With Marie working so hard on her dissertation, I've had some time to get an early start on the cabin this year. Even before it was warm enough to work outside, I was in our garage at home and at Jim's place cutting and finishing wood pieces to build the stairs . The first weekend that seemed warm enough, I hauled those pieces up to the cabin. I guess I still have to learn that the weather up there really is a little different than down in the Cities. I was surprised to find way too much snow compared to what I had at home. With some help from a kind neighbor, I was able to get the trailer close enough to then carry all the pieces in.

The stairs went up just like I had planned. The loft space feels much more useful now!

A couple weekends later I went up again and did a little more work on the loft and on the soffits. I'd never really noticed soffits much - it seems like one of the details of a house that I just take for granted.

That weekend I also put up the trail camera. I changed its location from last year, and it seems to really be better now. In just five days I captured deer on five different occasions.

On my third weekend up there this year, I had the siding delivered. We decided to use log siding. Even though it will be a lot more work than vinyl siding over time, we think it will give the cabin a warmer, more rustic feel. By this point, the snow was pretty much gone, and the weather was very comfortable (but more rainy than I would like). Over the weekend I sanded each of the 130 siding pieces and put stain on the backs of about two thirds of them. It was very tedious, and I'm glad to have it behind me. However, I did get to put up the siding under the patio during a rainy Sunday when I couldn't continue doing the staining. After all the prep work on the siding, the process of putting it up seems to go very fast, and is very rewarding. In three weeks, we'll have a "crew" up there, and the rest of it should go up. It should look close to finished (from the outside) a month from now!