9/5-7/11 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

I got a late start and then visited an old friend in Woodinville so I didn't arrive at Camp Serendipity until 2:00. The gate was open and I found Jess and Tim just finishing up the taping job. We chatted for a while and I admired their work. They did a great job. They told me that today they had only dry sanded so it is ready for paint any time. They gave me back my keys to the place, packed up their tools, and left. It is a great feeling having that drywall job completely done, except of course for the cleanup.

I had my lunch and my usual nap and then went into the woods and watered all 11 sequoia trees. I got a small start on cleaning up the drywall mess but before it got dark, I drove over to Ron's and paid him for the work. I also brought the left-over round corners to him.

On Tuesday morning I started the systematic cleanup of the entire cabin. Even though there had been no drywall work in the loft, there was still a thin film of white powder on everything up there. The fine dust must have risen on the convection currents in the air and gotten deposited up there. I felt a little stupid because I had made no preparation at all for the dust. If I had known better, I would have covered things up. As it was, I had to vacuum the top surface of everything. I even vacuumed my bed.

I decided to work from top down, so I started with the loft walls and windows. Then I did everything that was on tables, chairs, dressers, boxes, and chests. All the stuff that I had moved from the trailer was in a pile in the corner with no covering, so it was a lot of work to clean everything in that pile.

When everything on the floor was clean, I vacuumed the entire loft floor. By the time I finished, it was time for lunch and a nap.

Afterward I vacuumed the staircase and moved downstairs. I started downstairs by vacuuming all of the drywall ceilings. Then I vacuumed all the first floor log walls and windows, and also all the new drywall walls.

The vacuuming was tedious because the drywall dust is heavy and clingy. It doesn't come up without a lot of suction and slow, hard scrubbing. The filter had to be cleaned every 5 or 10 square feet or else the suction was reduced too much. And to clean the filter, I had to go outside and pay attention to which way the breeze was blowing so that the dust didn't blow back on me or the porch. The best way I found to clean the filter was to gently knock it against something rigid, like a big rock. But to avoid climbing so many stairs, I tried to do it on the back porch. Instead of a big rock, I used a 3 lb hammer. I held the hammer out away from me with my left hand and then rotated and knocked the filter against the head of the hammer with my right hand. I would stand so the dust would blow away from me. In some cases, when the breeze was wrong or too variable, I would have to walk down the stairs and use a big rock. I didn't count the number of times I cleaned the filter, but it was a lot.

When the walls and ceilings were done, I proceeded on to the tables and other furniture and the things that were on top of them. Finally I got a start on the main floor before I quit for the day.

On Wednesday, I went to work vacuuming the main floor. There was a lot of spilled drywall mud so I had a putty knife in my left hand which I used to scrape up the spots while I ran the vacuum with my right hand. There was a lot of bending over.

I had already vacuumed trails from the bathroom to the stair landing and to the refrigerator so that I could live up in the loft without tracking a lot of dust up there. I had a rug at the foot of the stairs that I would wipe my feet on each time before going up the stairs. This rug kept getting whiter and whiter until I periodically vacuumed it clean again. But now, I systematically cleaned the entire floor starting at one end.

I was almost finished with the main floor, excluding the bedroom and the utility room, when I got a call from home that I had to take. It was a conference call to deal with a family problem and the call took an hour and a half.

When the call was over, I finished vacuuming all the floors and cleaned the four rugs I had in various places.

I hadn't made as much progress getting ready for the scouts as I had hoped, but at least the place was reasonably clean now. If I don't get to it next week, the scouts can carry furniture from the loft down to the first floor where they will be working.

One problem I wanted to solve was to provide an easel, or other surface, where they could post their work charts. I usually hung two old doors on the studs lining the hallway, but now that was drywalled. I also needed some kind of door or flap for privacy for the bathroom. I could use a tarp as I had done in the past, but I thought of temporarily hanging some of those old doors. My plan was to use horizontally aligned screw eyes in the jamb and long screws in the door edge which I would bend down 90 degrees to go into the screw eyes. I checked my inventory of parts and happily discovered that I have six screw eyes of the right size. That will be enough for 3 doors.

I didn't check to see if I have the right size doors, but I think I do. Getting them hung will be a project for next week before the scouts arrive.

I left for home at 2:45 feeling pretty much ready for the scouts. On the way, I stopped at Ron's house again and returned a metal yardstick and a bag of screws that he had forgotten to take.

9/9/11 Called Sky Nursery and learned that they have giant sequoia trees. I want to plant one to replace the one named 'Chuck' that died, so I was delighted to find them. They are bigger than the ones that I have growing, so that means that Chuck will go from being the runt of the grove to the biggest of the bunch. That is if I can keep it alive. I plan to plant it down by the concrete stairs. I can run a hose to that location to provide water on a continuous basis. That should keep it healthy until it goes dormant for the winter.