After some delays, we are finally making progress on the cabin again! Last week, the inspector came out and we passed the rough plumbing and electrical inspection and we have started on the interior. Our first priority was to get the insulation up before we could start with finish material.

We also had been waiting to get the insulation up so that we could stain the ceiling. Interestingly, while we planned every single square inch of the floor plan of this house, we are making finish decisions daily, as we go along. The living room ceiling was one of these decisions. After pondering it all this time, we decided to leave the ceiling as is, except for stain. This means that the plywood decking and the joists and their hangers would be exposed, as well as some bolts and nails. We used the same stain we put on the door (and multiple other places around the farm) which is Cabot Semi-Transparent Deck Stain in Cordovan Brown, which is actually a lovely chocolate color.  It is dark enough that it hides the obvious flaws and it saves us having to drywall the ceiling of the biggest room.

We actually had planned (and would’ve preferred) to have wooden boards on all the ceilings, but at this point we are more concerned with time and money. Our boards have not been kiln dried, so they would shrink after a time in the climate controlled house, leaving cracks that would compromise the insulative properties of a ceiling. The time and money involved in kiln drying the boards led us to decide to use drywall.

With the ceiling stained, we got the first interior wall started. The west wall of the living room is going to be log siding just like the exterior of the main part of the cabin. We got the logs up and it’s ready for staining and chinking. We aren’t sure yet what stain we will use, but the “chinking” will be drywall strips and tinted drywall mud.

We also got the west side of the yard plowed and graded with the tractor. We needed to smooth it all out because it was where we piled dirt and sand while we were initially building. We sloped it away from the house so that it would drain down the hill and not channel any water under the house. We got it finished and headed to town to get some grass seed, to be followed by hay. Not far from home, the sky darkened considerably and we decided to turn around and get the hay down without the seed. It was a good call, because we spread the last little bit with it sprinkling. It proceeded to rain for about 5 hours (finally) and the hay kept it from washing at all.

Finally, we got the logs started on the last side of the house. It was the most daunting because of the steep grade, so putting up the scaffolding up was a challenge. We are about 75% finished with the the logs and got the last two windows cut out and framed in.