Cabin DIY

I'm pretty proud of Team Skaggs.

Ella cleaning up leaves in the backyard

 We raced up to Woodstock late on Friday night, after mythology class at The Met.  I was so excited that I could barely get anything done on Friday.  I had a pile of stuff next to the door to load into the van after class, mostly cleaning supplies.  This was my first time going to our new cabin since we have officially owned it.

Panoramic view taken from our back deck

There is no furniture in the house except for the two beds that we bought from the previous owner.  And no dishes or cooking utensils.  So I pulled out our camping gear and we camped indoors.

The kids were so helpful, raking leaves and cleaning up the garden, while Kevin and I started on the inside.  We're in a bit of a time crunch because all of our storage from California is arriving at the end of the month.  The front part of the house was an old fishing cottage built in the 1930s.  The rear part of the house, including the master bedroom, sunroom, and dining room were added on about ten years ago and are much cleaner and newer feeling.  The original living room had a terrible floor that not only leans downhill pretty dramatically, but also has the original 85 year-old wood plank flooring that was once painted yellow.  We knew that before all of our furniture arrived that we wanted to sand down the floor and repaint it.  Something we have never done before and that I found completely intimidating.

Before picture of the living room

Until...we went to our local hardware store in town and had a nice chat with the clerk there.  He basically gave us a 10-minute lesson on what we needed to do, rented us an orbital sander, sold us face masks and plastic sheeting for the doors, and gave us some much needed confidence.

 

Then we were on a roll.  Next to the living room is a small room that was once an enclosed porch but that the previous owners insulated and turned into an office.  They had it painted a dark red and turned the floors green.  It was hideous.  The living room floor went so well that we continued onto the office.

Before picture of office

While Kevin and I were getting rid of the yucky pink walls in the kitchen, we put the kids to work priming and painting the floor.  It turns out painting a floor is an excellent job for a kid - no worries about spills or drips.  You really can't mess it up.

We chose a high gloss, dark brown color.  We knew we couldn't make it look any worse than it already did, so I felt pretty confident that whatever we did to it could only improve it.  Plus, I figured the dark color might hide a lot of the imperfections, including the slope.

Here's an after of the first coat of the office floor.  We also primed the walls to cover the red.  Next week we'll put white paint over the primer and add a second coat to the floor.

After a typical spring day on Saturday with scattered showers and sunshine, we woke up to several inches of snow on Sunday morning!  We didn't hear a thing all night.  It was a quiet storm.

I took this photo while still laying in bed on Sunday.  I could have stayed there all day.