7/25-27/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 11:10. The temperature was a pleasant 75 degrees and there were some clouds that made it nice and cool for working on the roof. There were no signs of any mischief. After moving in, I screwed down the last 5 roof panels and the last of the C-channel. Before I quit for the night, I picked about a cup of blackberries. It seemed like there should have been more ripe ones than that, but I suspect some furry friend beats me to most of them. There are still a ton of red berries so maybe next week I can get a lot of them.

On Wednesday I stapled screen across the other half of the ridge. The panels were so slippery and hard to stand on, that I finally gave up and wiped them down with a wet towel every place I needed to walk. This made the work a lot easier. With the screen down, I installed 30 feet of ridge. Each section was a little easier as I caught on how to do it. There was still about 2 feet of ridge left to do, but that had to wait until the rake was on.

I took a late lunch, then a nap, and I was awakened from the nap by Larry who stopped by to chat. We got pretty involved in our chatting and ended up talking until 6:30. By that time there was plenty of shade so I started installing the rake. The first section took the longest because I fashioned a box end for it. I ended up doing this one different than the last one so now all four corners of the roof are slightly different. Another small contribution to the character of the building. I installed one more section of rake and then went in for the night.

On Thursday morning, I almost had a serious accident with a rake section. The top of the section was hanging over the roof panel and I was trying to bend the other end up over the lower section to fasten it. In pulling up on the rake, I lifted it loose from its hold on the roof panel at the top and it started falling. As soon as I felt it falling, I let go as fast as I could, but it still pinched my right ring finger between the raw edge of the panel and the inside edge of the rake. The lower edge of the rake was engaged with the next section so the falling section pivoted around this point making a giant 10 foot long shear with my finger inside it. I don't know if I pulled my finger out before the panels disengaged or not, but at any rate, instead of snipping my finger off, it just pinched it pretty badly and barely broke the skin. I felt pretty lucky.

The panel fell about 15 feet and hit the rock cliff. It bent the end up pretty badly so I decided to use this panel as the last one. That one needed to be trimmed about 3 feet and the damage was all about a foot from the end. It worked out perfectly. I finished installing the rake without any more problem.

Finally, I installed the last 2 foot section of ridge. I drilled pilot holes for the 4 screws and halfway through driving the second screw, my drill battery went dead. One last delay before I finished. I made the trip down to get a fresh battery, climbed back up and drove in those last 3 screws. Hallelujah! The roof was finally finished! I walked back down off the roof for the last time, hopefully, in a long time, went down to the trailer to note the time and it was 11:40.

Next, I removed the safety ropes from the roof so they wouldn't show in the pictures, and then I took a lot of pictures of the completed roof. It was a red letter moment and it felt great.

I had lunch and was just starting to pack up to leave when a car drove up. It was Chris and Joan Foote and their kids. They had also taken Skip's class and had built a log house in Plain using Skip's methods. We had a nice long visit and they ended up inviting me to dinner next Tuesday so I could see their house. They hired a lot of the work done so their house is all done and they were living in it. After they left, I finished packing up and I left for home at 2:30.

8/1-3/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

It was a pleasant 75 degrees when I arrived and after moving in, I started out by picking 5 cups of nice ripe blackberries. I think I just beat the furry little critter that usually beats me to the ripe berries. By the time I finished, the temperature was up to 80 degrees.

I spent the rest of the afternoon dismantling the scaffolds and the lower walkway. I stored all the scaffold planks across the porch beams, so now I can walk on about a quarter of the porch floor, temporary though it is.

I quit working at 5:30 so I would have time to shower and make it over to Chris and Joan's for dinner. It was delightful visiting with them and their kids and seeing their house, and they served an excellent barbequed salmon dinner. I took a lot of pictures while I was there. Their house is beautiful and gave me a lot of ideas for when I get to the finishing stages of ours. In particular, I will add Penofin to the list of candidates for the log finish. They did both the interior and exterior logs with that product in the cedar marine color. It is beautiful and the cost is in the same range as that of TWP.

On Wednesday, I dismantled the upper walkway. Before I did, I moved the stack of plywood for the loft floor from where it was to a location near the front door. I wanted to use the previous location of the stack to store the 7 sheets of OSB that formed the upper walkway decking. Those sheets of OSB are spare and fairly weather beaten and worn by now, but they will no doubt be useful for something later on. I wanted to store them under the porch roof to protect them.

I also decided to harvest some porch joists from the crane mast and booms that had formed the structure for the upper walkway. I fired up Mother Sow, which started - but reluctantly, and cut 5 nice 16 foot log joists. I stored these on the porch beams roughly where they will finally end up as joists.

Before I quit for the day, I measured the as-built joist structure around the fireplace hole in the main floor. Tom Hammond had questioned the structural integrity of this framing when he visited last and said he would do a load analysis of the structure if I would provide him with a drawing and measurements. I also measured the roofs of the privy and the woodshed so I can figure out how to use the left over roofing material to cover one or both of these roofs. I need to do something with the metal before winter because otherwise the snow would destroy the two long left-over panels.

In the evening, I got a call from Chris asking me when I wanted to pick up two 14 foot log stair stringers that he had offered to give me the night before. We agreed on 7:30 the next morning.

On Thursday morning, I unloaded a bunch of yard waste I had brought with me, and a bunch of tools and other things from the back of the pickup, and went over to Chris and Joan's . We had a couple cups of coffee and a nice chat, and then we loaded up the stringers and I brought them back and unloaded them at the property.

I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up odds and ends that were left from the scaffolds and the walkways. I also sanded a couple scrap pieces of log and painted them with TWP as a test. I was particularly interested in what color would result. I could see immediately that any of the grayed wood that wasn't sanded off turned much darker than the wood that was sanded completely down to white wood. It was also obvious that the grayed wood was much more porous and soaked up considerably more of the TWP than the white wood. For both of these reasons, I had better do a good sanding job when I finish the logs.

Before I left for home, I picked another cup of blackberries that had ripened since the previous picking. Just as I finished that, Larry stopped by for a short chat. I left for home at 1:00.

8/4/00 After some drawing and some spread sheet analysis, I determined that if I cut up the remaining roofing material just right, there will be just enough to cover the woodshed roof. Since that is a full hip roof, all the pieces are either triangular or trapezoidal and with the left and right handed considerations, it was a little tricky to figure out how to use the 10 or so scrap pieces in order to do the job. It was a fun challenge but I got it figured out.

8/8-10/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

This week was a slow, tired week for a number of reasons. I was physically beat as a result of doing an unusual amount of heavy yard work over the weekend instead of getting my usual rest and recuperation. Emotionally, I think I was experiencing a certain amount of anticlimactic letdown after completing the long roofing project. I was also in a sort of a quandary as to what project to take on next.

The major candidates were to continue with the inside framing of the loft floor and interior walls, which I had started but interrupted, and the finishing of the exterior log walls. I have decided to start on the exterior log walls for two main reasons. One is that they continue to look worse and worse as they get discolored from the sunlight, and the other is that since I plan to chink with mortar, I need to do that when the weather is not freezing. If I start with the exterior walls now, then when the weather gets cold, I can always shift over and work on the interior framing.

But there are still decisions to be made about the strategy for finishing the walls. One is whether to build more or less permanent scaffold footings. Since I will need to erect scaffolding on a continuing basis in the future for all kinds of maintenance on the outside of the building, it seems that if I had permanent footings, the erection of the scaffolding would be quick and easy. If I have to jury rig the footings each time in order to make them firm and level, it will cost me time in the future, but if I build permanent footings it will delay me now.

Another decision is whether to begin installing the soffits under the eaves as long as the scaffolding is in place. On one hand, it seems like I should do everything that needs to be done once I get the scaffolds in place. On the other hand, if I install the soffits I would have to buy the 1x8 pine paneling, and to make sure I got enough of the same material, I should buy enough to do the entire building. It would be a huge job to take delivery of all of that lumber and move it into the building to store it out of the weather.

Just the mulling over of these alternatives I think slowed down my work pace this week. Subconsciously, I think I decided to take on some smaller more insignificant jobs just in order to give me more time to consider those more major decisions. I started out by picking a half cup of blackberries. My furry competitors for the berries had beat me to them again.

Next, I decided that I would use up the rest of the metal roofing material to cover the woodshed. This was a fun geometry problem and since the one leftover 40 foot panel would be destroyed by the snow if I didn't do something with it, I decided to start on this project. I started cutting roofing parts from the 40 foot panel and an 18 foot panel. I spent the afternoon crawling up the metal smith learning curve. I didn't know the best way to cut the parts from the panels, so I tried several ways.

I had watched Sean Pritchard cut a panel, and his method wasted about 2 inches of panel material in order to make the cut. Since my parts plan called for cutting the 18 footer into four pieces with absolutely no scrap, I needed to figure out a way to avoid the 2 inch waste.

I tried various combinations of tin snips and hacksaw. I ended up doing most of that job with a hacksaw, but in the process, I broke my new left handed tin snips. I really think the snips were defective, because I don't think I am that strong. I was squeezing the handles mainly with my right hand and applying only a little extra squeeze with my left hand. The top cutting jaw broke off cleanly at the base and went sailing off. Next time I see Curt Pritchard I will ask him if he thinks the snips should have broken that way. If not, I will take them back to the store and try to get them replaced.

From that point on, I only had right handed snips to work with along with the hack saw. I also tried a saber saw for a few cuts, but that was so noisy, seemingly dangerous, and slow, that I gave up on that method after I completely dulled the saw blade.

By the end of the day, I had cut 12 pieces and figured out a fairly efficient way to cut the parts using only the right handed snips.

Having developed this technique, on Wednesday morning I made the remaining 16 pieces in about an hour. Once again, by the time I got good at it, the job was done.

Next, I rebuilt part of the woodshed roof. I had done a quick and dirty job when I put the woodshed roof together and it was not flat. Some of the plywood panels had been lapped over others instead of being fitted between them. The reason for that had been that there wasn't quite enough rafter reveal in most places. I toyed with the idea of using a skilsaw to cut away some of the panels to reveal more of the rafter, but there were nails in the way, and it seemed like a messy way to do it. Instead, I took a bunch of the old 1x2 chicken steps, that still had the screws in them, and screwed them to the sides of the rafters at the top so that the new panels could be supported by the 1x2s. This worked slick. Then I cut the plywood panels to size and nailed them in place.

Next, I tar papered the entire roof and began installing metal panels. I got 11 of them installed before the end of the day, and by that time I could see that I didn't keep enough clips by half. Somewhere in my calculations, I multiplied by 2 one time too few. Worse than that, I only had a quarter of the number of screws that I needed. I must have figured one screw per clip rather than two. I was never a whiz at arithmetic, but usually I am not that careless.

On Thursday morning, I decided not to even start putting on roof panels since I didn't have enough screws and clips anyway, and my mood hadn't improved, . . .and it was hot, and a bunch of other excuses came to my mind.

I had brought a pickup load of yard waste from home and that had to be unloaded before I could leave for home. I got the wheelbarrow and got it all moved onto the compost pile.

Next, I decided to pick up and put away the big ropes I had used for safety ropes on the roof. These were nice big 3/4 inch ropes, one of them 200 feet long and a couple others 100 feet long. They were lying out where someone could steal them and I figured I better get them locked away. One of them ran up over a limb in a tree about 30 feet overhead and was attached to a block through which one of the other ropes ran. Anyway, it took me a while to get the ropes all coiled up and put away and the tackle and knots removed. I felt a lot better with them locked up. I remembered how angry I got when someone stole a much smaller rope that was so weak that I couldn't even trust it. I really didn't want them taking my good ropes.

Finally, I picked up all the pieces of roofing that I had spread out on the ground, and stacked them inside the woodshed. Then, with all my puttering around finished, I had lunch, packed up and left for home at 1:30.

8/23-25/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got a late start and didn't arrive until 12:40. The temperature was about 75 degrees when I arrived. There was a message on my recorder from Bob saying he and Pat would be up to see me about lunch time. The message was dated 'Tuesday' by the answering machine, but since I skipped last week because we attended the Droge family reunion, I didn't know if Bob was coming up today or if he came up last week when I wasn't here. I called his home and got his answering machine, so the odds went up that he was coming this week.

I had just finished my lunch when Bob and Pat drove up. It was a little warm, but there were virtually no mosquitoes, so we had a delightful visit in the log house for the entire afternoon. I figure that the purpose of the log house is for doing things like entertaining guests, so if it can be used for that purpose before it is completely finished, so much the better. Anyway I have a pretty sore wrist, and the extra half day off work might help it heal a little quicker. They left some time around 6 PM and I decided against starting any work for the rest of the day.

On Wednesday I erected a 30 foot scaffold tower at the center of the southwest wall. I also secured it with some sturdy braces that I screwed into the high window ledges. The platform on the top is just about level with the top of the high windows. From there I can reach the entire end of the ridgepole under the eaves, but I can't reach the full width of the wall at the level of the platform. In order to reach it, I plan to make two hangers out of rebar that will hook into the hangers on the B and D purlins. Then I can lay planks from the scaffold platform out to those hangers and then I can reach the entire wall above the windows.

With the tower in place, a person can climb up the scaffolding and get in the building through the living room windows. To discourage prowlers, I decided to board the windows up with OSB left over from the walkway deck. I lifted four sheets up into the building and cut them to size so they fit over the window frames. I screwed two of the sheets on to cover one of the windows. I left the other one open to allow me to use it to get on and off the scaffold.

In the wildlife department, I fed one scruffy looking gray jay several times. He was alone and took peanuts from my hand about a half dozen times. I also found a little frog on my gate padlock when I arrived. But the worst of it was that a mouse got back into my tool box and made another nest on the trapper nelson backpack. I had put concrete blocks on the lid because that's where I thought he was getting in, but I guess there must be another hole somewhere. The backpack smelled pretty bad and parts of it were pretty frayed where the mouse had chewed on it. I took it outside, brushed it off, and hung it up to air it out. I may have to do something more serious to keep the little guys out of that box. I haven't decided what.

Before I quit for the night, I swept the cabin floor. It hadn't been swept for some time and had accumulated quite a bit of sawdust, dirt, and pine needles. It sure makes it look a lot nicer in there with the floor nice and clean.

On Thursday morning, I started sanding with the 'Mouse' palm sander. It worked very well except for one log that had some kind of deep stains. I think I will try a floor scraper on that one. I sanded the end of the ridgepole and the top two logs on the gable by 11:30 or so. At that point, Larry stopped by and we chatted about ways of cleaning the logs up. He suggested a Behr product that he used and said it worked very well. He offered to give me some so I could try it. I told him that someone else had recommended using a solution of bleach and water. Next week, I will try both of those methods and see what works best.

Larry helped me board up the second window before I put away my tools and got ready to have lunch and leave for home. I left about 1:15. The little frog was back on the padlock when I left, so I took him off in order to shut and lock the gate, and then I put him back on the padlock before I left.

8/29-31/00 I went up to the property for two days: Wednesday and Thursday.

I had to attend a meeting in Seattle late in the afternoon on Tuesday so I left for the property after the meeting at about 7:00 and arrived at about 9:30 PM. Before the meeting, I made two hangers out of half inch rebar. Each hanger will hook into the two anchors at the end of a purlin and hang down to support planks for scaffolding.

On Wednesday I spent the day sanding the logs at the top of the southwest wall. I hung the new rebar hangers from the B and D purlins and ran planks from the top of the scaffold to the hangers. This allowed me to reach the log wall clear over to the B and D purlins, and it also allowed me to sand the insides and the bottoms of the purlins out to the ends.

I felt pretty tired all day and my wrist was still so sore that I couldn't really trust it while I was climbing up and down the scaffolds. A pair of gray jays stopped by enough times to run me out of peanuts. I had to go to the trailer and shell a bunch more of them.

In the evening after dinner, I heard a strange hissing noise about every 10 seconds. After investigating, I discovered that the gas regulator for my propane tanks was venting. There was nothing unusual about my gas usage or the temperature or anything else so I couldn't figure out why the regulator was venting now when it had never done it before. I turned off the water heater, which was the only gas appliance running, and then turned off the valves on both propane tanks. The hissing continued for at least another hour and a half, but this was undoubtedly due to the pressure in the lines.

On Thursday morning, I slept in until 8:30! I think I may have been coming down with something. I didn't feel all that great when I got up, but I sure did appreciate that extra sleep.

The regulator was not hissing any more and I turned the gas back on in order to cook breakfast and heat water. The hissing did not start up again.

I went back up on the scaffold and spent another couple hours sanding the logs. This is going to turn out to be a big job unless I can find a quicker way to do it. The logs look beautiful, though, when they are sanded.

Before I quit for the day, I walked the trails to the spring and found a lot of recent bear sign. Lots of torn up rotten logs that I hadn't seen before, and two piles of scat on the trails. I whistled and made a lot of noise as I walked.

I packed up and left for home at about 1:15.

9/1/00 Bought a new propane regulator at Evergreen RV. They said those things wear out just like everything else.

9/3-4/00 Ellen, Andrew and I went up to the property, spent Sunday night in the trailer, and just had fun. That is, except for Ellen who spent a lot of time scrubbing down the trailer, inside and out. She probably had fun doing that, though, since that is what she chose to do.

When we arrived, Ellen and Andrew were standing close by when I unlocked the gate just in case the little frog was on the padlock under the can. Sure enough, there he was. We let Andrew give him a name and he decided to call him Sam. Sam stayed in the can, which I set on the telephone pedestal, while I opened the gate and drove through. While Ellen was cleaning, Andrew and I spent most of the time exploring the trails and cliffs of the property. We would periodically check on Sam, and found him still in the can until late in the day. Andrew spotted him hopping on the ground at one point and we figured he was out hunting for the evening.

We walked to Larry and Roberta's for a nice visit and coffee after dinner. The next day, Monday, after some more exploring, we visited Chris and Joan on our way home.

9/5-7/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

It was raining most of the way over. There was no snow in the pass, but there was a skiff of snow, or hail on the road that the rain was washing into the ditches a couple miles east of the pass. I didn't stop to see if it was snow or hail, but if it was snow, it was the first I have seen this season. The rain diminished as I left Highway 2 and proceeded up the Lake Wenatchee valley. By the time I got to the property, there was no rain and no indication that it had rained at all since we had been there the day before.

I resumed sanding the log wall but I switched from the Black and Decker 'Mouse' to a DeWalt orbital palm sander. It is a little heavier, but it has more power and I decided that it was a better tool for that purpose. The coarsest sandpaper I had, which was 90 grit, seemed to work the best.

By 4:30, I could feel the onset of a migraine headache so I quit for the day, took a shower, took some aspirin, and slept it off from 5:00 to 6:00. I haven't had one of those for quite a few years and I don't know exactly what brought it on. Maybe the extra amount of driving I had done in the past few days. Anyway, I felt better after the nap.

On Thursday morning, I felt a lot better. I went back to sanding with the DeWalt sander, but this time I used the dust collector attachment. I decided that this was an improvement. Even though it was a nuisance to keep emptying it, it kept me from getting so caked with dust. It would also no doubt mean that my respirator filters wouldn't plug up so soon.

By now, it was pretty clear that sanding the entire building was going to be a long hard job. I tried to think of ways of speeding it up or making it easier. The label on the TWP can said that before application, old wood should be treated with a 50 percent solution of bleach. I mixed up a bleach solution and tried it on the logs in various places. It didn't seem to change the wood very much where I had sanded but it sure made a difference on the grayed wood. In a few seconds, it turned gray and even black wood to a new looking orangish color. It wasn't as nice looking as where I had sanded, though. That was more of the yellowish color of new wood. The bleach loosened up the gray and black stuff so that you could easily scrub it off with a stiff brush. If you scrubbed it a lot with the brush, you could get the orange color to turn more yellow, but it still didn't look as good as where it was sanded. I decided that I would sand all the wood in front of the building and the parts that you could see, but that in the back, I might just use the bleach without sanding. We'll see when I get further along.

Even though sanding is hard, tiring, monotonous, and dusty work, it provides the immediate reward of revealing beautiful new wood from beneath the rather ugly gray and black film. The further down the wall I went, the more pronounced this was because the lower logs have been exposed longer and looked a lot worse. In addition to this reward, since the job is rather mindless, it gives me a lot of time to think about the meaning of life and other esoteric topics.

By the time I quit for the week on Thursday morning, I had sanded and bleached the front of the building from the peak down to the top of the first floor windows and as wide as the top pair of windows. I was able to reach that far just from sitting or standing on the scaffolds and hanging on with one hand while I reached over with the sander or paintbrush in the other hand.

I left for home about 1:15. On the way out, I found that Sam had shinnied up the rebar and was back on the padlock under the can. I gently put him back after I had closed and locked the gate. I visited Marilyn in Skykomish on the way home. She was recovering from surgery.

9/8/00 Stopped in at Evergreen RV and asked about a confusing lever on the gas regulator I had bought. I found out I had bought a fancier and more expensive regulator than I needed or wanted. Fortunately I had not yet installed the one I bought so I will bring it back next week and exchange it. I also talked to them about my furnace and learned that I can clean out the pilot orifice with carburetor cleaner and if that doesn't work, that I can bring the pilot assembly in and they will clean it out. I bought a can of carburetor cleaner and felt good about the possibility of getting the furnace to work again without too much trouble.

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