Floor

After  the initial build out in the fall, I returned for spring, to ride, for Tailgate - and to continue work on the cabin.The first among many projects left to do included putting in some kind of floor. In Alaska, many remote cabins will use the sub-floor - 1"+ plywood for the flooring of the cabin. While this works, I wanted to go with something a little more finished  - like natural stone which would contrast the all wood structure and maintain use of natural and recycled materials throughout.

It ended up being a confusing task - not the installation - that was pretty straightforward. It was finding the right material and getting it to the cabin - much more of a mission than I had anticipated. 

i started by fishing around on Craigslist and the Alaska List for deals on tile - nothing there - then started roaming the aisles of Home Depot and Lowes. After some deliberation I decided on a black marble - not cheap - but beautiful. Finding enough to do a project larger than a bathroom proved challenging- and would require picking up all available inventory from more than one store. After calculating the weight - close to 2k pounds - I would need a pickup truck. When I returned with the truck, and went to pick up the first batch of black granite tile, I stumbled, almost literally, across some 18x18 Travertine - on clearance - normally $5 a square foot - now $1 .Low and behold they had a full pallet in the back - and that full pallet would be the right amount for the cabin. It also weighed 2100 lbs., enough to almost break the back of my rented Chevy Silverado- when they put the pallet in the back, the suspension squatted some 5" - I actually inspected the tires to convince myself they would not pop on the 230 miles of frost heaved road to Cloud Mountain.

In summary the rest of the job took a few days and consisted of...

Step One - Get Tile

Step Two - Drive 230 miles

Step Three - Unload Tile

Step Four - move tile 200 yards over 3' deep snow to the cabin

Step Five - Install sub-floor

Step Six - Move tile into cabin

Step Seven - Install tile

Three days to and from Anchorage and three days moving and installing floor.