Sweetwater Days 08, Part 3

As I said in Part 2 of Sweetwater Days 08, I had cut down and reassembled the table a couple weeks earlier, but I hadn’t had time to shorten the eight-foot benches to fit the now six-foot table.

Somehow Annie and I had made the drive to start our four-day trip without me remembering my best crowbar.  You know, long (about three-feet long) and strong enough to provide plenty of leverage, but short enough not to risk poking holes in the walls every time I tried to maneuver it. Yes, believe it or not I have another, bigger pry-bar.  That one is six-feet long, 2-inches thick and probably weighs 30 or 40 pounds.  Really.  I leave it at the cabin to pry logs and rocks.  Anyway, since we had forgotten my preferred prying tool, I was forced to use the bigger one.

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As I’ve mentioned in the past, when we moved back to Malden, I had stored the disassembled table in the machine shed.  Annie, on the other hand, had put the benches for it on the front porch of the house, where she placed pots of flowers, oil-leaking weed whackers, etc on it.  Oh, and I don’t think she planned it, but the benches also proved to be perfect nesting place for carpenter bees. 

Carpenter bees look just like your standard bumble bees in size, color, shape, and everything, but I’ve only rarely known them to sting anyone.  That endearing quality is more than balanced out by their deplorable habit of boring 1/2” diameter holes in untreated wood, where they then lay their eggs and plug the holes so that their hatchlings can develop in safety.  It’s good for the baby bees, but not good for the wood.  I suspect that many of the fallen down barns you see while driving across the countryside have collapsed at least partly due to the enthusiastic hole-boring of carpenter bees.

As I was cutting the benches to length, I discovered a new fact about carpenter bees.  They drill a hole pretty much perpendicular to the surface they start boring in but, before they might dig through the other side, they turn at a right angle and continue gnawing the wood and lengthening their holes.  I don’t know how they know when to turn, or how to then keep from angling out of the board, but they do.

When I cut across the benches to shorten them, I also crosscut several depeloping baby bees.  Some others were mature enough that they crawled out and flew away.  I did manage to kill a few others before they could make their escape.

Serves ‘em right for what they did to my benches.

It was at this point that Annie told me she had never seen any evidence of carpenter bees around Sweetwater…and I had just introduced the species.

Dang it.

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With the benches disassembled, cut down, and reassembled, we were ready for the best part of this trip.  Fourth son, Travis, was coming and he was bringing two of our awesome grandkids, John and Emma!

Annie had steaks on the grill and cooked to the peak of perfection just about the time I heard my son’s pickup coming down the driveway.  As the vehicle pulled into the yard, a child’s voice yelled, “Hi, Pa!”  Then another hollered the same, followed by Travis shouting, “Hey, Dad!”  I hobbled down the steps as fast as my crippled up old knees and back would let me, and was almost to the truck by the time my grandkids saw Annie downhill standing beside the grill.  It was too late for my wife though, I scooped nine-year-old Emma up in a bear-hug before she could wriggle out of my arms and run to Grannie Annie.  Six-year-old John was waiting his turn and leaped into my arms.

“I’m SO glad to be back at Sweetwater, Pa.”

I couldn’t help but smile, “I love you too, John.”

My son, Travis moved in for a manly hug as I said, “Steaks are ready.”

He replied, “Good.  While we’re eating we can decide what we want to do first.”

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Now, if it had been one of my grandkids saying that I would have known their options were playing in the woods, playing in the creek, or playing…well, just playing in general.  Travis, on the other hand, had an entirely different and more industrious idea than his kids.  We had been making phone calls back and forth for a month or more, planning what we wanted to do to the cabin during this visit. 

While Travis’s motives were far from entirely self-serving, he did want to help us fix the cabin up to where his lovely wife, Danielle, would be willing to visit it.  That meant our plans for running-water and a water heater were back on the front burner, and our son had taken the projects on for himself

After clarifying exactly what we wanted and needed to do the job, T had bought everything he would require.  We paid him back for his investment of money, but would never be able to pay him back for all the planning he had done, and especially for all the work he was getting ready to do.

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As we wrapped ourselves around Annie’s delicious steaks, T said, “I think I can get most of the plumbing done, and install and wire the on-demand water heater tonight, then I can take out the fuse box and install the breaker box tomorrow, with enough time left over to work on the roof.”

“Gosh, son, don’t you want to do a little work while you’re here?”

He laughed.  “Nope.”

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The cabin had been plumbed with PVC pipe by a previous owner.  State of the art at the time, it hadn’t aged well.  We removed all of that and Travis replaced it with PEX, which is a vast improvement over the older type.  Whereas PVC rarely survives being frozen even once, PEX flexes and stretches and is much more resistant to accidental freezing.

Not only that, but it bends like the soft plastic that it is, making installation in difficult places much easier than PVC.

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After he did all the plumbing work he could that night, Travis drove to where he could get cell phone reception, and called youngest brother, Patrick.  Knowing my youngest, I don’t think Travis had to beg, threaten, or cajole him much to convince him to drive four hours out the next day to help T accomplish his goals.

Annie and I had projects we were working on too, but we both tried to help Travis with everything he was doing.  The problem was, John and Emma kept calling for Grannie and Pa to play with them.  What’s a self-respecting grandpa to do?

I tried saying “no” a couple times but it came out sounding a whole lot like, “Sure thing”…OK, exactly like it.

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The following day, Patrick showed up, wearing his usual “wide as the grill on a Chevy pickup” smile.  He and T wasted no time getting to work and accomplished some impressive things.

Now we just need to finish a few more little things, like replacing a couple incorrect breakers we’d bought by mistake, and picking up some new wire for one of those last minute plan-changes, and the electric work on the cabin will be done.  Then we’ll be ready for the next big step. 

For that portion of the remodel I need to set the posts for our water tower, shelve the 275-gallon IBC tote on it, and finish the plumbing to and from the tote to the house.  Then I’ll build the enclosure that will be insulated to keep the tank of water from freezing in the winter.  At some point in all that, I need to put a reservoir in the creek, install the pumps (one to pump water from the spring, and one to pressurize the flow from the water tank to the house), and attach the pipe from the spring.

Oh, and I need to figure out exactly how we want to put up the outside shower Travis designed and created for us, and then put that up.

Yep, that’s all, at least for that little stage of improvement to our place.  Of course, we have other things we want to do around Sweetwater, but with the electrical system safer than it was when we bought the place (We averaged a blown fuse on every other visit.), and running water, I have a feeling everyone will be a lot more comfortable when we stay at the cabin.  As of now Annie and I have been bathing in the spring-fed creek.  Well, she tried it once, and got in it knee deep, before opting to take spit-baths with moist towelettes.  I still bathe in the creek…or just do without until I can’t stand my own company anymore.  Water from the spring averages about 58°F year round.  Now 58°F may be a warm day in the winter but it is a cold bath all year long.  It makes for short, quick ablutions.

Anyway, with all we have accomplished in the last eight months, there’s not much left to do at Sweetwater.  We just need to fix the porch floor, replace the flooring in half the cabin, paint the walls, tear down and rebuild most of the old shed behind the cabin, and, and, and…

Well, you’ll just have to keep reading my blog to find out.

See you next time.

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Addendum: It turns out Annie was wrong; carpenter bees are plentiful around Sweetwater.  I’m not guilty of loosing ecological havoc on our beloved Sweetwater.

You’re welcome.

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