Our Tiny Winter Abode in South Fork

At last!  We've brought you all to South Fork, Colorado, where we've been living since November 2nd.  :)  Welcome!

We rented this little cabin, which we found on craigslist, for the winter:

Also on the property are two trailers, two sheds (you can see one in the background above), and a greenhouse frame.  We decided to park Baba G between the greenhouse and the cabin, to block the neighbors' dogs' view of the front door: let's just say they are a bit... barky.

 Dog shield and fabulous free woodpile!  (Yes, yes, safety googles during all chopping!)

You also noticed, no doubt, the lumber sticking out of the Civic: we had a few critical carpentry projects to do to make the place liveable.  And when I say "we," you know that means Nate... right?  ;)

Project #1 -- Staircase to loft, so we could use it as our bedroom.  Nate had hoped he could use the stringers we found lying around from some previous staircase that had been torn out of the place, but no luck there as there were about three zillion nails sticking out of the them, plus one had been cut in half (boo).

So, he started from scratch, taking measurements... not much run to work with there, so these were going to be some pretty steep stairs!

... but he fit in the newly made stringers...

... and voila-- an accessible loft!  This man is a force to be reckoned with!

 

Nate says it's more of a ship's ladder than a staircase... but it is functional and sturdy.

Project #2, 3 & 4 -- Cat door plus inside and outside platforms to reach the door (especially for my two fat boys: Fink and Pete).  Nate was so clever, he made a boot rack for
the inside platform, so it's doing double-duty.

Wow!  It is BRIGHT through that window: hopefully, you can make out the little square of cat door in the left lower end of the overexposed area.  ;)  Isn't that boot rack awesome!

Can you believe that fat cat (Pete) fits through that little door?  He does!

Project #5 -- Snow rake!  [Pics to come...]  It was fortunate Nate built this handy thing, for pulling snow accumulations down off Baba G's roof (Ace & Kathie had warned us about the possibility of collapse... and there was no way we were going to risk that, after our Eterna-Bond project-from-hell back before we hit the road!): we got a massive snowstorm about a week after we moved in!

Baba G says "Yay!  They got me parked and winterized... just in time!"

Finally, we put up several shelves, including one in the living room (just for candles and such), one in the office (for the modem), another in the office (with a hanging closet rack mounted to it, for clothes), and one in the bathroom for laundry detergent and stuff.

And I picked up four identical bookshelves at Walmart for $5 each (!!): one is a bathroom shelf, two are for clothes, and one is for office stuff and holds up the printer.  

I also hung (inexpensive, but really nice deep red) curtains in all the windows and a makeshift curtain rod in the shower (with two plastic caps screwed into the walls and an old broom handle we found in the cabin).  

You can see the hammock we had temporarily installed (before we got a love seat in December)-- hanging off to the right, but let's just say it's way more interesting to look out the windows than at them.  ;)

As you are likely gathering by now, the place was pretty bare when we got here!  And kind of a weird interior: the walls are oriented strand board (OSB), which is normally only used on exterior walls.   You can see it behind our favorite fixture (the wood stove) here: [And yeah, that's unfinished sheetrock on the side wall... bleh.]

This was taken before the loft was accessible, so we were still sleeping downstairs.

We brought in our red rug, the two bookshelves from the RV and our whole library.  In came the mattress too, backed with a headboard we found in one of the sheds!  Last but not least, we put up our USA map (for planning our next destination and appreciating just how crazy and long the trip here was), our photo-poster from our trip to the Pacific Northwest in 2012, and hung Nate's dartboard on the last remaining office wall.

Oh, right: one last thing: we found out just a few days before arriving here, that there was no fridge.  There was no way we were going to continue "cooler madness" through the entire winter, so we were tossing around the idea of buying a dorm fridge.  But-- lo and behold!-- there was a full-sized refrigerator/freezer in the back of the shed you saw way back up there in the first pic.  We pulled that sucker out and plugged it in on the concrete slab that runs along one side of the cabin, crossed our fingers, and... it worked!

Thus began a momentous, three-day cleaning blitz during which I had to (a) evict three mice, (b) clean out their food stash (which I relocated to a nice, cozy spot under the back of the wood pile... c'mon, people, I am not a heartless monster!), (c) remove all the-- let's just call it "rodent-sullied"-- insulation (No pictures: you're welcome.), (d) scrub and bleach everything, and (e) install new insulation, cut to fit.  The end result: no more cooler!

Somehow, we managed to get all this stuff done by the time the snow storm hit, so we were able to just hunker down in our cozy cabin, with a roaring wood fire, food chilled down to safe temperatures, self-sufficient in-and-out cats, and the knowledge that Baba G that was safely parked and winterized right outside the front door.  Yippee!

Up Next:  Holidays in the Valley