Back again for another new year!

 I see I've done it again, no posts since September. It was a busy fall. One of my big problems is just failure to document. I need to remember to take pictures of stuff.

Anyway, when I was a kid on Christmas morning my mother would "make" cinnamon buns. I put make in quotes because she really just popped a Pillsbury can.

A few years ago, for Christmas, I snagged a can on cinnamon buns and was disappointed with the quality. You really can't go home again.

I can't remember if it was last year or the year before I decided to make my own dang cinnamon buns and fired up the bread maker. I changed up my usual dough with added sugar and they came out pretty good. 

For Christmas 2025 we kinda went crazy.

On Christmas eve we put together 3 bread doughs by hand. Looking back I don't appear to have written about making bread before which surprises the heck out of me. Anyway we threw together my standard bread recepie:

1C flour
1tsp salt
5/8tsp yeast
1 1/2C water

and let them rise overnight.

In the morning we rolled them out thin and made cinnamon rolls and 2 different styles of cinnamon bread:

I'd originally intended to just do cinnamon rolls but Angie had other ideas.

The thing on the left is a loaf of cinnamon bread, it's upside down which makes it look weird.

In retrospect the middle thing looks like a fox. They curl up like that to sleep. Next time we make one I'd put ears on it.

Overall as an experiment these were delicious and we'll be making more soon.

We did a thing!

I've talked some about fitness on here but it would appear I haven't written anything about Couch 2 5K. Normally its written as Couch25K or C25K for short. Its a program to help non-runners to learn to run. I've started the program many times and last year finally finished it. Unfortunately life got in the way as it does.

This year I restarted with renewed vigor because some friends invited us to participate in a Spartan Race with them. Spartan is just one of a stack of obstacle course runs. Specifically in Spartan you run a 5k with 22 obstacles. Heck to get to the start line you need to cross a 4 foot wall.

The obstacles include monkey bars, (nope, no chance) rings, (again, no chance) a spear throw, (harder than it seemed like it should be, I didn't even see anybody complete it successfully) and a bunch of wall climbs.

Its hard to say what my favorite obstacle was, I liked a couple of them, like the bag lift where you drag a weighted bag into the air with a rope that goes up over a pulley.

I also quite liked the A-frames pictured here. The netting in the distance in the picture is the outgoing run. By that point you've completed (or taken penalties) on a couple obstacles and are just finding your rhythm. The netting in the foreground is the very last thing before you leap over fire to finish.

Least favorite was the Atlas stone. The stone is really a concrete sphereoid (not really a sphere) about 75 pounds. I could pick it up but I couldn't then stand up. My friends had to help pick it up. Carrying it was no real issue but dang it was demoralizing not being able to pick it up.

Lesson learned, I need a lot more upper body strength and especially grip strength.

The joke is that you spend $100+ to punish yourself and get a medal and a t-shirt.

Another lesson I learned is that I didn't need the hydration pack. It was just one more thing to drag around. We were only out for 2 hours and there was water available. I'm not sure I really even needed a snack although I was starving and thirsty when we finished.

10 years ago I would never have considered such a thing but now we're already planning for next year. I'll try to update on training progress, I've got some ideas. We finished in 2:06, the goal for next year is to get under 2 hours. If I can get my mile run under 10 minutes we'll be pretty much there...

The Great Northern Estate Update Phase 2

So at the end of the last post we were up to summer 2024 and nearly the end of phase 1. You might think this post would be about ending phase 1 but that would include finishing the downstairs floors. If that happened the floor in the living room would get ruined by the work upstairs so we'll pause phase 1 for now.

Phase 2 begins upstairs. As bought the house had 4 bedrooms upstairs. With the removal of the stairway to nowhere three of those bedrooms are all in a line, which is no fun. That northern bedroom was really small and there was only one bathroom in the house so why not turn that little bedroom into an upstairs bathroom and a walk in closet.

The original plan had it as a half bath but Angie and I pushed for a shower and I'm glad we did. It essentially makes the upstairs a little apartment. Its nice to not have to traipse through the kitchen to take a shower.

Bathroom on the left, walk in closet on the right. Well, it was supposed to be a closet. My parents wanted a little bed in there, so for now we're using it as a bedroom.

With the upstairs bathroom and closet finished the guys moved on to the master bedroom. This didn't require a whole lot, new trim and better paint. Electric and insulation had been done by one of the Cushman brothers at some point in the past.

The floor in the master bedroom has been stripped but not refinished. Unfortunately its had a lot of traffic since the finish was taken off so when we do the rest of the floors this one will need to be sanded too but fortunately it'll just be a quick sand to take off the wear. I'm tentatively planning on refinishing the floor in the little bedroom and the master bedroom last summer but that will depend on replacing the windows in the master bedroom.

Actually the big holdup right now is the fact that we've used the house all summer. The guys really only get access from late November through mid-May. I think they had planned to work into the summer but my parents are much more comfortable in the house than the camp, the indoor bathroom being an important feature.

At some point last winter the roof leaked a little around the chimney into the downstairs bathroom. The guys gooped up the joint which stopped the leak but that meant we needed to shift focus and get a new roof.

This will be a standing seam metal roof but we opted for an inch of foam insulation. There isn't much insulation in the roof of the house. We intend to add more but there is only so much you can do so this will help.

I left before the metal started going on, it should be done by now.

Technically the roof is phase 3 but this is one of those things we didn't feel comfortable putting off. It'd be stupid to spend all that money on the inside to have it ruined by a leaky roof. Fortunately this kind of investment is once in a lifetime, I should never have to mess with the roof again.

The Great Northern Estate Update Phase 1

I realize I've been remiss in updating you on the state of Cushman House

Fall 2020:

Summer 2024:

A pretty good transformation right?

In my head I've broken this project roughly into 3 phases. Right now we've nearly completed phase 1 which is to rebuild the downstairs. Phase 2 takes us upstairs including re-working the stairs themselves which are too narrow and steep.

To that end we've rebuilt the kitchen, bathroom and dining room entirely. Thats new windows, exterior doors, flooring, insulation, electric, plumbing, ceiling, cabinets, lighting, shower, and toilet. The only thing original is the kitchen sink and fridge.

I didn't really want the laminate flooring but the glue on the old flooring would have been very difficult to get off the hardwood underneath. I'm particularly pleased with exposing the chimney, I think it looks great. Our builder was doubtful. There is something about folks around here that makes them want to hide a chimney.

The living room and downstairs bedroom (formerly a parlor) got new insulation, electric, windows and wallboard. The bedroom also got a closet:

These old houses never have any closet space and we were lucky to have somewhere to put this one.

Oh and before I forget the reconfiguration of the bathroom had us saying goodbye to the stairway to nowhere:

Its such a weird stairway that it bears explaining. I'm taking the picture from a very small bedroom on the north end of the house. The stairway Angie is coming up ends at a chimney. So there are 2 little like proto-steps that brought you into the bedrooms. I wouldn't have wanted to negotiate those in the middle of the night. 

The spot where Angie is standing in the picture is now the bathroom vanity down stairs.

Still to come in phase 1 is the ceiling in the living room and bedroom and refinishing the floors in those rooms.

Pictures of food

Often I think "This would be a good story for the blog" and then I forget to take pictures.

So instead of the stuff I've been doing lets take a look at what I've been eating. We're making an effort to eat less meat, really chicken, pork or beef. This has mostly taken the form of burritos.

The magic here is that they're super easy and can be made from just about anything. For purely vegetarian we'll grill some peppers and then warm up a can of beans with some taco seasoning. Start with a layer of rice. I usually use white rice, Angie tends to use a rice pilaf like from Goya. Then some beans, and the peppers. You might like onions with your peppers but they upset Angie's stomach.

A couple weeks ago the grocery store had tuna steaks on sale. I've ruined quite a few unsuspecting tuna steaks. The thing I've learned is to not overcook them. This one is done, you might not think its done but you're wrong. Cook it any more and its ruined.

Really good, big wraps are hard to find, if you've got a hispanic grocery near by they're your best bet. Fortunately our local grocery has good ones. Here I've added some Caesar salad which gives a nice flavor. I forgot to add salsa before I took the picture and had to go back later.

This is haddock with "Magic Fish" coating. Again pan fried but haddock wants to be cooked all the way through.

At home we steam the wraps before we assemble, this makes them slightly sticky which helps keep them rolled. At the great northern estate I grill them a little in a cast iron pan which seals them shut. I like the little amount of crunch they get when I do that.

I should note that this is also a good way to eat cheap, I bet we're only looking at maybe $2 per portion.

The floor continues

 The difficulty with the great northern estate is really the distance from the great northern estate to, well, anywhere. That of course means I can't be around as much as I would like to and thus everything takes twice as long as I would like.

So, you'll remember a couple weeks ago when I started refinishing the floor in the camp. When I left the floor had been sanded to 80 grit and the first coat of finish put down.

I used an oil based finish with the old-school thinking that it would be a tougher coating for a floor that gets kind of tortured. The satin finish is supposed to not show imperfections so bad as gloss.

The result looked okay but felt terrible. I think that first coat raised the grain of the wood and made it feel really rough and unpleasant.

I'd used the entire gallon on the floor and couldn't locally source any more oil based finish, the stuff I could get was all water based and thus incompatible with what I had already put down.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I'm back with 2.5 gallons of the oil based finish, honestly this is the size can I should have bought in the first place. If I'd looked around a little more at Home Depot I'd have found it.

Because of the delay I needed to sand to 220 grit. I did that with my old Harbor Freight palm sander. This wouldn't have been so bad except that the backs of my knees were still sore from the 5 hour slog getting the floor flat. My knee pad straps had really dug in. I should have taken a few minutes to rig up my sander on a stick so I could do the job standing up. Oh well.

Once again I had to clean, clean, clean all the dust left behind and finally put down some of the new semi-gloss.

Semi-gloss gives a balance between that nice shiny look and hiding any imperfections in the job.

This is the dried 3rd coat just before I put down the 4th.

So with 4 coats down I'd intended to give a couple days for the floor to dry and harden but Independence day intervened and I didn't have a chance to get back to it. This is probably for the best, the longer it can harden without getting walked on much, the better. I'll be back at it soon.

While I was waiting for the floor to dry I took a minute to clean the accumulated cruft off of the pipe that goes under the dam. When I first walked out to the pipe a frog jumped. Later as I was cleaning he came back. Frogs are common around the edge of the pond but I rarely get to see them, they jump away before I get close. This guy hung out for 10 or more minutes just watching me. He was pretty big for a frog in our area, maybe just a bit smaller than my fist.

Well that was weird, again...

 You might remember back in 2023 when the burner element in our stove failed. I was sitting near it and heard the "BZZZT" of the element trying to weld itself to the body of the stove.

At the time I replaced that burner with one from eBay that cost about half of the official replacement. I noted that it was thinner than the original but otherwise seemed to work fine.

That was true until last September. I was up north hunting moose with my dad when Angie texted that it had happened again, only this time it was worse:

Where before the shielding had only melted a little bit Angie wasn't as quick to get the oven shut off and this time it melted but good.

I jumped on the internet but couldn't remember the model of the stove. I ended up ordering the same unit again. Interestingly this time the replacement is thicker.

I have a good feeling about this one, its better built than the last one. I probably ought to buy the proper replacement now, these are easy to change so just keep the right one around until this one fails. I probably won't do that but its what I ought to do...