While we were acquiring flooring, cabinets, counter tops, appliances, and plumbing fixtures, we were still existing with few interior doors. There are no hallways in the cabin to utilize every inch of floor space, so not having bedroom and bathroom doors all this time was often a problem.

If the hubby and I were the only ones there, it really wasn’t a problem, unless neighbors or contractors came without warning. But if our awesome family came to help, it really made things awkward for all of us.

Even for our little cabin, there were a lot of doors. Eleven interior doors had to be stained and sanded 3 different times. Since both sides of a door have to be treated this way, that makes for 6 different rounds of sanding and staining per door, or 66 rounds total.

Trying to sand and stain one side while another side is drying is very difficult for even the best do-it-yourselfer. Based on all of these factors, we decided to have our interior wall staining crew price this job. It turned out to be a very reasonable price and within a weekend, we had doors installed!

Perhaps the most daunting task of finishing out the interior of our cabin by ourselves was sanding and staining the interior walls, doors and trim inside our home. “Phase I” of this process involved sanding all the interior walls and ceilings.

Just doing the vaulted ceilings was a massive two-week undertaking. While the hubby had tremendous help from our youngest and the DSL that first weekend, the hubby was forced to take some vacation time and do most of it himself.

After looking at several log cabin magazines, I had one fear and I have a sneaky suspicion many log cabin families fear the same thing: making the cabin too dark. Our neighbor says and I agree that one does have to install more lighting in a log cabin than in conventional housing because the logs are already going to naturally darken the room and absorb light.

Thus, I elected to go with the lightest stain we could find to minimize this effect.