11/27-29/12 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way I stopped at Priscilla's to pick up a file cabinet she is giving to me. After checking it out, I realized that it was too big and heavy for me to handle without a hand truck and I had forgotten to bring one with me. So we agreed that I would pick it up later when I had a hand truck. Then I proceeded on to visit with Uncle Charles. Since he was just beginning his lunch, I joined him for lunch. We had a nice visit.

There was fresh snow above about 2000 feet so the drive over was beautiful. It was sunny on the west side of the pass but there were low clouds on the east side. The temperature was below freezing and there was about 4 inches of snow on the ground when I arrived at Camp Serendipity at about 2:15.

Bert and Ernie were right there to greet me and they got their usual hugs and biscuits. I built a fire in the stove and then had a short nap.

I placed the last full-width board in its place in the ceiling and then measured the narrow, tapered space that was left. Since that space was so narrow, my usual method of ripping a board to fill it would not work very well.

After thinking it over, I decided on a new method. Rather than install a full-width board and then a little skinny second one, I decided to rip the full-width board down the middle and insert a spacer in the middle of it. That way I would just fatten up the board a little. I measured and marked the boards for ripping and clamped them to a sawhorse ready to rip in the morning.

On Wednesday morning it was 26º outside.

Since the saw was still set at 45º, I decided to do all the ripping at 45º. I figured that would make them mate tighter. So I ripped the boards I had marked. When I put the pieces together, I discovered that the resulting board was too narrow. So I got a second scrap and ripped it a little wider. This time the result was exactly the right size. This was really not another example of measure once and cut twice. This was an example of learning exactly where to follow the line when cutting at 45º. It makes a big difference whether the scrap is going to be the piece on the left or the right.

Anyway, I took the three pieces up onto the scaffolding and placed them in the ceiling. I was really happy with the fit. By cutting them at 45º, they overlapped each other so that when they were nailed in place, the seams were smashed together very tightly. I was pleased with the result.

With those boards nailed in place, the entire eave at Grid A was finished. I was very happy about that. Next, I got my caulk gun and inspected the entire Grid A seam between the wall and the ceiling and didn't find any place that needed caulking. I had already caulked the ceiling board that was nailed to the purlin at the time I installed the purlin, and that seam was still caulked tight. And since all the new ceiling boards mated tongue and groove with that one, no more caulk was necessary. All that remained now was to dismantle the scaffolding. I got a start on that before I stopped for lunch and a nap.

After my nap, I dismantled the scaffolding and got it all done except for four of the five 4x4 hangers, two ladders, and the planks going over to the cliff. The ladders were frozen in a snowbank and the planks on the cliff had a big load of frozen snow on them.

I also dismantled the 3-tier steel scaffold tower and erected the second tier on the new tower between Grid A3 and B3. It started snowing at about 2:30 in the afternoon.

On Thursday morning, it was still snowing lightly and the trees were all covered with snow. It was beautiful. I finished removing all the scaffolding. I had to dig the ladders out of the snowbank. I also finally dismantled the hanging scaffold I had used to install the kitchen range vent cap. I had stood on that scaffold to hang the Grid A2.5 rebar S-hook, since it was there and was handy, so I used it again to take that S-hook back down. Then I unbolted the two brackets from the log wall and that wall was finally scaffold free for the first time in a long time.

I took a couple pictures of the eave with the new ceiling and the wall with no scaffolding. There is now only the one gable eave to do and all the ceilings on the outside will be in place. Another milestone passed. I left for home at 12:30 happy about the progress in spite of it being slow.