1/20-22/04 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:10. The temperature was 32 degrees and there had not been much new snow since last week. The snow was frozen pretty stiff so it was easy walking on the old trails. After moving in and having lunch, I went to work and sanded all the logs and window frames I had varnished last week. I'll give them all another coat this week.

On Wednesday, I scraped, planed, and sanded the rest of the top window frames and the top five courses of logs between Grids A and B. I also scraped and sanded more of the RPSL, the two PSLs, and the short logs between the windows.

I think this will be the slowest going of all the varnishing because it is so awkward. Not only is it high up requiring climbing on scaffolds, but the RPSL and the PSLs being inside the building make it impossible to reach close behind them with the planer or the sander. All the corners around the windows make the work a lot slower than on a long straight course of logs. I knew this ahead of time and that is why I decided to do the southwest wall first: to get it out of the way. The rest of the work should go a lot faster by comparison.

Before I quit for the day, I broomed off all the logs that I had sanded and planed to make them ready for varnishing in the morning. The sander kicks up huge amounts of dust that gets all over everything. Fortunately there are no drafts in the building, so when I broom the walls off, the dust falls and settles all the way to the floor, and by the next morning, there is no dust to speak of up on the walls or the scaffolds.

On Thursday morning, I varnished a second or third coat on previously varnished surfaces and the sealer coat on the newly prepared wood. I used about a quart of varnish. Except for hearing some squirrels in the woods and seeing a few of their tracks in the snow, I didn't see any animals this week.

I almost forgot to unload the load of tree branches I had brought with me, so I did that before I left. I left for home at about 1:00