9/20/11 (Tuesday) Drove to Sumner and picked up seven interior doors from Pacific Coast Frontier Door Company.

9/22/11 (Wednesday) Terry Hagen called and said that the cabinets are ready for delivery. I told him I would call him Monday, 9/26, to schedule a date for delivery at Camp Serendipity.

9/23-25/11 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Friday through Sunday.

On the way up I stopped and visited Claude McVey. I spent some time unsuccessfully trying to get his email system working.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 1:15 and was soon greeted by Bert. I drove the truck up to the upper roadway, gave Bert his hugs and biscuits, and unloaded my gear. After having my lunch, I unloaded a couple boxes of kitchen utensils and pots and pans Ellen had collected, and stored them in the loft waiting for cabinets. Then I went to work unloading the seven doors.

I used the porch crane and made a video of the process. It was uncomfortably hot outside, but the crane made the work easy. It was harder carrying them inside the cabin, but it was a short haul so it wasn't too bad. I stacked the doors in the living room hoping there would be enough room to store the cabinets too when they arrived. My plan is to install the kitchen and dining room flooring before I install the cabinets, so the cabinets need to be out of the way. They also need to be out of the way of the painting that still needs to be done.

After I backed the truck down and parked it below, I took my buckets into the woods and watered the sequoia trees. Then I took a long extension cord down to the parking area and plugged an electronic rodent repeller into the meter disconnect. I placed the repeller under the hood of the truck to keep pack rats from chewing up my plug wires. This is about the time of year that they do that so this should keep them away.

At 3:00 AM I was awakened by a snap. I knew that the only thing that could make that noise was a mousetrap. I got up and sure enough, I had caught a mouse in the loft in my make-shift kitchen. I threw the mouse outside and reset the trap wondering how the thing got in. I convinced myself that he walked in the front door while I was carrying doors in. I left the door open the whole time so I suppose it is possible that the mouse darted in when I wasn't looking. If I don't catch any more mice for a while, I'll begin to believe that story.

On Saturday, I removed one of the hinge screws from one of the new doors. I'll take it with me to Tacoma Screw so that I can buy 63 matching screws that are 3" long. Bill taught me a neat trick of using the hinge screws going into the jamb to fasten the jamb on that side. That way you don't mar up the jamb with nails. The other jamb is still a problem, though.

Next I dismantled and put away the doors that I had temporarily hung for the scout visit. Then I moved everything portable out of the bathroom and got it ready for painting. I used the big sheets of cardboard that the doors had been packed with to cover the log wall and the tub. Then I used a couple 2x4s and a piece of plywood to span the top of the tub so that I could reach the ceiling and the walls above the shower stall by standing on the plywood. I used some plastic sheeting to mask the shower stall and I used garbage bags to mask the toilet.

With the masking done, I stopped for lunch. I skipped my nap and started right in on painting right after lunch.

I am not much of a painter and don't really like the job, but I am eager to get it done so I jumped in. I haven't done much interior painting so I had asked the paint store guy for advice. He told me to "cut in" the corners with a brush and then use a roller after that. That's what I did. I was awkward and messy to start with, but I got better.

When I finished the bathroom, I moved on and painted the linen closet. Then I moved into the bedroom, painted the closet, and finally painted the rest of the bedroom. The paint was a heavy base coat for covering new drywall. I was very happy with how it looked when I was done.

Cleaning the equipment was a little messy. I tried cleaning the roller by holding it out in front of me and squirting it with a hard stream of water from the hose. By hitting the roller on the side, I got it to spinning fast so that it was spraying water for 360 degrees. I figured the centrifugal force would really do a good cleaning job. What I didn't realize until it was too late was that the spray was soaking my pants and shoes.

After the tools were cleaned up, I hung my wet pants in front of an electric heater and then took my shower. I had to remove the cardboard and wooden platform from the tub, but I left the plastic sheet around the shower stall. I just set the curtain rod on top of the shower stall edges so I had a shower curtain. It worked fine.

I went to bed happy with the painting progress and was glad to find my mousetraps still set in the morning. I think that if a mouse had found a hole into the cabin, there would have been two mice instead of just one.

On Sunday morning, I painted the bathroom using enamel. I want to get the bathroom finished as soon as possible so that I can use it without a lot of inconvenience. This time it occurred to me that it would work better to do the roller first and then "cut in" the corners with a brush afterward. This worked so much better that I wondered if that paint salesman had ever painted anything. I was very happy with how the bathroom looked after it was all painted.

This time, when I cleaned up the tools, I screwed the long handle onto the roller before I squirted it with the hose. That way it was out far enough from me so that I didn't get quite as wet.

When everything was put away, I vacuumed the loft floor. I had my lunch and left for home at 1:20 feeling good about the progress.