I've been slowly reading my way through Cabinology by Dale Mulfinger, which is a book about designing and building your own cabin.  In the beginning he refers to people who have a connection on some level to cabins and a 'hunger for some form of wilderness place' as 'cabinists'.

I am a cabinist.  I didn't realize this until I got serious about planning our cabin, after my husband convinced me that we should buy a piece of property in some remote place and build a cabin on it (and after I got over my misconception that all cabins must be loggy, brown dark caves filled with sad, old, cast-off furniture).




I am a cabinist, and this place, Yosemite, is the reason why.  




I should have known that I have been a cabinist all along.  I've been coming to Yosemite for as long as I can remember.  

My mom first brought me here when I was 3 or 4.  




We spent countless summers in one of the simple little cabins that used to be by the Merced River in the Yosemite Valley, before they were washed away by floods in the '90s.  We went on multiple backpacking trips into the high country surrounding the valley.  

That's me and my brother at Glacier Point.




I hiked to the top of Nevada Falls.  I hiked to the top of Yosemite Falls.  




My husband, my stepson, and I hiked to the top of Half Dome with my brother, who wanted to celebrate his 50th birthday by sitting on the edge of the sheer 'half' of the dome (see photo below) and dangle his feet several thousand feet over the valley floor. 





I didn't actually get to the top; I stopped when I saw the cables going up the seemingly near-perpendicular face  (click here if you want to see this fearsome sight),  which is a good thing because it meant I wasn't there to witness my brother's lunacy. 


The deep hush of the forest, the faint echo of the falls that follows you wherever you are in the valley (if it  has been a good year for rain, and plenty of water is coming down out of the high country), the warm, piny scent, the scolding of the jays-- with every trip to Yosemite, all this established itself as layer upon layer of wilderness sensibility deep in my subconscious...and then found its way out into the plans and design of our cabin in Utah.





When I talk about our cabin, whether it be through this blog or elsewhere, I often get the same reaction from people: happy enthusiasm and something like longing.  I suspect they are cabinists too, either living in, or planning, or dreaming of their own cabin to escape to.

So, if you have a cabin on your mind, read on to see how a lifetime of visits to Yosemite National Park spoke to me as I planned and decorated the cabin...and see how you also might do the same thing with your own experiences in some wild, natural place, whether you have your own cabin that you want to create and decorate or just want to incorporate a few rustic, wilderness touches into your home (click here for more details on the finished cabin).




I talked a little bit about how much the lodges, cabins, and other buildings in Yosemite National Park were an inspiration for the cabin here, but I didn't have a lot of good photos to share at the time.   When I was there last fall with my family I was able to get pics of all my favorite places...which includes not only the beautiful scenery, but the amazing structures that the National Park Service built in the first part of the 20th century, and which are all very fine examples of rustic decor and architecture.



A quick note on the names I use in this post for two iconic establishments in Yosemite Valley (Ahwahnee Hotel and Camp Curry Village); I'm using the old names established at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century that the National Park service has recently changed (hopefully temporarily) because of a ridiculous lawsuit brought against the U.S. government by a previous concessionaire over a trademark licensing and intellectual property dispute (click here for more info on this). 



Starting with the Ahwahnee Hotel-- this place certainly epitomizes the concept of a dinner jacket in the jungle (or in this instance, in the wilderness). 





Although, I think they have added newer furniture in recent years since the renovations to accommodate more people; lounge and lobby areas are open to everyone (not just hotel guests), and these rooms can get very crowded.    

It looks like the hotel staff have just crammed in as many chairs and sofas as possible in the main lounge area.  Not much furniture staging going on here...




During the winter, when it's snowy outside and all the fires are going inside, competition is very fierce for one of those chairs by the massive fireplace.  




All these over-sized, comfy armchairs to flop down into after a long hike and charming little side tables to set your drink or your hot chocolate on!  

I had all this in my head when I visualized the furnishings for the cabin...



Which is why I snapped up this spindle table the minute I saw it at a local antique mall. 






...preferably sitting at one of the tables by the huge, dramatic windows... each one with a view of surrounding meadows and woods and towering granite cliffs.  

By the way, that is not us sitting by the window, although that is my brother's elbow in the foreground (as you can see, he survived his Half Dome escapade).





We put lots of tall windows in our cabin in order to capture our own spectacular views.  And yes, breakfast here is just as special, if not more so (because of all the hard labor it took us to get to this point), as it is at the Ahwahnee!





So many other details throughout the hotel that I never get tired of looking at...





If the Ahwahnee is rustic elegance, then Camp Curry, located on the eastern side of Yosemite Valley, is rustic camp-style. 




I love these tree limb chairs and tables in the main lounge, but long to get rid of that ugly, pea-soup green vinyl covering on the cushions and replace it with a fun, pretty fabric (perhaps something similar to the fabric on the pillow to the left of the Eastlake table in the previous photo of our cabin).  

When looking for armchairs for our cabin, I checked out a couple of places that carry tree branch furniture (is that the correct term?), but even the cheap stuff is very expensive.  Perhaps one day making a couple of these can be another project for my husband...



I would have loved to finish the exterior of the cabin with rough-hewn branches and bark (or whatever that is below the windows in the photo below-- it may be branches), but we also needed to consider fire safety (and pay attention to the budget), so we went with fiber cement siding.   

But the effect is so charming on the Camp Curry bungalows and cabins.



This is a cabin with bath... which is what I wanted for our visit last September...



... but this is not what I got because I unfortunately waited too long to make reservations, and all I could get was a tent cabin with no heat and no bathroom-- not exactly glamping

I don't recommend the unheated tent cabins if you are planning on visiting Yosemite Valley in the fall or winter.  Tent cabins get cold without any heat; I ended up grabbing all of the wool blankets from the other beds in our cabin and piling them on our bed.





A lot of the elements that we used in our cabin was on the camp-y end of the cabin decorating spectrum, similar to Camp Curry, fused with a little bit of farmhouse and salvaged industrial, with antiques, or near-antiques with a  vintage charm similar to the furnishings in the Ahwahnee adding a bit more refinement. 




Like the cabins and tents at Curry, our cabin focuses on simple living that is just one step above camping, but with just enough creature comforts (hot and cold running water, basic stove/oven/refrigerator, full bathroom, electricity, heat) to make our experience there more comfortable than roughing it in a tent.




I have many happy memories of hiking and camping not only in Yosemite Valley and the surrounding high country, but also in rural, natural areas near my home in southern California and the red rock mesas and canyons near our cabin in Utah. 

There is nothing more restorative to an over-busy mind and stressed-out psyche than being surrounded  by untouched nature where all you hear is the the chattering of birds and the wind in the trees and the sound of running water...



Adding a few woodland details to our cabin brings the wilderness inside... and creates a special place to escape to and relax.







It was my experiences in Yosemite as well as my husband's experiences camping with his family that drove us to purchase 15 acres on a high, wooded mesa in the spectacular San Rafael Swell area of Utah and build our cabin on it.  

We wanted to create a place that was a reminder of happy times spent camping, hiking, fishing, and being, however briefly, disconnected from the drudgery of the every-day.  We needed our own piece of wilderness beauty; a quiet place of peace and relaxation that was a sanctuary from our high-speed lives.




What about you?  Don't you want to escape too?

I'm seeing lots of 'reality' posts on various blogs these days. People admitting to not having immaculate homes 24/7, admitting that not every room is perfectly styled and ready for a Country Living magazine shoot  (What!!?, don't we all live like that??).  




I see photos with a bit of artful messiness here and there as evidence of real-life lives: a few toys scattered around on the floor, a couple dirty dishes on the coffee table, some one's shoes tossed randomly under the sofa.  

I'll start off by saying right away that this post isn't going to show that kind of reality.  Thanks to the multitude of projects that we have going on right now, including major renovations, my home is neither magazine ready nor is it even just discretely untidy here and there--it's just AWFUL everywhere.  

This is, of course, one of the reasons why I haven't posted in so long: too many projects consuming all my time and energy, plus some other things that demanded my attention, equal no spare time and a pretty messy looking home.

So, since I don't have much in the way of pretty pictures to share, this will be more of a battlefield-tour, with select, highly edited photos of the nitty-gritty that is my current reality and a few brief, explanatory sentences. 


Man Cave

Let's start with the man cave, which until recently, has been a storage room for all of the stuff we didn't have room for anywhere else.   We borrowed several design ideas from the cabin, including using galvanized metal (click here for more info on this) for the wainscoting and creating salvaged-looking wood for a feature wall and for the trim throughout (click here and here for more info on the wood 'aging' process).



We stopped at about 85% complete so that it could briefly revert to the Storage Room and the juggernaut that is my renovating husband could continue rolling inexorably forward with more upstairs projects, forcing me to make decisions about paint color.

Details such as clearing out all of the tools and other stuff, finishing the switch plates and cleaning up all the sawdust, plus adding manly-type furnishings, remain.  


Flooring and Re-finishing the Walls

This is why the Man Cave remains almost, but not quite done.  We need a place for the big saw that is used to cut the wood floor planks and store all the stuff from the other rooms that are getting wood floors and refinished walls, and the Man Cave is the biggest room on the second floor.  

And what I mean by 'refinished' walls is my husband sanding away the ugly texture that came with the house so that the final, painted surface is nice and smooth.  The end result is lovely but the process is horrible and messy, with super-fine dust getting everywhere.

This also means that I need to decide on final paint colors for the sanded walls and I'm pretty sure that trying to choose a paint color that we both like will break my brain.

A medley of the upstairs mess...




The Deconstructed Chairs

These ugly escapees from the '70s were a Craigslist find (the twin to the chair below is lurking out of frame in full tacky glory).  But what could be better for a furniture deconstruction project?  They were almost free at $20 for both and had no redeeming qualities that I wanted to preserve.  The only thing that convinced me to bring them home (very reluctantly) was their solid wood construction, high back and side wings that could remain exposed, and relatively simple, unadorned style.  




This is my first attempt at chair deconstruction (I'd spent a lot of time looking covetously at Restoration Hardware's very pricey deconstructed chairs, which is where the idea was born).  In my ignorance I had assumed that full chair destruction could be accomplished in just a few hours instead of the month and a half of hard labor it actually took me to remove the dreadful, smelly fabric and batting and millions of staples and to sand away the icky, speckled finish so dear to the hearts of 1970's furniture makers.

These chairs are part of the cabin collection and I will share more on the deconstruction journey and their final, 'after' appearance later on in a separate post (although you get a glimpse of one that is finished at the end of this post).




Window/Map Wall Art

Another Restoration Hardware-inspired brainwave. I was sauntering around their store discretely trying out the deconstructed chairs and cogitating about how I could replicate them for MUCH, MUCH less than Restoration Hardware prices (see above) when I spotted some vintage maps on the walls of one of their show rooms (the theme of this particular 'room'  seemed to be world-traveling-manly-man from circa 1932 whose taste runs to over-sized leather chesterfield sofas, chunky, rustic coffee tables, weathered looking globes, a few chrome accents here and there...).  I remembered some windows-as-photo-frames I'd seen at World Market and a light bulb went off in my head as I stood there channeling Indiana Jones.  

I'll share more on how I put all this together later in another post; it involves a poster-making website and some free, vintage map images.




Bath Towels

This is so mundane but I thought I would share it anyway.  I think I got this idea from Sarah Richardson back when she still graced HGTV-USA (why is she only on HGTV-Canada now? Who knows.   Sarah, please, please come back to us all here in the lower 48, especially now that Fixer Upper is going away...).

Anyways, back to the towels.  It's simple: I sewed on grosgrain loops so that they would hang on hooks and stay put.  I find towels hanging spread out on towel racks very messy looking and opted for a vintage-looking hook and rail thing I got at Hobby Lobby instead.  Instant tidiness.

You'll be seeing more of this when I reveal the cabin bathroom.




Pillows

It was a summer of pillows.  I'm a fabric junkie and grew up with a mom who sewed and made everything, so creating with my own two hands a custom collection of pillows that adequately expressed the right degree of cabin-ness was very important to me.  I did buy a couple  pillows when I couldn't stand the thought of one more sewing project.   

At least once a day my husband asked me if he needed to buy another container to haul all the pillows back to the cabin.  I think he is concerned that we will need to sleep outside because the bed and floors are covered with pillows...

I don't know what he is talking about...but I am looking forward to show you all my pillows in their proper place at the cabin. 



Coffee Table and Other Things

The next few photos show a random collection of various cabin-related furniture and accessories.

In it's former life, this coffee table started off as another 1970s piece.  I banished all semblance of '70s tackiness with some chalk paint and a gray-brown stain for the top. 





I've been collecting all sorts of cabin-related accessories and decor items over the years-- here they are sitting in our dining room, ready for packing and transport to the cabin.




I used painters drop cloth and black ticking fabric to create a shower curtain for the cabin bathroom. I then transferred, stenciled, and hand painted a message about how much it's going to cost to shower at our cabin...




Not all of my time has been spent on cabin or house related projects.

My family and I recently made a trip to Yosemite National Park to scatter my mom's ashes...




After the photo above of the divinely wonderful and rustic Mother Curry's Bungalow, it's entirely fitting to end this post with a sneak peak of our own little rustic cabin.  Yes, yes, YES it's finally, finally done and habitable in every sense of the word.  We just spent Thanksgiving there-- you can see our Thanksgiving Table below.







I will, of course, share more photos of the cabin over the next month or so as I work my way through all of the photos...