11/21-23/11 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

I stopped and visited Claude McVey on the way. The drive over was snowy from Gold Bar on, so it was a little slower than usual. I arrived at 1:45 and saw that Mike had cleared my driveway and parking area all the way back to the old trailer site. There had been another 3 inches of snow since he plowed and there was a berm from the snowplow on the road. So I stopped on the road and engaged 4wd before I drove in. I drove all the way up to the old trailer site, turned on the water, and then backed the truck into the parking area and pulled frontward downhill and parked at the foot of the concrete stairs. This is probably going to be the most convenient way to park during the winter if he keeps clearing snow the same way.

I shoveled off the concrete stairs before I carried my gear up, and when I reached the top, I unlocked the cabin and started a fire. Then I went back down and got my gear.

After lunch, I began to prepare the entry room for flooring. I removed the 2x4 door stop I had screwed to the floor and then used a scraper to scrape off thick lumps of paint and to check for any irregularities. I found one nailhead that had to be driven in a little.

Next I vacuumed the floor real well and then re-read the instructions for installing Konecto. The instructions stressed the need for a hand roller as you go and a 100 lb roller after the floor is laid. I had looked into renting a 100 lb roller and that is what I had planned to do. But then it dawned on me that it is winter now and I would have to carry that roller up and down the concrete staircase. I wouldn't be able to drive up and use the porch crane as I could in the summer.

Instead of renting a big roller, I decided to make my own. I cut three 7-inch pieces of 2 1/2" PVC, placed them in a row, placed a board on top and piled 3 concrete blocks on the board. This gave me 120 lb spread over 2 or 3 7-inch segments rather than 100 lb spread over three 10-inch segments if I used a standard roller. Mine would deliver at least as much pressure. It would be a little more awkward to use but a lot cheaper and convenient to get on site. As I pushed the board, it would roll over the pipes until the last one came out from under the board. Then I would pick that pipe up and stick it under the front of the board so it could keep rolling. I steered it by sticking a stick in the pipes and changing the angle of them.

I spent at least a half hour looking for my hand roller. I evidently had found some perfect place to store it that I have since forgotten. I checked all the tool boxes and all the cabinets and places I could think of but I couldn't find it. Rather than waste any more time looking, I made my own hand roller by borrowing a caster wheel from my Mt. Rainier model storage/display/travel case and screwed it to a short 1x2. I'll replace the wheel when I am done installing floors or whenever I find my store-bought roller, whichever comes first.

It was getting late by the time I was ready to start laying floor tiles and I realized that I needed to do some more thinking about exactly where to start, what the pattern was going to be, and exactly how to start cutting the first piece. After thinking about this, I quit for the day and planned to start laying the floor the next day.

On Tuesday morning, there was about 8 inches of new snow on the ground. I got a fire going, did my exercises, had breakfast, and started laying flooring. The flooring tiles have a very sticky glue strip all the way around, and it is important to keep those clean. I had a little trouble keeping little pieces of something from sticking to the strips. I discovered the little pieces were bits of paper or cardboard that came from inside the box the panels came in. I used a tweezers to pick the little pieces off the glue strips and I was thinking that the manufacturer should have been more careful to provide clean packaging. Then it dawned on me that I might have created those small pieces when I cut the box open. Maybe a different technique of opening the boxes would prevent the problem.

Anyway, after some fiddling around, I got the first panel cut and laid in place. Then I cut and attached the second piece and I was on my way. They got easier as I went.

Not long after, I got a call from Terry. He informed me that my new cabinet for the bathroom would be ready to pick up on December 5 at Canyon Creek Cabinet Co. While he was on the phone I asked him for his advice on laying the Konecto. He said that he had just spent the weekend with a relative helping him install Konecto so he had some good practical advice. He said not to be afraid to bear down hard when you cut the tiles. No kidding. I had found that I not only had to bear down hard, but to make several passes, and then even at that, it was hard to bend it and snap it.

The instructions say that in order to cut it, you simply score it and snap it. I think the trick is to bear down hard, have a very sharp knife, and it doesn't hurt to have a lot stronger wrists than I have too.

I ended up getting the hang of it. The pieces were cleaner after I got going so I didn't spend much time picking debris off them, and I got better at cutting them. I laid the entire entry room floor, which isn't all that big, except for one piece before I got pretty hungry. I looked at the clock and realized that I had worked right through my normal lunch time. It was already 1:30.

After lunch and a nap, I cut and laid down that last piece. I really like how that floor looks.

With that experience, and a little new knowledge, I changed my plans for how I would lay the flooring in the bathroom. My previous plan was to start under the toilet, but now I decided to start on the long wall opposite the toilet and leave the toilet space for last. The long wall will give me better alignment of the tiles and the new plan will minimize the amount of time the toilet will not be operational.

Ron Siderits had questioned why my drywall came down so close to the floor in the bathroom. He said he kept his an inch and a half off the floor in case of a flood. My drywallers had used scrap pieces of half-inch board to keep the panels a half inch off the floor. Ron didn't think that was enough.

I decided to compromise and cut another quarter to a half inch off the bottom of the drywall panels in the bathroom just to be safer. That would still leave the board in contact with the plate and that was about as low as there were any screws.

I got a good start on cutting away the sheetrock before I quit for the day.

I heard it raining cats and dogs all night long so on Wednesday morning, the snow was as soggy as mashed potatoes. After breakfast I heard the snowplow down on the road, but it didn't sound like they were going away. I looked out the window and saw that they were working right around my driveway. I thought they were trying to clear the berm they usually make so that I could get out more easily. I decided to go down and talk to them and thank them.

They were gone, though, by the time I got my coat and boots on and got out there. Since I was outside, I decided to clear the snow from the concrete stairs and go down and see what they had been working on and assess how hard it was going to be for me to drive out.

They had been clearing some fallen branches and they didn't work on my berm at all. But still, since I was in 4wd and aimed downhill it seemed that I might be able to barge my way out onto the road without doing any shoveling. At least that's what I would try first.

The rain had stopped, but there was a lot of tree drip and snow falling from the trees, so I got pretty wet shoveling the stairs. My big broad brimmed Stetson is perfect for that. The rain and snow just bounces off instead of going down my neck.

When I went back in, I moved the cabinets out of the bathroom so I could finish the drywall trimming job. I temporarily tucked one cabinet in the living room closet and the other one in the linen closet. Then I went back and finished the job of trimming away sheetrock.

After cleaning up the drywall mess, I scraped the bigger paint blobs off the floor and looked for irregularities. Then I swept and vacuumed the entire bathroom floor.

I measured and learned that the first piece of flooring would end right in the middle of a drain pipe and right between the water pipes coming up out of the floor. This was perfect, because I could cut half the hole for the big pipe in each of the first two pieces of flooring. I could also cut a notch for accepting each water pipe.

Looking at the pipes, I decided that I had better fill in the oversized hole in the subfloor that the drain pipe came through. The plumbers had installed some kind of sleeve around the water pipes that made them mouse-tight, and maybe even ant-tight. But the drain pipe had a gap around it that was about 3/4" at the widest. I decided to cover the hole with sheet metal. I fashioned a piece to fit and screwed it in place after a little struggle.

Since the weather was pretty threatening, I decided to quit for the day and get on over the pass. When I was down in the crawl space, I could see that there was water running in from the rain and that my elaborate drainage system didn't keep it out. That news was a blow that I will have to think about. My first thoughts were that I was never going to stop the leakage and that I would have to do some kind of plumbing and drainage inside the crawlspace to deal with it. I'll have to do a lot more thinking and observing before I make any final decisions, but I wasn't happy about the water.

I left for home at 12:45 and was able to blast my way out in 4wd and get onto the road without doing any shoveling of that deep slush. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I am feeling very thankful for my project.