Cabins

Folks have wondered how three families can fit into the lake home here and still get along.  The answer is that we are tight.  When we built this house, we only had one grandchild, and at the time it was hard to envision that we would have five someday.

This is a two story house with the upstairs on the parking lot level with an attached garage.  The upstairs has the living room and the master bedroom.  The kitchen is an alcove off of the living room. 

The lower level is walkout and has a second family room with surrounding bedrooms.  One side has a large guest bedroom with an attached bath.  The other side has two bedrooms with a center bath.  So one family has the large suite and a bath, and the other family has two bedrooms and a bath.

It works for now, but as the girls grow, they will kick the oldest boy out of the bedroom, so we have a sleeper sofa in the family room for him.  Still four girls in the small kids bedroom will be an all night party waiting to happen.  But given the cost of housing down here in Lake Ozark, I don't think we will be trading houses anytime soon.

We only have a 60 foot wide lot and lake frontage, so the house is small by some folks standards, but then we don't actually live here.........it is just a lake cabin.

When I was a boy, we used to go to Clear Lake up in Northern Iowa and the cabins were 2x4 framing with lap siding on the outside of the walls.   The wiring was just stapled to the wood on the inside in plain sight.  No wall board at all.

The plumbing came up out of the floor from underneath, and the entire building sat on concrete blocks. They did paint the interior walls and frame work with a kind of lime green paint.  The windows were single pane, and there was no insulation at all.

In my college years, we went to school up there, and I remember working for one of the owners of the cabins blowing the water out of the plumbing and sealing up the windows with plastic for the winter.  The buildings had no heat.

So by those standards we are really lucky to have drywall interior walls with heat and air conditioning. This is a year round home, but it does not become nearly as cold in Missouri as it did up by the Minnesota state line in Northern Iowa.  Winter was brutal up there....

Here in Lake Ozark today, we spent the day under overcast conditions, and I think it might have made 70 degrees late in the afternoon.  My son Chris and I ran the power washer and scrub brush all afternoon on the dock.  The trees here give off a green sticky pollen, and it was thick on everything.  The water ran yellow green on everything we washed.

It was a ardous task, but by late afternoon, we decided to put the new jet ski in the lake.  So once on the back of the pickup, we headed over to the public ramp.  Chris hopped on and I backed him into the water.  I finally got deep enough that he was able to just back it off of the trailer.

I came back with the pickup, and he rode around for a little while, but was back and on the lift rather quickly.  I guess he took a drenching out in the main channel and was cold.  Not a good day for jet skiing........ 

He reports that the new ski has waaaay more power than the 15 year old one we traded off.  He says it is almost frightning.  He of course had to see how fast it went wide open, and it indicated just a little short of 60.  Say 57 to 59, but that changes as you bounce in the waves.  But perhaps it will suffice to say it goes like heck!!

I am sure that I will never try that one out, as it beats your insides when it bounces on the waves.  No one has had the machine out again.  They thought it might be warmer tomorrow, and at least the sun might be comming out then.

Of course I was teasing them that in their younger days they wouldn't have let the thing set for more than a minute, and would have run all the gas out before they put it up for the night.  The grandkids moms wouldn't let any of them put their swim suits on as they said it is just toooooo cold, so they could only watch.

Tonight we are hard at it telling more stories and doing what families do when they don't get together as much as they would like to.

Retired Rod