Bucking The Standard

The interior of the cabin is coming along nicely.

All the paneling is now up in the main room. Except under the kitchen counter. That's an area yet to be addressed. I think I can use the cutoffs from the panels in the main room to cover the insulation under the counter before building some shelving underneath. That shelving will take a little creative thinking.

We figured ten sheets to do the paneling.

It's going to take eleven.

There's one sheet of paneling left of the ten and it is sitting safely in the loft over the bathroom and alcove. One up top waiting and one more to be bought will finish the alcove.

I made the up and back this morning to carry a small table up, finish that last corner in the main room, and move a nice futon into the cabin.

An electrical outlet had to be moved where it was tight against the corner and would have been a booger to finish around. My son-in-law helped me with that. We moved it Monday. By the time I got to that corner with the paneling, I was ready to dog it off and make the run back to the lower end of the county.

The first step today was to cut and install the insulation. Nasty stuff. I hate fooling with it. But it makes a world of difference in the heating and cooling of living space. That wall gets the most sun of any of the four outside walls so there was no fudging on the itchy stuff. Just get in there with it and get it done.

I've always used a utility knife to cut insulation in past projects. Taking along a utility knife wasn't an item floating around in my brain. So I made do with what I had on me.

I cut the insulation with the Mora that hangs around my neck. That Mora gets a lot of use. It does practically all of my day to day everyday knife chores. Even the slicing and dicing in the kitchen. Turns out that it is a smart tool for cutting insulation too. The blade is long enough that you aren't picking up fibers on your fingers that get transferred to other bodily parts that, in turn, go to itching.

Two corners need corner molding. Some type of molding needs to go at the bottom and tops of the paneling. I doubt I'll use the milled stuff from the store. Standard molding looks good in standard residential houses. This is a far cry from standard residential housing so we don't want to install something that will take away from the cozy non-standard ambiance we are creating in our KOA Camping Cabin on Steroids.

I was doing a little looking on the internet to get some idea of the average price of used sticks and bricks housing in this county. One of the sources that I looked at indicated that the average price of used houses is 264K. That same source indicated that the Median Monthly Housing Cost (with a mortgage) is $1,225.00. I can't swear that those numbers are accurate. I wasn't the one doing the numbers on the calculator.

The simple truth of the matter is that it costs a lot to live the median lifestyle in this county. It costs a lot to live a median lifestyle anywhere for that matter. The truth of the simple matter though is that there are alternatives. There are workarounds to the problematic median lifestyle thing. There are ways to work around the median lifestyle issue once the median lifestyle is dismissed as a goal … a goal that far too many strive for but never honestly realize … or dismissed as a symbol of status and a reason for occupying the planet.

This is not intended to be a railing accusation. Far from it. It's merely pointing out what it costs to buy into this fast growing county. You can find stuff at the extreme ends of the standard if (1) you have the resources to afford the upper end, or (2) your resources are such that you have to buy into neighborhoods where your hubcaps go missing. Personally, we (1) don't have the resources to buy into the upper end, and (2) we prefer to keep our hubcaps.

We don't have a problem with people having what they have. What we do have a problem with is a codified system telling us what we have to have to fit in and what we can or cannot do with it once we have it.