11/23-25/15 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

Over the weekend, we heard that the Department of Transportation decided to open one lane of Highway 2 on Sunday and two lanes on Monday. Since Thursday was Thanksgiving, I decided to go up on Monday.

On the way, I stopped and played a game of checkers with Uncle Charles. I beat him again, but barely. He was busy sweeping the floor when I got there and I had to tear him away from it in order to play checkers.

There was very little traffic on the road and there was no problem or slowdown at the damaged bridge. I arrived at Camp Serendipity at noon. It was a beautiful, still, sunny, 25° day. There was about 3 inches of old frozen snow on the ground. In addition to my normal gear, I brought with me a new vacuum cleaner and a new Bluetooth speaker.

After settling in, I went to work selecting, planing, and treating the next two tread blanks. Since the treads get shorter toward the top of the staircase, I chose the longest of the ones I had available for the next one. As it turned out, this was the remnant of the log from which I made the inside staircase stringer. That meant that it was a half-log as opposed to the rest of the blanks which were slabs left after cutting two thick planks out of the center of the log. That made this blank extra big and heavy.

I figured that I could speed up my installation rate if I prepared two treads instead of just one and that is what I did. I brought both of them into the cabin and set them on top of four 5-gallon buckets behind the stove so they would be nice and dry the next morning. Then to get a little more ahead of schedule, I gassed up the chainsaw and I screwed the small plywood rectangles to the ends of the bigger tread blank to get it ready to mount. Then I quit for the day.

On Tuesday morning, there was about an inch of new snow that had fallen overnight. It was 26° and sunny during the daytime.

I removed the next old temporary plank tread, mounted the new tread blank in the suspension structure, and scribed it in time for lunch. I skipped my nap again in the interest of sticking to my schedule and went to work cutting the notches with the chainsaw. The notches were extra deep in this tread because it was so much thicker than usual so the first attempt at fitting it wasn’t very successful. So I carried it back down to the sawhorses and cut some more with the chainsaw. The second attempt was just as bad so I went through the process a third time. Finally, it fit well enough so that I could do the rest of the cutting with Rasputin or the Bosch Bulldog fitted with a wood chisel. I was pretty well exhausted and quit work at 3:00.

On Wednesday it was 22° and sunny. In addition to Rasputin and the Bulldog, I used a hand saw and the Bosch vibrating saw to cut away more wood from the tread in order to get it to fit. Finally, it was ready.

I changed my normal sequence a little and drilled the lag screw holes before I did any staining. I think that speeded things up a little. At least it was not quite so messy. With the holes drilled, I stained the stringers and the bottom of the tread. Then I placed the tread, fastened it down tight with the lag screws, stained the top, and then washed out my brush and put away the tools.

When I went in and cleaned up, I tried out the new vacuum cleaner. It worked so well and I liked it so much that I got carried away and ended up vacuuming the entire first floor. The vacuum is a Shark and I love it.

The end of the front staircase tread installation job is in sight. There are only three treads left to go. One of them is already planed and treated. Next week I’ll plane and treat two more and install one. I expect that the last two will be relatively easy. Now I need to decide what project to take on next. It will either be the back staircase or the front stoop. I left for home at 2:00 feeling very good about the progress.