Demolition Day On The Cabin

Hi, Friends,

How are you? I hope you had a good weekend. 

Thank you for your comments on my last post. I appreciate you all so much. 

We have entered in our fifth month with our little East Texas house. 

The work has slowed because of the weather but we got a few things done this weekend. 

Demolition has started on the cabin. Here is an older post about it. 

These cabinets don't look too bad in the photos but they were not good. They were made by the former owner's brother. He is the king of the air gun. There were staples all over the place. The drawers were made out of any type of lumber he could find. Things were pieced together any which way and they were heavy.  

I kept some of the cabinet fronts thinking they can be made into wall art. We salvaged the hardware. We got the left side cleaned out in about an hour. 

Demo on the right side took a little longer. I had to get out of the way. The pecans under the stove made me gag. I'm not judging. We had two former frozen fossilized hamburger patties under our stove. (Teens lived here.) Okay, maybe I'm judging. This was gross. 

The more we dug into it the more we uncovered. 

The electrical to the stove ran under the sink. The outlet box wasn't attached to the wall. 

Umm. I'm sure it's not to code but okay...

We know there were water issues because we discovered the soggy bathroom floor our first day. Once he was done with the kitchen, Bill wanted to salvage the live edge dresser in the bedroom. He got that out and had the first look under the shower. It wasn't pretty. Bill shut off the water to the cabin a long time ago. Which was good because those pipes would have frozen and burst two weeks ago. It was -2 out there. 

The former owner called it the "guest" house but she also called it the garage. Her brother finished out the quonset portion and lived there for a while.  When he moved out, the owner bought the larger shed and attached it to the quonset hut. She rented it out for extra income. The kitchen and bathroom, dining and bedroom are in the quonset portion. The larger building is in good shape. It was the living room and closet. I'm wondering if the people who were living in it had health issues due to water leaks.  

As we proceeded with the demo, I came to see what Bill already knew. He knew from the get go that the whole quonset portion would have to be gutted. He has to see what is under the tile floor and what is behind the sheet rock. I was in denial about it. 

We're not sure if he will finish the demo or if we will hire the guy who hauled off all of our trash. 

The sheet metal will come off. Once it is down to the frame, we will know what we're dealing with. 

Because she had renter the front door to the cabin faces the back of our property. 

This is how it looks from the back door of the screened in porch. 

It can be seen from the front of the property. 

We are a little stumped at this point. Would we really put guests out there? 

We like the idea of a kitchenette and a half bath. What if we turned the quonset hut into a green house. 

It has a good shape for that. It would be wonderful because there is propane and water.  

This wasn't inspected and it wasn't part of the appraisal so anything we do will add value. 

When I stepped away from the demo, I noticed the pine tree at the back of the clearing. 

The needles on it and some of my other pines are a rust color. 

Some are fine so far. 

It made me a little angry if I'm honest. A 100 year weather event wasn't really in the plan. 

I'm following a bunch of East Texas plant experts and they all say to wait and see. 

 Nature is resilient. The daffodils will bloom. I cut a few to enjoy at home this week. 

It wasn't a prolonged funk and I got to work on my potting shed. 

I diverted my energy into making something cute. 

Here is the before. I pulled off all of the metal except the roof.

The old shutters from the main house became new siding. 

I hinted to Bill that it would go faster if one of us cut the wood and the other installed it. 

Bill said that it was my project and that I needed to do it myself. So I did. 

He did help pull out staples because the Air Gun King made the shutters. :) 

I have two old windows that will fit on each side. I need to get one more for the front. 

I'm not in love with the door but it will do for now until I find an old door. 

I stepped back and thought it looked like a grown up lemonade stand. 

Haha. 

I went to the paint cabinet and discovered that all of our paint froze. I was finished with the majority of our painting but I'd kept leftovers for touch ups. 

We needed about five more gallons of Alabaster for some trim and the porch ceiling. It was ordered but remained at Sherwin Williams because of the snow. Thankfully that wasn't out there or it would be ruined too. 

That is all for now.

Thanks for stopping by. 

To read the whole story go to my Country House page. 

Katie