SMOKY BRANCH CABIN

When I first moved to Tennessee, nearly ten years ago, I rented a house in Jefferson City for one year. I just gave em a years lease up front and that was that. During that period I was fortunate to become accepted in The Tennessee Wildlife Resource’s Agency and assigned a position with Reservoir Fisheries. That was an unexpected lifetime dream come true and that dream resumes today. Anyway, I had to move to within ten miles from the assigned lake. The house search was on. Remember now that I just moved over here to Jefferson City in 2011 due to that residence rule and now reside on this property I never wanted. So, back then I kept the search near the Cherokee National Forest as I hate neighbors. A little fixer-upper cabin (shack) fell under my eye right in the Cherokee forest. It sat half way up a mountain in a place called Smoky Branch. I used to be a fair carpenter in the seventies, and the price of the shack was right. It would take some work to make it habitable but, I thought I could fix it.

Today is a rainy, cold, dreary day and I was wasting time going through some old photos and the folder with the old cabin pictures came up. I thought it might be interesting to toss them up on the blog, just to pass time on this rainy day.

There she is.  Sweet, huh?  Not really.  It was in horrible condition.  I might add here that the camera used back then was hardly what anyone would call "up to date on technology."  The shots may not portray quality.
I wish I had those wagon wheels today.

I had started to tear the porch off in the shot above.  It was in very sad shape.

I started this project in winter out of boredom.  I'm dangerous when bored.

I tore the rotted steps off and started replacing parts of the porch deck and fabricated a railing.  That's Douglas when very young in center front of the shot.

What a mess.  I was sort of sorry I started this thing.  Many nights I worked until 3AM.  I somehow ignored the cold temperatures.  Remember - it was Winter.

 Douglas stuck it out with me

It was shaping up but, very slowly according to my temperament.   
I had to get some paint on the fresh wood and finish off the decking soon.

There was a lot of night work.  Even the roof supports needed replaced.  Whew!
I finally finished the railing and the deck and installed wood lattice on the front of the porch for ground effects.

I decided that if I'm going to paint the porch - I may as well paint the house too.  And, so I did.

The dump was slowly being transformed into a pretty fair habitat.  It went along slowly though.

As a last thought, I replaced the siding on the house with rough cut that I purchased from a local saw mill.  I even put new rain gutters on the roof.

 Just about done.  She looks pretty good at night anyway.

I wrapped it up about a week later.  Below is the finished product.  The neighbors couldn't believe the change-over.

I was pretty pleased and it was nice to get home from the lake and not have to mess with this project any longer.  

This property was covered with every conceivable flower and bush imaginable.  This is a mountain side and  wild flowers grew everywhere.  I was forced to mow them when cut the grass, in those rare events.  I miss this old place now.  It was peaceful out there and the only neighbor was further up the hill.  I never saw him very much and we got along well.  Douglas could roam where he wanted and not be a bother to anyone.  The place had very bad water though.  I had to change the water filters on the purification system daily.  I moved out the same month that the township was laying pipe along the road to pipe in city water.  Figures!

Well, I used up a couple morning hours posting this to the blog site.  Now I have to figure what to do with the afternoon.  See ya.