Construction Journal Entry Week of 5/29/16

5/31-6/2/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 11:45, took my weekly photo of Ruby (the rhubarb plant), hoisted the flag, and had my lunch and a nap. When I got up I watered the giant sequoia trees Brian and Paul. I checked on Paul and found that water was not coming out of the hose. After many trips between valves and trees, I fixed the problem by adjusting the valve to give Paul more water. I checked Brian and it was getting plenty so I called it good. I don't understand how it got out of adjustment.

I spent the rest of the afternoon chiseling on the notches for the next tread.

On Wednesday I woke up at 3 AM and couldn't go back to sleep so I read until 4. While I was up I discovered a mouse in the trap in the bedroom. There were already a bunch of ants on the carcass so I killed the ants with ant spray and took the mouse and trap outside. The mouse's body was still limp so it must have been trapped within a day or so. The rodent war is not over. I went back to bed and finally dozed off at about 5. I got up at 7.

I disposed of the dead mouse and then set out four mousetraps, two in the living room, one in the loft, and one in the bedroom. I also cleaned up the ant mess.

After breakfast I watered Brian and Paul again and checked on Paul. Water was flowing nicely. Then I went to work on the stair tread. After quite a bit of chiseling I got it to fit perfectly.

The mosquitoes were pretty bad so I had put bug juice on before I went to work. I also lit a citronella candle and had it burning on the back stoop while I worked. That made the mosquitoes tolerable.

Next I drilled the holes for the lag screws and treated the tread and the stringers with Board Defense. I left them to dry while I went in for lunch and a nap. When I got up, the wood was dry to the touch which is all that is required in order to stain it. I stained the stringers and the bottom and ends of the tread and then lag-screwed the tread to the stringers. Then I stained the top of the tread and washed out my brush.

Then I went down to the truck in the hairpin turn and picked up the big stoop structure George had given me last week. He had removed it from his house and wanted to get rid of it. So when we picked up Marilyn for our hike and overnighter last week, I had loaded the thing into the truck. I had unloaded it right there in the hairpin turn and left it there. So now I carried it up to the cabin. It was pretty heavy and about all I could carry, but I took it slow and did it.

I put it in the crawl space over the drainage ditch I had dug. That made a nice bridge and deck over the ditch and made it much easier to walk around in there. When I get the stairs done and all the railings done, I will tackle the crawl space and put in some kind of floor system that will allow the water to drain out but still keep it dry in there. I'll figure out exactly how to do it later.

Next I went up on the high rock to retrieve some tackle that had been up there for over a year. I had wrapped a chain around a huge stump and used it to anchor a come-along that I had fastened to the log from the tree that had crashed into the cabin. The tackle was intended to keep the big log from slipping back down over the cliff. There was about 8 feet of the log that was sticking out over the edge of the cliff and the rest of it had been sticking up in the air toward the cabin.

With some help from Robert, I had cut most of the top of the log away. I used some of it to make the front porch stoop and the rest of it had been cut into firewood. The butt end of the log was now only 16 feet long, but it is 18 inches in diameter at the big end so it was still a pretty big and heavy log. I didn't want it sliding or rolling down over the cliff.

I tried cranking on the come-along and found that I could inch the log up the hill. I used another chain to keep the top of the log from rolling or sliding down and cranked the log up so that the bottom end of it was almost up on the cliff edge. I used rocks and logs to make abutments to keep the log from rolling and I used a cant hook to help move the log past obstructions as I went.

When I got the log up as high as I could, I removed all the tackle. That chain and come-along had been out under the snow for at least one winter and some rust had developed, but they weren't damaged too much. I was happy to finally be able to put them away. I also retrieved a 10-foot 4x4 that I had used as a lever and which had been stuck under that log the whole time. I put it away too.

On Thursday morning I went up to the woodshed and fetched the next tread blank. After dragging it down to the cabin, I planed the bottom and ends of it and chamfered the curved edges. Then I used the planer to fashion the nose of the tread.

Next I screwed the small plywood boards to the end of the tread blank, built the supporting structure, and mounted the tread blank in position for scribing above the staircase stringers. I moved the plumb bobs and aligned and leveled the tread blank so that it was ready for scribing. Before I left for home at 12:30, I took a picture of the back staircase with the suspended tread blank. I went home feeling that I am finally getting into the swing of things again.



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