Extreme Makeover - Camp Store Edition

Our latest endeavor has been to remodel the camp store. The camp store is on the National Historic Registry like many of the other buildings and is one of the oldest metal-roofed buildings in the area. It will continue to be used as a store and camp check-in but was badly in need of some work.

Here is how the store looked during the summer of 2008:

It had a certain charm, and some lovely flowers planted out front, but it also had some serious flaws. Part of the building was covered in aging yellow vinyl siding while the rest of it was old brown-painted barn board. The roof was discolored, had holes in it, and leaked like a sieve every time it rained. The interior was dark and dingy with age. The exterior deck and interior floor were also suffering from age and water damage.

We started by repairing the roof with silicone. Missing nails were replaced and popped nails were pounded in (by yours truly). I admit it was pretty fun to crawl around up there. Then we used the airless paint sprayer to put on two coats of silver aluminium paint. Incidentally, the overspray from the paint turned all the foliage around the store a lovely silvery color so it looks like we had a visit from the Christmas fairy, and I now own a nice pair of moon boots (aka hiking shoes with a coat of silver paint on them.) Unfortunately there are still some leaks so we will have to keep working on it, but at least the roof looks better than it did.

Next we stripped off the vinyl siding and removed three sets of unsightly sliding glass doors. We sided over the outside of the building with new barn board, which led to a discussion about what color to paint the new building. I voted for white. We have painted every other building in the park barn red and it seemed like it might be nice to have a bit of variety. I even painted a picture of what I thought it would look like in order to try and convince everyone:



I was outvoted. The men concurred that if we painted the store white with the silvery white roof it would look as if the moon had landed in the park. So we painted it red:

I think they were right. It does look nice and will look even better once we get the windows in and all the trim painted white.

Next we tackled the inside of the store. We took down all the old laminate paneling and replaced it with really nice V-groove car siding - the boards are so light and crisp that they remind me of sugar wafer cookies.

Once the interior paneling is finished we will put in the new windows and doors and give the concrete floor a fresh coat of paint. Updates coming soon!

Gorillas in the Mist (otherwise known as Another Wet and Wild Day at Stonehouse Park)

Great White Chicken

Today the men caught a chicken in the woods. Go figure.

We've Been Working on the Railroad

You probably all realize that we don't have a railroad here (maybe someday...?) but we do have a parking lot full of railroad ties.

We placed a railroad tie at the head of each parking space and then drilled holes at both ends of the tie. We used sledge hammers to pound pieces of rebar through the holes and down through the gravel and into the dirt below. The kids helped out by using a punch and hammer to knock the rebar down as far as possible into the ground.

I now have much greater empathy for railroad workers after swinging an 8 lb. sledge for a few hours. William surprised us all by very trustingly holding the punch even after Owen accidentally hit Will's hand with the hammer.

And the best news of all - the parking lot is now DONE and APPROVED by the county!

A Few More Pictures

House Roof

Last week we took advantage of several days of dry weather to replace half of the house roof.

Here are the backhoe and the construction dumpster ready to catch the old shingles:

The old roof:

Scraping off the old shingles with shingle rakes:

There were 4 layers of dirty, dusty, sticky asphalt shingles to remove, as you can see here:

Bits of asphalt shingle with nailer boards underneath. Some of the nailer boards were immensely wide and must have come from enormous trees. They were in relatively good shape for the age of the house:

Clapboard siding where the two roofs meet. There isn't much siding as most of the house is limestone, so we are planning to keep what little there is and paint it white as it originally was:

After the roof was cleared and swept we started putting down new cedar shake shingles:

All in all the project went very smoothly. The cedar roof looks fantastic with the house's limestone facade. More importantly, it is raining as I write and we have no leaks! We will start on the other half of the roof as soon as the weather allows and I hope to have pictures of the finished product very soon.

Weekend Photos