8/27-28/96 I went up to the property for 2 days: Tuesday and Wednesday. I planned to stay through Thursday, but I forgot that I had to bring my mother to a doctor's appointment on Thursday. Ellen reminded me on Wednesday evening, so I spent Wednesday night in the trailer, and left for home early Thursday morning.

On the way to the property, I stopped at Wood Care Systems in Woodinville and bought 6 gallons of Penetreat preservative for $146. This is enough for about 24 30' logs which is about $6 per log. It doesn't sound so bad that way.

The first thing I did after I got moved in was to install the Log Wizard on the chain saw. Then I used it to strip the gray wood off log #14, the 33' log I had pulled up for the sill. The Log Wizard is sort of a power drawknife and it makes the job of stripping the bad wood off the log much easier than with a muscle powered drawknife.

Even though Earl had identified this log as a douglas fir, I think it is a white pine because the wood has the blue ring in the sapwood that Louis Brender told me was characteristic of white pine. The wood also seems to be soft like white pine and not as hard or grainy as douglas fir. Anyway, after I finished stripping log #14, I treated it with one coat of Penetreat before quitting for the day.

As I worked on the log, I became increasingly unhappy with it and that evening I stewed about it a little. I wasn't sure the log was good enough quality to use in the wall, and I wasn't sure that the rest of the logs I had bought were any better. The log is severely checked and the bluish ring discolors the log. Ron Sideritz told me that the blue ring is a fungus in the wood.

The next morning, I decided to finish treating the log with the second coat of Penetreat but not to use the log right away. I decided to pull up another log to see if it would be any better. I selected a 40' grand fir, and instead of cutting it to length down at the log pile, I decided to pull the whole log up to see if I could handle 40 foot logs.

As I was pulling the log, #31, up the cliff, Nancy Bartholomew stopped by and introduced herself. When she left, I finished pulling the new log up to the roadway. Oscar had no problem pulling the log up. I cut it to length and stripped it with the Log Wizard. I felt a whole lot better about this log. There aren't many checks at all and the wood is sound and pure white. Just as I was finishing up applying the first coat of Penetreat to log #31, Nancy came back with her husband, John, a friend, and a few kids. They looked over the project, toured the property, and we had a real nice visit.

It was time to quit for the day (and for the week, as it turned out) by the time they left.

9/3-5/96 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

Although I still had mixed feelings about the quality of the logs in the log pile, I felt a lot better about the new log I had prepared. My hope was that by the end of the day to get log #31 up on the wall as the first log in place in the building.

I started doing some careful, systematic measuring and recording of the checks and other features of the log in order to figure out which way to orient it in the wall. After a few attempts at measuring I gave up and just used my eyeball and my gut feel judgement to choose which way to set it up.

After choosing the orientation, I used the Log Wizard to sort of true up and flatten the bottom of the log that would be lying on the sill plate, and also the side that would be inside the building. A rim joist will be screwed into this side and it needs to be rather straight, flat, and in line with the inside edge of the pressure treated sill.

I started out using a string to figure out where I needed to cut, but I found that it was easier to slide a long straight 2x4 along the top of the log. The 2x4 that I used had some old blue paint on it and as it slid across the log, it left blue marks on the high spots of the log. I used the Log Wizard to grind off these marks and then repeated the process. This method worked pretty well and I was amazed at how easy the Log Wizard made the job. I had tried out the drawknife earlier, and I knew what I was comparing against.

The next step was to measure and mark the log for the holes that would receive the vertical rebar sticking out of the foundation. There are 10 such rebar that go through this particular log and since the log must be lowered over all these at once and neither the log nor the rebar will give very much, the holes must be drilled to a pretty close tolerance. I made the measurements, marked the log, checked them by eyeball, found an error, fixed it, and then did a little more checking.

I sort of lost my enthusiasm for checking after a while because it started raining and it was 5:00. I decided to quit for the day. Before I went in, though, I took a walk through the trails to the spring. A bear has been visiting about once a week for the past month or so and I kind of like to check back there to see what he has been doing. Each week I notice some new rotten log that he has torn apart. This was the first time I didn't see any evidence he had been there.

By the time I got back the rain had stopped so I decided to try drilling some holes. I had several different drills and bits and I wasn't sure which combination would work the best. I also wasn't sure if it would be easiest to drill horizontally, straight up, or straight down. I started with a spade bit in the new 3/8ths drill I had just bought. This drill is a lot lighter and easier to handle than the two half inch drill motors that I have so I started with this one. It also has a leveling bubble in it to help align it on horizontal or vertical holes. I decided to drill horizontally on my first try.

The spade bit got clogged very easily and I had to pull it out and unclog it every quarter inch of depth or so. When my first hole was a couple inches deep, I decided to try a different bit. I had bought a long, 5/8ths inch, double-twist augur bit at a garage sale for $1. Someone had filed the screw point tip off of it and I had honed the edge sharp. I knew that without the screw tip, it would need a pilot hole, and I had already made a pilot hole with the spade bit. I put the augur bit in the 3/8ths drill and tried it. I was amazed at how fast and effortlessly the drill cut.

The grand fir wood is fairly soft and the bit was very sharp so it cut through the log in seconds. In fact it was so much fun, I kept going and drilled all 10 holes, or so I thought.

Since the rain stopped and the sun had come back out, I just kept going. I was eager to know how easy it was going to be to lower this log over the rebar so I chained the log up and had Oscar lift it up above the wall. It was hanging out from the wall about two feet because it was directly above the spot on the ground where it had been lying. To move it over so that it would be directly above the wall, I would have to raise the boom and I had been wondering whether I would be able to do this while a log was hanging from the hook.

This was the time to find out. I hooked up the windlass, tried turning the crank, and I got that little rush of gratification when I found that I was able to swing the log exactly where I wanted it. With a little tweaking of the guy ropes, I got the holes in the bottom of the log to line up exactly over the rebar sticking up from the foundation.

Now with little short tugs on Oscar's control rope, I gently lowered the log down over the rebar. As I lowered it an inch or less each time, I would check to see which rebar were touching the log, and make sure each one went into its hole. The log would drop an inch or so each time I pushed a rebar into its hole, or jiggled one that was already in. After all the rebar were in their holes, the log quit dropping. I got a hammer and pounded on the rebar trying to jiggle them enough so that the log would drop. It wouldn't.

I diagnosed the problem to be that the sharp chisel-like corners on the tops of the rebar were digging into the soft wood and hanging it up. I had Oscar lift the log back up off the rebar again and decided to round off the tops of the rebar and try again. Unfortunately, I didn't have a file with me. I looked through all the tool boxes and the pickup, but I couldn't find one. Instead, I used two hammers and used them to pound on the tops of the rebar to round off the edges. I could see that this was going to take a while and it was starting to get dark so I decided to finish it tomorrow. I didn't want to leave the log suspended in the air like it was, so I looped chains over the vertical corner lifting poles and chained the log to them. I let Oscar relax a little so the lifting poles were holding the entire weight of the log and I went in for the night.

Thinking about my strategy that night, I realized that in my exuberance I had forgotten to apply the second coat of Penetreat to the log.

On Wednesday morning I lowered log #31 back down onto the ground so I could apply the Penetreat and also to make it easier to pound on the tops of the rebar to smooth them. Instead of lowering the boom and swinging the log out, I leaned two poles up against the foundation wall and lowered the log from where it was. The log slid against these poles which kept it away from the wall on its way down.

As I was brushing the Penetreat onto the log I was surprised to find that when I poured some of the preservative into one of the drilled holes, it filled up the hole. It should have run out the bottom of the hole. When I checked it out, I discovered that I had drilled the pilot hole but had not drilled all the way through the log. No wonder the log got hung up. I felt lucky that I discovered this problem so easily.

When the treatment was finished, and the rebar tops were smooth, Oscar raised the log back up over the rebar, skidding the log along the poles on the way up. This time the log settled nicely down into place. I had to use a big 10 lb. hammer to persuade it along the way, but it did go down into place at 11:45 AM, Wednesday, September 4, 1996. A momentous occasion.

I went back to the trailer to get the camera so I could record this moment for posterity and on the way Earl Landin stopped by. I was happy to have someone to share my joyous moment with. We had a nice chat while I took pictures and showed him what I had done.

Earl had never seen or heard of a Log Wizard so I gave him a demonstration. He was impressed and said that he thought the word would spread and a lot of people would be getting them when they found out about them.

We also talked about the quality of my logs. He had also had some misgivings but didn't want to say anything to me. After discussing a lot of pluses and minuses, we concluded that I shouldn't make any judgement until after I had skinned and used enough logs to see if there is good wood under the rough looking skin, and also until after I got deep enough into the pile to be able to measure all the logs and determine if Louis had supplied me with the contracted for quantity of good logs. I know he supplied me with a lot more logs than we agreed on, but I don't know exactly how much more and how much of it is good.

After Earl left, I pulled up another log from the pile. I also rigged a sling to hang the chainsaw from. It hangs from the boom about four feet out from Oscar so the hook hangs right above the log on the ground. Using this sling, I don't have to hold the weight of the chainsaw with my left arm when I am using the Log Wizard. Instead, the sling holds the weight and I can use both arms to guide the cutting head. Before the day was over, I stripped about a third of the new log and learned how to use the sling. It made the job much easier than it had been without it.

Before I went in for the night, I had a pleasant encounter with a cute little pine squirrel. I was on the privy and I heard a squirrel rustling in the leaves behind me. He seemed to be a little frustrated because he was trying to carry a cluster of 4 fairly big pine cones and he couldn't quite manage. When he saw me watching him, he dropped what he was doing and started walking toward me. He kept looking me in the eye as he got closer and closer. It seemed like he was trying to tell me something and I figured he was asking for help. So I went into the woods and broke the cones apart for him.

When I was back at the building site putting away some tools, I heard him start scolding me. I went back to see where he was and I spotted him high up in a tree scolding away. As I talked to him, he kept scolding but started climbing down the tree. He kept chattering and went back to the four pine cones. When he got there, he stopped his racket, picked up one of the cones, and carried it off to who knows where. I don't know what that was all about, but it is fun to imagine that he was either thanking me, or in some way acknowledging what I had done for him.

That evening, I called and talked to Louis Brender. I gave him a progress report, invited him to come up and check out my project, and hinted that people have had some questions about the quality of the logs. He gave me assurances that under the rough exterior the logs were good and that he had given me more than enough additional length to make up for the bad wood.

On Thursday morning, I finished stripping the log down to a drawknife finish and by the time I was done, I had developed a technique for using the Log Wizard and the sling that made it almost as easy as spreading peanut butter on toast. I now feel that working that whole pile of logs by myself is a doable project. I had to leave early in order to give Kalimba a ride to a class and take care of Andrew, so I quit work about noon and left for home about 2:00.

9/16-19/96 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

I skipped a week of working at the property because I spent 4 days last week at Vladimir and Joyce's place near Twisp.

Partly inspired by their privy, and spurred on by the need to dig a new privy hole and regain some privacy, I decided to build a new privy. I hauled up 7 old doors that we had gotten from Will Vasquez, a bunch of old 2x6s that a neighbor was giving away, and an old window and frame we had also gotten from Will. I had just finished hauling this material up to the site when Mike Tutino came over and looked over my progress. He thinks the logs I got will work out just fine. He said that it is probably a plus that they are already checked because the wood preservative can get deep into the cracks where it will be needed.

After Mike left, I started digging the new privy hole and I made the floor joist system out of the old 2x6s.

On Tuesday, I finished digging the hole to a depth of 4 feet. There were a lot of rocks on the way down, but I was able to get to that depth by snaking the hole around the big ones. When the hole was dug, I built the foundation, set the joist system on it, nailed on the floor boards (old fence boards) and set up four of the old doors which will serve as wall panels.

On Wednesday, at the earlier suggestion of Earl Landin, I called Ken Marson of Marson and Marson and talked about getting an account and a contractor's discount. He said that he would give me the discount and that he would send me a credit application and the specs for TJI products. I had the specs before, but somehow I have misplaced them. I need them to figure the materials for the floor system.

After the call, I went back to work on the privy. I set up the rest of the doors except one, to make the walls and I made a door frame. The last door will be used as a real door. Each wall of the privy consists of 2 doors. Since I only had 7 doors, there was one space left. For this space, I built a plywood panel about 3 feet high and set the old window on top of it.

At this point, I had an accident that could have been serious, but fortunately it was not. I had set the window, which probably weighed 30 lbs. into place and was checking out how it fit. It looked good but as I was looking it over, I noticed a protruding nail head. I made the mistake of pounding on it with a hammer. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the window starting to fall. Instinctively I reached out with my right hand to catch it, but of course, I held a hammer in that hand. In an instant, my hand and the hammer smashed through the glass shattering it into a thousand pieces. Fortunately, I sustained only three small cuts on my arm. It took quite a while to clean up the mess which set my progress back more than I wanted. I will also have to get some glass and replace the pane.

Before I finished for the day, I cut all the rafters (using the old 2x6s) and got them up on top of the privy. That evening, I started feeling a little sick so I went to bed before 9:00.

On Thursday morning, I still didn't feel too well but I nailed on the rafters and about a third of the roof boards (old fence boards again). I had to get home early in order to give Kalimba a ride, so I quit work at noon and packed up and left for home.

9/23-26/96 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

I was sick in bed with the flu over the weekend, but I felt OK on Monday morning, so I set off for the property. I brought a pane of glass with me and I fixed the window on the privy that I had broken. I didn't have all my strength back from being sick, but I just kept plugging away at the work. When the window was fixed, I nailed the rest of the roof boards on the privy before I quit for the night.

On Tuesday morning, I woke up with a headache. Moving slowly, but deliberately, I got the roll roofing nailed on in the morning. By lunch time, I was feeling kind of crummy. The weather was gorgeous and the leaves were just starting to turn, so as a sort of easy project, I decided to take some pictures. I had brought the cabin model up with me and it now has the porch railing and stair railings on. I took roughly the same series of shots I did before so I can superimpose the image of the cabin on the picture of the actual site.

I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging the privy door. In the process, Earl Landin stopped by and we chatted about his recent trip to Las Vegas. I started feeling a lot better by 7:00 when I stopped work.

But on Wednesday morning, I woke up with another headache and felt crummy again. I wanted to get back to making progress with the logs so I trudged off to work. First, I got the chainsaw out and trimmed the top of my log chute so that it has a 'V' shape at the top. I think this will make it easier to pivot the logs on as I swing them up over the cliff. We'll see.

Next, I selected log #47 to pull up. I rigged up the crane and pulled the log the first 30 feet. In the process, I noticed that the knot in the rigging at the top of the vertical crane pole had slipped about 8 or 10 inches. This was a bad sign. I had noticed that this knot had not gotten set properly when the ropes were first tensed, and I had been wondering ever since whether the knot would hold. Now I knew.

Since the crane could not be trusted in this condition, I had no alternative but to take the vertical pole back down and fix it. Since I was not feeling very good, I decided to work very slowly and deliberately so as not to make a dangerous mistake. Also, since I didn't have much energy, I decided to use Oscar to lower and then lift the pole. I chained the boom to a corner lifting pole so that the weight of the boom was off of the vertical pole, and then got about half of the rigging set up to lower the pole. I was getting tired, so I took a break and took some pictures.

It dawned on me that the log I had started to pull was completely blocking the driveway so I couldn't get the pickup out. If I were to suddenly get sicker, or have any kind of emergency, this was not a good situation. It didn't look like I was going to be able to fix the crane and finish pulling the log up before it was time to go home, so I decided to pull the log back up onto the pile by hand before I did anything else.

I used a come-along to pull the log back inch by inch. I would only pull a few strokes at a time and then take a rest. I finished getting the log back by 2:30. Then I took a break for lunch and took a nap until 3:30. After the nap, I went back up and finished rigging the lowering rope. I put the tools away and quit for the day at 5:00 feeling really crummy.

That night, Ellen asked me if I could be home early enough to give Kalimba a ride to her class. I said that I would. I figured that if I was going to feel as crummy the next day as I had this day, I might as well just go home and forget about working.

Thursday morning, I didn't feel too bad so I went up and tried lowering the pole. I really didn't want to leave it for a week in this dangerous condition. Things worked very smoothly and by 11:00 I had the pole laying on the ground. Since there was still time before I had to leave, I decided to fix the problem at the top of the pole by tying different knots. I had this done before noon and since the rigging was ready to go, I had Oscar lift the pole back up. Before I left for home I had the crane repaired and ready for action. I felt good for the first time in the whole week.

9/30-10/3/96 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

Finally I felt healthy and strong and the weather was perfect. On Monday afternoon, I pulled log #47 up the hill and got everything ready to skin it with the log wizard.

On Tuesday morning I skinned #47. All the bugs are worked out in the technique and by suspending the chainsaw in the sling, the job is actually very easy.

In the afternoon, Larry Copenhaver stopped by and watched and helped me pull log #39 up the hill. In the evening, I found 4 big King Boletas mushrooms but the bugs had gotten to three of them. I cooked and ate the other one.

On Wednesday, I skinned log #39, then inspected and measured the three logs that I had prepared (#22, #39, and #47). Then I decided which of these I was going to use where for sill logs. I cut them all to length and gave #47 one coat of Penetreat.

On Thursday morning, I drilled the holes in #47 for the rebar. This time I used a half inch drill motor and drilled straight down. The job is just a little too much for the 3/8ths drill; it strains pretty hard and gets too hot. The big drill has just the right amount of power and by drilling vertically, the weight of the drill bears on the bit and you don't have to hold the weight, or push on the bit. That's how I will drill all the holes from now on.

When the holes were drilled, I gave the log a second coat of Penetreat. Then I had Oscar lift the log up and place it in the southeast wall. It was in place by 3:30 and then I left for home.

10/5/96 At breakfast, Ellen made a great suggestion: she suggested that I continue to place logs in the walls instead of installing the floor as I had planned. I was going to start working on the floor as soon as all four sill logs were in place.

After thinking about it, her suggestion is the only reasonable thing to do for many reasons. First, it will get the logs off the ground and treated sooner. Second, it will mean that the floor will be exposed to the weather for less time. Third, I won't have to move the crane until quite a bit later. Fourth, I won't have to dismantle the scaffold right away. Fifth, I won't have to spend the money for floor materials this month when the property taxes are due and money is a little tight. Sixth, progress will be a lot more visible which should give us a psychological boost. And seventh, I won't have to waste time shoveling snow off the floor during the winter.

10/14-17/96 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

Dr. Goldman had put me on Doxycycline six days earlier because he suspected I had Lyme disease, or something similar. That must have fixed me up because I finally felt healthy and back to normal. I was still a little weak, however, and since it was raining cats and dogs when I got to the property, I didn't do much on Monday except dig some drainage trenches to keep the roadway from flooding or washing away.

On Tuesday I hauled some planks and nails up to the site. Then I flattened the bottom of log #22 and measured and drilled the rebar holes. It rained off and on all day which made the work go slowly.

That night, around midnight, the temperature got down to about 30 degrees, and the 110 volt power failed.

By Wednesday morning, the power was still off so I called Tutino's and found out that their power hadn't failed. Fortunately I had my meter with me. I started at the power pole and traced the problem to an outlet at the building site. Evidently, frost had formed inside the outlet that had tripped the GFI breaker at the power pole. There were two double outlets in the box, so I fixed the problem by simply taking out the bad receptacle.

Next, I went to work on the 12 volt problem with the water pump. In about an hour I had that working also. Since it was now freezing at night, I knew I had to winterize the trailer before I left this week so I needed that pump to work.

Next, I rolled up the water hose that ran up to the building site, and stored it for the winter. Then I started applying Penetreat to log #22. Larry Copenhaver stopped by and visited while I was doing this. After he left, I installed log #22 in the northwest wall.

That night around 1:00 AM, the temperature was down to 28 degrees and the water faucets would only dribble. I left them on, dribbling, until they finally started flowing normally. I checked all the pipes I could find and none of them had burst, fortunately. I left the faucets running a little all the rest of the night so the pipes wouldn't freeze. I felt lucky I caught them when I did.

On Thursday morning, I clinched the rebar on the northwest and southeast walls. Then I flattened the bottom of log #39 and measured and marked the longitudinal locations for the rebar. By then it was about noon and it started snowing. I went back to the trailer to winterize it and to pack for the trip home.

While I was in the trailer, Ellen called and said that I had tested positive for Lyme disease. I felt grateful to Dr. Goldman who had taken the extra time to investigate the weird set of symptoms I had, and for prescribing the medicine. I feel lucky that the disease was diagnosed early enough to avoid the serious long term symptoms. There was snow on the road all the way from Cole's Corner to Stevens Pass and a few miles beyond. Even though I don't have the snow tires on the pickup, I made it through just fine.

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