In keeping with my annual recap of home improvement projects accomplished (really for my own record-keeping), let’s rewind to summer 2024. (Here’s summer 2020, 2022 & 2023).
I love that we live in an authentic log cabin, but after 5 years of ownership, I would consider wood structures to be very high maintenance. Wood is more prone to damage from water, insects, movement, but most structures up here are logged. The upkeep every summer involves an exfoliation (sanding) and a spray tan (staining). This year, we tackled a second wall of the cabin. It was a bit more difficult because there was the door frame and windows, so we had to pull off several pieces to treat (and repainted them green to pop … because why not). This side gets most of the weather (sun, wind, etc), so it was particularly in need of attention (and we already have noticed a difference this winter). As a reminder, the process is for us to sand all the old stain off, then fill in any cracks with backer rod/caulk, then slap on 2 coats of stain.



Next summer, we’ll do the front wall of the cabin, which also gets a lot of the weather and will be all sorts of fun to work around the window frames & electrical boxes. Yep, totally looking forward to that …

We also did some maintenance to seal the wooden yurt beams. The Weatherall brand/color of stain & caulk recommended for the yurt does NOT ship to Alaska for less than like $400 (common issue for us), and I probably could have found a substitute, but instead I just had it shipped to the lower 48 and we brought it on as checked luggage. Anyway, we completed the exterior, but it would behoove us to treat the splitting beams from the inside, except that we’ll need to get some sort of scaffolding and it feels like a big production nonetheless.

I have been wanting a summer outdoor spigot for awhile, but it was definitely more of a want versus a need. I wanted to be able to fill water jugs for the yurt more easily and to have the option for a hose to keep hooked up for watering my mini garden (we also built a mini garden box, but I never took pictures!). Regardless, it was not something we could do on our own, and finding someone with availability & skills in our small community is forever a challenge. But voila! We got it done this summer & I’m a happy camper.

Now after writing that blog post and knowing we have quite a few months left of winter, I am definitely salivating over summer!!!
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Very clever idea to fly the stain and caulk! Good job on the spigot.