OK... So we are making some big time progress now. I was only going to take Monday and Tuesday off and come up here and work by myself, but on a lark I decided to text my brother and see if he had any time off from his job to maybe help a little. He's been a carpenter for about 47 years. He's 5 years older than me. He's a serious trim carpenter on a lot of very high end homes.

So he tells me he just quit his job and needs some work, so I paid him to help me all week this week. He and I together got as much done in one week as Mrs. Irish and I could have gotten done in about 6 weekends.

My brother:



He drinks PBR like water and smokes about a pack of Pall Malls a day. That's an old carpenter for you.

We basically got the whole downstairs ready for flooring, counter tops, trim and the tile back splash. We worked like Hebrew slaves getting all the ship lap installed. A lot of high work in the stairwell.

Finished mantle ready for the ledge stone and the wood stove to be installed:



After all the cabinets were installed and the ship lap installed he suggested we make a run to Lowes and get the stuff to finish up the stairs, and finish them we did!



Something else he did was to wire up another breaker in the temporary power box so that we could run the cabin A/C on a separate circuit from the compressor and power tools. It was a game changer. Just the one window unit kept the cabin at 78 or below all week. I have smaller units in each of the upstairs bedrooms, so between all of those we will easily be able to keep the cabin plenty cool in the hottest summers.

More stair pics of my Bro's carpentry skills. He's giving me a bunch of 1" square iron tube spindles left over from a job and we are going to use them on the stairs.



We installed drywall up behind the cabinets because all of that up to the ceiling will get subway tile and grey grout. We will be using Acadia butcher block counter tops with butterfly joints where we connect them in the corners. I never realized that there was so much work to installing cabinets correctly. He used all kinds of shims and spacers to get everything perfectly level and square. I learned a lot just watching him work all week. He is an amazing carpenter.



To cap the week off I installed the Compass Rose I designed in Autocad and had Roland at Metal Market in Ft. Payne CNC for me. It turned out great and makes a nice addition to our top deck. I got out my trusty compass from my Jeep gear to set it right. If you're out in the woods I would never trust a smart phone compass. We had two phones out there with compasses and my Suunto compass. The only one that was right was the "real" compass.



Mrs. Irish and I were getting a little burned out and the contribution my brother has made has been a complete game changer and reinvigorated us to push on through and get it finished. We bought all the interior doors and flooring Friday at Dixie Salvage in Ft. Payne so those will be getting installed soon. We may yet meet our goal of getting finished for the Holidays.