1/27-29/04 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:30. There was about 6 inches of new snow in the parking place that hadn't been scooped out, but I had no trouble parking on it. There was no berm of any consequence from the snowplow. The temperature was 37 degrees so the snow was soft and wet. After moving in, I brought another load of tree branches from the pickup up to the compost pile.

Just as I finished lunch and was having coffee, Larry stopped by. He went up to the building with me to see what I have been doing. We talked about the possibility of subcontracting out some of the work. I have been thinking that I might want to have someone else install the waste-water plumbing and the ceiling insulation. I want to install the water supply plumbing myself so that I can design it exactly the way I want it. I would also like to do the wiring, but subbing that out is a possibility I won't rule out. There are still a lot of log projects left that I will have fun doing (front outside staircase, front stoop, inside staircase, back outside staircase and deck). I am thinking that while I am working on those, I could have a subcontractor working on something else to speed things up. After Larry left, I sanded all the varnished work that was due for another coat.

On Wednesday, I planed, scraped, and sanded everything left to do above the top scaffold level between Grids A and D. This included two more logs on the wall between Grid A and B and it included the top log on the northwest wall from the corner to the loft. Then I broomed off all the prepared logs and window frames to have them ready for varnish.

When I went in for the night, I found a bag hanging on the trailer door knob with a Christmas gift from Shirley. I called her to thank her and we chatted about her new job and the fact that there hadn't been any recent accidents or health problems over there for a welcome change.

On Thursday morning, I varnished all the prepared surfaces. The work is in sort of a rhythm now, doing pretty much the same thing each week. It is rewarding work in that I see the beautiful transformation of dingy discolored logs to bright shiny varnished new wood. But it is hard dirty work. The dust is especially bothersome. It should get easier as I go, though, because as I move down the wall, I will have less scaffold climbing to do, and as I finish that southwest wall, I will be done with most of the window frames and with the log columns up against the wall. Working around all the corners and tight spaces between the windows and those columns are what really slows me down and is where I need to use the sander the most. Scraping and planing make big enough chips that there isn't much dust produced The work should really speed up when I get to long straight log runs and it should be a lot less dusty.

I left for home at 12:30.