3/4-6/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

My back was pretty much healed up and it felt good to be getting back to work. I arrived at 11:50. It was breezy, dry, about 40 degrees, and there was no new snow. There was about as much still on the ground, though, as there was two weeks ago.

After moving in and having lunch, I did some thinking about what to do where the porch runs into the cliff at the back. Using these thick planks gave me an option that I hadn't considered before, and that was to cantilever the ends out quite a ways. The planks are so stiff that I am sure I could cantilever them two or three feet with no problem.

The two column pads are in the way of placing another joist log back there so my thought had been to support the end of the porch by resting columns on the bedrock somehow. If the weather were warmer, I probably would pour concrete piers, but it still freezes at night and I don't want to delay any longer.

There was an extra 12 foot joist log that I had flattened but didn't use. I decided to place this right up against the two column pads which would leave only a foot or two to cantilever the planks. I set to work to install this joist log.

I used a kid's compass as a scribe, but I clamped the thing with a 1" C-clamp so that the spacing wouldn't accidentally change. I scribed the two porch beams for notches to take the joist log. Then, I took the gwizard off the .032 saw and installed a regular cross-cut chain. I used this to cut the notches in the beams. When I rolled the joist log in, it was just a little high. After smoothing out the notches a little, the log fit perfectly.

Next, I made a couple of #4 rebar pins with Dr. Dick's rebar cutter, clamped the joist into place, drilled the holes, and spiked the joist to the beams. It was almost like old times spiking in logs again.

So now the problem was what to do on the side closer to the building. I decided to support a pressure treated 4x4 somehow on the ledge that the northeast wall of the building foundation is built on. The problem was that the ledge was still covered with dirt and rock and I didn't really know what the bedrock was like underneath. I got a small trowel and a bucket, and started excavating to uncover the ledge. I hauled a few buckets of dirt and rock away before it got too dark to see what I was doing.

On Wednesday morning, I resumed excavating and exposed the bedrock between the building and the Grid F column pad. I had cut a length of pressure treated 4x4 that I had gotten from Doris to fit in this span. Unfortunately, there was not enough clearance above the ledge for a 4x4, so I cut it in two. There was a place for each half, oriented a little cockeyed, that allowed clearance. Using a combination of short pieces of 4x4, rocks, and heavy roofing paper, I installed these horizontal 4x4s. My intention is to screw them to the deck planks which will hold them in place.

All of this took more time than I had expected. Before the end of the day, I had time to rip the edges of a couple planks. I used the skillsaw, with a new carbide-tipped blade I just bought, on the thinner cuts, and the chainsaw on the thicker cuts. That combination works well.

The weather was rain mixed with snow all day and I was sure happy to have a nice dry covered place to work. By the end of the day, it turned to snow and it began accumulating on the ground and on the roof. The jays came around once during the afternoon and flew into the building to get their peanuts.

On Thursday morning, there was about 5 inches of new snow on the ground and it snowed off an on all morning. I ripped the edges of four more planks, cut them to length, and placed them in the floor. My plan is to place all the planks before I fasten any of them down. That will allow me to shim them appropriately so that the surface of the deck will be reasonably flat. It also seems to be more efficient to separate the work so that I am only doing one kind of job at a time.

My back and shoulder held out very well, although all my muscles and joints seemed to be weak. I worked slower than usual as a result. I figure it is a combination of atrophy from laying off the work for three weeks, the effects of the injuries to my back and shoulder, and from just plain getting old. I will probably just have to adjust to a slower pace of work. That might even make it more fun.

I left for home at 1:30 in time to beat a fairly big storm headed for the Cascades in the afternoon.