Hans & Franz's Family Cabin

My dear friend Hans, who has graced this blog a few times with his wonderful wife Teresa, has ALWAYS talked about his family's cabin up in the mountains of Colorado.  It is located about 20 minutes west of his hometown of Salida, CO near the top of Monarch Pass on US 50.  Over the years, as Hans and his brother Franz (yes, they are brothers of THOSE names) have moved away from their hometown, and as their parents have grown elderly in age (boy is THAT a common theme in our lives these days), the cabin has fallen into disrepair.

So, for Hans' 40th birthday, he and his wife arranged for their friends to enjoy a "work" vacation up in the mountains of Colorado.  They would provide housing and food, the rest of us would provide the muscle to spruce up the cabin, but more importantly make it much more accessible for his parents so they can enjoy the cabin on a more regular basis.

Franz, Hans, Nancy and Xavier W.

The Brothers W. in front of "Rock n Pine" the family cabin near Monarch Pass, Colorado

One of the projects that I worked on over the week was to remodel an upstairs room.  On the left is Nina.  She and I are removing nails and catching up.

Franz and Nina putting up sheetrock in the upstairs room.

Here I am putting up moulding on the doors and windows.

Hans and I on the newly built outdoor steps up to the new upstairs room!

By the end of the week, we were putting down padding and carpet in the upstairs room.  You'll see the sheetrock is painted and the moulding is in place!

The ever present need to cut firewood.  Here Franz is in charge of the chainsaw and I'm the assistant feeding the wood.

Franz left in the middle of the week and I took over the cutting of the wood.

A large project was to build some stairs along the side of the cabin to more easily access the storage areas in back.  Here are the stairs after they have been set in place and filled the gravel.

Those of us still present on Wednesday of the week were tasked with moving a ton of gravel.   We were the "priceless" friends!

To give you an idea of how much gravel we moved, I think this tractor (not the right actual name) came and dumped 26 loads of gravel on our pile.

Hans' mother walking the steps for the first time.

Hans' Dad checking out the railing!

Another project I worked on was sealing the top of an addition to prevent water from leaking through.  I now have an intimate knowledge of tar!  Here, however, was one of our challenges.  Seems as though we were always fighting hailstorms.

Happy to be nearing the end of the work.  It's clean up time on the inside of the cabin.

On the Monday night of the week, we had 23 people (including family) up working and enjoying our vacation.  So we celebrated Hans' 40th birthday.

We all managed to stay in two cabins that looked like this, that were about a five minute walk down the road from the W family cabin.

Meals were family style!  The woman front left in the green shirt is Hans' wife, Teresa.

A group photo taken sometime when i was there, but somehow, I wasn't in the photo.  I was probably off working.....or napping!