Staining the cabin

We have a cabin that Farmer John's Grandpa built. (I should probably call him Farmer Homer - or Farmer Pap.) All the wood is from the farm and lumber was cut with his sawmill. Nobody has ever lived in the cabin for very long, it was mostly used when hunters came to the farm and is now just for storage. The wood was never treated or protected in any way - so earlier this week we stained it.

First Farmer John got to use my second-favorite farm tool - the power washer. He cleaned the porch and railings.

Here's what the porch looked like after the power washing.

Oh, I should have mentioned that we cleared everything off the porch first. You know, things like chairs, tables, a glider and the moose antlers. No West Virginia cabin would be complete without it's moose antlers.

Then all the windows and doors were covered with plastic. That's because we were going to use "Uncle" John's amazing paint sprayer.

The paint sprayer was awesome. Here's Farmer John staining the floor of the porch - which took him oh, about 5 minutes. It was so much better than brushing or rolling all the stain on. The guys kept the sprayer bucket full, moved the hose around and supervised Farmer John whenever he was up on a ladder. This project went so much faster than we anticipated. Now we're thinking about which buildings to paint/stain next. Here's one of the walls after one coat of stain. Sam helped with rolling the stain on all the railings and then trimming around all the doors and windows. (I bet all you teenagers out there wish you could have such an exciting summer vacation!)Here's a before and after - I know it's hard to tell, just believe me that it looks better. Another after picture - this time with Farmhand Dad. I like the warm Cedar color of the cabin now and that it still shows some of the weathering that's happened over the past 26 years. Our next goal will be to run water the cabin and eventually add a bathroom. Until then, it still has the best porch on the farm.