According to Plan
We're In!
I am writing to you from The Crash Pad where we are were celebrating Midsommar and now a long July 4th weekend , okay ~ the second half of August. Life is busy, and when it is not, we are trying to make sure it slows down and enjoy it. As all Minnesotan’s know, especially after a veeery looong winter, Summer is short and we have to make every minute count. I think I knew at the outset of writing this it would really take me until Labor Day, and that’s almost exactly where we are. All people in The North are wondering how the Summer went SO FAST, but we know ~ we’ve been having as much fun as we can, riding as much gravel as we can, and absorbing all the hard work we did on the Crash Pad over the last year. We are thoroughly enjoying much anticipated hot Summer days, soaking it all in to our core. The woods are lush and green, and best seen from the middle of a gravel road on a bicycle.
So what have we been up to since our last update?
On May 9 we drove up to the Crash Pad with a moving van of old furniture, some of it we had set aside years ago ‘in case some day we have a cabin’ .
It felt amazing to finally be at the other side of what we had been planning for weeks ~ THE BIG 6 WEEK PUSH (featured in our latest story), and to no longer have to constantly be on top of coordinating contractors (for what has turned out to be the briefest of pauses). It was time, after months of hard and trying work ~ to pack up the bikes, and go for a much needed ride!
My fourth story highlights all of the amazing partners it took to make our cabin build happen. Kurt and I sat down Memorial Day Weekend on the ‘some-day Screen Porch’ slab at the Crash Pad to discuss the step-by-step process we went through over the last year and also highlight our project partners. Without so many truly good people helping us every step of the way, there is no way we would have a cabin built right now, let alone be staying in it. We have a long list of ‘cabin miracles’ that we will likely turn into a story later on. Meanwhile, we have the story I have been working on for months ~ I hope you will enjoy reading & watching as much as I enjoy the process of creating.
A full list of our partners is listed in the written Process and Partners Story.
This is a long one, but for people interested in what the steps are to build a cabin, love HGTV and anything Home and Design related, or who want to simply know what we have been up to, it is worth a watch. If you fall in the first group, I will be adding this story to our YouTube channel and chapterizing the video so you can go to specific areas of interest (i.e. Excavating, Plumbing, Electrical, etc.).
Thanks for your interest and sharing in our aventyr!
On another note, I am adding another dimension to my stories….
Introducing…. GenX Notes
For at least four years, I have been writing these stories in my mind, and I have also attempted to start writing them a number of times. But writing about many of the things I will be writing about feels a bit daunting, personal, a moving target, and yes I hate to say it ~ at times embarrassing. Which is a case in point of why I need to do this. Because others are sharing, my life is better. My hope is that because I share, maybe the life of at least one person will be better.
Want to know what exactly GenX Notes will be about and what I will be sharing here? Head on over to my first post to learn more. My goal is to really buckle down over the winter and write stories about so many of the things I talk about in my introduction.
If GenX Notes is of interest to you, you can subscribe separately to the feed.
To clarify the options for subscription options to my writing, hopefully this helps…
On the website you will see the navigation options have changed. There are now three avenues for entry:
Cabin Stories: This was formerly ‘Blog’. You can subscribe specifically to this feed to receive updates about new posts on our Crash Pad build.
GenX Notes: This is the new section I discussed above. If you are not interested in Cabin Stories, but are interested in GenX Notes, you can subscribe to just this feed to receive updates about new posts.
Newsletter: This is what you are already subscribed to. You do not need to separately subscribe to the other feeds unless you want to. The Newsletter will always include a summary of the most recent posts in Cabin Stories and GenX Notes so you can head over and read at your leisure.
ALL THREE. Of course you can always subscribe separately to everything to be in the know as soon as I share.
Substack App.
The Substack App is free to add to your phone and a great place to go to see all your subscriptions. Maybe you’ll find some other writers you like and choose to subscribe to. Ah, writing, so old fashioned and analog, SO SO good for the brain…
Lastly…. What’s Happening at The Crash Pad you might ask?
The roof is 100% complete!!! 9 months in the making, this was THE biggest thing on our checklist and feels fabulous to finally have done. We are so thankful for Paul’s Sheet Metal in Rice Lake, WI. The Roof (aka The Time of Despair), will be it’s own episode.
We now have internet connection! Vital in a rural area in case you need to contact someone for help. We tested our Starlink last Summer and it wasn’t great; we were a bit worried. But a lot can change in a year and both us and our neighbors have it and it is GREAT! We have better service than we do in Minneapolis, and the price went down from last year. Although we aren’t fans of the guy who started Starlink, we are thankful for Starlink.
An epic snowfall, turned into an epic mosquito hatch in May, which turned into an epic carpenter ant invasion in June. We now can add Plunkett’s Pest Control to our list of partners (the carpenter ants instantly retreated - phew!).
On our first bike ride after our first night in the Crash Pad in May, we turned left and shortly to our right saw our first black bear of the season. Luckily it kept moseying on, as did we.
We traipsed to the back of our property (before the big mosquito hatch) and downloaded pictures from our trail cam. Definitely wolves, bears, deer, and more are here!
Speaking of animals and our first night, we didn’t get much sleep because of all the wolf and/or coyote howling. Wow was that something else.
We had a huge dumpster delivered (thank you Woodland Rolloff!) and filled it Memorial Day Weekend with construction debris on our property. It feels SO good to have all the piles finally gone! Pro Tip: Debris on your rural property instantly becomes great habitat for mice.
Right before July 4th we had our first septic tank empty. I’m starting to feel like the septic tank and all thing related might be its own mini-episode.
thinking about the walls, building the walls… Rick, who did our siding, stopped by to discuss helping us potentially finish the interior walls so we can get a building inspection. But Rick is so busy, Kurt keeps plugging away at the work and is making good progress! We are eager to get the rough-in inspection done so we can start closing up the interior walls and finish the front porch. This will also happily mean no more using the toilet without any privacy (good thing we know each other well…).
We have reached out to our electrician so he can complete the electrical work this Fall after the rough-in inspection.
We have decided on finish surfaces for the interior! This was a big decision that came together and seems perfect. We will be starting with a test area. I can’t wait to share more of the design fun in later stories!
Last week we had our excavator back over to discuss the final grading. We can not wait to get rid of the mud pit and make things look more finished on the outside (landscaping comes next year).
The Anderson Windows Rep stopped by to look at our front door [incorrectly installed by our SIP installer] and gave me advice for correcting the problem. Now to find someone to reinstall it…. (gurrrrr…..).
This week we came back up to sign off on the propane tank moving to its final location and had the BEST referral to have a tree removed that should have been taken out in the initial excavation.
We have known none of our temporary cabin furniture is comfortable, so have decided to purchase at least one office chair for up here while we are here working. We are waiting on final furniture until all the interior work is completed.
We have learned that the organic produce section at Walmart is better than the local grocery store and can get us through a few meals.
And lastly, we are figuring out what life looks like in this new phase. The reasons why we did this are still 100% true and we have found being here (after we got through the first rough patches of mouse and ant invasions and the epic mosquito hatch), to 100% meet our need for a break from Minneapolis. We are starting to wonder what the word ‘home’ will mean for us over the next few years, it definitely feels like it is expanding and shifting.
Thanks for reading and watching äventyr.cc, and supporting my mental health and creativity! ~DeAnn