7/15-17/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 1:00 after chatting with Larry near his place on the way in. I brought 3 sacks of mortar mix with me and after I moved in and had lunch, I carried one of them up to the building and then wheeled the other two up in the wheelbarrow. For only three sacks I didn't think it was worth it to drive the pickup up there.

I chinked one seam and fed a chipmunk during the work.

On Wednesday I finished chinking the last two seams by 11:00 AM. That was a major milestone; all the chinking on the outside is now finished. I feel good that that project is done and I can move on to something else. I decided to clean things up since I will be done with mortar mess for quite a while and the cement dust has gotten spread all over. I swept out and mopped the trailer floor. Then I beat the carpets outside and brought them up to the house and vacuumed them with the vacuum cleaner Gus gave me.

Then I used Gus' vacuum cleaner with a soft brush attachment to clean out the tub and shower. I didn't have it covered so it had accumulated quite a load of sawdust and cement dust. Since it is made of fiberglass and can scratch pretty easily, I had to be gentle when I vacuumed it out. It cleaned up real nice. I covered the whole thing with a blue tarp so it won't get so dirty again. I cleaned up all the masonry tools and put them away. I gathered up all the empty mortar sacks and counted 78 of them. I think there might have been a few more that I destroyed earlier. At 60 lb. each, that amounts to 4680 lb. of mortar not counting the water. Good thing the building is strong. Before I quit for the day, I swept out the loft floor and got a start sweeping the first floor.

On Thursday morning I put the winch away in the crawl space and resumed sweeping up the first floor. I got a bucketfull of sawdust from the ripping station to use as sweeping compound. The sawdust is the consistency of cornmeal and it works really well for sweeping compound. I have a supply up there that will last me a long time.

The gray jays came into the building a few times for peanuts and they all looked a mess. Their feathers were all rumpled and sticking out in every direction. They all looked so bad that I couldn't identify Scruffy among them. I don't think he was with them but I can't be sure. The young birds were nearly black but full size. They still weren't too sure how to go about getting peanuts, but the experienced adults had no problem. They cleaned me out of the peanuts I had and I had to shell some more. The chipmunk came in while I was shelling them so he got a few loads of them. He has to enter the building through the doorway now because I have chinked up all his other points of entry. Pretty soon he will have to go through the crawlspace in order to get in.

Before I left for home, I plugged the last 5 scaffold bolt holes, boarded up the back doorway, and took some pictures of the newly chinked wall. I left for home at 1:20.