4/15-17/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 11:30. The weather was pleasant and dry. The cold I developed the last week was almost gone. I really think that the combination of Coldeze and Zicam stopped it cold, so to speak. I still felt pretty tired, though.

After moving in and having lunch, I turned all the planks over so I could stain the undersides of them. Some of the round edges of the planks, which are on the undersides, still had the cambium or phloem layer still on them. This had turned almost black in some cases. But in any case, I have learned that if you stain it, it turns extra dark. So, the first thing I did was take a floor scraper and scrape all these round edges down to white wood. That will make the cracks between the planks look a lot better from underneath.

Next, I sprayed all the planks and edges with plain water. It is recommended to do this on dry wood before applying Board Defense. Since the Board Defense is in a saturated solution, any evaporation will cause it to crystallize out. And since it takes a while to soak in to dry wood, crystallization is likely to happen. By first soaking the wood with plain water, the borate solution will disperse deeper into the wood following the water that is already there.

When the planks were soaked, I boiled a bunch of water and mixed up three coffee cans full of Board Defense. By the time I got ready to spray it on, the planks were already almost dry to the touch meaning that some of the water had been absorbed into the wood. I ran out of spray and mixed up an additional two cans full to finish the job before I quit for the day.

On Wednesday morning, I started out by lashing a paintbrush on the end of an 8-foot 1x2 and using that to stain the very ends of five purlins. When I stained the northeast wall, I also stained those purlins out to the end, but I couldn't reach the very ends. I also used up all the stain at that time, if I remember correctly, so those ends just didn't get stained. I was able to barely reach them all by standing on the high rock.

I spent the rest of the day brushing stain on the undersides and edges of all the deck planks. I had one gallon of TWP 501 which I used where the planks will be visible from underneath. This is the same stuff I used on the exterior walls. I used a second gallon of TWP 101, which is intended for decks, to finish the job. I will use 101 for the top surface of the deck once it is fastened down.

On Thursday morning, my shoulder hurt pretty bad when I woke up. In fact, it hurt pretty much all night. It seems that everything I do aggravates that shoulder.

When I was doing my exercises in the trailer, I noticed at least four and maybe as many as six chipmunks running and playing all around the rocks. The chipmunk population seems to vary widely and it looks like there is a pretty good brood this year. We'll see how many of them survive the owls that hang out around the building.

I started out by cutting the handle off of a Phillips screwdriver. I discovered that the screwdriver bit holder that I have doesn't fit into a 3/8" hole and that is what I will use to counterbore the screws. So the screwdriver doesn't reach into the hole deeply enough to drive the screw all the way in. By cutting off the handle of a regular screwdriver, I made a bit with a long enough and skinny enough shank to do the job.

I had made two short planks, about 8 inches long, to fill two small spaces at the very edge of the deck. I had screwed these into the first joist and cut them off when I trimmed the entire edge. Now I needed to screw them back into the same holes so that they could serve as a gauge for aligning that edge back the way it was. I used my new screwdriver bit to do that and it worked great. And, if I don't ruin that bit, it should work for all the rest of the screws as well.

After all the planks were turned back over and into their proper positions, I felt pretty good. I went underneath and admired how they looked from there, and I took some pictures from underneath. All during the work, the chipmunks were playing all around the rocks and one of them was even playing around inside the building.

There was still some time left before I had to go home so I took the plumber's snake up to the spring to see if I couldn't snake it through the underground stream channel. After trying for quite a while I gave up. It was obvious that you couldn't push on the snake unless it was confined in a pipe. There was too much room in the stream bed so the snake just flopped around in there and didn't go anywhere.

I decided to try another trick. Since the aspirin bottle couldn't pull the parachute cord, I figured maybe a lighter string would work. I tried a cork tied to some fairly heavy thread. That didn't work either. Anything the thread touched seemed to hold on to it and the cork couldn't pull it loose. In all my trying, the cork never even got out of my sight, so I gave up on that too. I'll figure something out eventually, but right now I don't know what that will be. I left for home at 1:15.