9/12-14/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got a late start from home, and then I stopped in at Priscilla's and tried to clean out her shower drain which delayed me a little longer. From there I went to Wood Care Systems in Kirkland to buy some TWP. I spent about an hour with them talking about finishing my logs.

I learned a lot. In particular, I learned that in spite of the instructions on the TWP label, they no longer advise using a bleach solution on logs. They have found that the bleach destroys the lignum in the wood which weakens it. Instead, they now recommend one of two different surface preparation methods. After discussing the options at length and explaining my particular requirements and circumstances, they recommended that I use an oxalic acid based product. I bought 5 gallons of TWP, one container of the oxalic acid preparation, and a book on the maintenance of log homes.

It was about 3:30 PM when I finally arrived at the property. Sam was not in his can. The weather was what I consider to be absolutely perfect. The temperature was about 60 degrees and there was no wind and no mosquitoes. The leaves were starting to turn and everything looked beautiful.

The new plan for treating the log walls was to spray on a solution of oxalic acid and then while the logs are still wet, to rinse it off with a garden hose and use a brush to brush off the gray and black surface which the acid loosens up. I had already treated the parts that I had sanded with bleach and I had not rinsed the bleach off. The people at Wood Care Systems told me that that was a mistake and that I should rinse the bleach off. I decided to start at the top again and give all the logs I had already prepared a dose of oxalic acid and then rinse them off.

I started off by stringing hoses from the trailer up to the building and up onto the scaffold. Then I loaded the sprayer with a solution of oxalic acid, got up on top of the scaffold with the sprayer and started spraying the ridgepole overhead. It only took a couple squirts for me to realize that I absolutely needed to wear a respirator. The first whiff of that mist made my nose and throat start burning immediately. I went down and put the respirator back together. I had bought a bunch of replacement filters for it and I was glad I had.

I sprayed all the log wall and purlins above the top level of the scaffold and then pulled the hose up with the idea of rinsing the walls off. I discovered that there was not enough pressure for the water to reach that high. Now, I not only had bleach on those logs which wasn't rinsed off, but now they had a dose of oxalic acid which I couldn't rinse off. The only way to do it would be to haul 5 gallon buckets of water 30 feet up the scaffold and then try to somehow splash the water onto the logs and rinse them.

I couldn't think of a good way to do that and there wasn't much time left in the day. I wanted to get all the logs that I can reach from the scaffold treated with oxalic acid and rinsed before I quit so that the logs would be dry enough to stain at least on Thursday but hopefully by the next day Wednesday. So, I decided to leave the top logs unrinsed and continue spraying oxalic acid on the rest of the wall all the way down to the foundation.

The logs that had been previously sanded and treated with bleach went rather fast. Spraying them with oxalic acid went very fast and as soon as I got below the top of the scaffold, the water ran out of the hose so I could rinse the logs. Since they had been sanded, it hardly took any brushing. The further down I worked, the more water pressure I had so it went even faster.

But when I got down to the tops of the lower windows where I hadn't yet sanded, it got quite a bit harder and slower. The oxalic acid loosened up all the discoloration, but it took a lot of elbowgrease with a brush to get all the discoloration scrubbed off the logs. I kept working at it and finished just as it got too dark to see.

In the process, I dropped my phone from pretty high on the scaffold. I try to be diligent about making sure I fasten the tether string to my belt each time I take the phone with me, but this time I was in a hurry and failed to hook it on. The phone fell about 20 feet and on the way down, it hit part of the scaffold and I could see that it came apart into 3 pieces. I didn't go down to retrieve it right away but kept working.

When I finally went down to pick up the phone, I discovered that the battery pack and the battery compartment cover were missing. It was already starting to get dark but after looking around a while, I found the battery pack but not the cover. Fortunately, the phone still worked after plugging the batteries back in.

On Wednesday morning, I looked for the phone part but couldn't find it. The logs were still damp but the sun was coming out and it looked like it was going to be a hot day. I figured that this morning would be the ideal time to try to fix the furnace. That would give the logs time to dry and I couldn't do anything more on the walls until they dried anyway. I spent the entire morning dismantling the furnace, which is a very tricky job, cleaning out the orifice and related parts, and putting it all back together again. It was 11:55 when I tried the furnace to see if it would work and I nearly jumped for joy when it worked perfectly. I felt really good when I cleaned up the mess, put away the tools, and fixed and ate my lunch.

I felt good, that is, except for a headache. I took a couple aspirins and laid down for a while before going back out to work.

I inspected the logs to figure out my next move and I discovered that the high logs that I didn't rinse had a whitish residue on them. The ones that I had sanded and rinsed looked pretty good but they had a little fuzz on them. The ones that had not been sanded were very fuzzy and were more of an orange color than a yellow color. I decided to start back at the top and sand them all. I figured that sanding the unrinsed logs would make up for a lack of rinsing.

The sander did remove the whitish residue and I decided that they could be stained in that condition. If nothing else, I can stain them and consider it to be an experiment to see what will happen. The logs that had been both sanded and rinsed went fast because they needed only a little sanding.

When I got down to the logs that had not previously been sanded, it went much slower and I went through a lot of sandpaper. I was using 60 grit paper of which I had bought a pretty big supply. The sanding turned the orangish wood to the nice yellow color, but the sanding job didn't seem to be much easier then if the wood hadn't been treated with oxalic acid. It was a hard job and by the end of the day, I still had half of the bottom three logs to go.

Several times during the day, I searched in wider and wider search patterns, trying to find the phone part to no avail. I had temporarily fastened the battery pack to the phone with duct tape and that worked pretty well.

On Thursday morning, I was hoping I could finish the sanding and get some of the stain on, but it took me until it was time to quit to finish the sanding. It doesn't seem to me that the oxalic acid makes the job easier at all unless you are willing to settle for that orangish color. I suppose the acid does some good in killing organisms in the wood so I will continue to apply the treatment before I sand. I think I am going to get a heavier duty sander, though, to help make the job easier.

I had lunch, packed up, and was ready to leave by about 1:00. Before I took off, I made one last pass below the cliff and I found the phone part. It had really flown a long way. The part looked undamaged and I was very happy about finding it. Sam was not in his can when I left.

On the way out, I noticed some activity at Phil and Jeannie Leatherman's place. I stopped and chatted with Phil. This was the first time I had met him. He was in the process of building forms and said he intended to start building his place.

9/15/00 I exchanged gas regulators at Evergreen RV and got nearly $20 in return. A much better deal.

9/16/00 Got a phone message from Wood Care Systems saying that the TWP that I bought might be the wrong color. They said to check the lot number on the can and if it was the bad one, to bring it back and exchange it. The can was still up at the property, so I couldn't check it, but I was glad I hadn't used any of that stain yet.

9/19-21/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped at Wood Care Systems and bought a gallon of TWP so I could begin staining the walls even if the previous can I had bought was bad. I still had a half gallon left over from the fascia and I figured that a gallon and a half would be enough to hold me for this week.

I arrived at the property at 1:15 and the temperature was 70 degrees. The leaves are really beginning to turn and everything looks beautiful. Sam was not in his can when I opened the gate.

The first thing I did was to install the new gas regulator. I had just finished and was gathering up my tools when Earl stopped by. We had a short visit and he looked at what I had been doing. After he left, I resumed sanding the logs on the front of the building. There was only about 5 feet of each of the last three logs that I hadn't sanded so I thought that it wouldn't take me long. But, I discovered that in the intervening week, the logs that I had previously sanded had already darkened noticeably from the sun. I ended up sanding the entire front again to lighten up the wood. This went pretty fast but since I did the whole thing again, it took me the rest of the afternoon.

It was a pleasant cool, overcast, 60 degrees on Wednesday morning -- just right for working. Before lunch, I applied the first coat of stain on all the logs that I had sanded.

In the process, I stained the ends of the ridgepole and the B and D purlins. I had regretted not staining the ends of the purlins when I was working on the roof. It would have been pretty easy to reach them by leaning over the edge. Since I didn't do that, I have been wondering how to get them stained because I didn't think I could reach them from the scaffolds. But, while I had the brush in my hand, I decided to try to see if I could reach. By pushing my planks as far out on the scaffold frames as they would go, and by hanging on to the farthest rebar anchor on the ridgepole with one hand, I found that I could lean out in space far enough to reach the end of the ridgepole with my brush. I also found that by leaning out farther yet, I could see the end of the ridgepole to make sure I covered it good. I used the same technique on the two purlins and I was pleased that I was able to get that job done.

Also during the process, a small flock of gray jays visited me up on the scaffolds and I fed them a bunch of peanuts.

The stain turned the logs a beautiful light caramel color and I was very happy with the results. When I stopped for lunch, I took pictures of the new stain job.

Just as I finished lunch, Charles drove up. He had told me that he was coming but I had forgotten so he surprised me. This was his first time to see the property. We had a nice visit and did the grand tour of the place. When he looked the building over, he said "Jeepers, you got a lot of work to do. You'll never finish." I told him that my trick for finishing it was to live a long time. We both laughed.

After he left, I applied a second coat of stain and completely used up my gallon and a half. I also checked the 5 gallon bucket, and sure enough, it was the bad lot number. I loaded the bucket in the pickup so I could exchange it for the right color. I felt really fortunate that the people at Wood Care Systems discovered the error and called me before I had used any of that stain on my building.

Before the end of the day, I had time to dismantle the scaffold tower. I decided not to do any chinking this season since the sanding and staining job was big enough in itself and it isn't all that much trouble to erect and dismantle the scaffolding.

On Thursday morning, I erected a three tier scaffold tower against the right third of the front of the building. Then I boarded up the windows that were near the tower, picked up, closed up, had lunch, packed up, and left for home at about 1:00. Again, Sam wasn't in his can.

9/26-28/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped at Wood Care Systems and exchanged the 5 gallons of TWP for a bucket with the correct color. I also talked with Jim Renfroe about my situation and formed a new and slightly different opinion on what to do. He surprised me by telling me that neither bleach nor oxalic acid killed the bacteria and fungus that attack the wood. I had thought that that was the main purpose for those chemicals and that was why I applied them. Now, I understand that the only thing they do is to substitute for, or simplify, the job of sanding the logs down to good wood. In my situation, I am not satisfied with the job they do by themselves and so I intend to sand anyway afterward, and the nuisance of applying the chemicals, rinsing them off, and waiting for the logs to dry is worse than the extra job of sanding without their help. So I have decided to quit using the chemicals, at least on the front of the building.

Jim told me that the best, and maybe the only, way to kill the bacteria and fungus was with borate. Even though I had already treated all the logs with borate, he recommended that I still apply two more treatments of Tim-Bor (Jim has switched to yet another brand name borate product, whose name I can't recall) before I stain.

So my new plan for the southwest exterior wall is to sand down to good wood, apply two treatments of Tim-Bor and then apply two coats of TWP.

I arrived at the property at 1:30.The weather and the leaves were beautiful and it was about 65 degrees. Sam was not in his can. Maybe it's too late in the season for him.

After moving in, I designed and built braces to hold the scaffold firm. The braces on the previous tower had been screwed into the window ledges, but there was no window in front of this tower. Instead, I made braces of short lengths of 1x2 and number 9 wire. The 1x2s made compression members between the scaffold frame and the exposed parts of rebar in the log walls in a particularly big gap between the logs. The tension members were bights of number 9 wire going around the scaffold frame and then through the gap in the log wall to the inside of the building. I securely fastened the wire on the inside of the building, in one case with a 2x4 and a wedge, and in the other case, with a heavy piece of steel and a length of rope. The braces made the tower feel very solid.

The tower nearly touches the eave on the low side, but on the high side, it isn't quite high enough for me to reach the grid D purlin. I thought of using a riser, a short ladder, and some other possibilities, but none of them sounded safe enough to me at that height. I finally decided to raise another scaffold frame and erect it on that side only. Then, to brace it, I coupled two separate scaffold cross braces by fastening them with two hose clamps. I made two such braces and connected each of them from the top of the top scaffold frame down to the top of the frame at the tier below that one on the other side of the tower.

After I had that structure assembled, I brought up two brackets and attached them to the high scaffold frame and laid two 2x4s on top of the brackets. From this arrangement I could easily reach the top of the wall and the grid D purlin.

On Wednesday morning, I began sanding the top of the right third of the southeast wall. I finished sanding the grid D purlin, the grid E purlin, and the top few courses of logs before lunch.

Just as I was walking down to the trailer for lunch, Larry showed up with a couple ears of corn he had just picked for me. We both went in and visited as I cooked and ate the corn for lunch. He left before I finished lunch. The last part of lunch was an apple, and as I was eating that, a car drove into the driveway. It was Phil Leatherman. He was interested in seeing the place so we took the grand tour and had a nice visit. On the way, he spotted some young puffball mushrooms and told me that they were good eating. He told me that there were no poisonous mushrooms that looked anything like them and that as long as they were still white inside, they were good to eat.

After Phil left, I resumed sanding. Since I was now working on fairly long logs, I decided to try a hand held power planer that I had bought last week. On the logs that had fairly flat facets, the planer worked very well and fast. It made me feel good that I had found a way to significantly speed up the sanding process. Since I had spent so much time visiting, I didn't get a whole lot of sanding or planing done the rest of the day.

Before I went in for the night, I picked a fairly good bag full of puffballs. Then after I showered, I sliced the puffballs, sauteed them in butter, and ate them. They were okay, but not worth the effort. I'm not much of a cook so maybe it was the way I prepared them. At any rate, I will leave them for someone else just as I did with the fiddlehead ferns.

On Thursday morning, I started out with the planer and planed all of the logs I could reach from the top level of the scaffold and that were flat enough for the planer. Then I switched back to the sander and finished off the hollow parts of the logs, the parts near window frames and corners, and any other places that the planer couldn't reach. I feel good about getting close to a steady state process for finishing the logs that is reasonably fast and reasonably easy. It's still going to be a lot of work, though.

I boarded up the windows, picked up the tools, packed up, had lunch, and left for home at about 1:30. Sam was not in his can on the way out either.

10/3-5/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped at Priscilla's and tried to fix a light for her. I couldn't fix it so I'll go back later and try again. I arrived at the property at 1:15. The drive over was beautiful. The leaves are gorgeous. It was sunny and 55 degrees when I arrived.

I started right out planing and sanding the logs and finished those that I could reach from the scaffold. I finished to the end of the wall, but I couldn't reach around to the projecting log ends in the corner. I will have to figure out how to reach those later.

Next, I used the sander without the dust bag as a blower and, together with a whisk broom, I brushed and blew all the sawdust and planer chips off all the logs I had done. Then, I hooked up the water hose and rinsed all the logs off with water. I didn't have much pressure for the top ones, so it took quite a while to squirt them by jerking on the hose. The lower I got on the wall, the easier it got.

I mixed up three gallons of Tim-bor and sprayed it on all the logs. Jim Renfroe had told me to wait two hours after the first application and then apply a second one. Since it was starting to get dark, I decided I wasn't able to do a second coat that evening.

On Thursday morning, the logs were still a little damp. If they had been dry, I might have decided to skip the second coat of Tim-bor, but since they were still damp, I mixed up and applied the second coat.

I still had about an hour before I had to get ready to leave, so I figured this would be a good time to sweep out the building. It had accumulated a lot of sanding dust and planer chips and I was done with that kind of work for a while. It looked lots nicer in there after I finished sweeping. I left for home about 1:30.

10/10-12/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I came down with a cold over the weekend and I almost decided to skip working this week. But since the logs were prepared and ready for stain, I didn't want them exposed to the sun for any longer than necessary, otherwise I would have to sand them all again, or put up with them being a shade or two darker. Neither of these was acceptable to me, so I went up with the intent of taking it easy to nurse my cold, but still to get the wall stained.

It rained all the way up and over the pass, but the rain diminished once I crossed the pass. By the time I got to Cole's Corner, the rain had stopped. It was dry at the property and 55 degrees when I arrived at 1:30. It had rained recently, and I spotted a giant King Boletus mushroom at the old log pile. It was about 10 inches across. It looked good so I harvested it, brought it into the trailer, took a couple pictures of it, and cut into it. The bugs had just started to get into it, so I decided not to eat it. I threw it out and went out looking for more.

I found 5 more that weren't quite as big. The bugs were already in most of them, but I found one that was completely good and a couple more that had good parts. I filled my big frying pan with mushroom slices and sauteed them for lunch. They were excellent. Much better tasting than the Puffballs I tried before.

After lunch, I went to work staining the ends of the D and E purlins and about 2/3 of the way down the wall. By then it was 5:30 and I was feeling pretty sick so I quit for the day.

On Wednesday morning, I felt pretty sick and it was cold and damp outside. I decided to spend some time figuring the lumber for framing the interior walls. I called Marson & Marson and placed an order for this lumber plus the six TJI joists I needed to make up for a previous error. I set the delivery for next Wednesday, Oct. 18.

By the time I finished that, the sun was out so I went out and finished staining the first coat. After lunch, I started on the second coat. Just as I was finishing that up, Larry stopped by and we chatted mostly about my options for reaching the corner of the building. From the scaffold tower I have in place, I can reach the very ends and the inside surface of the logs sticking out from the southeast wall, but I can't reach the rest of the corner logs. We talked about options: a) using a ladder, b) hanging something from the Grid F purlin to hold the end of a plank going over to the tower, and c) a vertical 2x6 from which I could fasten brackets to support the ends of planks. This conversation gave me some new ideas to think about, but I had an ace up my sleeve. I had bought an emergency fire escape ladder at a garage sale with just a vague idea that it might be useful for this kind of purpose. It consists of two 25 foot chains with rungs between and a hook structure to hold it fast to a window ledge.

On Thursday morning, I was still sick so I slept in until about 8:30. After breakfast, I decided to try the fire escape ladder to see if it would work. I used two rebar 'S' hooks that I had previously made to suspend the ladder from the anchors on the Gird E purlin with the ladder hanging down in the very corner between the projecting ends of the wall logs. Then I screwed a couple of 1x4s across the ends of a short 2x10. About 6 feet down from the purlin, I put one end of the 2x10 onto a rung of the ladder and the other end on a rung of the scaffold tower. This pushed the ladder out and held it in a position so that by placing similar planks at various levels below, I will be able to reach the entire corner. It will work great and I was relieved to have an easy solution to that problem.

I rolled the ladder back up, secured everything, had lunch, and left for home at about 1:30.

10/17-19/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 1:00. It was not raining, but it had evidently rained a lot very recently. I figured there might be some good mushrooms so I went hunting for some for lunch. I had just found one that looked good when a young guy named John came walking by with his dog. I invited him to look at the project. We went up into the building and had a nice chat while I removed the boards from one big front window. His dog is very friendly and inspected the building and grounds while we chatted. John told me that she had a litter of 6 pups at home. He also told me that he was staying at Paul Wagner's place.

After John left, I found one more mushroom that looked good. However, when I started cutting into the mushrooms, I found that the bugs were already in them so I threw them out.

After lunch, I built the corner scaffolding based on the hanging fire escape ladder. I finished the basic structure before I quit for the day.

It rained pretty hard over night, but in the morning (Wednesday) the rain stopped. I called Marson & Marson to confirm the delivery of lumber and was told that it would be some time after lunch. I went up and finished bracing and securing the corner scaffold. Then I took a couple pictures of the scaffold.

The cold I had had for the past couple weeks was almost over, but I am convinced that the cold triggered allergies, or at least a sensitivity to dust. The sanding dust that was everywhere as a result of my sanding the logs was particularly irritable to me. The dust did not consist simply of powdered wood, but it also contained all the fungus, mildew, dirt, Tim-bor, and whatever else happened to be on the logs.

To make room for the lumber delivery, I got the cant hook and rearranged the logs in the log pile so that there was a parking place for the pickup. Then I moved the pickup into it so I could have the lumber dumped as high up on the roadway as it would go. Next, I carried the three 20 foot TJIs, that I was going to return, down to the log pile. It rained off and on so I covered the TJIs with visqueen so they wouldn't get so wet.

After lunch, I had just gotten started planing the logs in the corner up on my new scaffold when the lumber arrived. It consisted of 91 2x4s, 6 2x6s, and 6 22' TJIs. I spent the rest of the day carrying it up the hill. I got it all under cover, most of it stacked inside, and the joists in place in the loft floor before I quit for the day.

That night, the dust that was evidently in my bedding was so irritating to my nose that I got up at about 1:30 and put on a dust mask so I could sleep. It leaked and I could still smell the dust so I got up again and duct taped the mask to my face. Although I could still smell the dust and my nose was still irritated, I slept the rest of the night okay with the mask on.

On Thursday morning, my nose and throat felt better after I got up. While I was having breakfast, I saw John's dog and two of her puppies trot up the roadway up to the building just like they knew where they were going. I went out to greet them and they were all excited and were jumping up on me and licking me. Very friendly and happy. I walked with them down to the main road expecting to see John, but he was nowhere in sight. The dogs then headed east on the road and turned into the next driveway. It looked like the mother was showing her pups around the neighborhood.

After doing the breakfast dishes, I finished stacking the rest of the lumber inside. Then I took all the carpets out of the trailer, beat the dust out of them, and swept the entire trailer out. I rolled up all the bedding to take home to wash, and I decided to be extra careful not to bring any more dust into the trailer if I can help it. After that, I walked the trails to the spring admiring the beautiful leaves.

While I was having lunch and packing up to go home, John came by on a bicycle and asked me if I had seen his dogs. He had last seen them about 8:00 and this was the longest she had ever been gone. I told him which way they had gone and wished him luck in finding them. I left for home about 1:30.

10/24-26/00 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped at Home Depot and bought a one piece tub and shower stall from Woody Frickle. I hadn't seen him for quite a while so we updated each other on what we had been doing.

There was just a little snow in the pass above 3500 feet. I arrived at 2:15. The weather was mild, sunny and 50 degrees. After moving in, I put the chains on the pickup and drove up to the upper roadway. Then I used a couple planks to make a ramp from the tailgate to a spot under the porch. I secured the tub and stall with an arrangement of ropes so that it couldn't tip or get away, and then I proceeded to move it from the pickup, over the ramp, to the spot under the porch. This process went well and I was able to back the pickup back down the hill without getting stuck.

On Wednesday morning, I decided to move the tub and stall again. It was sitting right on the trail that goes under the porch and had it completely blocked. I want that trail to be clear for when Dick and Diantha come to visit in a couple weeks, so I decided to lift the tub and stall up onto the porch deck. That will get it out of the way and also put it into a better position for getting it in through the front door later on. I can't bring it in right now because all the loft floor plywood is stacked right in front of the door blocking it.

I made a harness for the tub and stall out of a stout rope and used a come-along hanging from the Grid F purlin to lift the tub up to the deck level and set it onto a big plank that spanned the porch beams. The process went well but took most of the morning.

In the process, I moved some tarps that are in a big heap and noticed a little frog in the tarps. I picked him up and held him for a while, and then put him back in the tarps. I checked on him several times during the day, and he stayed in that spot until late in the afternoon.

After lunch, I planed and sanded all the projecting log ends in the corner. Unfortunately, at one point, I hit the end of a piece of rebar with the planer and made huge nick in the middle of the blade. I didn't change blades but just used it the way it was. It would leave a big ridge where the nick was, but by going back over it with the end of the blade, I could shave the ridge down and make it reasonably smooth. That just adds a little more character to those very rustic looking logs.

On Thursday morning while I was having breakfast, John came by on his bicycle accompanied by his dog. Her name is Winky but he calls her Honey Bunny. He says she answers to both names, or any other name ending in Bunny for that matter. John said that he found her the day she took off with two pups, but he never did find the pups. Since they were in a rather residential area, it is likely that some person took them rather than coyotes. John needed to find homes for them anyway so he was not upset that they were gone.

John had the impression that I had some poles that were left over scrap. He was interested in getting some to shore up his dwelling. I showed him what I had but told him that I didn't have any to spare that were very useful. He seem a little disappointed and said that he couldn't use them for a week anyway and that he would be back to talk to me some more next week.

I mixed up a batch of Tim-bor and sprayed it on the log ends in the corner. After that, I still had about an hour before I had to leave, so I spent it pruning the bushes back from all the trails up to the spring. I want to make the 'grand tour' as pleasant as possible for Dick and Diantha when they visit. I packed up and left for home about 1:30.

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