Since I last wrote about the “tent house”, we have pretty much completed it. We are very pleased with the results and are looking so forward to putting up the tent in it later next month ~ in the meantime we will be setting it up with some chairs to sit and just enjoy the view.

We left off the last post with the rafters all in place, ready for the strapping to go on before the roofing material. The first photo will show you the spacing of the strapping, we would have liked to have had them fairly tight together but it would have used up too much material so we opted for a wider spacing.

Next was the installation of the fascia boards on the gable ends,

Those two projects took up most of one day, then Rick spent the next day sanding the posts and beams with his belt and palm sanders in preparation for the staining. We would have liked to leave the timbers natural to weather to a driftwood gray colour but all of this lumber is fir and would mostly likely start to blacken with mould, so we had it sprayed the colour of our cabin’s trim ( Benjamin Moore – Kingsport Gray HC-86), which is very much the colour of the tree trunks and blends into the environment very nicely.  A good friend of ours on Hornby offered to spray it out for us, so that saved us countless hours of staining it by hand – thank you  Jeff!!

We had the roofing company that we use in Qualicum Beach go over with Rick for a day to install the same metal roofing that we used on the cabin. It is an 18 gauge standing seam metal roofing in the colour charcoal, our neighbours roof is a fun & beautiful blue but we had chosen a quieter look. Metal roofing is excellent to use for the catchment of rain water that would be stored in a cistern or rain barrels, it is the cleanest option. They first laid a layer of black paper, but vertically rather than the traditional horizontal, so that the layers would not be seen from underneath through the openness of the strapping.

One of the last things that has been done was the building of a step onto the lawn. Next will be a final sanding of the deck and the application of a couple of coats of a Sikkens product on that ~ if the decking was cedar we would not stain it but once again these boards are fir (it is what we have so much of and wanted to use it up).

The last step on this project will be the skirting in of the lower portion from the deck to the ground, we are thinking of using board and batten siding that will compliment the board and batten we used around our outdoor cooking station and / or we may just add soil and plant ferns that will grow tall enough to soften and bring down the look of the height from the driveway.

Eventually, we will frame in walls, add windows, a door and add on a small bathroom ~ so our guests can really stay in comfort! For now though, it will be a “tent house” where they will be warmer up off the ground and sheltered from the rain. Once we have it all set up I will post a picture of how it looks with the tent and how we decorate it all up!