8/29-31/17 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at noon. The temperature outside was a nice cool 63° but the air everywhere east of the pass was very smoky. When I checked for mouse evidence, I saw that the mousetrap at the foot of the loft stairs was missing. The insulation in the unfinished baseboard right by the trap was disturbed so I figured the mousetrap was down there somewhere. All eight tell-tale peanuts I set out were still in place. It looks like the mouse entry point was right there where that trap was.

I suspected that maybe the mouse hole might be through the foam sill sealer that is between the pressure treated 2x10 sill and the concrete block foundation. The sill sealer is nearly a half-inch thick before it gets compressed by the wall load. If there is some irregularity in the sill or the foundation, it might make a place where a mouse could chew through it.

I got a ladder out, set it up against the wall, and inspected the sill sealer with a flashlight. I couldn't find any place where it looked disturbed or where it wasn't squashed flat except above the crawl space door. But I couldn't see any holes there either. Nevertheless, I got a caulk gun and sealed it up good.

After turning on Brian and Paul's irrigation valve, I went in and had my lunch and a nap. Then I went into the woods and checked on the sequoia trees. Brian and Paul were getting water nicely but Andrew looked pretty dry. I drew a couple gallons of water in a bucket and took it up to Andrew. While the first half was soaking in, I went to the spring to check the overflow. There was no water flow, but the irrigation hose was still running. I took the overflow pipe off and could see that the water level was almost up to it. I'm pretty sure that it would be overflowing if the hose were turned off.

Next, I went down to the crawl space to look for the missing mouse trap. The ten steel scaffold frames are stored right under where the trap would have fallen and they were in the way preventing me from looking up behind the floor beam. So, one by one, I moved scaffold frames from the stack and leaned them against the Grid B.5,2.5 column. After moving eight of them, and jiggling the ninth one, the mousetrap fell to the floor. When I picked it up I saw that there were two mouse hind leg bones clamped in it. The bones were stripped bare, almost certainly done by ants. I don't know what happened to the rest of the carcass but I'm sure it was reduced to bare bones too. At least I know that mouse won't be back.

On Wednesday, there wasn't quite as much smoke in the air. Dave called first thing, and we had a nice conversation. He will be gone to a regatta near Boston next week so we will skip next week's phone call. After breakfast, I watered Brian and Paul again. Then I went to work and drilled the pilot holes on the underside of the rail. I used a rather small bit that made a hole that allowed me to screw in a small screw eye with a plumb bob string running through.

Then I laboriously tested each hole, to make sure the balusters would be plumb, by screwing the small screw eye up into each pilot hole and then lowering the plumb bob down to the hole I had previously drilled in the tread. All the pilot holes were in the right places.

Then using a 7/16" bit, I enlarged each pilot hole by drilling a 1" deep hole, making the holes as plumb as I could by eyeball. Then I sealed each hole up with a strip of masking tape so the mason bees wouldn't use them before I inserted the balusters.

Next, I took up, and retired the big 3/4" rope that had served for nearly 12 years as the temporary porch and stair railings. (I started installing it on 9/21/05 and finished on 10/13/05.) The rope had also served as two of the guy ropes on my crane so it was a little nostalgic to retire it. Who knows, it may still have some other use later. I made a hanger out of #3 rebar and used it to hang the rope up in the crawl space.

Before I stopped for lunch and a nap, I measured and cut the first four balusters for the staircase. When I got up from my nap, I made twelve more balusters. That was half of what I needed for the entire rail, but I will install them first so I can re-install the mortise and tenon joint with those sixteen balusters in place before I install the last sixteen balusters at the bottom of the rail. Since all the balusters are different lengths, I put each one in the paint rack in sequence so I can keep track of which one goes where.

Next, I checked the alignment of each hole in the rail by sticking a piece of rebar, that was somewhat shorter than a baluster, in the hole to see whether it lined up with the hole below. Virtually none of them was in alignment. My eyeball plumb method wasn't very accurate.

To true up a hole, I just stuck the same bit up into the hole and revved the drill up while I straightened it up and enlarged the hole. I made an error in judgment on the first two holes and ran the bit out the top of the rail. To keep me from doing that again, I got a small tube with an inside diameter a little bigger than the bit and cut it so that when it was slipped over the bit, it left just an inch of the end of the bit exposed. I will have to plug those holes with dowels later.

On Thursday morning, there was no smoke and the skies were blue. I went through the routine of using the wire wheel to brush the rust off each baluster, then cleaning the oil off by dipping them in the tank of paint thinner and wiping them down with a rag, then carrying the rack of balusters down to the upper roadway and spraying them with a coat of primer followed by a coat of flat black paint. By the time I finished my lunch, they were dry. I carried the rack of painted balusters back up onto the porch and left for home at 12:50, happy to have made some progress.