Progress at Blackberry Blossom Campground
We are continuing to work on our campground which we hope to have open sometime this spring. We have experienced a lot of setbacks, especially due to weather. Ironically,we decided not to try to open the campground last year due to the severe drought. There just wasn't enough water. This year construction has been slowed due to excessive rain. We will keep plugging away and will open the campground as soon as possible.
We are working on four projects for the campground. Following is an update on their progress.
The first project is of course, the campsites themselves.
We currently have 10 sites under construction. Janice and
the girls have taken these projects on and are doing a great job.
Pictures to follow.
The second project is the Camp Store & Office.
Camp Store Construction Underway
The building we are remodeling into our camp store & office started life as a storage shed for lumber back in the 1980s. It's in a perfect location for it's new use, so we decided to renovate it.
The first job was to remove the existing roof and add a shed to the rear.
A new roof was framed to cover the building and the new shed addition
The new roof was covered with tin.
The idea is to build the Camp Store to resemble an old country store. A parapet wall was built over the front. The old shed had a dirt floor, so a lot of hand digging was required to get enough clearance to put in a new wooden floor. A porch will be built on the front and will attach to the the parapet wall. A big sign will be placed on the wall above the porch.
After the floor was installed, I build the front wall. we used a couple of old window units and an old door we acquired somewhere along the way. Our good friend Toby, master carpenter extraordinaire, helped me install the door and windows. Here he is checking to see how plumb I built the front wall.
After the door and windows were installed, we covered the front of the store with siding and Janice gave it a first coat of paint.
The parapet wall is covered with plastic until the porch is built and siding is applied to the wall.
I wired the building, then Toby and I installed the ceiling and wall coverings. This is a view from inside the store looking towards the new Bath House. The next step for the store is a big ol' porch with some rockin' chairs.
The third project is the new Bath House seen in the picture above.
Here is the plan for the Bath House
I had a lot of help with this one. Toby really is a master
carpenter although he doesn't like to be called that. I
really just showed him the plan and ask where I should drive the
nails. We started with the floor as shown here. The holes are
for the concrete shower slabs.
Next came the walls. We had to keep the plywood floor covered due to all of the rain.
After many, many rainy days, we thought we would never get the bath house under roof. But of course we finally did. We still kept the walls covered with plastic to protect the plywood floor. I'm not sure it would have survived all of the rain if we had not done so.
After the building was under roof, we hung the siding, hung the doors and trimmed all of the openings. Janice then cranked up her spray gun and applied a first coat of paint. The stakes in front of the building locate the deck post which is the next step here.
There is still a lot of work to do here but we are working as
hard and as fast as we can.