When I met Morgan he was living in this house. He had at some point obtained an old cedar hot tub from somewhere and patched it up enough to function with a propane heater and a few jets. It leaked a bit and routinely ran out of fuel while we were in it but it was fun to fire it up and it felt great when we did. When Huck was a little baby, it finally started to leak way too much to justify the trouble so we emptied it and it sat there for awhile.

Morgan and Baby Huck in the cedar tub, 2005.

Then Buphalo needed a place to stay while he rebuilt the gutted house he had just bought, so the Hut Tub was born. A little shack built on the deck around and over the old hot tub, with a little pot-bellied stove in the tub and a bed on one side. He lived there for maybe six months? Maybe longer, I don’t know, but it was pretty cute and it did the job.

The Hut Tub had to go for our big project, as there will be an extension built onto the garage for storage. It includes a deck and some stairs going down the side of the house and needed some foundational support that had to be done when we were moving earth and pouring concrete at that level. Here’s one image of the plan:

This shows the existing garage on the left, with the new deck and shed attachment concept. The back door of the house is just off screen to the right, with stairs in between going down to the yard.

We have plans to incorporate a hot tub into that deck someday. In the meantime, Morgan’s body isn’t getting younger, especially since he is single-handedly building this house, and it felt like he might actually need a hot tub to make it to the end of this project. We found a “free” tub on Craigslist a few months ago and Morgan has been fixing it up and replacing parts. We made a temporary pad for it near its future home, and got it up and running this week.

I suppose we can build around it when it comes time. And perhaps Morgan’s body will make it to that stage of the project now!