Construction Journal Entry Week of 7/15/07

7/17-19/07 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped at Chainsaws Plus and picked up the chainsaw and two gallons of bar oil. I arrived at the property at 1:00. It was a nice cool 72 degrees. After moving in and having lunch, I discovered one mouse in the trap downstairs. The tell-tale peanut was gone from upstairs but both traps up there were still set. There is definitely a hole somewhere. The peanuts in the rodent valve were still there so they are not coming in that way.

I went to work and aligned and leveled the second plank directly above where it is supposed to be. Then I scribed it for the notches the same way I had scribed the other plank: by eyeball with a double ended pencil. It is a very quick method and plenty accurate for chainsaw work.

When I cut the notches, I was very pleased with how the saw worked. It started and ran perfectly, and the chain was super sharp. It made the notching easy.

When I flipped the plank over, it slid into its notches and fit perfectly. That was very gratifying. I was happy.

On Wednesday, it rained a little off and on in the morning. There were no more mice and the peanuts were undisturbed.

I flipped both planks out of their notches and slid them, upside down, to the other side of the beams. That was so I could get at the mortise-tenon joints in the sill log. I had brought four 3/8"x12" galvanized lag bolts with me and I used them to secure the tenons to the sill log. I put them in at an angle right in the joint, one on either side of the tenon and slanted so that the points would end up about in the center of the sill log. The shank on the bolts was five inches or more, so there were no threads in the interface between the mortise and the tenon. That should give maximum shear strength. Not that much strength is needed here, but it never hurts to over-engineer.

With the planks lying upside down, I scraped the bottom sides to prepare them for staining. I had previously stained only the top sides. I use a different stain for the two purposes. I use TWP 101C for deck and tread surfaces, and TWP 501C for surfaces that don't get walked on. The scraping was sort of tedious because the logs had not been gwizzed so they were not faceted. There were lots of small concavities that the scraper couldn't reach. I went over the logs with a straight scraper and then made a second pass with a convex scraper to get the low spots.

After lunch, I stained both planks and the rest of the beams and columns that I had not stained before. Then I flipped both planks over, for I hope the final time, and seated them back in their notches. I'll pin them in later. They really look good and it is nice to be able to walk out the back door now and stand on a nice sturdy deck, even though it is only half there.

A flock of Gray Jays and a chipmunk came around for peanuts while I cleaned up the chip mess under the deck. When that was done, I went in the cabin and put tools and other things away to tidy up. I am expecting company next week and I decided this would be a good time to make the cabin presentable. I vacuumed the floor and window sills in the loft. Then I brought the vacuum down and vacuumed the first floor. While I was vacuuming it rained pretty hard. I didn't know how hard, because of the vacuum noise, but when I went outside I could see that it was almost a flash flood. It had pretty much quit by the time I went in for the night.

On Thursday morning it was not raining but rain was forecast. I figured that I better beat the rugs from the trailer while it was not raining. I beat the rugs and then swept the trailer floor. It really needed it. Then I put the carpets back and did some tidying up in the trailer.

Then I went up to the cabin. There were no signs of mice. I vacuumed the log walls in the living room. Some dust had settled on the logs and I want them to look as shiny as possible. Also, a spider had set up shop in each of the big windows. Any bugs that get into the building try to get out those windows, so it is an ideal place for spiders to build webs. I keep the webs on the lower windows pretty much under control, but the two high windows hadn't been cleaned for quite a while. It takes the fully extended 20' extension ladder to reach up there, and I have to pile chairs on top of a table so I can set the vacuum cleaner high enough so the hose can reach the windows. I managed to catch and carry outside three of the four spiders. The fourth one got inadvertently sucked into the vacuum. They'll have better hunting outside and their absence will delay the reconstruction of the webs. They do good work for me so I hate to kill the little guys.

While I had the extension ladder up against the wall, I took the opportunity to look for possible mouse holes. I had imagined that they were coming in through the gable/ceiling interface because until the ceiling boards are in place, there are some potential gaps. My plan was to stuff a 1x2 in the notch reserved for the ceiling boards. But when I looked up there, I saw that I had already done that. At least on the lower half. I couldn't see or reach the upper half with the ladder so I don't know whether I did it up there too or not.

While I was at the top of the ladder checking this out, Phil and Jean stopped by for a visit. They hadn't seen the place for two years so I showed them what I had done since then and the projects I was working on now. We took pictures of each other and then went down to the old log yard and took pictures with the cabin in the background. Phil set up his tripod and we used both my camera and theirs to take pictures. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to work the timer on mine so I didn't get in any of my pictures.

The mosquitoes were pretty thick down there, so I got my fan and used it to fan both Phil and Jean to try to keep the mosquitoes off them. They both had short sleeves. A chipmunk came by while Phil was getting his tripod and Jean and I fed him some peanuts.

When the picture taking was over, we went into the trailer to escape the mosquitoes. We had a very nice conversation over lunch of bologna sandwiches and coffee that went on until around 3:00. We talked mostly about politics and we solved nearly all of the world's problems. It was a great visit. I closed things up after they left and I left for home at 3:45.



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