Extreme Cabin Makeover

My parents built an A-frame cabin in Union County in 1984. Mom said someday we would finish the inside walls but we can use it with stud walls until then. The cabin was finished on my dad's sixtieth birthday and he died about a year and a half later. Ownership then passed to his children. When Mom died in 1993 the walls were still unfinished. (This picture was taken in 2009 when we were painting the porch and balcony.)

In 2006 we put dry wall on the two end walls and insulated them. Those two walls were a lot of work, even though they were short walls, because a lot of fitting around doors and windows was required. But, as often happens with improvement projects, the end walls looked so nice it made the side walls look even worse. We realized it would not be nearly as much work to do the side walls. Since it is an A-frame, there are no windows or doors on the side walls. Last year we did the one side wall with plans to do the other one this year. We chose to do these walls on Memorial Day weekends because we knew it would take more than one work day to do a wall.
We picked up the dry wall Friday afternoon and got to the cabin around 6 p.m. We did a few things around the place but had a nice evening to enjoy the quiet woods before the work started. My sisters arrived on Saturday and the beavers got to work. This is how it looked before we started.

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By evening the dry wall was installed and spackled. We also patched the spackling on the wall we did last year. (Lacking the proper tool, we had tried using a broad cake spreading knife to apply the spackling and it was a lousy job.Don't try it!)

We took a day off to rest on Sunday and then tore into it again Monday morning. The spackling on both walls was sanded (making a dusty mess on the whole main floor) and then painted. I thought we would have to go up another day to put on the finish coat of paint. Since it was a nice warm day, the paint dried fast. We realized if we stay a little later than planned we could finish the whole job. That made more sense than running up there again later. Some of us cleaned up the dust while others painted. When we were ready to leave at 5:30 p.m., the new wall looked like this.

And here is a view of the whole room with both walls finished. It doesn't look like the same place!

Besides finishing this wall, between the six of us we also cleaned out the spring, filled the woodshed, trimmed the weeds and brush around the cabin, and scrubbed the green growth off the two porches and balcony. A lot of the credit goes to the two who are not yet in the senior citizen category. I don't think we four older ones could have done it without their help. 

I'm sure my parents would approve of and be pleased with what we have done. After 28 years, "someday" came and the walls are finished. The only remaining unfinished wall is the L-shape in the kitchen but there are some problems there we haven't figured out yet how to get around. Maybe "someday" we'll find a solution and finish that section. Meanwhile, we'll use it as it is.