8/6-8/08 I went up to the property for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

I arrived at 1:15, was greeted by Bert and Ernie, and was happy to find no signs of mice in the cabin. I called Ralph's Concrete Pumping and talked to Jimmy Dills (509-929-4034). He said he would come out tomorrow morning and size up the job. I also called L&I and scheduled an electrical inspection for permission to cover the conduit with a concrete staircase.

Next, I went to work in the woods and did some more excavation from inside the staircase forms. I also screwed in a few risers to see if that plan was going to work out. It worked perfectly.

On Thursday morning, Jimmy Dills showed up just as I was finishing my breakfast coffee. He came into the trailer and had a cup of coffee along with me. We took a tour of the cabin and the staircase forms. He estimated that it would take 6 - 7 yards of concrete. We agreed on a time of 10:30 for him to show up with the pumper. We also agreed that we could tolerate some delay in that schedule on the order of a half-hour. He said that the job should take less than two hours, so even if we are delayed an hour or so, Dave and Bill would still be able to leave early enough to return to Seattle. Starting at 10:30 would also give them plenty of time to get up there in the morning.

After Jimmy left, I went back to work screwing on risers. I got all but one of them on the top flight and one on the bottom flight screwed on before lunch.

No sooner had I finished lunch, than the L&I inspector, Dave Westermann, showed up and inspected my installation. He passed me on the bronze water pipe clamp and the buried ground plate up on top (even though I had already buried it). He also OK'd the covering of the feeder conduit with the concrete steps and the vaulting of the 10 feet up near the building. And he tested and passed the four circuits I had installed and connected to the distribution panel. He did tell me, though, that I still needed a steel plate on the outside of the wall plate below the service panel to protect the feeder conduit coming up through the floor.

I was happy to post the inspection report with its approvals. Now I don't think I will need or have another electrical inspection until just before I hang sheetrock.

After Dave left, I screwed in the last riser on the bottom flight and went to work cutting out a section of the stringer on the top flight where it went down into the channel I had chiseled in the rock. I want the concrete to fill the entire channel I had cut so I had to get that section of the stringer out of there. The section was two treads and one riser long. It went from right below the riser on top to right above the second riser below.

The riser in between was special and was the last one to install. It was longer than the rest because it had to reach over to the rock wall, which was four or five inches past the inside of the stringer I had just cut out. The rest of the risers went right up against the inside of the stringer.

Since the riser was pretty near the rock on the side and the bottom, I used a small crosscut saw I got from Gus to do the cutting. I had to make pretty short strokes so it was tedious, but I was able to cut out the section with no problem before I quit for the day.

On Friday morning, I got the Bosch Bulldog out and chiseled away a bunch of rock so that there would be at least a couple inches of concrete on top of the rock where that one step was lower than the original grade of the rock. Otherwise I would be afraid that the concrete might break away from the rock.

When the chiseling was done, I installed that last long riser. I had to cut and form the end so that it fit rather tightly up against the rock. And then I had to build a wooden structure to hold it in place. This structure couldn't interfere with the leveling and troweling of the tread. So I fashioned a piece of 2x8 which I screwed on edge to the top edges of the stringer so that it spanned the section of stringer that I had cut out. The piece had two notches cut out of the bottom which allowed room for a trowel to get under it. Then I screwed a length of 2x2 vertically to both the riser and the spanning piece of 2x8. This rigidly holds the riser in position and yet allows clearance above and below the riser.

During the work, the gray jays and the chipmunk came around for peanuts.

That completed the final construction work on the staircase forms. Hooray! I took some pictures of the finished product including the detail of that long riser. There are still some odds and ends to do, but the major construction work is done. I now have two weeks to clean up those odds and ends and to get the place ready for visitors.

Since there will be more visitors than will comfortably fit in the trailer, I decided to host them in the cabin for most purposes. I will get enough cots and mattresses up there for everyone to sleep. I brought up a two-burner hot plate and there is already a microwave oven up there so we can cook. I'll have running water available on the porch and we'll probably use pitchers and basins for inside use. We can use the trailer to wash up in, since there is hot and cold running water and a sink and shower down there.

One problem is to figure out how to keep mosquitoes out of the cabin. They follow you in the door whenever you go in and they will present a problem for sleeping in there if we can't keep them out. I keep them out of the trailer by systematically waving a fan over the door every time before I enter. This is the only effective way I have found to keep them from following me in. Taking this as a cue, I decided to set up an electric fan in front of the front door of the cabin and making the rule to enter the cabin through the front door only. I have a small fan I think I got from Leonard that used to circulate air through a fireplace insert.

I set it up in front of the door so that it blows straight up and tried it out for the rest of the day. I think it will work perfectly. Just before you enter the door, you stand above the fan and let the breeze cool you off and blow the mosquitoes away. Then you go through the door alone. I'll leave the fan on all the time while the guests are up there and I think we should be able to keep the mosquitoes out. At least that's the plan.

I left for home at 2:15. On the way, I stopped and talked to Roy Dickinson at the Two Rivers office. He firmed up his schedule for delivering concrete at 10:30 on Aug 25.