As you can probably imagine, the Cabin Rental business is seasonal. Summertime is busiest here at Cabin Creekwood, with lots of family vacations. Holidays are also busy, like the winter break between Christmas and New Years, Thanksgiving, and the other long weekends scattered throughout the year. During the winter, we host many skiers on weekends, but midweek tends to be a little slow. In the spring, we are covered up with cyclists coming down from New England and Canada, who are taking advantage of our warmer weather to get a jump start on their spring training. So finding time to fit in bigger remodeling projects can be quite a challenge.
We often take the time when rentals slow down right after Thanksgiving to tackle some bigger projects that take the cabin out of inventory for a few days. Here is one such project that was done between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Cabin Barnwood used to be a two-car garage. When we bought the property in 1995 and had the garage converted into a cabin, we decided to keep the garage doors because of the unusual, conversation-starting feature that a cow painted on the door provided. However, over the years, the garage doors have gradually deteriorated so that they were allowing air and water to enter the cabin. Not good!
We tried to keep the doors as long as possible with a variety of temporary fixes. We replaced the window panes, which were single thickness, with custom made double pane glass. This eliminated a lot of sweating on the inside. A few years later we caulked and repainted the doors, all except the cow, which we wanted to keep as long as possible. Then last year, we painted the doors again, this time covering up the cow with red like the rest of the door.
Recognizing the continued deterioration of the doors, we brought in our good friend and contractor Gerry Chandler of South River Construction to make a recommendation. He suggested covering the outside of the doors with siding, and covering the glass inside with plywood. Liking his recommendation, we hired him for the job, and it was completed it in just a few days.
Click here to see all the photos.
Stay tuned for more upcoming projects to be done this winter!