1/24-26/12 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped in and visited with Claude McVey in Woodinville. From there I drove to Camp Serendipity on mostly bare and wet roads. There was some snow and slush on the Lake Wenatchee Highway, and there was a lot of new snow on the White River Road. It had not been plowed there, so there was no berm at my driveway, which also had not been plowed. There was about 6 inches of snow on my driveway when I arrived at about 2:45. I was already in 4wd so I just backed into my driveway far enough to get out of the snowplow's way about 10 feet.

Bert and Ernie greeted me as soon as I was parked and the three of us went up to get them their biscuits and hugs. The staircase was covered in about 5 inches of snow and I decided not to take the time to clear it off. I was able to carry all my gear up in just one more trip.

The water in the tub ran fine and the pressure was enough for a shower so I decided not to change anything down at the discharge end of the plumbing. The leaky nozzle down there had allowed enough flow to keep the system from freezing since I had been there last, so I decided to leave it the way it is.

I split some wood, made a fire, had my lunch, and then went to work and laid some more flooring before it was time to quit for the day.

On Wednesday I spent the whole day inside working on flooring. The electric heaters were set to 60º and they had the place warmed up enough so that I didn't start a fire in the stove. A couple times I burned some of the cardboard cartons the flooring came in and that provided more than enough heat to keep the place warm. In fact it was a little too warm to work so I worked all day with just my t-shirt on top.

The time-consuming part of the flooring is cutting and fitting around obstacles like the columns and the stair stringer. Once those are surrounded, the laying of full-size panels takes almost no time. Cutting the last ones at the end to length takes a little time, but not nearly as much as fitting around a column.

To fit the flooring around a column, I first have to cut the notch around the bottom to receive the flooring. I use my new Bosch cutter for that and I had the technique figured out pretty well by the time I had done a couple that way. I didn't notch the stair stringer at all but simply fit the flooring pretty close to the stringer.

Then to fit the flooring panels, I use the thin waxed paper sheets that come between each floor panel to make a pattern. I lay the paper flat right where the next panel needs to go and where the paper meets the obstacle, I use either a narrow chisel or my knife to mark the paper where it needs to be cut. Then I use the paper as a pattern to mark where the panel needs to be cut. That method works very well.

By lunchtime I had flooring surrounding the stair stringer and I had cut the notch in the Grid B3 PSL. After lunch and a nap, I had nearly surrounded the hearth and half of the Grid B3 PSL.

The flooring nearly met at the south corner of the hearth being only about an inch away from the corner on both sides. The hearth is at nearly 45º to the run of the flooring so all the pieces butting up to the hearth had to be cut at an angle. The problem was that I could see that the line of the panels wasn't going to come out exactly right at the corner and I wasn't sure how to correct for that.

It snowed pretty heavily for a couple hours during the middle of the day, but it stopped before there was much of an accumulation. I don't think it was more than 4 or 5 inches.

On Thursday morning I moved the interior doors and the flooring material for the utility room out of the way from the corner of the living room where I still needed to lay flooring, to the opposite side where the flooring was already laid. I cut the notches in the bottom of the Grid C3 RPSL and the Grid D3 PSL and finished laying all the flooring in the living room except for two runs of about 3 or 4 panels each. These need to be fitted around the columns.

In order to match up the flooring to make up for the mis-match coming around the hearth, I cut a slight notch along part of the edge of 3 or 4 panels. This hides the mis-match and moved it to the wall where it disappeared. I was fairly proud of how it came out. I suspect no one will notice it unless I point it out.

I was extremely happy with how the floor looks now that it is nearly done in the living room. It just happened that the wood-grain and species in the flooring matches the big dining room table almost exactly. And the darker pattern contrasts nicely with the log walls and staircase.

I packed up and thought I was going to leave at 1:00 until I discovered that the snowplow had thrown up a huge berm between my truck and the road. It was about 4 or 5 feet high and was made of icy heavy chunks of snow. It took me 45 minutes to dig through the berm enough in order to drive out.

I brought my chainsaw with me and dropped it off at Chainsaws+ to repair a broken bolt, to get a new chain, and to get a much needed tune-up. I also brought my power planer with me so that I can make some baseboards at home in order to save some work time at Camp Serendipity.

1/27/12 (Friday) Planed the bottom edge of six 8-foot 2x4s to make baseboards for the kitchen and dining room. The planing takes away the normal chamfer on a 2x4 and makes a sharp right angle corner. That way the baseboard will fit tightly against the flooring without having a dirt-catching notch underneath. I applied one coat of Varathane water-based gloss polyurethane to two sides of each baseboard. I did this in Seattle to save time working at Camp Serendipity.

1/28/12 (Saturday) Applied two more coats of Varathane to the baseboards. Dave gave us a beautiful hand-made Adirondack chair which he designed and built himself. I loaded it in the truck along with the baseboards to haul it up to Camp Serendipity.