Sunday, June 25, 2017

Our Little Cabin in the Woods-Part Two


Do you remember last year when we painted our big house?  Just in case you missed it, here's a picture of the front entry area.  It shows all of the colors we used.


Here's a picture showing the garden shed behind the house, where we used the matching color scheme, once again.


Well, we absolutely LOVE everything about that Sherwin-Williams paint and those colors, so we decided to use the same exact color scheme on the cabin, and all future cabins.  



The exterior walls are Sherwin-Williams Majolica Green.  Porch ceiling is Swimming, in keeping with the southern tradition to paint porch ceilings blue...(There's a story there! Read about it here.)  We trimmed it in white and finished it off with my favorite part, the bright turquoise (actually, Gulfstream) door.


The paint part of this project was the easiest part.  Why?  Basically,  because we have the best Sherwin-Williams in the world, right here close by, in Spanish Fort, Alabama.  Did you know that they keep up with all of your paint project details in their computer? When I go in for paint for the next cabin, I can just tell them it's for the cabin exterior, or whatever, and they can easily find it, because they keep notes for every paint mixed!  

Stacy Burgos helped me the first time I visited, and I was so impressed with the level of service she offered-it was second to none.  And, you know what?  She even took my paint to the car for me after it was all mixed!   What other paint store does that?  

Then, as we talked and they found out we would be building a "village" of matching cabins, the manager, Tommy Duncan, offered me a nice discount.  I really appreciate the help, as those dollars added up on this little cabin, and wherever we can save, it really makes a difference.  

As a way to show my appreciation for their help, I had a sign made for the front yard of the cabin during our last vintage and antiques market.  



Now that this one is finished (it took long enough!) we're already thinking about the second one!  Hopefully, the next one will go a little more smoothly and faster. (It was not easy retrofitting and trying to work with a building that was already partially built...lots of things didn't work out for our plans for the building, so things needed to be moved around, and that took lots of time)  One thing is already figured out-the paint from our local Sherwin-Williams. Stacy and Tommy, I'll be seeing you again soon!!  Thank you for your help and great service!

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Our Little Cabin in the Woods-Part One

I hope you haven't been holding your breath waiting for us to finish the cabin!  Like most everything we try to tackle these days, it has taken about three times as long as it should have...and we're still not totally finished, but I'm going to share it anyway, because we're just sooo close to being finished, and I can't wait any longer!

When we purchased the land next door, this structure was already there.  The 16' x 24' building was built on sight.  It has a front porch and a gambrel style roof which allows space for two sleeping lofts inside, one in front and the other in the back.  It was covered in white vinyl siding on the sides and back, but had cedar on the exterior of the front wall, inside the porch.  The inside was unfinished, but had a small wood stove and a window unit air conditioner in the wall.

What We Did...

On the exterior, we removed the vinyl siding (I forgot to take a "before" pic with the vinyl siding.) but here's what it looked like after it was taken down.  See the door leaning up against the back wall?  We added that so that we would have a back entry.  We also removed the window unit air conditioner that was in the wall...you can see where the hole was filled in.


New back door with awning...


Front porch area is now trimmed in cedar to match the front cedar wall.


Color scheme that we chose to use is the same as what we used on our house last spring...more about that in the next blog post.


We needed to add new air conditioning, as we had removed the old window unit, so we went with a ductless system by Samsung, and we love it!  It works by remote control, and keeps the place at a constant temperature, even automatically switching from a/c to heat, when needed.   It's also energy efficient.  (Samsung did not give us anything for mentioning this product.)


We also needed to connect it to the septic tank so that we could add a bathroom. That required ditch-digging.  


We removed the ceiling fan. (I borrowed this picture from Hope Contracting's Facebook page...Hope Contracting did most of the work for us.)


Insulation went up.



...then the metal ceiling!  I was so excited about using corrulated metal on the inside, and I do love it as much as I thought I would!  Oh, and see the black wall up on the end of the loft?  That's chalkboard paint!  Just imagine camping out and playing tic-tac-toe up there while you're supposed to be sleeping!  I plan to add some funky picture frames to the wall so that kids can create their own wall art within the frames...


And, here's my sweet hubby hanging the funky green chandelier!



That's all I'll share today...this post is taking me three times as long as it should, too!  I only have about a thousand pictures to look through after four months of working on the place!  

Be watching for part two where I'll share the bathroom and some more interior work real soon.

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