Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Oct 3rd - Log Jam





I woke early this morning to the sound of thunder and rain on the roof. We aren' t covered with plastic since I had chosen to ignore the 30% chance of rain. The upstairs floor is wet and leaking through the ceiling liner, but not much we can do about it at this point. It clears mid morning and Pat and I are back on the logs again.

We have all full length logs to deal with and at much higher heights now. We have moved all the logs temporarily over to Joe's other lot so that Fabian can do our final fill work behind the garage. He has brought two loads of nice fill in that will pack well and make a perfect driveway. Dylan helps set a large flat rock behind the top of the foundation wall for a walkway at the base of the 2 iron steps that climb up to the iron balcony we installed a few weeks ago.

The propane company has set the tank just over the property line next door and so we disconnect the tank, move the pipe over a foot and then flip the tank around 180 degrees so it lines up better with the property line. Starting at noon, it comes down again for a couple of hours and manages to soak everything once again. When we return, Pat and I continue working on the logs and fasten the north and south 5th course of logs in place. Now the cabin has some strength to it as the full logs on top hold the walls together. We have both strained our backs today just moving the logs around on the floor, drilling and peeling them. These suckers are heavy and weigh around 500 lbs each and are 18' long and 18" thick.

Joe and R. D. continue on the roof framing for the 2nd floor, installing the lookouts on the west face and tying the 2 gable ends together. It's some tough framing, but it's coming together nicely. Greenbay has been working on laying out and framing the north wall of the stairway. Once complete, this wall will provide a resting place for the balance of the roof rafters.

Tonight I stay late, examining the log structure and figuring out how I will tie the floor in above for the master bedroom. It's key we keep the height down on the structure as the original cabin walls were nearly 10' high. Because of height restrictions in Rico, we have to keep this portion of the house as low down as possible without causing any problems with doorway clearance between the 2nd and 3rd levels or with window heights being too low. I am also looking at ceiling heights in the north bedroom and notice just how tall they really are. After careful examination, I come up with the idea for putting in a nice loft/balcony area over the north bedroom that can be easily entered from the upper stairwell and loft over the bathroom. It will be really nice and add another 100 sq. feet onto the house.

Cody and Anika, our neighbors at the top of the Silver Street Hill, stop by tonite to return the material handler. They are building a beautiful log structure on an incredibly steep hillside and have used the handler to transfer logs from down below up the hill to their lot. They will start stacking logs soon. What a view they have of the entire valley off their west deck.

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