Construction Journal Entry Week of 9/18/05

9/20-22/05 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:45. There was no frog in the gate and no rodents in the traps. Hooray!

I drove the pickup up to the building and unloaded six sacks of mortar mix. I had no trouble getting up or down the hill. Next, I plugged up the knockout holes in the outlet boxes that needed them, and then I installed two more receptacle assemblies. Before I quit for the day, I insulated and nailed the remaining 3 and 1/3 seams left in the kitchen except for a short space. I left this space because it contains the stub end of the EMT for the range circuit. I need to fasten an elbow to this stub with a coupler but I forgot to bring the coupler with me. I was feeling a little headachy when I went in for the night.

On Wednesday I was disappointed to find that I had caught another shrew in the downstairs mousetrap. I'm not sure what to think at this point. Maybe there is a way they can tunnel into the building through some crack in the bedrock.

I spent most of the day chinking the rest of the kitchen wall except for that small gap at the end of the range EMT. After I had cleaned up the tools, I decided to install a rope guard rail on the porch. The boy scout troop is planning to visit the cabin in January and it will be better and safer to have a rail. I built a temporary post where the head of the staircase will be, and I strung a 3/4" rope for the top rail. I'll string another length below that later on. I fed the jays and chipmunks many times during the work. I even let the jays come into the trailer to eat peanuts off the bed while I was having lunch. I knew enough to pull all the curtains shut except for the ones on the window that I had open. Otherwise they try to fly out a closed window and they panic after they hit the glass.

During the work on the guard rail post, my relatively new Panasonic cordless drill broke. One of the three sliders inside the chuck must have broken because it slid back inside the chuck and I couldn't get it out. It was useless the way it was. I immediately lost respect for Panasonic as a maker of tools. I have never heard of a chuck breaking before. I thought that was old, well-known, and reliable technology. Very disappointing and frustrating.

On Thursday morning I cleaned the logs I had chinked and fed the jays and chipmunks quite a bit more. I left for home at 1:00.

9/23/05 Made two more receptacle assemblies. This time I used receptacles that I got at Home Depot and they were a better grade than the ones I had gotten from Lowe's. They were a little harder to wire, but once I got the hang of how big to make the wire loops, it got a lot easier. The 12 AWG wire barely fits between the screw head and the plastic housing so the loop has to be just right to make it work.


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