8/8-10/12 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

My schedule was shifted one day this week so I could be home to host our street's annual Seattle Night Out potluck party. I had known in advance that Highway 522 was going to be closed and I intended to go through Everett. But I forgot.

When I got to the Maltby Road, I was reminded and I was detoured onto Route 9. When I got almost to Snohomish I outsmarted myself. I took the road to the Snohomish Airport thinking I knew the way from there to Uncle Charles' old house, and from there to where he is living now.

I knew the way at one time, but I forgot. To get where I wanted, you have to go north from the airport, into Snohomish, go east a ways, and then back south. That way you get across the river. Instead I went south from the airport and got seriously lost. Fortunately I have a map function on my new Android smart phone, so half a dozen times I consulted the map, learned where I was, and made my decisions as to where to go. I had to go a long way south, almost to Duvall, in order to get across the river and then go back north to get to Monroe.

I arrived at Charles' home at about 12:15 and had a nice visit with him and two other gentlemen at the lunch table. They had already finished their lunch. They knew that territory south of Snohomish and said it can be a nightmare getting lost in there especially at night. I was glad for my smart phone and that I had gotten out as well as I had.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 2:30 with quite a bit of the day already shot. I didn't get any real work done. After lunch and a nap, I mixed up a bunch of anti-freeze and loaded it into the truck. Then I put away the cots, the bronze model and the cabin model, cleaned up a bunch of dishes and glasses, and tidied up some other stuff. I also replaced a broken thermometer out on the front porch.

A couple of windows had inadvertently been left open after the Kemly visit so it was the same temperature inside and outside the cabin. It was 75º inside and out at 5:00. Too hot to work so I headed for the shower.

On Thursday I slept in. Nothing like shortening another work day. I started out by watering all the giant sequoia trees. Then I finally went to work on the ceiling boards.

I finished fastening the screens on the first two boards that I had nailed up. This took quite a bit of experimenting and failure before I discovered a method that worked. I had tried two types of staplers but you couldn't reach in very well to operate them and you couldn't always find anything substantial to staple into. The target was the groove edge of a pine board up in the apex of an acute angle formed by the wall and the ceiling.

I had tried electrical staples, holding them with a needlenose pliers and driving them in with a hammer. This didn't work very well either for the same reasons.

What finally worked was to drive the screens into a snug position by driving a 3" putty knife into it so as to form a crease tucked in above the ceiling board above the purlin and then driving it below the board to form a second crease between the board and the purlin. The screen then ended up tightly wrapping around and hugging the groove edge of the board. Then, to hold it fast, I drove one-inch galvanized roofing nails (with the big heads) into the purlin catching just the bottom edge of the hardware cloth. I held the roofing nails with a needlenose pliers and drove them in with my trusty 13 oz. hammer.

It was tricky because the last ceiling board didn't allow me to get my hammer up very high, and the curvature of the purlin meant that the nail had to go in almost tangent to the log surface. To get it to bite into the log, the nail had to be up a little higher than the hammer could reach. But since the head is so big, I could start the nail by hitting just the bottom of the head until the nail took hold. Then with the pliers, I could tip the nail back down enough so that I could drive it in.

This didn't always work, but I used other tricks to get almost all of the nails driven in tight. I drove a nail in every three inches or so, so the progress wasn't all that speedy. I got those first two boards done before lunch.

After lunch and a nap, I had a scare. I noticed what looked like a little pile of frass at the base of the Grid B2 PSL. If it really were frass, then it meant that I had a powderpost beetle infestation in that log. That would be really surprising since that log has been inside and in place for many years. I swept the little pile up so that I can see if more appears. If it does not, then it just must have been some sawdust that got piled up there and I can quit worrying. We'll see.

I went back to work on the porch and finished making and installing the last course of ceiling boards with their screens as far as I could go. There is still an unfinished corner of the ceiling between Grid E and F that has to wait until I can raise the scaffold tower at the Grid 3 end.

The galvanized roofing nail method worked fine all the way across and I was happy about that. I used four concrete blocks on the scaffold platform with my old riser on top of them. It took quite a bit of moving and reconfiguring them, but I got the job done.

With that much of the porch ceiling done, the three scaffold frames in the tandem tower were now freed up. I quit for the day, tired and sore, but happy that this milestone had been reached.

On Friday, I swept the porch, and in the process found the nail set that had mysteriously disappeared some weeks ago. It had rolled up against the pile of new ceiling boards and under the tarp that covers them. I was happy that mystery was solved.

Next, I dismantled the tandem scaffold tower and used two of the frames to add a tier to the tower making it three tiers high. I was pleased to discover that my planning and measurements had worked out. The frame toward the low end of the roof just barely fit. It had to be slanted to get started so it didn't hit the ceiling, and when it went down into place, the tip of the frame is right up against the ceiling boards. That's close. An inch further east and it wouldn't have fit. An inch further west and the base of the tower would be off of its rock abutment. It was perfect.

The porch was now a lot less cluttered and was getting back to normal. I swept the porch off good and moved the log bench back where it belonged now that the scaffold frames were out of the way.

I used my special-made rebar S and C hooks to build a support for a deck on the scaffold tower at the right working height for the ceiling. It will now be fairly easy to finish installing the boards in that area.

Next week I should have no trouble finishing the ceiling between Grid E and F and dismantling the scaffold tower. Then I can deliver new flooring and get it up on the porch, and I can begin installing ceiling boards on the Grid 1 gable end and finally evict the packrats from those rafters.

It was a relief to see that no more frass had appeared below the Grid B2 PSL. Next week should be the definitive test. I left for home at 12:40 resolved to go home by way of Everett and not get lost again. This time I remembered.