Alaska Homesteading


At the end of our summer fishing season last year Doug and I returned to Haines, AK where we met back in 1994. Doug’s kids (Dawson and Marirose) live there along with many good friends. Now that we are both spending our summers fishing in Alaska, we decided it was time to truly move here and build a place of our own.
The cabin with "bunk house"

We found 3+ acres about a mile outside of town that is pretty flat and dry that we purchased last November. We need to clear a lot of brush and a few trees to build our new home, but first we need to deal with the neglected cabin, 4 out buildings, 10 abandoned Ford trucks and numerous other old, rusty “treasures” scattered thru-out the property.

We arrived back in Haines in early April, ready to tackle as much of the clean up as we could before heading out to fish for spring King Salmon down near Sitka in May and June. Although we were tempted (and encouraged by some) to tear all the buildings down and start over, we knew it was going to be a slow process to build anything new so we decided to “camp” in the cabin until we could come up with a better solution.

The cabin hadn’t been lived in for 7 years (except for the family of squirrels that made a huge mess of things) and it, as well as the out buildings, were also full of stuff. We dove in and started hauling out junk and scrubbing down and painting every surface in the cabin. We were both extremely pleased when Doug was able to get the electricity, the old well and the septic system working!

Before: Dining area
After: Dining Area










We ended up spending both April and May on the place while simultaneously getting Pacific Son ready to fish. It is still very much a work in progress but the cabin is now livable and we have made a dent in clearing out the out buildings and gathering up the scattered junk around the “yard”. We were even able to re-purpose some of the abandoned items to create our table, benches and closet area.

Before Bedroom area

After Bedroom


Before Utility room (Squirrels nest was in ceiling above here)
After Utility room













We will continue to improve the space in the fall, but for now, its time to go fishing!



Comments

  1. Sheila BoyceJune 16, 2019 at 3:13 AM

    Great work! You have made a good start. Smart to start with what was there.

    ReplyDelete

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