Tubs, the naked truth and rocks

Kyle and Olesea dropped by to pick up 'Ada' their Roddy after being on vacation for two weeks. We decided that if anyone comes to visit we put them to work. It took four of us to haul our 300 pound cast iron tub from outside up three levels...but we did it! The tub is shown resting, along with the rest of us, in its place in the master bath.

Speaking of baths, we've gotten questions on how we are able to prepare meals, where we get our water from, do we have a 'functioning' toilet and do we take showers? I'll attempt to answer all of these intriguing questions in their order:

1. We have our little camper set up behind the workshop, out of sight, and it serves as our chuck wagon of sorts. We have a small refrigerator the size of a breadbox, a 2 burner gas stove, no oven. Darlene makes some good, good meals in the chuck wagon.
2. Water comes from our across the street neighbor. We load up our five 5 gallon buckets and drinking containers, fill them with water, and then transport them on the back of the truck to the basement. They are used for #3 below, actually #1 and #2.
3. We do have one toilet that is hitched up and functional. It is luxury compared to our old port-a-potty. The water for the toilet is carried up a level from the basement and used as flush water.
4. Do we take showers...you be the judge!

Part of our water ritual is to fill up our shower bag. The bag is then placed on some logs along our driveway, in the sun. Half a day later we have hot water for a shower. If we had lots of clouds, then the water isn't as hot. We hang the bag from the under carriage of the deck and presto...a shower.

You have to keep an ear out for visitors...don't want to scare anyone.

p.s. the black diagonal bar finally came off after two showers :-)

p.p.s. I'm also known as 'the silver haired Chippendale' around these parts.

Recently we struck a deal with some stone masons to install our foundation stone. They've worked for a week and will finish up this coming Monday. All of the rock came from our property or our mountain. Each piece hand picked by Darlene and me. Rock collection started a week before the masons started. We continued to gather rocks while they worked. We count 25 loads of stone. Each load had to be hand carried to a point nearby the work area. Lots of work but well worth the effort.

Our walls actually look like an old hand crafted cabin foundation while most of the cabins on the mountain use flat stones layed flat on the walls with large mortar gaps, a much easier, more conventional, less appealing way to finish the walls.

We have one more stone harvesting trip in preparation for the Monday finish. All in all we saved a good grand doing the grunt work as opposed to buying the stone not to mention the final product is more special being gathered from our own property.

More coming,
D&z