Second floor framed, Craftsman door, refinished tub

Some neighbors took pictures of the house for us this weekend. The second-floor rooms (master bedroom and bath) have been framed. The second floor on the left side of the house will be open to the living room on the main floor.

I also picked out an antique front door for the house last week and got to see our first refinished claw-foot tub. Pictures are below.

We're buying this Craftsman-style front door

from Southern Accents, an architectural salvage

store in Cullman, Ala. At $950 it comes in just

under our $1,000 budget.

The door has a dental shelf on one side.



Allen Iron Works in Birmingham did a great job

refinishing the claw-foot tub. I was a little
nervous because the company charged so much
less than all the others I called ($330 compared
to $500 to $700). My dad picked up the tub
Wednesday and is storing it in his basement.


The finish on the tub looks like brand-new porcelain even though

it's actually a thick coat of industrial-strength paint. I'm really

glad I was able to find a place that would refinish the tub for a

price within our $500 budget. (We paid $175 for the tub itself.) If

I hadn't, I probably would have bought a refinishing kit from

Lowe's and tried to do it myself. That would have been a

catastrophe.

The bathtub and claw feet were sandblasted to
remove old paint before the new finish was

applied.

The tub was about to be hauled to a landfill when we bought it.

Here's how the inside of the tub looked before it was refinished.

Main floor framed, Creepy Critters show, pumpkin patch

The main floor of the cabin was framed in two days last week. I guess that's the normal amount of time for that much work, but since we closed the construction loan in April and this is as far as we've gotten, it seems like a lot of progress.

The drop-off on two sides of the house is at least 12 feet, so I couldn't let Ansley and Caden walk around without holding their hands. It was nice to finally get a feel for what the rooms will be like. The view is better than I thought it would be, and windows and glass doors will fill the back wall. There are built-in shelves in the kitchen and living room that I didn't notice in the plans. I think that will add to the "old" feel of the house since built-ins are more common in older homes.

We met Scott at the house Friday, and decided to add an outdoor fireplace that will share a chimney with the indoor one. It will be $800 more, but being able to use the screened-in porch during winter will be worth it. We also decided the space set aside for a stackable washer-dryer isn't going to be big enough. So we're going to put a washer and dryer in the basement and make that space a pantry in the kitchen. I like that better anyway -- less noise and more storage space. Scott also said he's going to build an exposed-beam ceiling in the living room and master bedroom.

The porches are going on next -- this week supposedly.

Here are more photos:

We spent Friday night at DeSoto State Park Lodge, about eight miles from the cabin. Jacksonville State University's Little River Canyon Field School hosts a series called "Campfire Talks" at the park every Friday and Saturday night (May-October), and I've been wanting to go to one. We decided during our drive from Tuscaloosa to stay at the park and I hadn't checked the schedule, so we didn't know what the topic of the Campfire Talk would be. The guy working the front desk at the lodge told us it was called "Creepy Critters" and is the most popular show of the year.

A curator from Anniston Museum of Natural History (and his three daughters) brought a tarantula, python, baby alligator, scorpion, mummified cat and some other interesting creatures. He put on an entertaining show and looked a bit like Steve Irwin. When one of the kids in the audience mentioned this, he did a great impersonation.

Caden was terrified when animals were brought around the room for people to see and touch, but he ended up petting the python before we left.

Here are some pictures:

We went to the annual property owners' association meeting Saturday morning. My parents drove up from Birmingham for it. They own the lot next to ours. We met a lot of our neighbors for the first time since most of them haven't built houses on their lots and live in Georgia, Tennessee or Florida. My parents and one of Randy's cousins and his wife came to look at the cabin after that.

Saturday afternoon Randy dropped me and the kids off at a Pumpkin Patch in Rainsville where our niece is working. It was around 3:00, swelteringly hot, and he said he'd be back sometime after 5:00. I was walking away from the car when he said this and I just looked at him. I thought he was kidding. It wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been the third pumpkin patch I'd been to in six days. I went to the one in Locust Fork with my parents and the kids Monday, during fall break, and I went with Caden's class on a field trip to Critter Creek Farm, which included a pumpkin patch and hay ride, on Friday. I now feel qualified to be a professional pumpkin patch critic.

Despite my mood, I had to admit this was the best of the three. Someone put a lot of thought into the kids' activities, which were, well...unique. The Cow Train should go on record somewhere as one of the most imaginative redneck inventions of all time. I paid $1 apiece for Ansley and Caden to strap themselves into garbage cans that had been painted black and white, turned sideways and mounted on wheels. The power source for this ensemble was a four-wheeler driven by an inarticulate teenager.

There was also a sandbox-like bin filled with corn and accessible via a plastic slide. I almost wanted to try this one out myself. Caden took a turn on the racetrack for suped-up John Deere tricycles. Michelle, our niece, said she's seen some pretty nasty wrecks. Her main job is to ride on the back of the hay wagons, I suppose to make sure no one falls out. She stands behind the gate and holds onto the rails. It kind of reminded me of how sanitation department workers ride on garbage trucks. Kids have spit on her and thrown hay at her, but overall, she says she likes the job.

Caden also spent a lot of time in the cab of a gigantic agricultural tractor that had been turned into a playground. Ansley preferred the corn bin and the hay jump. I'm going to stop trying to describe this stuff now. You can look at the pictures.

As if we hadn't packed enough into the weekend, our 1969 Mustang's two-year exterior and mechanical restoration was finished and Randy decided to drive it back to Tuscaloosa Sunday. A high school auto-body tech class in DeKalb County painted it, and a mechanic Randy knows did the rest of the work. We avoided the interstate except for a short stretch near Cullman, so getting home took awhile. The first time Randy drove the car to Tuscaloosa (we bought it in DeKalb County), a wheel came off on the interstate near Bessemer. At the halfway point of that trip, we were standing in my parents' driveway when I noted only about three of six lug nuts were on each tire. Irritated, Randy told me it wasn't a problem and muttered some other things, the gist being that I didn't know anything about cars. He's right, but still...I guess some things don't require a lot of mechanical knowledge...

Here are some photos of the car, which made it to Tuscaloosa this time without incident.

Basement framed, Little River Falls

We visited the cabin site over Labor Day weekend and were surprised to find the remaining two basement walls had been framed. The builder had to send a crew home last Tuesday because there was no electricity at the site. A temporary line was running across the property when we bought it, and Scott thought the electricity was already on. Randy had to call Cherokee Electric, which at first refused to turn on the power until he or I came to the company's office. After agreeing to pay extra fees, Randy got them to do the paperwork via fax and expedite the service call, but it was still supposed to take a couple days.

Plywood for the main floor is in place as well. The basement will be unfinished for now, but when we move into the house full time we plan to finish it with a den/game room, bedroom, bathroom, office and laundry room. Since I had to decide where the future bathroom and laundry room will be so that plumbing could be installed beneath the concrete slab, I drew up a floor plan for the basement. This irritated Randy. He didn't understand why I couldn't just say "Put the plumbing here and here (random locations) and we'll work around it later." Maybe, but that could have led to a bizarre layout for the entire floor. To decide where to position the toilet, sink, bathtub and washing machine, you have to determine not only where the bathroom and laundry room are going to be, but also their shape, size, where the doors will be, etc. And to figure that out, you have to put some thought into where all the other rooms are going to be. After a few minutes of considering this, I concluded that just drawing up a plan for the entire floor would be the simplest -- and probably fastest -- way to accomplish the task. (The floor plan is with the pictures below.)

It turned out to be a good thing because Scott went ahead and framed the windows and doors in the appropriate places. That should save some money later on. We walked around in the basement for awhile this weekend. The view is going to be really nice, even from there.
We also spent some time at Little River Falls. I want to start visiting the outdoor attractions in the area, both for myself and so we can tell people interested in staying at the cabin what there is to do. I know people kayak, rock climb, hike and swim in pools in the river. The parking lot next to the road into the neighborhood has been overflowing the past few times we've been there. But we usually go to our property, look around for about five minutes, then leave. We don't have much time during our trips, and we like to visit family in the area while we're there. I'm going to try to go somewhere new each time we visit the cabin, though.

At the falls, which is the starting point for Little River Canyon, the water level was way down and lots of people were walking over the exposed rocks and swimming in little pools created by depressions in the rock formations. Some people were swimming below the falls, too, and others were walking under the small stream of water -- about 10 feet wide -- that still spills over the drop-off. A volunteer park ranger is posted at a sign that gives information about the falls and canyon. He said there's actually more water now than there was most of the summer because the area got some rain late last week. The kids and I walked around above the falls. The water temperature was cool but not cold, and the designs in the rocks were interesting. Some looked like shell impressions. Since rainfall is so far below normal this year, many of those rocks probably haven't been visible in a long time.

Here are photos I took at the falls and at the cabin:

Concrete floor poured

Sonja and Eddie, Randy's sister and brother-in-law, visited the site today and reported the concrete basement floor has been poured. We don't have photos, but some neighbors sent us these pictures this past weekend. A gravel sub-base and concrete forms were in place.

Basement plumbing installed

We visited the house site on the way back from a weekend vacation in Atlanta. (Note to potential tourists: the trek through the World of Coke "museum" feels like a not-so-subtle brainwashing, but the CNN tour is cool.)

The pipes for the basement plumbing were in place and some tar and brown plastic sheeting were added to the outside of the two walls. The concrete floor wasn't poured though. The builder had said that would be done early last week.

Here are some new photos:

Claw-foot tub refinisher

I spent the morning calling claw-foot tub refinishers in Alabama and Georgia. After getting estimates of $600 to $700 per tub (our budget is $500 each and we already have $150 in one and $175 in the other), I called a company I initially thought of when I decided to put claw-foot tubs in the house. If I'd done this to begin with, I could have saved us a lot of trouble.

The business is in a borderline-dangerous outskirt of Birmingham we drive through on the way to my parents' house. A bunch of tubs that need refinishing are chained up outside the place. We stopped there a couple times awhile back, but it was the weekend and no one was there. I turned to Google and the online white pages, and when this business didn't show up in my searches for bathtub refinishers I sort of forgot about it.

Anyway, I got the owner on the phone today and he sells refinished claw-foot tubs for $530. That's the excruciating part. He must not have surveyed the competition recently. An architectural salvage company in Cullman sells them for $1,200, and that's the next cheapest price I've found. The good news was I could bring him the tubs I've already bought and he'll have them refinished for $330. That's within the $500 budget and a little less than the $530 of buying one already refinished, but saving $25 doesn't make up for the trouble of picking up the tubs, unloading them (they're HEAVY -- I fear for my fingers and toes, not to mention my back, every time I help move one) and storing them. The owner told me he doesn't refinish the tubs there; the same man has been picking them up, refinishing them and bringing them back for 20 years. He must not have raised his price in 20 years either, I thought. A refinished tub is displayed in the store and it looks really nice. I kind of feel bad the guy is doing this work so cheaply compared to everyone else, but I can't be the one to clue him in.

Next week Dad and I are going to take the tub that's at his house over there to be refinished. It won't be back for five to seven weeks, but that's not a problem given the slow progress of the house.

Durango damage

As promised in the previous entry, here are some photos of the damage to Randy's Durango. Ironically, he had just gotten the driver- and passenger-side windows repaired (they wouldn't roll down most of the time, and if they did, they wouldn't roll back up) after living with the inconvenience for a year because the repair was so expensive. Now the driver-side window is messed up again.