3/24-26/09 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

The drive over was beautiful. The sky was blue, the mountains were covered with a fresh coat of snow, and the road was clear with hardly any traffic. I arrived at 1:00. Bert and Ernie saw me drive by and were at the place by the time I got my boots on. There had evidently been some new snow, but the total level had shrunk down again since last week.

After moving my gear in, I went up and started a fire in the stove. Then I went back down for lunch. Then I hauled a bunch of yard waste I had brought with me to the compost pile. By that time the cabin was warmed up and I went into the loft and made a couple shorter videos about how I insulate and nail the walls. Unfortunately, I have not been able to load those videos onto my computer either. There must be something wrong with my methods.

I went to work nailing the Grid E wall and almost finished before I quit for the day.

On Wednesday, Bert and Ernie came over first thing for some more treats. I started another fire in the stove and went back to work nailing the seams in the loft walls. I had some trouble bending the 10d nails over the electrical conduit in that joint. I don't remember having that trouble on the first floor, so either something was different in the loft or I had used some trick downstairs that I had forgotten. I figured that what I needed was a tool to bend the nails.

I went down to the crawlspace and found a piece of 3/16" steel about 8 inches long and hacksawed a notch near one corner of it so that a 10d nail just fit into the notch. I tried it out and it worked perfectly. After driving the nail partway into the log, I slipped the notch of the tool over the nail and used the tool as a lever to bend the nail. I would make one bend that would fit over the EMT and then make another bend right at the base of the nail that would make the nail hug the EMT and stay there. It was slick. With the help of the tool, I finished nailing the Grid E wall before lunch. In the afternoon I nailed most of the rest of the Grid 1 wall.

In the process Larry and Ted stopped by for a visit and a chat. I gave them a demonstration of using the tool I had made and I showed them the broken drawknife hanging on the wall. I had to point out the break in it. They got a kick out of it.

After they left, I went back to nailing. I reached a point where I needed to use 20d nails so I cut another notch in the bending tool to fit 20d nails. It worked like a charm on the bigger nails just like if did on the smaller ones.

After finishing the nailing on the Grid 1 wall, I made some careful measurements of the half-log stringer I will use for the loft staircase. I am doing the detail design of the staircase and I needed those measurements.

On Thursday morning, I insulated and nailed the seam on the very bottom of the Grid 1 wall. The logs there are not level so the seam only shows on the left half of the wall. On the right half, the seam is below the floor level. It was a special case to figure out how to insulate and nail that seam, but I did the job and it is now ready for chinking in the part above the floor.

Then I moved a bunch of stuff out of the way and got a start nailing the Grid A wall. I got the top seam out of five of them done before I quit for the week. I also did some thinking about what to do about the loft lights. I need to get the wiring done for them before I can insulate the ceiling, which I want to get done as soon as I can. I left for home at 1:15.

3/27/09 I decided what to do about the loft lights. I chose the simplest solution. I will put a fixture on each of the Grid B, C, and D purlins, daisy chain them all together, control them with a switch in Box D, and power them with a wire from Box L on circuit number 4. Box D will therefore contain wires from both circuit number 2 and circuit number 4.

I tried to think about how I might anticipate some future partitioning or finishing of the loft space and string some wires in the rafters to provide some flexibility later. I couldn't think of a reasonable way to do that, so I decided just to wire up the lights I will need and leave it at that. There will still be plenty of receptacles up there, and since they are supplied through EMT conduit, they can be reconfigured later without much problem. Unless I change my mind before the insulation and ceiling goes on, this is how it will be.