5/3-5/11 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:35 and was promptly met by Bert and Ernie. They got their usual hugs and biscuits. I carried up a bunch of stuff I brought with me, including a small wooden table we got at a garage sale, a TV-DVD we got from Almitra, a couple gallons of stain, some hardware, my laundered bedding, and my usual gear.

After turning up the water pressure and the thermostats I started a fire in the wood stove. Then, after having my lunch, I went into the woods with a chainsaw and cleared fallen trees from the trail through the sequoias. Then I carried a couple buckets of water laced with Superthrive and watered Bill and Andrew.

Next, I set up a two-tier steel scaffold tower under the Grid G3 corner of the cabin roof. I set up a long ladder against the eave at about Grid G2.5 and secured it with a rope to the Grid G2 and G3 PSLs. Then I placed two long pressure treated 4x4s stretching from the top of the Grid F.5 loft beam over to a rung on the ladder. This formed the support for planks from the porch deck at Grid G2 to the 4x4s and from there over to the scaffold tower. I used my usual rebar S-hooks and C-hooks, and 2x6s to lower the deck on the scaffold tower to match the level of the porch deck, which was a comfortable working height for the ceiling at the Grid G end of the roof.

The scaffolding is a little rickety, and probably wouldn't be acceptable to OSHA, but it is safe enough for me as long as I am careful, which I am.

On Wednesday after breakfast, I called Casey at the Building Department and asked about the requirements for roof ventilation. He said I need a total of one square foot of vent for each 150 square feet of roof, and that counts the venting at the ridge. I did the calculations and determined that in each rafter bay I needed a 4x12 inch hole. Casey told me that you can buy metal venting that you would install along with the ceiling boards, but I decided to make my own by cutting holes in the pine paneling boards.

Then I went to work installing ceiling boards over to the Grid G3 corner of the roof using my rickety scaffolding, which worked very well. It was awkward moving around on the scaffolding though. The tower enclosed the Camp Serendipity sign which limited where I could put planks and where I could walk, so I had to maneuver around the sign. I also had to move on a couple different levels in order to get around. That gave me a lot of extra exercise, but it was fun and it worked out fine.

It took me a while to devise a way to handle those 16-foot 1x8s up on the scaffolding and get them in position so I could drive in the first nail. What ended up working pretty well was to make two short rope slings positioned four feet in from each end of the board I wanted to nail up. Each sling was held to a rafter a foot or so above where the board needed to go by a C-clamp attached to the bottom flange of the rafter. Each sling was then attached to the 1x8 with another C-clamp. The rope between the C-clamps was tied with a tautline hitch which is adjustable.

Once the 1x8 was clamped to the two slings, it hung edgewise vertically. By pushing it up with my hand, I could get the board pressed up against the bottoms of the rafters and I could see whether the slings needed to be tightened or loosened. I adjusted the slings so that the tongue in the ceiling board that was already in place just entered the groove of the hanging board.

The first course, though, did not provide a tongue to mate with, but instead the board just butted up against the fascia board that extended about an inch and a quarter below the rim rafter. That leaves about a half-inch of reveal of the fascia board after the ceiling board is in place.

Once the slings were adjusted properly, the next move was to push the board up into place with my right hand while attaching, with my left hand, another, bigger, C-clamp to a short 1x2 resting on the two rafter flanges above the 1x8 and clamping the 1x8 to take the pressure off my right hand. This left me with no hands to hang onto anything with, and it took many trials and failures to finally get the first board held in place, but as with everything else on this project, I got better at it as I went.

I clamped the board to the short 1x2s loosely enough that I could still slide the board. First I used a hammer on one end of the board or the other to get the board positioned correctly lengthwise. Then I slacked the sling ropes a little so that the 1x8 could be slid up or down the rafters. In the case of the first course, the board needed to be slid snugly down against the inside of the fascia board. On the rest of the courses, the board needed to be slid down once the tongue was in the groove for the entire length so that the tongue was seated all the way into the groove.

That was tricky but I got the hang of it and by lunch time, I had two 16-foot boards nailed in place. A chipmunk noticed me working and I took several breaks during the work to feed him peanuts on the porch from my hand. They're such cute little guys.

After lunch and a short nap, I installed one more 1x8, which went a lot quicker now that I had the technique down, and which completed the second course of boards all the way across the roof. The chipmunk was back to get more peanuts during the work.

The next course was going to be the vent boards so I switched gears and started to make them. Cutting a 4x12 inch hole for each rafter bay, which are 16 inches on center, leaves 4 inches of wood between each hole. And it leaves a little over an inch of wood on the groove side of the board, and it leaves the milled profile on the other side. I used a Skilsaw to make the four initial cuts for each hole, and then I used a small saber saw to cut away the corners. After the holes were all cut, I used a rasp to smooth the inside edges of the holes.

The finished product resembled a wing spar on an old Curtiss Jenny. It was surprisingly light and rigid.

The stain on the boards I had installed so far was still not quite dry. After the boards had been nailed to the ceiling for nearly a week some of the stain had run down across the boards from where it had pooled. I got a paintbrush out and brushed out all of these runs which made the boards look really nice. Then I noticed that all the rest of the boards in the drying rack also had pooled stain in places. I brushed out all of these pools on each board and then leaned the boards up against the cabin wall. There was just enough headroom to stack them so that the tops of the boards were between rafters at the top of the Grid E wall and the bottoms were on the porch deck out a few feet from the wall. The stain was pretty thick when I brushed it out so I am pretty sure the boards will dry in this position without any further running. Some of them may even be completely dry by the time I get around to installing them.

I cleaned up the sawdust mess I had made and brought in most of the tools before I went in for the night. After I had had my dinner, I saw a hummingbird hovering outside a living room window and he made a few attempts to come in the window. I sure don't know how those little guys survive this time of year. I don't see nearly enough flowers out yet to support them. It's truly amazing how they do it.

On Thursday morning I slept in and got a late start. I got the tools back out and made one more 16-foot vent board. It went a little faster than the first one because I have the technique down and didn't have to experiment. But by the time I finished making the board, and cleaning up the sawdust mess, it was time to pack up and leave for home. I left at 1:30.