10/2-4/07 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:59. It rained all the way over and pretty much all the rest of the day. I carried the two chairs up that I had glued back together after they were broken in the scout planning session. I also brought some fittings up that I had bought. I will use the valve Dr. Dick gave me as an air bleeder at the springbox. That way I won't have to disconnect the union every time I want to solder to the pipe. I will just have to close the main valve and open the bleeder. That way the pipe will drain. I should have done that a long time ago. I'll do it the next time I work on the pipes.

I also brought Leonard's old transit level with me. When I work on digging the next section of water pipe trench, I will need it to make sure the pipe runs continually downhill. That section has a very gentle slope.

I used some cedar shims that I brought with me to raise and level all the marble pieces to the same plane. I left the shims sticking out and when they were all in position, I fastened the parts sticking out to the floor with two screws each. Then I made corresponding pencil marks on each shim and the marble above it so that I could remove and replace the marble pieces exactly where they were. That way, I could smear mortar on the floor and then press the marble pieces down on top of it. The shims would keep the marble at the right height and the marks would allow me to align them again.

Once the pieces were shimmed and level, I spent a lot of thought on what to do about a hole for combustion air. I wasn't sure it would be needed, but if it was, this was the time to make it. After a lot of consideration I decided to make a hole in the floor but then plug it back up with a removable plug. That way if I didn't need it, I would have a continuous masonry pad. If I did need it, I could knock out the hole later on. I got the saber saw out and cut a circular hole in the floor under where the center of the stove would be.

On Wednesday, it snowed in the higher elevations. The tops of the ridges were covered in clouds, but later in the day when the clouds parted I could see that the snow was a quarter of the way down Nason Ridge. Mt. Mastiff was nearly all white. I hope we have a lot of snow this winter.

I made the plug for the combustion air hole in the floor by screwing the circular cutout to a plywood rectangle. Then from down in the crawlspace, I screwed the rectangle to the underside of the floor so that the circular plug was back in the hole it came out of. Then I cut two strips of aluminum an inch wide and formed loosely nested rings with them using duct tape. The rings fit right over the hole cutout. I figured that when it came time to break out the mortar over the hole, the outer ring would adhere to the platform and the inner ring would stick to the mortar inside, which would be easy to break out with a hammer and chisel. That's the plan anyway.

Bert and Ernie came up and visited me while I mixed mortar on the front porch. I gave them a few dog biscuits, but they seemed just as interested as the pack rats that are living in a pile of old boards on the porch deck. I should probably get rid of that pile of boards and evict the pack rats, but winter's coming on so I'll wait until spring to be fair.

Two of my standard size batches of mortar was exactly enough to bed all the marble pieces and to fill all the cracks between them. I was happy how it turned out and it will look even better once the mortar has turned white.

I used a back saw to cut all the shims off flush with the edge of the marble. Then I took out the screws that were holding the shims to the floor and removed the outer part of the shims.

I had two 8-foot pieces of cove molding left over from trimming the windows. I also had a lot of mitered short pieces. I used these to frame the marble pad on the floor. I think it really looks nice.

Next, I used some duct tape to fix a leak in the privy. When I finished, Karen Arnold and her sister Frieda Johnson stopped by for a visit. It had been quite a while since Karen had been inside and Frieda said she had never been inside. We had a nice visit while they looked around the place.

On Thursday morning, I built a rack under the front porch to store the left over marble. Then piece by piece, I carried all the marble from the building, down the stairs, and stacked it on the rack. While I was carrying the last piece, Larry and Ted Turner stopped by for a visit. They gave me some good advice and ideas on how to install and operate the wood stove. Larry thought that having the combustion air hole open might be a good idea if the walls aren't permeable enough to let enough air in to keep the stove from smoking. That will be a good test: if it smokes, I'll open up the hole, otherwise leave it closed.

By the time they left, it was time to clean up a little, have lunch and leave. While I was having lunch I had one of my migraine shimmering visual disturbance episodes. Fortunately I didn't get a headache with it. I left for home at 1:30.