we can move all of our stuff back in and work around it to install the walls if need be.
It makes good sense that home renovation while you are trying to actively live in the home is a universally stressful undertaking. Fortunately our cabin is small and we don’t have a lot of stuff in it yet, on account of not having a finished interior. We’re still operating with a 2-burner Coleman campstove situated on a plastic folding table and makeshift creative solutions for storing our food and dishes, in lieu of proper shelving and a countertop. But it’s still a lot to live amid the upheaval of our dwelling place being torn apart. And it may even be a little more challenging because of how small our place is. When living in a one-room cabin, when installing floors and walls, it means your living room, work space, kitchen, and pantry are all upended all at once. There’s no where to go when you have to gut your one-room dwelling place. Though we do have an upstairs bed loft, which is nice. So at least our bedroom area can remain in tact.
Part of the extended hassle right now involves all of the finishing of the wood we need to do after we install it. We’re using shellac to treat the wood boards on both the floor and the walls and we’re applying multiple coats, which require dry time and sanding in between. It’s work worth doing for sure, but it also means things are taking a lot longer. On our first big push to get this project done, Mike & I got a good system going where he would measure, cut, and install each floor board and then I would apply the shellac while he was screwing down each board and preparing the next. If it were warmer out or we had ample covered space, we could’ve treated the wood before installing it, but we’re working with the conditions we have.
All of our flooring is now installed but currently only half of it has been treated with the 3 coats of shellac I talked Mike into settling on (he wanted to do 4). Some of the boards have 2 coats and some have zero. Mike started installing some walling last night. So today we will need to figure out how to finish shellacing and sanding the flooring while simultaneously installing and shellacing the walls. Did I mention our cabin is pretty darn small (12X14) and maneuvering room is limited? With how cold it is in the morning and how early we lose daylight (and how late we receive it), our hours for working are limited too. But we’re making a conscious choice to see what we can get accomplished before we head out soon for the winter, even if it does involve a bit of mayhem and madness.
Hopefully we will make some good progress today. The woman that is me really wants to get all of our stuff back inside, for both practical use reasons and also cuz snow is on the way. She is also really keen on having a nesting place. She’s really no good at being untethered with her life in boxes on the porch. She finds it destabilizing and unsettling when her outer environment is in disarray. There is stuff everywhere! There are tools and wood scraps next to me as I type this post and we have just the very bare bone basics inside. It’s not her favorite thing. And. She also understands it’s all super necessary in the realm of making headway. You can’t build a building without making a big mess.
Maybe she is even getting a little better at going with the flow of change and being uprooted as time goes on. I mean, we moved into the woods sans structures or services - not even cell signal - and that was a little over 2-years ago. And now we have a cabin in the woods with flooring we need to shellac. Flooring that Mike milled from downed beetle kill wood last fall that we stacked and dried over the past year and looks truly amazing.
In other words, alongside the madness, I am deeply filled with gratitude for the abundant life I am afforded. For the amazing beauty that is everywhere & all around me. And the rich opportunity I have to learn how to live a simple life in the woods.
