Construction Journal Entry Week of 10/30/16

11/1-3/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

It rained most of the way up to the cabin, but it stopped before I got there. I think I live right. After starting a fire in the stove and raising the flag, I brought the wheelbarrow down to the truck and hauled a huge amount of yard waste from the truck to the compost pile. Then I wheeled the rest of my gear up to the cabin just before it started raining lightly.

I carried the 30 10-foot lengths of #3 rebar I had brought with me up to the cabin in four trips and leaned it against the porch deck under the eaves. The rain was light so I barely got wet.

On Wednesday, I split some firewood from a couple big rounds and started a fire in the wood stove before breakfast.

I spent the morning inventorying the extra bedding in the cabin. I had brought some extra blankets and sheets with me and I wanted to be able to tell Ellen exactly what bedding we had on hand up there. There was bedding in the Swedish Chest, the big cedar chest, some garbage bags, and I thought there might be some in the footlocker, so I opened all of it and one-by-one spread it on the bed in the loft and took pictures.

There was no bedding in the footlocker; it is full of light bulbs. I did a reasonable job of organizing and putting things back neatly into the two chests.

In the process of moving things around, I found a telephone that I thought would work. The phone that was currently installed in the loft does not work, so I have been in the habit of bringing up the phone from the kitchen every time I go up to the loft. That has been a nuisance.

I tried the phone that I found and it works, so I replaced the defective one and I will no longer have to bring up the one from downstairs. Another plus is that this phone is powered from the phone jack and doesn't need 120v power. It is the only one in the cabin that doesn't need the power to be on to work, so now I will have a telephone even when the lights go out.

After lunch and a nap, I got Dr. Dick 's big rebar cutter/bender out of the crawlspace and brought it up on the front porch deck. I positioned it near the Grid G1 corner where it will be useful to cut balusters from 10-foot lengths of rebar. I fastened it to the deck with two big lag screws.

Next I pulled up and stacked all the rebar that was leaning up against the porch deck. In the process, I learned that the rebar is not all exactly 10 feet long. A few of them are short by a couple inches and most of the rest are long by three or four inches. Since not all balusters on the staircases are the same length, I may be able to cut four balusters from some of the rebar pieces. For others, I will only get three. I will probably take some time to figure out the optimal way of making the balusters and minimizing the scrap. That's just one of my idiosyncrasies.

On Thursday morning, Dave called. He filled me in on his adventure of hauling a boat on a trailer from Seattle to Miami last week. The adventure involved dealing with a burned up wheel bearing on the trailer which required him to stay over two nights in Boise. It was fun talking with him about that and other subjects.

After breakfast, I did some careful measurements to determine the lengths of the balusters I will need for the front porch staircase. Then I began cutting rebar just to test the cutter and get a feel for the process. My progress was slow because I am still having considerable pain from my hernia surgery but at least I got something done this week. I left for home at 12:20.



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