The first task undertaken for our basement finishing/remodelling project was to put in egress windows for the 2 soon-to-be basement bedrooms. We initially debated whether or not to make one room a bedroom, which would require an egress window and the other a den, which would NOT require a window (and thus less work for us). We finally decided that we would put in a window in each room so that we would have the option of making each space a legal bedroom. This would also help with the resale value of the house if we ever decided to leave Burnsville.

Once the decision of how many windows to install was made, the next chore was getting to the area where the windows would go. This meant removing a good amount of dirt on the west side of the house. The decision in front of us at that point was what implement we were going to use. Shovel vs. Backhoe. As this was our first task in the project our energy level was high, and we were anxious to get started. Researching where to rent a backhoe, justifying the cost, and scheduling a weekend to execute the task was not nearly as difficult as grabbing a shovel from the garage. So, around the September 2006 timeframe I started digging, and digging and digging. To be honest, it wasn’t a terrible chore, but it wasn’t easy either. Rocks, cement foundation and tree roots made for some slow-going. In addition to removing the dirt from the side of house, there was the added question of what to do with removed dirt. Luckily, our yard is spattered with many ares of landscaping and flower beds so the destinations of our dirt-filled wheelbarrow were plenty. But, this unforseen task took time, which meant I wasn’t in the hole digging.

At this same time (fall, 2006) my father-in-law, Bill Fischer, (recently retired) was available and willing to provide a helping hand. Bill’s knowledge of all sorts of do-it-yourself projects would provide us with both the knowledge and justification of doing these projects by ourselves, and correctly. Bill came and stayed with us for a few days and helped enlarge the holes in the earth next to house, prepping the area for what would soon be 2 gaping rectangular holes in our foundation for the windows.

Once the holes were large enough to accomodate the size of the windows, it was on to cutting through the cement foundation walls, which would bring light into a space which hadn’t seen the sun since it was excavated in 1967.

If you’ve ever heard about the mess made when cutting through cement, you have to really only see it to believe it. The amount of tiny-grained dust particles created by sawing through cement is amazing. And despite any and all efforts to contain the plumes of gray dust, somehow, someway everything, and I mean EVERYTHING in the house will have at least a small coat fine dust.

While we were used to inhaling the dust from cutting the cement, we also decided to cut through the block between the finished part of the basement and the crawlspace. Before this point, the only way into the crawl space was to either ‘crawl’ through the 2′ x 2′ opening under the stairwell and dropping 5 feet to the dirt floor, or just recently enter the space though one of the outside window openings.

Now that the window openings had been cut it was time to rough-in the opening with 2” X 8” treated lumber. A combination of adhesive and cement screws were used to construct these borders. At this point we could have theoretically installed the windows, but a couple of reasons lead us to only place hinged plywood doors over the openings. For one, the holes we dug weren’t lined with whatever finishing product would complete the project. We were still undecided on whether to go with the corragated metal lining or construct a brick-style lining with pavers. We could have made this decision and proceeded with completing the egress windows, but another unrelated issue made us hold off. Because we had decided to sheetrock the rooms in the basement, we need a way to get the sheetrock into the basement. Because of the design, and size of the stairwell leading to the basement, there would be no way to get sheets of sheetrock into the basement. The only option would be to use the openings we cut for the egress windows. With winter approaching we were lined the plywood doors with insulation and hoped that would be enough to keep the cold, as well as any furry animals out of the crawl space.

For the past 2 years Shelly and I have undertaken the enormous task of finishing our basement. By “the past 2 years” I mean, “we started 2 years ago”. The plan was to finish the basement and remodel the upstairs, guest bathroom all at the same time AND all before Hannah was born. But like most plans, things never seemed to work out as designed.

As background, when Shelly and I bought our rambler-style house in Burnsville back in 2000 we knew about a few crawl spaces surrounding the basement. One under the master bedroom, another under the addition in the back of the house, and a third under the adjacent areas of the 2 upstairs guest bedrooms and guest bathroom. We discovered about a year after living in the house that the crawl space under the bedrooms/bathroom wasn’t 3 feet high like the other crawl spaces, but instead was fully excavated to the basement’s foundation, making the height of the space ~8 feet. The only entrance into the space was a small 2′ x 2′ screened window, which lead to 500 sq. feet of empty dirt floor which was riddled with cast iron plumbing for the upstairs bathroom.

After a couple of years of dragging our feet on making a decision on what to do (if anything) with the space, we finally decided to transform the area into 2 legal bedrooms and a bathroom. And because all of the plumbing for the upstairs bathroom was above ground in the crawl space below, and thus needed to be replaced/moved, we naively decided to ‘gut’ and remodel the bathroom at the same time. Our thinking was that while the house was ‘under construction’ we might as well get it all done at the same time. Little did we know that do-it-yourself projects of this magnitude too more than ‘a couple of weeks’ to get done.

My next few blog entries will detail the steps taken for each of the projects over the past 2 years.

This past weekend was the annual Fall Picnic at Conrads in Moose Lake.  This year’s theme was “Lutheran Hot Dish”.  My parents and Allison organized the bulk of the activities while the rest of us brought the good weather and an assortment of Minnesotan hotdishes. 

This year’s attendance was spattered with quite a few more kids than previous years.  In all I think there were 40-50 attendees, with 10-12 being kids under the age of 10.  Activities for the kids (and kids-at-heart) ranged from Hayrides around the 80-acre farm, a scavenger hunt, fox-and-the-hen in the pasture and jumping in mud puddles.  For those of us whose wives wouldn’t let us get dirty in the mud, there was plenty to eat and drink, as well as putting on the boots and walking out to the maple grove.

Jason and I were also lucky enough to get out bow hunting on the land on Saturday and Sunday mornings.  Our trail cameras have picked up quite a few different bucks on the land this year.  The biggest reason for this is because Wilbur/Neal Koecher didn’t use the pasture land for their cows this summer.  While I’m sure my parents missed how well the cows kept the grass mowed throughout the property, Jason and I both welcomed the high grass which have given the big deer more reason to stick around the land.  We’re still undecided on whether or not to hunt Conrads this rifle season (November) or if we’ll stick to the public land in Barnum.  I suppose our decision will be made partially from the pictures from the trail cameras between now and then.

 

My parents have been building a ‘Bunk House’ up at Conrads  this past summer, and it’s shaping up nicely.  They contracted the cement work and framing out to a local contractor, but decided to do the siding and interior work by themselves. 

The exterior siding is horizontal cedar planking.

The interior is pre-finished, tongue-n-groove, pine siding provided by Sam’s company.

The A-frame bunk house is equiped with in-floor heat (fancy, fancy), plenty of windows and a nice small deck/patio.

Too warm; Too wet.  Jason and I hunted Thursday, Friday and Saturday without any luck whatsoever.  Our bait stations were being hit, but no bears decided to come out during daylight hours.  We did however get visited by a few other creatures during our time in the stand.  On Thursday night a wolverine wandered under our tree (which was a bit unnerving), and into the bait station.  I had never seen a wolverine before so it was pretty cool; they sure do look mean.  Their marks/striping give them a menacing look.  Just before dark we heard what we hoped was a bear…only to be disappointed by 3 well-fed raccoons.   After watching them crawl all over the logs at our bait station, we scared them away and headed back to Conrads to clean up. 

Despite being shut out by the bear on Thursday, we decided to celebrate bear hunting season by splurging on frozen pizza and Premium Grainbelt at Doc’s Bar in Sturgeon Lake.  Unfortunately we were 1 day too early to be entertained by Karaoke Ken, but I did kick Jason’s butt in Big buck Hunter.

Friday Jason and I helped my Dad (along with Dave Tatge) finish up the exterior siding on the bunkhouse.  The bunkhouse is really looking better and better! 

Friday night was Jason’s turn to hunt, will I manned the camera.  I was “sure” a HUGE bear would walk in front of Jason with a bulls eye painted on it’s chest (I will devote a future blog entry to Jason’s trophy wall vs. mine), but (un)fortunately the only visitors of the night were the same 3 raccoons at dusk.

It rained all day on Saturday and we decided that it would be wise for us to split up and double our odds of getting a bear that night.  It rained the majority of the time in the stand, which made it impossible to hear anything except for the billions of raindrops bouncing off of everything in the woods.  The only sign of life I saw that night was a lonely skunk and a few woodpeckers.  Jason was visited by the wolverine and raccoons.

Overall, the hunting was a bust, but I’m not complaining.  Getting out in the woods, and up in the tree stand is a welcome change from the hustle and bustle of “real” life.  Ah, but it’s nice to be home again.

This past Sunday (Sept. 7th) Jason and I made the trip to Moose Lake to bait one last time before we begin to hunt.  We baited our Moose Lake bait station first.  Once we arrived at the bait site, we were both surprised and happy to see that all of our bait (doughnuts and cereal) had been cleaned out of the bait pit.  Interestingly, the bottom 2-3 inches of the pit was filled with a sandy sludge which could have been partially composed of our bait.  Along with the empty bait pit, we also found a number of trails coming and going into the site.  From the condition of the trails it appears that a bear (or bears) have been visiting the site regularly.  We also found a good size pile of bear feces on one of the trails. 

Jason setup a bow stand in a nearby pine tree with enough room for us to place another stand next to it for the cameraman to sit in.  At this point we hadn’t decided which of our two bait sites we’d be hunting at, but did decided that we were both going to sit at the same bait station when we do begin to hunt.  We decided this because we’ve both shot bear already, and we’d rather shoot 1 bear and get it on video, as opposed to having better odds of shooting 2 bears and missing out on video taping either of the hunts. 

The Barnum bait station had also been hit, but only about half of the bait had been eaten.  We did find one hind bear print in the mud surrounding the bait pit, but it looked like a smaller bear.  I put up a bow stand in a nearby pine tree and we baited the station. 

Our plan for hunting is to take Thursday and Friday (Sept. 11 and 12) off from work and hunt the extended 4-day weekend.  The ‘plan’ if you can call it that is to fill both of our tags in these 4 days and be done with hunting.  As much fun as it is to sit in the woods and hunt, bear hunting is an exhausting endevour; not to mention time-consuming.  Let’s hope my next post will include pictures of two bears.

Shelly and I travelled to Floriday over Labor Day weekend to attend my high school friend, Brant Lagoon’s wedding.  We left the house on Thursday morning at 6am for our scheduled 7:45am flight, but didn’t end up leaving Minneapolis until closer to 11am.  We met up with Troy McCrady (another high school friend) and the 3 of us flew into Memphis for a 2 hour layover, and our connecting flight to Pensacola.  In Memphis the 3 of us met up with 4 other friends whose desitination was the same as our: Kevin and Kay Jensen, and Jon and Shanna McIntosh.  Once in Florida, we were later joined by Bert and Mel Wagner, and Ryan Ascheman.

Our trip basically included multiple trips to the Pensacola Beach, eating far too much seafood, and drinking an equal amount of alcoholic beverages.  Brant and his fiancee, Amy Soo planned out the majority of our activities and their pick of resturants and bars were superb.   Thank you so much Brant and Amy Soo!

Two establishments of note were a little resturant/coffee shop named, Crema and a night club named, Sammys.  Shelly, Kay, Troy and myself found Crema on Friday morning while driving around downtown Pensacola in search of coffee.  The breakfast was so good we brought the whole crew out for brunch the next morning.  The chef at Crema was another reason for our return visit.  He (we never got his name) came over to our table both mornings, and LOVED to talk.  Shelly and I even got a few fried clams from him.  The other establishment we spent time at was a night club named Sammys.  We ended two of our nights at Sammys because it was open until 3am; one of those nights was after the wedding reception where we brought a total of over 20 people. 

Looming over the weekend was the impending hurricane (”Gustav”) and it’s near-miss of Pensacola.  Luckily for us, we only saw a few minor showers on Sunday night (the night of the wedding), and semi-tropical-storm weather on Monday morning on our drive to the airport.

The trip was great, filled with lots of memories and a great opportunity to see Brant and Amy Soo (not to mention the other White Bear Lake high school friends), and to be a part of their wedding, but I’m glad to be home in Minnesota.  It is safe to say I will not be ordering any shrimp, lobster or crab anytime in the near future.

The 2nd bear baiting session of the season was an individual effort of mine because Jason had family plans over the weekend of the 23rd.  Jason drew the 3rd session, Labor Day weekend because I was in Florida (Brant’s wedding).

2nd weekend

My baiting day went well.  I started off baiting the station in Moose Lake first and brought out three 5-gallon buckets of doughnuts and 1 gunny sack of cereal, as well as a 20 pound container of molasses.  My first trip from the 4-wheeler to the station was accompanied by two buckets of doughnuts and the molasses.  The trail to the station was barely visible, but I’ve made the trek enough to basically know my way around that part of the woods.  I was happy to find that a bear had moved a few of the logs from bait hole.  Not all of the bait had been eaten, but that wasn’t very surprising.  The woods are still plentiful with berries and acorns.  My trip back to the 4 wheeler to collect the remaining bait was uneventful. 

I returned to Conrads to load up with the same amount of bait for my trip to the Barnum bait station.  After finally reaching the bait station in the public land in the Barnum woods, I was again happy to see that a bear had been snooping around our bait.  The logs were pushed aside, but not much much of the bait had been eaten.  In fact, much of the cereal that was coated with the blueberry filling was not even touched.  Nonetheless, I dumped all the bait I brought and coated the nearby trees with remaining the blueberry jelly.

3rd weekend

Jason baited the same amount as I did on Labor Day weekend, and his report was that both stations had been hit fairly hard.  One of the stations had most of the bait pushed out of the hole.  And apparently a few of the trees at the Barnum site had claw marks where I had thrown the blueberry jelly.  So far so good.  One more weekend of baiting before we start to hunt.  Hopefully the natural sources of food start to dry up so that be bears begin to frequent our bait stations more.

Shelly, Hannah and I attended the State Fair on Friday the 22nd.  It was the 2nd State Fair for Hannah.  We took her last year when she was only 3 weeks old.

We decided to get to the Fair as early as possible so that we might avoid the crowd.  It wasn’t all that crowded at 9am so we went directly to the Animal Birthing Barn.  We saw baby Turkeys on our way in, and were lucky enough to see a few pigs being born.  Very cool.  We then proceeded to a few other of the animal buildings.  Along the way we found a stand that makes wood (carved) signs, which we’ve been looking for at the Fair for a few years.  We’ve been promising my Mom and Dad a wood sign for their ‘direction post’ at Conrads.  The prices were reasonable so we ordered a sign that would be ready just a few hours.

In those few hours we decided to walk around and of course eat some ‘fair food’.  Normally we’d head straight for the cheese curds, but this year we decided not to since we just recently joined Lifetime Fitness to lose a couple of pounds.  But, since the Fair only comes around once a year we did splurge a bit.  We at the following:  chocolate covered bacon (yum yum), Sweet Martha’s Cookies, all-you-can-drink Milk, a shredded turkey sandwich (new, very good!), beef jerkey, snow-cone, apple-freeze and some fruit. 

Overall, the fair was a lot of fun this year.  By the time we left (~2pm), it was packed, and we were happy to be leaving.  Next year we might even let Hannah ride on some of the ‘kiddie’ rides.

On Thursday, August 14th, Hannah’s Birthday, we had our immediate family over to the house for a little party.  Shelly had been planning the event for weeks (maybe months), so we were both excited and relieved the day had come.  The theme Shelly chose for the party was ‘Picnic’.  I won’t try and describe all of the details of what Shelly did; I’ll let the pictures of the party do the talking.  But mainly there was a lot of color, flowers and summer/grill-food.

Earlier in the day a few of us took Hannah to the Minnesota Zoo.  The main attraction this summer are the 3 Grizzly Bears, and boy are they cool.  I wish I had taken a few pictures of them.  If you have the chance to make it out there, trust me you won’t be disappointed. 

After the zoo visit everybody met at our house for some appetizers on the deck and a sample of “Hannah’s Best Root Beer”.  To go along with the ‘Picnic’ theme, Shelly thought it would be fun to make some homemade Root Beer.  The whole process was fairly simple and the result was a pretty good tasting product.  The carbonation level is a bit on the low-end, but if you add some ice cream to it, it makes one excellent root beer float.

Once we were all filled up on Brats and Pulled-Pork sandwiches, not to mention the homemade baked beans and rice pudding (both recipes from Grandma Olive) it was time to give Hannah her first birthday cake.  Shelly constructed a ‘dessert tower’ made up of carrot cake cupcakes topped with edible (marshmallow) flowers.  Hannah loved it!

The night finished up with Hannah opening presents (too many as usual) and eventually saying ‘good night’ to everybody as she stayed up way past her bedtime.

Overall the birthday was a huge success!  I take zero credit for any of it (except for maybe the Root Beer production), as Shelly was the mastermind and the one up the majority of the nights prior to the party prepping every last detail.

Here is a link to the pictures of the day: