4/3-5/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

It was 46 degrees and sunny when I arrived at 1:00. There were so many frogs croaking it sounded like a steady roar. It was good to hear so many of them. The snow had melted enough so that I was able to drive the pickup all the way up to the trailer for the first time this year.

The water from the hose still had some small pieces of slime in it, so I filtered all the water I used.

I spent the afternoon cutting the blocking for the staircase landing from the log slab. I used almost every saw I had in the process. The skillsaw couldn't cut deep enough to go all the way through so I used Jack the rip saw for part of it. I also used Henry, my trusty crosscut saw for part of it, and I even tried the big one man crosscut saw. Before I finished, I even got Mother Sow out to rip the pieces. The sapwood was deteriorated so I decided to rip it off with the chainsaw. I used a come-along as a vise to hold each piece tight to another short log so that I could saw it. I was very pleased that Mother Sow started and ran fine after quite a few pulls. It had been a long time since I had started it.

During the work, a half dozen gray jays came into the building for peanut treats.

On Wednesday, I got the Gwizard out and gwizzed the round side of the stringer log. The saw started easily right away as usual. I used the rope that I had left hanging over the ridgepole to hold the sling for the Gwizard. There was a nice breeze blowing through the window, so there was no problem running the saw indoors. It was sort of fun gwizzing again, but I forgot for a while that I needed to work from left to right rather than from right to left. That way, you spray the bar oil on the part that hasn't been gwizzed yet so the finished part stays nice and clean.

When the gwizzing was finished, I turned the log over and used the power planer to plane the flat side. It ended up very nice and flat. Next, I swept up all the planer chips -- about six 5-gallon buckets full -- and dumped them into the chip bin. When the place was nice and clean again, I applied the sealer coat of varnish on all the loft rail posts and on the flat side of the staircase stringer.

On Thursday, I tested the water again, and still found small pieces of slime. I closed the hose valve down to a trickle and went up to the spring and poured a bunch of bleach into the hose again. Then I sanded the posts and the stringer and applied a second coat of varnish. One jay came through the window and landed on the fresh varnish. I hollered at him and he flew up and landed on the loft but he wouldn't take any peanuts after that. I don't know if it was because I hollered at him, or if his feet felt funny. I hope the varnish doesn't foul up his feet.

Just before I left, Mike McComas and Larry stopped by and we talked about having Mike do some wiring for me. He gave me some great new information. I left for home at 1:00.

4/10-12/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived shortly after noon. It was 42 degrees and overcast. There was some snow in the pass on the way over.

This week was dedicated to moving the privy. It needed to be done some time this summer and this was the ideal time to do it. I am finished with the interior framing, except for the staircase, and there is still too much snow in the woods for me to get rid of the chips that are in the way of the scaffold. So I can't work on finishing the outside of the building for another week or so.

I started out by digging a new hole directly in front of the old privy location. I was fortunate in not hitting any very big rocks. I got the hole 4 feet 3 inches deep before I quit for the day. I also dragged two 14 foot 8x8 timbers up to the privy from where they were down by the trailer. I planned to use those timbers as rails to skid the privy on.

On Wednesday morning, just as I was finishing breakfast, a guy from Verizon stopped in asking for help in finding an address. I was unable to help him other than telling him that it was further up the road from my place. The guy was very interested in my building project so I took him on a tour to see the building. He seemed to be quite impressed.

Using a coffee can suspended by a rope bridle, I scooped another 5 to 10 gallons of dirt out of the bottom of the new privy hole just to increase its capacity by that much. When it got pretty hard to fill another can, I quit and called it good enough.

I used four 8 foot 1x2s to lay out the new location for the privy and then I built the new footings. I was very pleased with my eyeballs, because once having established the footing corner on the highest ground, my first rough guess at the elevation of the others was almost exactly level on two of the remaining three corners. The other one was only about a half inch high, so by scraping off another half inch of dirt, that one also came to level.

In the preceding few weeks, I had imagined many scenarios about how I would move the privy. I was sure I would use those timbers, but I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to lower the privy onto the new footings, which would be about 16 inches below the old ones. One approach was to use sand jacks. I had never used them but I thought it might be fun to try it. I still have a bunch of mortar sand which should work, and I brought four big coffee cans from home for that purpose. The plan was to fill the cans with sand, support the load on short 4x4s that were resting on the sand, and then lower the load by punching holes in the bottoms of the cans and letting the sand run out.

I had also imagined many other methods using jacks, come-alongs, levers, and so forth. With these alternatives in mind, I figured I would just start out and see which plan worked out best as I got into it.

Just about the time I was going to start the move, Rick stopped by for a visit. He hadn't seen the progress since I had been working on the log walls. He was quite impressed with the work. When he left, I got back to the problem of moving the privy.

I started out by sticking the two 8x8s under the privy just inside the corner footings. The timbers were hitting the ground on the high side and resting on concrete blocks and 2x6 shims on the downhill side. They stuck out nearly level and about two feet directly above the new footings.

Using each timber as a lever, I lifted each of the downhill corners of the privy up a little so the load was on the timber and I removed the top concrete block of the old footing. This placed the entire load of the downhill side of the building on the timbers. The timbers were cantilevered on the concrete blocks so they were held snug up against the underside of the joists.

My plan was to hook a come-along to a stump and pull the building onto the timbers, but when I did that, the timbers started moving out along with the building. I re-rigged so that I had a come-along anchored at the outer end of each timber so when I cranked the come-along, I was pulling the privy downhill at the same time I was pushing the timber back uphill. This worked great.

When the privy got to where its center of gravity was directly over the concrete blocks supporting the timbers, it was balanced so that I could tip it with almost no effort. I built cribs of short 2x6s under the projecting ends of the timbers so the whole thing wouldn't tip over all at once. As I slowly moved the privy further, one click at a time, more and more weight bore on the cribbing. I also began removing 2x6s one at a time to increase the amount of tipping a little at a time. I was careful to tip the building slowly so that the inertia didn't let the whole thing topple over. At each such lowering, I also walked over by the woodshed to look at the building and estimate where the center of gravity was and ensure that a vertical line through it was always uphill from the downhill rim joist of the privy. It was always plenty safe.

When all the cribbing was finally removed, the timbers were slanting downhill and were about an inch lower than the lower footings at the outside. The downhill slope made it easier to crank the building along the timbers, and by working one come-along and then the other, I was able to steer the building so that the corners aligned with the footings. I got a real sense of accomplishment when, with the last click of one of the come-alongs, the rim joist just came into contact with the corner footings exactly where they were supposed to be.

Now, all I had to do was to get those timbers out of there and lower the back end of the building. Just looking at things, it was clear that the easiest way to lower the building would be to use scaffold frames and come-alongs. I leaned a scaffold frame against each high corner of the building, hung a come-along from the top of each frame and fastened the other end to the corner of the privy.

Then using the come-alongs to lift the corners just off the timbers, I was able to pull the timbers out completely. Then by reversing the come-alongs, I lowered the building click by click right down onto the footings.

With the building resting on the footings, I took out the level and checked the floor. I got the same gratification I got before seeing that bubble as dead centered in the level as it could be no matter what direction I laid the level. By then it was 7:15 PM and I called that good enough.

On Thursday morning, I put away all the tools and lumber and made steps out of concrete blocks. Then I covered up the old privy hole and tidied up the area.

I still had some time left, so I rolled the stringer half-log over and applied the sealer coat of varnish to the rounded side. Then I sanded and applied the third coat of varnish to the loft railing posts. They are starting to look real nice.

Later on, I noticed that a mouse had fallen into the new privy hole over night and he couldn't get out. I found a branch that was long enough to reach to the bottom of the hole and still stick out above the toilet seat. I left the branch in the hole to give the little guy a chance to get out of there. I packed up and left for home about 1:15.

4/17-19/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got a late start (too much philosophizing on the Internet) and didn't arrive until about 2:30. The weather was a delightful 56 degrees. I found a note from Randi saying that she had stopped by on Sunday.

There was still little pieces of slime in the water, so I filtered all the water I used again. I checked the privy, and the mouse was gone. He had evidently been able to use the escape ladder I had provided for him.

I started out by pruning along all the trails. Most of the snow was melted off the trails, and most of the vine maples had stood themselves up again, so there wasn't all that much to prune -- just the new growth. It would now be easy to run the wheelbarrow on the trails.

I built a rack by the privy to hold short (6 to 8 foot) logs for later use as firewood. Quite a few of them had been used to make the chip bin, and now that I was about to dismantle it, I needed some place to put those logs.

When that was done, I started in earnest wheeling wheelbarrows full of chips and spreading them onto the trails. As I freed up logs, I moved them up to the new firewood rack. The weather was perfect for this work. Not too hot and not too cold. There were no bugs to speak of and it was delightful in the woods. The leaves were still not out so you could see very well through the woods.

Wednesday was another beautiful day and I continued hauling chips and dismantling the chip bin. On one return trip, a robin got on the trail in front of me and led me for a couple hundred yards. I think it must have been a mother trying to get me away from her nest because she kept looking over her shoulder to make sure that I was following her. On other trips, I noticed ground squirrels and one grouse who I think has a nest nearby.

Back at the chip bin, I noticed some movement so I stood still and watched. Pretty soon, two little brown lizards crawled back out in the sun on top of the chips. As I watched them, a cloud covered the sun and the lizards stuck their noses down into the chips and sort of slowly swam down into them. You could see this little hump of chips moving along showing when and where the lizards were underneath. Once and a while, a little nose and a flicking tongue would poke out above the hump, and then a little eye blinking and checking me out. Then when the sun came back out, they crawled out for a little more sun. I think they know how to stay comfortable. I felt a little bad that I was destroying their chip bed, but, that's progress for you.

A pair of jays also visited me periodically for peanuts. It was always the same pair and I am sure they are two of the youngsters from last year's brood. They were pretty shy at first, but by the end of the day, they were both landing on my hands and taking peanuts with confidence. Even with these animal-watching diversions, I was very tired by the end of the day.

On Thursday morning, the same two jays were right there to greet me when I went out. I also saw the grouse again, and I saw one tick. The tick was, of all places, on the head of my hammer which was lying on the concrete footing. I don't know why he was there, but he unwittingly chose his own method of execution. I used the hammer to make a grease spot of him on the footing.

I finished covering almost all of the two trails to the spring with chips. Only a fairly short section over near the Tutino property is still uncovered. I also used up almost all of the chips in the bin. There are probably enough left to finish the trails, but I ran out of time and energy. I also removed enough of them to make room for the scaffold tower, so I probably won't go back to spreading them on trails again until later. I will also be producing some more chips as I plane the log walls to prepare them for stain.

Having finished what I intended to do this week, I packed up and left for home about 1:30.

5/15-17/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I skipped working at the property for the previous three weeks because I was helping Gus get through eye surgery, a heart attack, open heart surgery, and convalescence. He is now home and both his eye and his heart are in better shape than they were a month ago.

I arrived at 12:30 and was delighted to find no evidence of anyone being on the property or causing any mischief during my long absence. The water tasted funny to me, sort of like creek water, so I filled two jugs directly from the spring. That water tasted perfectly good. On the way to the spring, I carried 10 gallons of wood chips with me and spread them on the trail where I hadn't yet spread them.

I spent the rest of the afternoon erecting a scaffold tower at the west corner of the building. I also braced it to the building at the third tier. In the process, a flock of gray jays visited and I fed them peanuts. Tutino's dogs, Bert and Ernie also stopped by for a visit. They were two of John's pups and now they are really big dogs.

It rained a little in the evening and I installed the screens in the trailer after dinner.

On Wednesday, I de-winterized the trailer. In the process, Larry, Roberta, Ted Turner and his wife stopped by for a visit and a look at the progress. After they left, I finished de-winterizing. Then I went back to the spring for another two jugs of water and I spread another 10 gallons of chips on the trails. It looks like another 30 or 40 gallons of chips will finish covering the trails and I will easily have that many chips available. I'll just take two buckets full each time I visit the spring. No rush.

I went back to work on the scaffold tower and set up diagonal braces to hold a single frame on the top. This is the same arrangement I used on the other end of the wall. I fastened two cross braces together with hose clamps to make a diagonal brace on each side that reach from the top of the single frame down to the opposite frame one tier below. Then I hung brackets with planks on the top frame so I can reach the end of the grid B purlin.

On Thursday morning, I got started planing the outside of the logs getting them ready for staining. I got a good start on them before I got pretty tired and needed to take a break. Just as I stopped, Earl stopped by for a visit. While we were chatting, the gray jays came in the building and we both fed them peanuts. By the time Earl left, it was time to board up the windows near the scaffold, put things away and have lunch. I left for home at about 1:30.

5/22-24/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at noon. It was already a hot 76 degrees. The water from the faucet looked clear and tasted good. Maybe whatever was in the hose finally worked its way out. After moving in, I went to work on the log wall with a power hand planer. The temperature got up to 80 degrees in the shade, so it was hot, hard work up on the wall. Fortunately, there are very few mosquitos this year. The winter was probably too dry.

On Wednesday morning, I got an early start to take advantage of the cool of the morning. The work was hot and hard again. I am not used to using my shoulders in that same position holding the planer up for that long, so I had to rest at intervals when my arms would be too fatigued to hold the planer up.

When the direct sun started hitting me around 1:30, I stopped for lunch and a siesta. The trailer was nice and cool and it felt good to rest. After a three hour break in the hottest part of the afternoon, I went back out and worked until 7:30.

I wanted to finish planing the wall and spray it with Board Defense before I quit, but I didn't quite make it. I finished all but the bottom three logs. After I sprayed the ones I had planed, I quit for the day.

On Thursday morning, I was super stiff and had a headache. I took some aspirin and went out to work. I got the first coat of stain applied to all but the last three logs. I barely had enough stain to finish. That made the building look a lot different than it did during the winter. Now the front of it is pretty much all the same color.

During the process of staining, a small flock of gray jays stopped by for peanut treats. I left for home about 1:30.

5/30/01 I skipped going to the property this week because I took Gus to the hospital for checkups on both his heart and his eye. On the way back, we stopped in at Woodcare Systems and I bought 5 gallons of TWP stain.

6/5/7/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 11:40. It was 52 degrees and raining lightly. Everything looked okay; no signs of vandalism over the Memorial Day weekend. The water also seemed to be okay. All that slime evidently worked it way out of the hose.

After moving in, I used the planer and the sander to clean off the last three logs. Then I sprayed them with Board Defense and took some pictures. Then before I quit for the night, I swept the chips off the floor.

On Wednesday, I stained the last three logs, and then put a second coat on all the logs on that third of the wall. I fed a few gray jays on a few occasions throughout the job. Then I cleaned up the chips on the ground on the outside and dismantled part of the old scaffolding inside the building.

The weather was cool and beautiful and there are still no mosquitos to speak of. I walked the trails up to the spring to check it out. I saw a tiny lizard or salamander that couldn't have been more than two inches long. He couldn't move very fast so I think he was just recently born (or hatched). When I got back, I got the fire-escape ladder out and hung it from the grid A purlin. I will use it the same as before to hold up the scaffolding I will use to reach the corner logs.

On Thursday, I felt weak and tired. Even though I was moving slowly, I build three scaffold platforms resting on rungs of the escape ladder and anchored them so they are solid. The same group of jays came around for peanuts during the whole process.

I left for home at about 1:00.

6/12-14/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got a late start and arrived at 3:00. The weather was nice and cool and there were still no mosquitoes. There was a little time to get a start on planing the ends of the logs on the west corner.

Wednesday was another beautiful day and I finished planing and sanding the ends of the logs and sprayed them with Board Defense.

On Thursday I woke up at 4:00 and couldn't get back to sleep. I got up and was out working before 7. I applied two coats of stain on the log ends and was happy to finally have the entire front of the building stained. I cleaned up the planer chips from the ground and spread 15 gallons of them on the trail. Now all of the trails are covered with chips.

I went up and checked on the little tree I had transplanted years ago and found that it was nice and healthy but still stunted. The deer have kept nibbling it so it never has grown much. I went back and got a wire tomato trellis and some screen and put it around the tree to keep the deer away. I hope it works. While I was up in the woods, two gray jays found me and I fed them some peanuts.

I saw one mosquito during the day and heard two others but I didn't see them. This has got to be the mildest mosquito year ever. I left for home about 1:00.

I didn't go to the property at all the week of 6/17/01 because I was sick with food poisoning. I think I got it from some spoiled yogurt covered pretzels at a father's day barbeque at Paula's. On Monday evening I thought I might be well enough to go the next morning, but Ellen and I went for a walk and I felt so terrible by the time we got back that I decided not to go up and work at all for the week. By Thursday, I was feeling pretty much back to normal.

6/26/01 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got a late start due to some philosophizing on the Internet and because I had to deliver Andrew to Priscilla's for swim lessons. I arrived at 12:30. The weather was a beautiful 60 degrees. There were no signs of vandalism, there were virtually no mosquitos, and the water from the tap was running nice and clear. It was good to be back up in the mountains.

I started out by dismantling the scaffold tower and putting the frames and planks away. Then I went behind the high rock and felled a tree that had died last winter. It is just the right size for porch joists and I need more logs for that purpose. Mother Sow started right away and ran pretty well once I got it started. There was one time, though, when it took a long time to get it restarted.

The tree fell exactly where I wanted it to and it lay across the valley behind the high rock. I used an axe to limb it, and I cleared the limbs away from the log. Then I bucked it into a 55 foot log, 11 inches on the butt end and 5 inches on the top. The middle of the log was about 4 feet off the valley floor.

On Wednesday morning, it was raining cats and dogs. Before I went out, I figured a bucking plan for the log. I need 16 footers and 12 footers for the joists, so I figured the optimal way to cut the log was into three 12 footers and one 16 footer. I made the butt log the 16 footer because I may use that for a beam instead of a joist. I still need one 16 foot beam for the porch.

I figured I would wait until the rain let up before I went back to work on the log. In the meantime, I decided to work on the deck ledger. In order to work on the log wall on that side, I need something to stand on. If the ledger is in place, I can either rest temporary scaffolding on it or I can install the permanent deck joists and put the scaffolding on it. Either way, the ledgers need to be installed.

I planned to make the ledgers out of the pressure treated 6x8s that Earl had given me. They were already under the porch roof so I could work on them out of the rain. I cut all 7 pieces to length, got 5 of them drilled, and got two of them installed. The power went out for a couple hours during the process so I was unable to drill during that time. I used Mother Sow to cut the timbers though, so the power failure wasn't a problem for that.

About the time I ran out of work I could do on the ledgers without power, the rain had stopped. I went back into the woods with Mother Sow and bucked the log into the four logs. The bucking went smoothly even though the log was supported only on the ends. To make each cut, I cut down from the top an inch or less. Then I made a plunge cut under that through the center of the log. Then gradually working both up and down from the inside of the cut, I enlarged the plunge cut. By the time the saw cut through the bottom, the top uncut wood was only about a half inch thick.

When the saw cut through, the log started to fall, the cut opened up on the bottom so I could get the saw out, and the leverage against the top cut easily broke the wood bridge on top. I think that is a very safe and slick way to do it.

I used a loop of small rope to drag the smallest of the logs out of the woods and up over the high rock. In doing so, I realized that I wouldn't be able to drag any bigger log than that out by hand, so I would have to use the winch to get the rest of them out.

On Thursday morning I rigged up the winch to snake out the logs. Instead of running the winch in the normal mode with a block, I used the block to turn the cable so it ran through a back window up to the high rock. This way, I had 50 feet of pull rather than 25 feet. I figured there would be plenty of strength even for the butt log. I chained a block to the big tree on the high rock which made a straight cable run from there through the window to the block inside the building. The control cable went through the same window so the remote control reached the top of the high rock.

It took a lot of walking to go into the building to prime the winch, and then again after the load was applied to make sure that it was winding properly and that the cable runs weren't touching anything. I also had to make a lot of trips up and down the cliff on the back side of the high rock in order to free the logs when they got hung up. But by 1:00 I had all three logs pulled up and lying on top of the high rock. I tried spudding the bark, but it is on awfully tight and it would be a huge job to spud it off. I decided that I will use the gwizard instead.

Since Andrew was at Priscilla's, I didn't have to be home as early as usual. I had time before I left to install one more section of the ledger. I left for home at 2:30 very tired and sore, but happy that I finally got some real work done for a change.

Ellen took vacation the week of the 4th of July so I didn't work at the property that week. On Tuesday the 3rd, Ellen and I hiked the Estes Butte trail to the site of the old lookout and then spent the night in the trailer. The hike was beautiful, but very hot. We could smell propane in the trailer, so there must be a leak somewhere. I smeared soap suds over the fittings I had opened when I worked on the furnace pilot light, but I didn't see any bubbles. I tightened the fittings anyway, and got about a third of a turn on one of them. I hope that does it. On Wednesday, the 4th, Ellen checked out the progress on the building before we drove back home.

I didn't go up to the property at all the week of July 8th because I volunteered to help at the Cub Scout day camp that Andrew attended. I checked on an order I had placed with Home Depot back in April for some blades for my Bosch planer. I didn't get a satisfactory story explaining why they didn't call me or get the blades. Their inventory showed that they had 10 on hand, but there were none on the shelves. I placed a special order and they said it should be at will-call for me to pick up when I returned from the property next week.

Entire Journal by Year: 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008