3/6/05 Chuck and I took my pickup to get the refrigerator.

3/8-10/05 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I tarped and secured the refrigerator for the trip and got a late start. I arrived at the property at 2:00. It was a beautiful warm day and there was virtually no snow left on the ground.

After moving in and having lunch, I tried driving the pickup up to the building without chains, but the damp ground covered with pine needles was just too slippery. I put the chains on and drove up with no problem.

I rigged a 2x4 platform for the refrigerator to sit on and a rope harness around the refrigerator and under the platform pretty much the way you would tie a ribbon around a Christmas package. I tied a small rope around the top of the refrigerator with a clove hitch around each of the four vertical ropes in order to keep them in place. I put a big shackle around the intersection of the two ropes at the top to lift with.

I decided to use my long chain running through the big snatch block to lift with. I hooked the snatch block to the inner anchor hook on the Grid F purlin. I slid the refrigerator back to the tailgate, which put it pretty much under the chain. It was still out away from the building about 5 feet, so I tied a tether rope to the refrigerator rigging, ran it through an eye-bolt on the far rail of the pickup bed, and from there up to the deck where I tightened and snubbed the rope. This would keep the refrigerator from swinging into the near rail of the pickup bed when I lifted it up.

I chained a come-along to a porch joist in the hole where the stoop will eventually go, and ran the cable up to the long chain. By using a chain, I was able to pull almost all the slack out of the rigging before I connected the come-along hook to the chain.

Then I proceeded to crank on the come-along, lift the refrigerator out of the pickup, and periodically relax the snubbed tether rope to allow the refrigerator to swing toward the building as long as there was clearance. Once the 2x4 platform was at the deck level, I rigged a couple more tether ropes to pull the top and the bottom of the refrigerator onto the deck as I relaxed the lifting come-along.

In the process, a flock of about 4 gray jays came around for peanut treats. I haven’t seen them for quite a while, so it was good to see them again.

When the refrigerator was safely sitting on the porch deck, I got the pickup backed down the hill before it got dark and I removed the chains.

On Wednesday morning it was 50 degrees. I moved the refrigerator inside the building by pushing it up a two-plank ramp over the hole for the stoop and up onto the threshold of the front door. In the process, I noticed a nylon thrust washer lying on one of the planks. The washer had obviously come from the refrigerator, so it made me a little concerned.

After I rolled the refrigerator in and started removing the rigging and tarp, I discovered that the lower hinge on the bottom door was missing parts and wasn’t working. That explained the thrust washer, but the question was, Where were the rest of the hinge parts?

I was hoping they had not fallen through the stoop hole because they would be hard to find among the rocks and logs below. I went out looking for them on the porch and the ground where the pickup had been parked. Then I went down and looked in the bed of the pickup. Sure enough, there in the corner where the refrigerator had been during the trip, I found a machine screw and the hinge pin assembly. The screw had evidently been loose and had vibrated out during the drive.

Fortunately I had found all the parts so I put the refrigerator doors back on. You have to install those hinges from the bottom up, so I had to remove the freezer door and all the hinges in order to put it back together again. I made sure I got the screws good and tight.

Next, I sanded all the logs due for another coat of varnish. These were the top 5 logs in the bathroom and the bathroom window frame. By the time I finished, it was time for lunch.

After lunch, I cleaned up some spots of mold that I found in the refrigerator in the process of installing the doors. Then I went back to work on the logs in the bathroom. I scraped and gouged all the rest of the logs in there and then I swept the floor and vacuumed the walls and floor. When I went in for the night, the frogs across the road were really loud. There were so many of them that you couldn’t hear any individual frog croak. It just sounded like a continuous loud din. It was good to hear that there are a lot of frogs. I hope they eat a lot of mosquitoes.

On Thursday morning, I put away all the rigging I had used for the refrigerator. Then I cleaned the glue beads from the small dining room window. Next I went to work preparing the easternmost big living room window for the molding trim. The masonite shim under the window was sticking out nearly a quarter of an inch so I got Jack the Rip Saw out and used it to cut the shim away for the 6-foot width of the window.

When the window was ready for the trim, I decided that I didn’t have enough time left to install it, so I started varnishing. I varnished the entire bathroom wall and window frame. When I was finished with that, I found a lens from someone’s glasses outside the building. At first I thought it was mine, but all of mine were still in their frames. I figured it had to belong to my most recent visitor so I called Larry. Sure enough, Ted Turner had lost one and didn’t miss it until the next day. I told Larry I would drop it off on my way home.

Since it looked like we weren’t going to get any more snow this season, I took a scaffold frame, a short chain, and a come-along down and reinstalled the gate log. I also backed out the screws holding my house number sign to the tree. The tree growth had snugged the bark up against the sign so tight that it bowed the sign a little. I backed the screws out to leave about a quarter of an inch of slack, about the same as I did last year. My experience with the bat houses taught me that I need to do this every year. Then I carried the scaffold frame etc. back up, had lunch, and left for home at 1:10. I stopped at Larry’s and gave him Ted’s lens.

3/11/05 Took the damaged 10-foot section of rake metal up to CP Sheet Metals. Curt kidded me about not clearing the trees away from the building but he said the metal was covered by his lifetime guarantee anyway. He had his guys make up a new section for me, which only took a couple minutes, and he gave it to me for no charge. He’s a great guy to do business with. He also showed me a brochure for his company that had some of the pictures I had taken of his guys and his machine when they made my roof panels.