The first thing that greeted us when we arrived at our new cabin was a Black Widow on our door jamb. :{ Thankfully that was the only one we saw! I wish I had taken before pictures of the cabin! I think we were too
overwhelmed to think about that when we got there. Haha. These were
taken when I was almost done with my cleaning.
The great thing about this cabin is that it has two rooms and two bathrooms. The front room and bathroom had been added on to the original one bedroom one bath cabin at some point.
First we had to empty everything out because it was stuffed full of all the stuff we had been buying off Amazon for months.We had shipped it all to Aunt K, and Uncle K and Aunt J's houses and then they took a road trip with a pickup and trailer to bring it all out to camp for us...so nice!
We had hired a guy to come out and replace most of the plumbing, knowing that we would not have time to do everything before camp started. The floor was really squishy in this bathroom so Uncle K bought a sheet of heavier wood and T was able to lay it over the plywood to give us a sturdier floor.
He also had to rewire almost the entire cabin. None of the outlets were grounded, the bathrooms didn't have GFI's, all the boxes were on the outsides of the walls with exposed wires, and none of the lights were on switches. They were all on pull strings which were ancient and kept breaking and getting shorter and shorter. The back bathroom's string had broken before we got there so you had to have a ladder to get up high enough to turn the light on. After many hours spent wiring he had all that fixed and even got a string of outdoor cafe lights on the porch, courtesy of Aunt K, on a switch!
Another big project was replacing some of the boards on the porch. Quite a few of them were rotted out, but we were thankful that most of them were in good condition and we didn't have to pull off the whole porch! We ended up spending quite a bit of time out there so it was really nice to have!
While the guys did the porch project I started painting. The addition really wasn't too bad for needing paint. The original cabin desperately needed it! I was able to get half of the cabin done on my own before everyone returned.
After some debate about what do with the back of the cabin...the boards had rotted to such a point that there were huge gaps between the siding, the guys decided to just re-side rather than attempt to patch what was there.
The crew arrived and Aunt K bought pizza for all of us for dinner! So nice! At that point we had all the beds built, mattresses, sheets, and sleeping bags in place, and the the kids were able to have a spot to call their own! The little white bunk bed was in the cabin when we bought it along with the two mattresses that went on it. Boo slept on top and the suitcases took the bottom since Lou wanted to bring her "crib" with her on the trip.
This brown bunk bed was found discarded by another cabin, but was in really good shape and is super sturdy. Bug slept on top and Peaches on bottom.
We purchased two twin over full bunk beds for us grown ups, T and I took the bottom of this one and Peanut was on top. Since baby J is still in a pack and play the top of the other one was empty and Uncle A and Auntie K were on bottom of that one and then their two boys got the other purchased twin bunk beds.
Somehow I got this little short twin bunk bed set when I ordered, but that ended up being a good thing when Cousin M slipped off the ladder in the middle of the night and banged his nose and lip on his parents' bed. We were thankful he wasn't up as high as the other bunk beds which were at least three feet higher!
Our cabin came with a fridge and microwave which came in super handy! It also came with a stove but the mice had made a resort home in it and we didn't think we would ever use it anyway so it went to the dump.
You can see some of my spray foaming in this picture. I filled every crack and crevice, high and low, that I could find. I used six cans of spray foam! Before I did that we had a mouse in the sticky trap the first night, and a good sized scorpion in the same place the next night. I also killed a scorpion in the main cabin the first night we were there. :{
The girls loved sharing the cabin with their cousins and especially the new baby!
The next day Noni, Aunt J, and the big girls kept the younger ones entertained so we could finish up work. Aunt K and Auntie K helped me do the second half of the cabin and we got it all painted in just a couple of hours!
I enjoy painting so I think we got the easy job that day! Noni did crafts and stories and took a nature walk to keep all these busy ones out of trouble!
It was definitely a big family effort but we got it done and were ready to enjoy camp starting the next day! After all that hard work Uncle K and Uncle A treated us all to an Italian dinner in town!
Uncle S, Aunt J, and Auntie E all arrived bringing our number to 19...we are so blessed to be part of such a wonderful family!!!
