# Mother-in-Laws Mountain Cabin



## avengerki (Nov 1, 2013)

I will warn you now this build will move at a slow pace as I only get out to it a few times a year. Right now I also don't really do a lot of work on it yet. Sorry I don't have pictures of them building it to where it is at now, I only joined the family a few years back although Connie(my mother in law) has given me the permission to do anything with the property I like and she has also been telling me her list of things still needing to be done and future plans. When she purchased the property back in 1998 her vision is that this property will get passed down through her family.

I will start with the first structure she built on the property for them to live in while working on the cabin.














Sorry I can't find an inside picture of this, the next time I get down there I will try and grab one. Right now she uses it for storage. The piece of wood on the front that doesn't match the siding is covering a broken window that happened when she was away from the property a few months and someone broke in and stole a bunch of items, they had apparently started try to bust there way in from the back which is where the patch comes from back there. It is a nice cozy little place along the backwall about midway up is a raised platform where she slept up top and below was her storage area. I think she had a small wood stove in there also at one time.

The main cabin is now completely built on the outside but still needs work on the inside.




























Sorry about the tent in the front view, the wife and I stayed in the tent while the kids stayed inside the house with grandma so we could spend some ehhem time if I remember right. It is cedar siding until you get to the backside, she had enough cedar siding to cover everything but my procrastinating do nothing aggravating brother in law who lives in the cabin year round with Connie didn't store it properly and then when he got around to installing it found it rotten or something like that and of course by then she couldn't afford to replace all the bad cedar as she had retired and money got tighter.


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## avengerki (Nov 1, 2013)

Strangely enough on that first visit those pictures had come from I didn't take any inside pictures. Alright on my next visit out I did manage to take a few inside pictures. I will start with one of the most important rooms in any home, the bathroom.














It is a small little room with a claw foot tub, no shower though. 








The living room of course and as you can see the subfloor is still being used as the flooring surface. I have a feeling the next time I am out there I might be tasked with changing that.








Looking at the dining room, same issue with the subfloor and yes thats a chandelier. 








Here is the bedroom on the first floor. It is next to the bathroom and the living room.








This is the fancy laundry room hallway. The door on the left leads to the bathroom and on the right is bedroom 1.


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## avengerki (Nov 1, 2013)

I could of sworn I had rotated the laundry picture, oh well you get the jist of it. 















Here is the kitchen. Those cabinets are all metal cabinets from like the 60's or something like that. My wife and I removed the old paint from those and repainted them while we were dating. Yep that is two stoves in the kitchen, one electric the other wood. During the winter that wood stove is the primary source of heat for the whole house and boy does it get toasty. She does get her electricity from the grid but during the winter the power is constantly getting knocked out. It is on the future plans to add a battery bank, solar and wind power with a grid tie in, at least once I finish figuring out what all we can do and with what budget. That is a monster wood stove and had to be put in place with a crane before they finished enclosing the place, back when they had the break-in for the small one room house they tried to steal that monster and only moved it like an inch. Although they did apparently steal a number of windows and some doors.

That sums up the first floor.

Edit: I forgot this little feature.







That is the air intake for the wood stove, notice how there is nothing connected to it. This is another one of those items the lazy-in-law never took care of even though he said he would and Connie had no idea how to do the hookup. It now is hooked up by me but I can't seem to find any of the pictures from that. It was a lot of fun to do since the wall is fairly thick and due to the 1 inch move on the stove the connections didn't exactly line up. I am pretty sure I fixed that on the trip this picture was taken after I was shown what the issue was.


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## avengerki (Nov 1, 2013)

Here is the stairwell. The two small light fixtures I installed for her and wired up the switches for them. That was fun as I had never wired up switches before from 2 location using the same destination. I had to redo the wiring a few times before I got it correct. Connie was so ecstatic that now at night she can see going up and down the steps.















This messy room is the annoying-in-law's or bedroom 2.

As you can tell the upstairs and stairwell still needs some drywall work. My wife is actually out at the cabin today and plans to get as much drywall done as she can before she leaves tomorrow.








To finish off the tour is this location which is sort of guest room and office. It sits above the living room and dining room. Oh look it is that great flooring option known as sub-floor.

To answer a question I can already hear coming up, yes all walls, floors and ceilings are insulated. She only needed to insulate the outside walls but she wanted the extra insulation. At some point there will be a door at the top of the staircase and if the king procrastinator ever gets a place of his own(cough did I mention he is over 40 and still living with mom) she can close the door and only need to heat the first floor.

Currently there is one other structure on the property.














That is the water shed. There is a 1000 US Gallon water tank under all of that straw. The big maroonish tank is an 86 gallon diaphragm pressure tank along with the water pump, the hose on top leading out of the picture is connected to a 300 gallon water tank in the back of a pickup truck used to fill the larger tank. You may be able to tell that the straw around that pump is wet, there is a leak in the valve they use to fill the tank.


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## avengerki (Nov 1, 2013)

That water leak I mentioned in the last post creates a nice little environment for these guys. As you can see someone never installed a face plate on that electrical outlet used for the pump. So Connie mentioned to me that the circuit breaker for her pump keeps getting tripped and they couldn't figure out why. They had replaced the breaker twice already, I spent a little bit of time staring at all of the connections trying to figure out what was going on. I am sure you might be able to figure it out, those little guys would get in the receptacle box their wonderful skin would touch across the wires and trip the GFCI breaker. It is amazing how just installing a faceplate and ensuring that the box was sealed up a little better and she hasn't had an issue.


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## avengerki (Nov 1, 2013)

So the last time we were up there on our last day we decided to put up what little sheet rock mom had on hand in the stairwell.








This is on the other wall of the stairwell. The dogs would be in bedroom 2 and poke their heads out throw the insulation to see who was going up and down the steps. Needless to say that was why we put up what we had. Yes using multiple smaller pieces creates more mudding fun in the future but needed to do something to keep the dogs from doing that.


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## avengerki (Nov 1, 2013)

Back during Christmas of 2011 the kids wanted to make something for grandma and were bored. So they decided to make a bench for her using items left around the property.








The base is two rounds of fire wood and a couple 2x4's.








They did need to ask for a little bit of help, more like consultation for how to secure the back.








Of course after the completed it they had to try it out.

Connie really loves this bench. It is simple and funky but it was built with love.


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