2/12-14/13 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got off to a late start and didn't arrive until 3:00 PM. Just as I was parking Dave, Nancy, a couple other people and a couple dogs walked by. I talked with Dave for a while about damage from the recent storm.

After moving my gear in and turning on the water I made two sheet metal patches, about 10"x6", for covering the holes in the boards over the purlins that are there to accommodate the anchor hooks. I made the patches out of a length of leftover galvanized stovepipe.

I took the patches up on the scaffold and nailed them over the Grid D3 anchor hook holes using 1" galvanized roofing nails. That will keep the critters out. Since those two patches worked out so well, I decided to do the same thing for the two remaining holes at Grid B3. After I came down from the scaffold I made two more sheet metal patches but I didn't want to go back up on the scaffold.

Instead I decided to gather some small firewood from all the broken branches that were lying around. They were exposed now because the snow had melted back a lot. I chopped the branches to firewood length and used a big bundle of them to start a fire in the stove. It didn't burn as well as I thought it would so it probably smoked a lot. I decided against doing that again. While I watched the fire slowly start burning, I listened to the state of the union speech on the radio.

On Wednesday morning I went out and nailed the two new patches over the holes at Grid B3. While I was up on the scaffold, Bert and Ernie showed up so I came down and treated them to hugs, biscuits, and gravy. Then I went back up on the scaffolding and nailed on five courses of ceiling boards starting at Grid B3 and working up toward the ridge at Grid C3. I was excited that I had finally progressed from the preliminaries of setting up scaffolding, cleaning out packrat mess, and plugging the anchor hook holes and was now doing the job this is all aimed at. When I went in for lunch, I could look up and see visible progress on the ceiling through the front windows. That was an exciting treat. I won't be looking at rafters up there much longer.

After lunch and a nap I discovered some bad news. I noticed that one of the bolts on the lowest tread on my staircase was sticking up a little. That was because the stringer is shrinking and the bolts need to be occasionally tightened up as a result. The problem with this one is that the bolt is coupled to an allthread that continues down through 3" solid blocking with the nut on the bottom of that and I am pretty sure that I didn't counterbore the coupler hole in the blocking deep enough to allow for the shrinkage.

I went down in the crawlspace and tried to tighten that nut. Sure enough it wouldn't budge. The coupler is evidently drawn up tight against the bottom of the hole in the blocking. That means I am going to have to dismantle most of the blocking under there and deepen that hole. That is not a trivial project so I'll put it off until all the outside ceiling boards are installed and my scaffolding is dismantled. It's always something.

Back up on the scaffolding, I nailed on another 5 courses of ceiling boards. That brought me to about 3 courses away from the ridgepole. I put on my respirator mask and removed a very dusty old bird nest that had been built on the ridgepole between a pair of rafters. I also did quite a bit of work trying to fit a ceiling board in the top slot right up against the ridgepole. The fit was tight so I used a block plane to work the edge of the board down all the way across trying to get it to fit. In the process I broke my pencil and discovered that a block plane is an excellent pencil sharpener.

I didn't like the fit but I was getting tired. I decided to quit and come down before I started getting shaky.

On Thursday morning, I used a big gouge in addition to the block plane to work the edge of the board down until I was happy with the fit. I gooped up the edge of the board with caulk and nailed it in place. That left slightly more than one board's width to go. I made the measurements necessary to make the skinny strip that will take up the gap and then took my tools down off the scaffold.

On the front porch, I used the measurements to fabricate the skinny strip. It will have to be installed at the same time as the last full board in order to be able to get them both in place. I'll leave that for next week. I left for home at 12:45 feeling very good that I am finally nailing on ceiling boards again.