Construction Journal Entry Week of 6/12/11

6/15/11 (Wednesday) Made some soffit parts at home.

6/16-18/11 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Thursday through Saturday.

I adjusted my schedule this week so I would be at Camp Serendipity on Saturday when Ron and Gary Scollard were planning to start hanging the drywall board in the cabin. I arrived at about 11:30 and was promptly greeted by Bert and Ernie. We went up to the cabin where I gave them dog biscuits and some leftover gravy. After moving my gear in, I went to the sequoia grove and watered Bill and gave it a dose of Superthrive. The ground was plenty moist so I skipped watering the others.

Then I went to work and screwed together the soffit frame using the parts I had made in Seattle. Then using four C-clamps on the joists overhead and a rope threaded through them to form a sling, I raised the soffit frame up to the ceiling. As I already knew, the stovepipe, which barely fit inside the framework, was not square against the wall. I thought I might be able to force it into position, either denting it a little, or forcing the caulking in the hole to give enough to square it up.

I measured and marked two of the joists where the soffit needed to be in order to be square. Then I tried various levering and clamping approaches to forcing the soffit and the stovepipe to line up with the marks but to no avail.

I found out that I couldn't budge it enough and there wasn't enough slack room inside the soffit frame. So I lowered the frame again and notched three of the 2x4s to accommodate the stovepipe and then raised it back up to the ceiling.

The pipe fit into the notches which allowed the soffit to be lined up exactly with the marks. With the framework in the correct position, I screwed it to the joists in three or four places in order to hold it in place. Then with the rope sling still in place, I took a picture of the framework attached to the joists.

At the end of the day, I called Ron Scollard and confirmed Saturday as the day for hanging the drywall. That gave me one full day to finish all the other items that needed to be done to get ready. He told me that he would help me remove the toilet, which was a great relief. It would be a lot easier to do it with two guys, and it was one less item that I needed to get done before Saturday.

I also got a call from Ron Siderits. He told me that he had come down with something the day he took the trailer and that he had been hospitalized a couple times after that. He said he couldn't really tell me what had made him so ill but that he was on the mend now.

On Friday morning, Bert and Ernie showed up first thing. They only got biscuits and hugs this time. After breakfast, I finished attaching the soffit to the joists and added a few more parts for drywall backing. That finished item number 44, the biggest and most worrisome of the items on my list.

There was still a nagging concern, though, about getting a strip of drywall board between the soffit and the short loft beam. I had already chiseled the clearance on top of the beam, but the strip of board would have to be shoved up at an angle because of the soffit and it wasn't clear that it could be done. I decided to experiment a little and find out.

I cut a strip from one of the sheets of drywall board and worked on it to try to fit it into place. It was going to be too difficult to do it in one piece, so I cut it in two. I got one piece to fit properly and I was working on the second one when Ron Siderits showed up. He watched and helped me work on trimming the board in an attempt to get it to fit until I decided I had had enough for a while. It was already about 12:30 so I was ready to stop for lunch.

Ron offered to buy me a lunch so after I cleaned up and changed my clothes, we drove to the Happy Clown and had a good lunch and a good conversation.

After lunch, I got the second piece of board to fit between the beam and the soffit. Then I went to work and finished off items number 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 33, and 36 on my list. These were to remove the bedroom heater, measure and record where the heater mounting screws need to go, take stuff out of the living room closet, take stuff out of the bedroom closet, remove the ceiling light fixtures in the bedroom, bath, utility, hall, and kitchen, remove the bath wall light fixture, remove the medicine cabinet, measure and record the hole locations for the medicine cabinet, turn the breakers off for the open boxes, and remove the clothes hangers from the bathroom studs. The only items that remained were to remove the toilet and to make a couple more templates. I felt good about being pretty well ready for the drywallers.

On Saturday morning I overslept a little and didn't wake up until about 8:00. I scrambled to get my breakfast eaten before Ron and Gary showed up. I just made it. They said they had gotten a late start too and they arrived at about 8:35.

It was truly inspiring for me to watch them work. They had obviously worked a lot as a team because they didn't speak to each other much at all except to call out numbers in some kind of code with the measurements. Gary was usually up on his platform with a tape and he would call out the numbers. Ron was at the stockpile of boards and he would cut the boards with quick easy strokes into the correct size and shape pieces. These guys measured once and cut once and everything fit. It was amazing. I was trying to imagine how long it would have taken me to accomplish the same thing. I am sure it would have taken me weeks to do what they did in an hour.

When it came time to tackle the job of moving the toilet, Gary said that there would be no need to. The plumbing comes through the floor and not the wall and he said they could install the drywall fine without removing the toilet. That was wonderful news and changed my priorities on when I needed to install the bathroom flooring and getting the walls painted.

We took a break for lunch and we all went to the Happy Clown in Ron's truck. Some time after we returned to work, they realized that we were going to be short of drywall board. I made a run in my truck to Plain Hardware and bought 8 sheets of 8-footers.

When I got back I decided to drive them all the way to the upper roadway. I figured it would be easier to pull the collapsed snowshed out of the way so I could get up there rather than carry all that drywall up the hill.

I attached a rope to the snowshed, threw it around a tree, attached a chain to the rope that stretched down the lower roadway, and attached the chain to my truck. Then by backing up, I pulled the snowshed over so that it fell on its side out of the way. The roadway was as clear as it ever was so I was able to drive the load of drywall up to the top. Bert and Ernie stopped by again during the work.

Ron, Gary, and I lifted the sheets out of the truck and up onto the porch and from there into the cabin. By the time I backed the truck down the hill and retrieved and put away the rope and chains, it was time to call it quits for the day. There was still some board to hang, but it was small pieces on the walls. The ceilings were all done. I took some pictures of the work at various stages.

The plan was that Ron will come back by himself when he has time in the evenings and on weekends and finish hanging the board and taping and mudding the seams. I gave him a key to the building and to the gate so he can get in when I'm not there. I was super happy about the work and left for home at about 5:30.



Go to Next Journal Entry
Previous Journal Entry

Index to all Journal Entries
Go To Home Page

©2011 Paul R. Martin, All rights reserved.