1/20-22/09 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:45. There evidently hadn't been any new snow up there since last week. It was cold, so all the snow was frozen solid into white ice. The walking was treacherous because there were numerous deep boot prints to slip into and the surface of the icy snow was very slippery. I should have filled in those holes when the snow was soft.

Bert was there to greet me as soon as I stopped. I moved in, had lunch, and then decided to harvest some more firewood. I was using up the pile of dry wood pretty fast and I didn't want to be out of it when the scouts come up in March. I decided to cut up some of the log ends I had piled up behind the privy. The pieces were about 5 feet long. Some were remnants of building logs, and others were sections of the pine trees that had fallen onto the roof some years ago. The pine logs were on top so I started with them.

I sharpened the chainsaw. It started and ran fine. I bucked up a few of the pine logs and then hauled them over to the back stoop of the cabin where I split them with a maul. Then I hauled the wood up and stacked it on the back porch. The wood was very heavy so I knew it had a lot of moisture in it.

I built a fire in the wood stove and learned that the pine that I had just split didn't burn nearly as well or as fast as the dry wood I was used to. As a result, the cabin didn't heat up nearly as fast or as well. I decided it would be a good idea to save that dry wood for the scouts.

I had bought a light fixture for outside the back porch and I decided this was the time to install it. It will make it a lot nicer and safer to have a light out there. I decided to install it in the wall log that is even with the loft floor. That way I can run the wire from under the floor directly through the log. Since the loft floor is pretty high, I needed a way to reach up there to work on mounting the fixture. I tried a small sturdy table, but it wasn't high enough. I put four concrete blocks under the legs and it still wasn't quite high enough, and it was too rickety anyway.

I ended up by setting up a scaffold of two 2x10 planks. One end was supported by a projecting wall log at Grid A1. The other end was supported by a hanger suspended from the rungs of the extension ladder on the porch. I secured the planks and the ladder with screws and I was ready to go.

It got too dark to work outside, so I went in and installed the electrical box for the bedroom ceiling. It was comfortable working in there as long as I left my hat and coat on. It was about 23 degrees out and that pine firewood just didn't heat the place up very well.

On Wednesday, it was another clear 25 degree day. I cut and split some more firewood, but this time I dug into the pile of logs and cut up some Doug Fir logs. These logs were well seasoned, but they had not been covered and they were now coated with solid ice. I wanted to see if they burned any better than the pine logs. They didn't seem as dense. I used them to build a fire in the stove.

Then I went to work and installed the back porch light fixture. I was pleased with how it turned out. The scaffold made it comfortable to work on, and I got lucky when I drilled through the log wall that I didn't hit a rebar. I wired the light up to the switch box A and felt good to have a working light out there for the first time.

I dismantled the scaffold and put the parts away. Then I finished up the day by installing switch box E. The cabin didn't heat up very well, even with the fir firewood, so it felt really good going in at night to the cozy warm trailer.

On Thursday morning, I split some of the fir firewood into smaller chunks and used that in the stove. That seems to burn faster and heat the place up better. That's probably what I will need to do to warm the place up from now on. I installed the box for the ceiling light in the utility room and wired it up to box A. I installed a porcelain light fixture as a temporary fixture so I can use the light before I install the final fixture. Unfortunately I didn't have a switch, so I couldn't finish the job. I did "hot wire" the light though, just to make sure it would work. I'll bring some more switches up next week.

Next, I installed the box for the pantry light. The pantry is full of quite a bit of odds and ends and junk, so instead of clearing it out, I built a temporary scaffold over the top of it so I could reach up and install the box. Then I dismantled the scaffold. I can reach up from the outside enough to install the wiring, so I won't need that scaffold any more.

Dave had talked to me about installing a "Wire Center" for low-voltage applications like telephones, cameras, burglar alarms, etc. He described racks that hold the computer gear and a punch-down block for telephone wires. I spent some time looking around for a good place to install it and decided on the upper corner at the coordinates (26,11) using the coordinate grid on the floor plan diagram. It is the upper western corner of the front entry room. I measured this space to find out how big of a closet would fit up there. I'll check with Dave to see whether or not it will work.

I left for home at 2:00. As I was pulling out of the driveway, Bert and Ernie came running down the road. Unfortunately I didn't have any dog biscuits with me in the truck, so I had to drive away with them running down the road behind me. They'll have to show up earlier next time.