7/2-4/12 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

My schedule shifted up one day this week so that I could be home on the evening of the 4th of July. I stopped and visited with Uncle Charles on the way up. The truck ran noticeably more smoothly with the rebuilt transmission and the old familiar growl was gone. I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 1:00.

After having lunch and a nap, I unloaded a bunch of yard waste from home and piled it onto the compost pile. Then I went to work on the porch ceiling. I cut a 5' 4" board to length, ripped it to fit, cut the groove in it by hand using only a 1/4" chisel, beveled the finished side with a block plane, stained the bevel, and nailed the board up into the ceiling. It was only one board, but it was still a significant percentage of the 41' 4" of total groove I needed to cut to span the entire ceiling. Fortunately, this is the only time I will have to straighten out the boards as a result of a crooked purlin on the outside. We'll see if I have a similar problem on the inside when I get to that.

A chipmunk visited me regularly on the porch all through the work. It's nice to be working outside again so that I can interact with the animals.

On Tuesday I started work by finishing up the first course of boards above the Grid F purlin. There was only a short board left to do at the very end, but that one had to be notched in two places to accommodate the two anchor hooks. By now I have had enough experience with this problem that it didn't take me long to modify the board.

First I marked where the notches needed to go. Then I cut the notches, which was straightforward, but then I stapled the patches of screen onto the board before I nailed the board up. That made it a lot easier than trying to staple them on later. I left the screens hanging over the notches so that when the board was in place, the overlapping part of the screen could then be stapled to the adjacent board which was also fairly easy.

With that last board in place on the first course, I proceeded to work on the second course, which is the one in which I need to cut new grooves. I cut, ripped, and made the groove on an 8-foot board which would complete the second course.

A truck pulled into my driveway and the county assessor came up to see me. After talking a while, he informed me that my house was considered to be 80% complete for tax purposes. That was unchanged from the last time so I didn't argue with him. He complained about the mosquitoes and said that he had seen four of them when he got out of his truck. I laughed and told him that this was an unusually light year for mosquitoes. In other years he would have seen 400 of them.

After he left, I beveled, stained and nailed up the final 8-foot board completing the second course. By then it was time for lunch and a nap.

It had been raining a little now and then so I wasn't sure whether or not I needed to water the giant sequoia trees. I went outside and tested the ground in a few places and decided that I needed to water at least some of them. But since I was going into the woods anyway, I ended up watering all of them.

When I finished, I nailed up the entire third course of boards. It sure is a lot faster when I don't have to make grooves in the boards. I had previously decided to install 8-foot lengths of boards, because they're easier to handle, but at one point on the 3rd course, I decided to try a new method that would allow me to install a full 16-foot board. The first try didn't work, but I modified the method and it did work. I may use this method on more boards from now on. Using 16-footers will save time in cutting the boards, and as long as I can install them fast, it will speed up the entire process.

The method I used was to fasten a loop of rope to a C-clamp and to attach the clamp to the bottom flange of the rafter where the end of the board will go. By placing the end of the board in the rope loop, it ends up being suspended a foot or 10 inches under the rafter. Then I can fit the other end of the board over the mating tongue and butt the board up against the next ceiling board. Then by tacking that end to the rafter with one nail, both of my hands are free and the board hangs there by itself.

I can now begin working the board onto the tongue all the way down the board. The rope loop has enough slack in it so that as the board is drawn up into place, the weight of the board is no longer supported by the loop and I am close enough to that end so that I can reach it and slip the loop off the end of the board and finish mating the tongue and groove. It is important that I initially installed the clamp so that it doesn't interfere with the final position of the board. I learned this on the first try.

With the tongue and groove engaged for the full length, and with that one nail in the far end, the board stays in place by itself and I can snug it up and nail it in place in whatever nailing pattern works best for this particular board and the way it is mating with the board already in place.

This method will not only be faster, once I get the hang of it, but it will tend to keep the courses straighter than if I used shorter boards. I'll keep doing it as long as it works.

Now, the slow part of the work is not in preparing or nailing up the boards, but in re-adjusting my scaffolding and in climbing up and down the scaffolding. The higher I go, the harder this part of the job is. But it's good exercise for an old man so I enjoy it even though it tires me out by the end of the day.

Needless to say, the chipmunk was a regular visitor all day long.

On Wednesday morning the chipmunk was right there to greet me again when I went out to work.

I started out by seeing whether or not I could begin installing the 4th course of boards under the Grid E3-F3 eaves. It was a little hairy and scary up there because I would have to stand on the very edge of the platform, on top of a riser or concrete block, with my back to the edge of the platform, and work straight up over my head. I tried hooking my lineman's belt to one of the Grid F3 anchor hooks thinking I could do the work by leaning back against the belt, but I changed my mind. I decided to do no more work from the scaffold tower in the position it currently was. It was time to move the tower.

I dismantled the two-tier tower completely and set the frames, braces, and planks aside. Then I worked on the abutments for the next position of the tower. One frame needed to go right into Rosy, the rose bush at the end of the porch. The other frame needed to go as close to the foundation as it could, but there are a lot of logs stacked there. I decided that placing the frame right up against the logs would work OK. And I was able to get the first frame worked into the rose bush so that it worked OK too. Then I simply got an assortment of blocks of wood to make the abutments so that the frames forming the first tier were nice and plumb.

There was a question in my mind of whether I would be able to erect a 3-tier tower in this spot. I could get more clearance by moving the tower to the West, but that would make it harder to reach the first course of boards I needed to reach. I couldn't really tell where the optimal spot was with just one tier erected, so I proceeded on to erect the second tier.

About this time, Paula called and said that she planned to stop and visit Camp Serendipity that day. Unfortunately I would be gone by the time she got there. So we arranged for her to get the keys so that she could visit even though I wouldn't be there. I also gave her instructions on the gate, the water, and some other items. When we hung up, I set the keys out in the pre-agreed place.

With the 2-tier tower in place, I did some more careful measurements to see whether I could install a 3rd tier on top of it. It was close. It looked like I would be able to install the next frame, but that I might not be able to take it back down once the ceiling boards were nailed up. The frames need to be lifted up about four inches in order to take them apart, and it looked like I might not have that four inches.

I went back down and moved the tower toward the west a few inches and then checked the clearance again. This time it looked like it would work OK.

I thought about setting up the third tier, but I soon realized that I did not have enough frames. I only had one left. Then I remembered my plan. I need to complete the ceiling over the porch so that I can free up one of the frames used there and use it on the 3-tier tower. In the meantime, I can finish quite a bit of the eaves from the 2-tier tower the way it is, maybe using a riser on the platform. At any rate, I can finish the entire porch ceiling, without completely finishing the eaves on either end. Then I can reconfigure the scaffolding to finish up the eaves. The plan is still workable.

With the new scaffold tower in place, I put away all the tools, had my lunch, and left for home at about 12:30.