We spent Friday night/Saturday morning in Missoula. It was a good visit with dinner at The Depot, watching the fish in Mike's pond, late night ice cream, errands, and splurges (2 shirts at Goodwill and a new pair of jeans from Old Navy counts as a splurge in our lives).

As we were driving home we saw a small black bear swimming across the Lochsa. I think he either saw or heard us and decided to head back to the other bank. He got out of the river and looked at us and went up into the trees. It was so neat to see. We haven't seen a bear since we were in Glacier National Park maybe about 5 years ago. So impresive.
The video is blurry. But take my word for it, that's a bear.

So Sunday was a Work Day.
First up, reading lights. It took some planning and revision of plans, but we finally figured it out. I'm very impressed with how this turned out.



It's barn wood (free!) surrounding the 2 LED solar lights we got from Costco (as a set of 4--for $40!) and some conduit we picked up at Home Resource in Missoula (only $.20.ft!). We have toggle switches on each side (the most expensive part of the whole thing-- EIGHT DOLLARS EACH!?) so we can control them individually and they're pointed to the outside so hopefully the person not reading (Keith) won't be bothered by the light and won't ask, as he does every night, "You're reading?"

The wires on the last photo will be pulled up out of the way. We had to put the wiring for all 4 lights (only used 2 for this) out through the wall to the solar panel. One light will go in the kitchen area and one will go in the bathroom (that's the plan for now, open to change).

The other project was finishing the clothing storage cabinet thing, which we mostly did.

It still needs paint on the left side and top of the bottom section (OSB) and maybe some contact paper on the shelves. Shoes/boots/etc. go in the horizontal section at the bottom, my clothes go behind the middle window, and Keith's clothes go behind the top window. I'm thinking we need some kind of hamper for dirty clothes, so maybe we can put that on the side where there's room. But Keith wants to keep it as open as possible, because it's close to the theater seats.

In a tiny house these are pretty big decisions.