2/27-28/01 I went up to the property for 2 days: Tuesday and Wednesday.

I arrived at 12:30 and the weather was a beautiful 40 degrees. I forgot to bring bleach so I couldn't clean out my jugs. I checked each glass of water I drew from the hose and only once saw any of the filamentous stuff in it.

While I was having lunch, Larry stopped by with some mail for me. It was the pages of the plumbing code the guy at the building department said he would send. He sent it to Lake Wenatchee instead of Seattle and fortunately the mailman trusted Larry to give it to me.

The snow was frozen pretty firm so I could walk on it so I decided to investigate some trees that had fallen over. There was one that might be useful, but I won't know until I cut into it.

I went to work and installed 4 doorway headers. Then, I decided to go up on the roof and see whether or not the roof panels were really slipping down. There were two or three that looked like they were. What I found was that every panel on the big roof had slipped except the one with the chimney. That one had four screws in the top of it. About half of the panels had slipped a quarter of an inch, most of the rest had slipped a half inch, and the three or four worst ones had slipped as much as two inches. It didn't seem as though the panels on the short side had slipped, but I couldn't really tell from up on top. This was a pretty serious problem that I had to do something about.

On Wednesday morning, I called Curt at CP Sheet Metals and asked his advice. He said that I should have put a screw in each panel at the top. His son Sean had told me that the manufacturer recommended an easier way by cutting notches in the panel to engage the clips and hold the panel. I had done that on the top two clips of each panel but they evidently didn't hold. I think the fact that they are 40 feet long and carried a very heavy snow load was the reason they didn't hold.

Anyway, CP said that I should be able to drive the panels back up with a short 2x4 and a big hammer. Then we agreed that the thing to do is to take the ridge off and put a screw in the top of each panel.

The snowbank is high enough to allow me to reach over half of the panels so I decided to try and drive them back up.

I went into the cabin to make a bracket to hold a short 2x4 to hold it in place as I hammered on it. I was facing the open windows and I had just finished driving a screw into the 2x4. I heard some kind of noise and I thought it was my flock of gray jays. I looked up at the windows and expected to see the jays, but instead, I only saw a hanging rope swaying. I figured the jays had landed on the rope, which they commonly do, and I figured they would be right in.

Then, all of a sudden, it sounded like 500 squirrels were running across the roof. I knew I didn't have that many squirrels and before I could think of anything else, I could feel my chair, and the floor gently swaying back and forth about a half inch. Then I knew it was an earthquake and I glanced back at the log structure which was flexing and creaking. I looked at my watch and it said 10:56.

I looked out the window again and saw all the trees start swaying in unison and at that same instant, every bird in the forest started squawking at once, just as if a fox had entered a hen house. They only squawked for a second or two. Then the trees stopped swaying and all the birds and animals became deathly quiet for about 10 seconds. Then, one by one, starting in the distance first one squirrel started scolding, then another, then a bird started chirping, and pretty soon they were all making their normal noises. It was kind of neat.

The motion only lasted two or three seconds. I was glad I was in the building at the time so I could see how it behaves in an earthquake. There is no doubt in my mind that it can take a much bigger one. I checked the foundation inside and out and was pleased to find no sign of any cracks.

I went down to the trailer wondering if anyone would believe me that I had been in an earthquake. I thought of calling the neighbors to see if they had one too. I also toyed with the idea of reporting it on 911 or calling a radio station. I hadn't made up my mind what to do by the time I got to the trailer.

The radio in the trailer was tuned to a Seattle station, and to my surprise, they were talking about an earthquake. Then it dawned on me that I had felt their earthquake! The radio said it was a 6.2. Within a minute after I got to the trailer, Ellen called and told me that she was safe and that the motion in Bellevue had lasted about 30 seconds. I told her that I would go home a day early just in case there was a problem at home.

Before I left, I decided to try to drive back some roof panels. I used a hammer and the 2x4 with my fancy bracket and a couple strips of duct tape to hold the bracket in place. It was fairly easy to drive the panels, but my bracket didn't work at all. The hammer blows tore the thing apart almost immediately so I gave up on it and took it apart. It worked pretty well just holding the 2x4 with my hand. I just had to be careful not to hit my hand with the hammer or get it between the 2x4 and the roof panel.

I drove back all the panels I could reach and then climbed back to the top of the roof and found that they were all snugly back in place. After I came back down, I jumped back off the snow bank and headed for the building under the porch roof and ran full blast into the main porch log beam. I whacked myself in the forehead just like Tom Hammond did on one of his visits. My hat kept the blow from breaking the skin on my forehead, but my jaw had slammed shut and I had a lot of little gritty tooth chips in my mouth. I chipped a little hunk out of one of my front teeth.

I decided it was time to hang something in front of that beam to make that the last time anyone bangs their head against it. I got a big strip of visqueen, screwed it to the end of a short board, and fastened the board to the beam so the visqueen hangs a couple feet in front of the beam. Hopefully that will prevent any more of those accidents.

Back in the cabin while I was putting things away, the gray jays did show up for a peanut snack. I left for home about 3:00. I met Ellen in Bellevue just as she got off work . We had dinner there and then continued on home. We were pleased to find that there had been no damage to our place.

3/5/01 Took the pickup up to CP Sheet Metals thinking that I could pick up enough screws to fasten down the roof panels and also get the ridge metal and clips I needed to finish the woodshed roof. CP's crew had gone home for the day so I couldn't get the sheet metal. CP gave me a couple bags of screws, though, so I could fasten down the panels.

3/6-8/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

This week was sort of a downer. I had a cold over the weekend and I still wasn't feeling up to par. But worse than that, I made no progress in framing at all; I spent the whole week working on problems.

When I arrived at 1:00, it was a beautiful 46 degree spring day. But as soon as I started moving in, I discovered the power was out. I went down to the power pole to see if a breaker had tripped. None of them were tripped but I could hear the transformer humming. That meant that there was power in the street but I wasn't getting any. There are three breakers in my panel: one red one and two black ones. I mistakenly thought that the red one was a master breaker for the box, so I flipped it off and then on again. That restored my power immediately so I assumed that there was something wrong with that red breaker.

After I moved in, I went to work driving the rest of the roof panels back. The snowbank had shrunk a foot or two from last week so the panels were that much more out of reach. I thought about various options about how to set up scaffolding in order to reach them. I figured I would use a ladder or two with hanging brackets and a plank, or run the plank from one bracket to the snowbank.

I started out by setting a ladder from the snowbank up to the fascia at the highest corner. I could see that it wouldn't be easy to use the brackets and planks, so I decided to work just from the ladder. I could reach two panels from the ladder in one position. It was a little tricky because with a four-pound hammer in one hand and a short 2x4 in the other hand, I had no hands left to hang on with. I also had to be pretty accurate when I hit the 2x4 because if I was a little high, or low, the hammer would glance off, threatening my balance, and it would bend the sheet metal.

Each time that happened, which was quite often, I used the head of the hammer as an anvil and the 2x4 as a hammer to straighten the metal again. I got the hang of it, but my shoulders weren't used to using a heavy hammer overhead for that long.

Each time I moved the ladder up the snowbank, I had to stomp on the snow to pack it down enough to hold the ladder firmly. Since the top of the ladder was resting on the fascia board which was sloping down and away from the ladder, I didn't want the ladder to slip down and dump me off.

The whole process was very tiring, but successful. I ended up driving all the panels back up where they belonged except for the six on the high side. They were still under a foot to 18 inches of snow. There was about a 3 foot snow bridge connecting that to the snowbank. The bottom 3 inches of the bridge was clear, solid ice with melt water running off in a steady stream. There was a foot or more of snow on top of the ice. I figured I didn't want to walk on that bridge until morning when it was frozen solid, so I decided not to climb up on the roof that evening. I was pretty beat anyway.

I put the ladder and tools away and while I was up in the building, I could hear someone talking on the property across the road. I watched and listened and I saw two guys come walking out onto the road talking and joking and laughing. They turned up the road and as they came into view, we waved and started talking. They were fish and game guys who had hiked a length of the river checking on something or other and they were headed back to their truck about a mile up the road. I offered them a ride back which they accepted.

It was a good excuse to not have to do any more work and I could do a good deed in the process. They had been postholing because they had decided not to take their snowshoes so they were plenty beat and very appreciative of the ride.

On Wednesday morning, it was 30 degrees and the snow bridge was frozen solid. I packed my trusty Trapper Nelson backpack with everything I could think I might need up on the ridge and I made a set of stirrups by connecting two 2x4s with small ropes. The ropes held the 2x4s parallel to the ridge, one on each side, so I could rest my feet on them. Without them, you either keep the muscles inside your thighs tensed all the time to keep your feet from slipping down, or you just let your legs dangle and take all the weight on your crotch. Both of these options get very uncomfortable in a very short time.

When I tried to climb up the roof, I discovered that the coefficient of friction between my boots, with a little snow on the bottom, and the roof panels was absolute zero. After one attempt and one slide back down to the snow, I decided to get a rope over the top of the building. I threw a 5/8 rope over the ridge. It was attached to a 3/4 inch rope. By throwing bights of the big rope toward the ridge, I got the smaller rope to slide down off the other side of the roof. Then I tied each end of the big rope to a tree on either side of the building. Using this rope, I did my Batman walk up the roof carrying my Trapper Nelson pack full of stuff on my back.

Once on the ridge, I tied the pack to the safety rope and set up my stirrups. Since I was going to do the whole operation straddling the ridge, I decided against tying myself to a safety rope. It was awkward enough without that.

CP had told me that a single screw in each panel was enough to hold him, but I figured that since I was up there, I would put two screws in each long panel and one screw in the short panels. None of the short panels had slipped.

I found that I couldn't start the screws very easily without a pilot hole. I regretted not bringing a punch with me, but I did have several 8x3" screws with me. These worked pretty well as a punch until they finally bent. I started across the ridge using this method until I realized that I had some drill bits with me. I switched to drilling the pilot holes instead of punching them and it was a lot less work.

Then, to save time switching from the drill bit to the screwdriver bit all the time, I decided to do all the drilling first, and then drive all the screws in a second pass. That way I didn't have to change bits and I didn't have to drag the Trapper Nelson with me as I went.

After a drilling a few holes, I decided to give up on the stirrups. It was more work to keep moving them than it was worth. My boots were now dry and clean so they didn't slip on the roof. I didn't trust them enough to ever have both feet on the same side of the roof, but with one on each side of the ridge, I could take the weight off my crotch now and then.

Since it was so much easier drilling right handed than left, I made a complete round trip across the ridge drilling all the holes on one side on one pass, then the holes on the other side on the return trip. Finally, I made one more such round trip driving in all the screws. By the time I finished, it was after 2:00 and I had been up there without a break since morning. My legs were rubbery when I got back down on the ground and went in for lunch. I was beat.

While I was having lunch, I did a lot of water testing. I found that now the slimy stuff was in every glass of water I drew from the hose. On average, there would be one or two half-inch strands in each glass. I boiled all the water that I drank, and I wrote 'filters' on my list of things to bring up next week. I figured that paper coffee filters would take that stuff out, whatever it was.

It was nearly 4:00 before I felt like going back out to work. Since the temperature was still above freezing, decided to try to break the snow bridge while the snow was soft. My plan was to get all the snow to slide off the roof so I could drive back and screw down those last six panels.

I got a spade and started whacking an 8 inch gap in the bridge. The bridge was about 8 feet wide, so I cut a four foot gap from the low side. I made sure that I never got in front of the snow in case it might avalanche. Then I went around to the high side and started cutting a gap from that side. When I cut through the last little chunk of ice, the whole mass, which went about 20 feet up the roof, avalanched at once and in an instant, closed up the gap and stopped cold. It looked exactly the same as it did before I did all that work, except now my spade was locked inside. There was just a foot or two of the handle sticking out. I went down and got my spud and spent another half hour or so chipping the ice in order to free the spade.

I figured that my mistake was that I hadn't cleared the snowbank away but instead I had left an abutment that stopped the avalanche. I started digging and chopping again trying to make a nice ramp over which the snow could avalanche on down the hill. After sweating over this until I thought it should work, I found that the snow decided not to move so I gave up and quit for the day. Beat!

At 12:45 in the middle of the night, I turned on a light and got only a short flash. Thinking I might have blown a light bulb, I turned on another light and found that I had no power. I figured that either I had blown a breaker, or the power had failed, coincidentally, just as I turned on that light. I decided to go out and see if it was that same breaker again or what. I got dressed, got my flashlight and when I stepped out the door, I could see that my neighbor's yard light was on. I figured the power must not have failed if his light was on, but when I turned to head down the trail, I saw that my lights were back on too. Did the power come back on just as I left the trailer? I didn't know, but I went back in and went back to bed.

When I woke up on Thursday morning, I had a headache, my body was stiff and sore all over, and my cold symptoms were back again. I was feeling pretty down thinking about my roof problems, my water problems, my power problems, and I also got to thinking about another problem. The water that leaks into the crawl space under the footing was starting to run again now that the snow was melting. It occurred to me as I woke up that the footings in that spot are subject to frost heave action since on really cold nights, the rock below the footing gets cold enough to freeze the water, at least on the surface. I don't know if it ever gets cold enough to freeze inside the rock, but if it did, it could damage my foundation. I decided that I need to jack up the priority on doing something to stop that leak.

Before I started cooking breakfast, the lights went out again. I went down to the power pole and again found that no breaker had tripped, but that by turning the red breaker off and on again, my power was restored. That clinched it for me. I decided to take that red breaker home with me and buy a replacement.

After breakfast, I filled three water jugs from the hose and then partly closed the valve so that the flow was only a trickle. Then I put the snowshoes on and went up to the spring with a gallon of bleach and an empty water jug. I cleaned up all the leaf debris around the spring, took the overflow pipe off, and drew a jug full of water directly from the overflow nipple. I wanted to see if there was any of that slime in the water that hadn't gone through the hose.

Then I disconnected the water hose and poured in a half gallon or so of bleach. Since the water was flowing out of the hose so slowly, it took a while to pour the bleach in. Then I connected the hose back up and left.

Back at the trailer, I looked at a couple glasses of water that I drew up at the spring. To my relief, I didn't see any slime. I planned to take the rest of the jug home with me though and check the rest of it. I also planned to take a jug home that I had drawn from the hose. I wanted to show Ellen the slimy stuff and also look at it under a microscope to try and figure it out.

Larry stopped by and we had a nice chat about all my problems. When he left, I packed up to leave. My propane tanks were empty so I loaded them in the pickup. As the last thing, I took the breaker panel apart, removed the red breaker, and put the box back together again. I left about 1:30.

While I was driving home I got to thinking. When I removed that breaker, I didn't pay any attention to the wiring. I just concentrated on getting the thing out. After thinking about the wiring, I realized that the red breaker was not a master breaker for the box. Instead it was a 220 breaker that only fed a 220 receptacle, which I have never used. It had nothing to do with my 115 power at all. The middle breaker was not connected to anything so it was also completely unused. I had noticed that the contact between the third breaker and the power bus was dirty looking so I was sure that this was the problem.

I realized that it would be pointless to replace the red breaker and that all I had to do was to re-wire the box to use that middle breaker instead of the one that was failing. I felt good about at least making some sense of my power problem.

3/9/01 Took the pickup up to CP Sheet Metals, told CP about my experiences, and picked up the ridge sheet metal. He refused to take payment for it saying that he gave me bad advice. I argued with him, but he still wouldn't take any money. He's a good guy to do business with.

3/13-15/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 1:00. The weather was cool and overcast. I installed the newly filled propane tanks and got the furnace going. Then I got started right away on rewiring the breaker panel. I re-installed the 220v breaker that I had removed, I hooked up the middle 115v breaker instead of the outside one, and I replaced the ground wire. I did the work in the trailer where it was warm and I had a table to work on, but it was pretty dark. I turned on a battery powered emergency light, but it was still pretty dark for the work.

After I got my power restored and had lunch, I carried the roofing sheet metal up and stored it in the woodshed. By that time it was snowing very hard. It only snowed for an hour or so, but about an inch of new snow accumulated on the ground.

I tested the water from the hose hoping that last week's bleach treatment would clear it up, but I found more slimy stuff in the water than before. Maybe the bleach just loosened it up. I set up a Melita coffee filter and used it to filter all the water I used from then on. I used one jug to get water from the hose, and two more jugs that I only put filtered water into. Ellen thinks I should replace the hose again, and she is probably right. When the snow melts, I think that's what I will do.

On Wednesday morning, I worked on the entry room wall with the door in it. I got it built and in place and when I went to put the header in, I discovered the doorway was three inches too narrow. I think that when I put down the sole plates, I must have been planning for the jack studs to be on top of the sole plates. Since then I have decided to have the jack studs resting on the subfloor. The difference is three inches.

Thank goodness -- I mean Doctor Dick -- for getting me to switch to screws for framing. I dismantled what I had built by backing out all the screws in reverse order and took the wall apart again. Then I sawed three inches off the south sole plate and rebuilt the wall. What a waste of time. It was lunch time by the time I finished.

At midday, the sun came out and melted all the new snow off the roof and dried the roof off. Over the weekend, the last of the snow had avalanched off the roof so this was the perfect time to drive the last seven roof panels back up and screw them down. This went a little faster than before because I knew the best technique and my rope was already in place. When I finished, I took the rope down and coiled it up.

I spent the rest of the day finishing up making the entry wall. I chiseled two deep notches in the loft beam to receive one jack stud and one cripple. That makes a very solid anchor for that part of the wall.

On Thursday morning, it snowed lightly and there was a forecast of more snow in the mountains that afternoon. I installed a bunch more cripples over doorway headers and then spent about an hour measuring and recording the as-built configuration of the framing. I wanted to have an accurate drawing showing where all the walls and studs are, not only for a permanent record, but to help me do the planning for plumbing and wiring.

I decided to leave early to beat the snowstorm so I left for home about 1:00.

3/20-22/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

It was a beautiful, sunny spring day when I arrived at 12:45. The temperature was 45 degrees and a lot of the snow had melted. I shoveled the snow off the log gate which was lying on the ground so that the sun could get at it and melt it loose. When it was all uncovered, I found that it came free so I decided to put the gate back together. I don't think I will need to have Mike scoop out the driveway any more this season and I think it would be a good idea to keep people from driving in the driveway.

After I moved my gear into the trailer, I got a scaffold frame and a come-along and brought it down to the driveway. I used them to lift the log gate up onto the post and over the rebar.

There was lots of the slime in the water from the hose so I started filtering it right away. My guess is that the bleach had killed it and now it was all losing its grip and coming loose. Maybe next week there will be less of it. We'll see.

I made and installed a few more cripples above doorways, and I measured the as-built configuration to complete and fix a few errors in what I had done the week before.

On Wednesday, I built and installed the 2x6 wall between the bath and utility rooms.

On Thursday, I decided that the remaining 2x4s I had were too crooked to use. I decided to get some new ones before I did any more framing.

I went up to the spring to get a jug of water directly from the spring to test for slime -- I was pleased to find there was no slime in it. On the way up, I saw a set of cougar tracks starting between the privy and the wood shed and heading across the valley toward the spring. They were made since the last snowfall, which was during the past weekend, and they were made when the snow was very soft because the cougar sunk in about a foot with each step. So it was probably late in the day on a nice sunny day. It might have been even yesterday or the day before. The snow was frozen hard when I went to the spring and I was able to walk right on top so it had to be pretty soft for the cougar to sink in that deep. The tracks were big, so I think it is probably the same guy who came through there a couple years ago.

Since I wasn't going to do any more framing this week, I decided to start working on doubling up at least one of the joists at the fireplace hole. I had one piece of TJI that was long enough so I cut it to length and brought it into the crawl space. Then I made six filler blocks by ripping 2x4s edgewise to get pieces 1 1/8" thick. I put one of these on each end of the existing C2-C3 joist, one at the junction of each of the headers for the fireplace hole, and the other two so that they were roughly equally spaced across the joist. Then I clamped the new joist over the filler blocks and next to the original joist, and then fastened them together with screws through the webs and filler blocks from both sides.

I still need to install hangers or brackets on the columns to support the ends of the joist, but at least the joist is in place. It makes a noticeable difference when you walk on the floor over the doubled joist; it is a lot firmer.

I packed up and left for home about 1:30.

3/27-29/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived about noon and the weather was 40 degrees and overcast. The snow had melted enough so that with a few tries and a good run at it, I was able to bounce the pickup through the snow and about halfway up to the trailer.

I checked the water from the hose and there was some slime in it, but not much and not in every glass. It helps confirm my earlier guess that the bleach killed the stuff, and now it was working its way out of the hose. I hope that is the case anyway.

By the time I got moved in and had lunch, it started snowing. I carried up a dozen ten-foot 2x4s up that I had brought with me. Then I built the bath/linen wall and the linen door opening. John's dog Winky and one of her pups showed up for a visit and an inspection of the property. They had a good time and then left. I didn't see any sign of John. I was glad to hear a lot of frogs croaking. There were so many that it sounded like a solid roar. I don't remember hearing so many for quite a few years. Maybe they are on a come-back. I hope so. By 5:30 when I quit for the day, the new snow was about 2 inches deep.

On Wednesday morning, there was about 3 inches of new snow on the ground, but it was raining. The rain stopped by 8:00 and the rest of the day was nice and sunny.

By noon, I had finished framing all the inside walls. I had mixed feelings. I was glad it was done and a little embarrassed that it had taken me so long, but I also enjoy building things with 2x4s so I sort of miss having that part to do any more. Oh, well -- there are plenty of challenges and fun projects yet ahead.

I cleaned up the place; I stacked the left-over lumber and swept the place out. Then, when I went to take some pictures, I remembered that the camera battery was dead, so I didn't get any pictures.

The next indoor project I will tackle is to build the interior staircase. I rigged up the winch so that I could pull one of the half-log stringers into the building through the small side living room window. It is always fun to move logs around like that. I got the stringer up into the living room before I quit for the day. A lot of the new snow had melted during the day, and the frogs were roaring again when I went in.

On Thursday, I did some careful measurements to determine where the staircase abutment will be. Then I decided to work on the solid blocking which Tom Hammond said I need to reinforce the joists where the staircase rests on the floor. I decided to cut the blocking from a big log slab that was in the crawl space. I rigged a come-along and used it to lift the log up into the living room. Then I planed half of the flat side of the log down to nice new wood and cleaned up all the planer chips. By then it was time to get ready to leave. I left about 1:30.

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