10/26/28/99 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

This week I had to face the possibility of changing my plans. I arrived at 11:45. It was 40 degrees and damp. It looked like it had rained a lot recently, but all the tarps were still in place and they looked like they had shed a lot of water.

After moving in, I measured and marked the ends of the northwest rafters where the top of the first course of OSB would go. I also strung a tight string over the ends of the rafters and measured and recorded how big a shim would be needed to bring each rafter up to the level of the string. I plotted these quantities on paper and made a decision on how many shims of what sizes to make. Then I took a 4 foot 2x6 and cut 12 shims from it. I don't know if my skilsaw blade is dull, or if the knots in the board were extra tough, but it was hard work pushing that saw through the knots.

After making the shims, I nailed them to the top ends of the selected rafters.

On Wednesday morning, my right elbow hurt something fierce. That elbow is always on the ragged edge of getting tennis elbow, and ripping those shims really aggravated it.

I started the morning by measuring the northwest roof for square, and was pleased to find that it was as square as I could measure. Then I set about peeling back the tarps on the roof to make a pathway up the roof so I could carry OSB boards up to the ridge. It is too slippery to walk on the tarps. It's also slippery if there are fir needles on the roof, which there were, especially on the walkway. I took a broom and swept them all off before I did much walking on them.

Next I rigged up a bunch of ropes and pulleys to use in lowering and controlling the OSB sheets and also for holding me so I wouldn't fall off the roof. The weather looked very unstable and the wind was pretty strong and gusty. I decided it would be too dangerous to carry OSB sheets in the usual way because a gust of wind might blow me off the roof. Instead, I decided to drag the sheets up.

I fastened a c-clamp to a sheet and with a loop of rope through the clamp, I found that it is easier to drag a sheet up the walkway and up the roof than it is to carry it. My rope rigging worked well for lowering and positioning the sheets although it still took a lot of time to get the sheets in place. By 2:30 I had just two sheets nailed in place on the roof.

Over the weekend, I bought a new 13 oz. hammer. Last week when Ellen was helping me, I used a small mason's hammer for a while because Ellen was using my only claw hammer. I found that I don't need a 16 oz. hammer, which is what I normally use, to drive in those 6d and 7d nails. I figured the lighter hammer would be easier on my tennis elbow. I was also influenced by a childhood memory. I can still hear George Olson, my boss when I worked as a carpenter in my youth, coming to work one day singing the praises of a new 13 oz. hammer he had just bought. It was a finishing hammer for driving small nails and he claimed that it was just the thing for nailing down roof sheathing. I remember the rest of the crew not being impressed and changing the subject, but George's comments and enthusiasm have stayed with me all these years. Now I found out he was right. I really like my new hammer.

As I was nailing in the second sheet, it started snowing. I hurried up and finished nailing down the sheet and then started replacing the tarps that I had peeled back, and also tarping the new sheets and the walkway. I used about every tarp I had and every spare piece of vis-queen as well. I was soaking wet by the time I finished, but I got everything covered before the OSB got too wet. I finished by about 3:30 and quit for the day. I took advantage of the extra time by removing the screens from the windows in the trailer. This makes it easier to get the condensation off of the windows.

On Thursday morning, it was still snowing mixed with rain and there was about 2 inches of snow on the ground. Working on those wet rafters in the snow was out of the question. I spent most of the morning moving all my lumber into the building. Half of the building is now dry and protected from snow and rain, so I decided to move the lumber inside. This way I freed up some more tarps, and I wouldn't have to dig in the snow to get at the lumber. That was a fairly hard job because the lumber included about a dozen 16 foot 1x12s and a couple 24 foot 11 7/8 TJIs. I finished stacking the lumber by 11:00. I decided to leave early since it might be bad going over the pass and there wasn't much more I could do anyway.

This snowfall gave me the opportunity to see how the tarps and the tar paper on the roof behaved. What happened was that the snow slid right off the tarps, but it didn't slide at all on the tar paper. So there were big clear blue avalanche tracks on the tarps, and a big jumble of avalanched snow piled up on the lower third of the roof which was only covered by tar paper.

After seeing this, and also after hearing that we are going to have another La Nina winter with more than normal snow, I have come up with a few alternative plans for the winter. From most to least optimistic, they are:

1. If there is a lot of nice dry weather, and if I get some more time and/or help to nail up OSB, tar paper, and fascia boards, and the sheet metal guy says that he can put the metal roof on for me this fall, then that is what I will do.

2. If the weather is good, but the sheet metal guy can't do the job this fall, then I will nail on the OSB, cover it with tarps, and forget the tar paper until spring. I can see that the tar paper doesn't help and can only get damaged. Then during the winter, after the roof is covered, I will start working on the floors.

3. If the weather is spotty, I will work on the roof as in 2. on the nice days, and begin working on the floors on the bad days.

4. If the weather is mostly bad, I still want to get the OSB on the roof, but I won't want to uncover the walkway so I will lift the OSB up onto the roof from the northwest side. That will mean that I will need some kind of derrick to hold the tackle to lift the sheets. I will begin designing this derrick just in case I need it. That way, on the days the weather is good, I can take the most advantage of it because I won't have to spend time uncovering the walkway, only to spend time covering it again when it starts raining or snowing.

5. If the weather is constantly bad and there are few or no dry days, I will still put the OSB on the roof, but in addition to the derrick I will build some kind of tent out of tarps so I can keep the sheets reasonably dry while I nail them down. I will start working on the design of this tent also so I will be ready with that if I need it.

I'm hoping that reality falls near to the top of my list of alternatives.

10/29/99 Had some fun figuring out the optimal way to dangle a sheet of OSB so that I could get it up on the roof after lifting it up with a block and tackle hanging from a derrick. With this information, I designed and built a derrick to use in lifting the OSB sheets.

11/2/99 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

Just as I crossed over the pass, I stopped to help two guys that flagged me down. They were Mexicans and didn't speak any English. They had run out of gas. I took one of them down to Coles Corner, got a gallon of gas, and then went back up to their car. They got their car started and followed me back down to Coles Corner. It was an 11 mile trip one way so that gallon probably was just enough to get them to the gas station. The whole thing took an extra hour or so, so I didn't get to the property until 12:15.

It was 32 degrees inside the trailer and 40 outside. Pretty cold. After moving in and having lunch, I nailed up two part sheets of OSB which completed the west corner. Then I carried the derrick up and erected it on this corner of the roof. Since the weather looked unstable and since I had the derrick, I decided to install it and see how it worked. I lifted one full sheet with it before it got dark and it seemed to work pretty well. I quit for the day at 5:20.

On Wednesday, I finished nailing on the first (and hardest) course plus a half sheet on the second course. I couldn't nail on any more OSB without first insulating at least one of the walls. I had already installed the screen over the north wall, but I had to do a little patching on it to make it ant tight. When that was done, I laid the insulation in between the rafters. I was just finishing this when Larry Copenhaver stopped by to check out the progress. He told me that there was a bear that was becoming a nuisance. He was getting into peoples garbage cans and didn't scare easily. He told me not to leave any food lying around.

While we were talking, it started raining a little. I hurried up and cut some strips of vis-queen and stapled it to the rafters to cover the insulation. Then I covered all the exposed OSB with tarps. I finished by about 3:00, and since it was raining pretty steadily by then and there was only another couple hours of daylight, I quit for the day. The forecast was for six inches of snow in the passes overnight, so I was afraid I wouldn't be able to work the next day.

As it turned out, Friday morning was beautiful, dry, and sunny. It was a real pleasure to work. I got started by about 7:30 and seemed to have a lot of trouble lifting sheets with the derrick. Mostly it was ropes getting fouled, or the sheet hanging up on something. Each problem, however, taught me something so after finding a solution to each of the many problems, I think I now have an efficient way of lifting the sheets up onto the roof. Unless the weather gets really nice, I don't think I will go to the trouble of uncovering the walkway and roof on the other side and carry sheets up that way.

By the time I quit at 1:30, I had the second course completed except for one sheet, and had it all covered with tarps. I left for home about 2:00.

11/9/99 Ellen had the day off. She and Aziza and I went up to see the property. Unfortunately it rained while we were there, but we did the grand tour anyway. We hiked through the wet bushes to the spring, and Aziza climbed up on the high scaffolds.

11/10/99 I went up to the property for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

The weather was dry and sunny when I arrived at 11:30, and I thought the rain was over. No such luck. By the time I moved in and had lunch, it was overcast and threatening. I started out by installing the screen over the south wall, and by the time I finished, it had started to rain again. I decided right then that La Nina was probably going to force me into plan 5, the least optimistic of the plans I outlined in the10/26/99 entry of this journal. I decided that I had to build a tent on top of the roof.

I have another 30x40' tarp that I intend to use to cover that side of the roof once the OSB is nailed on. The plan is to use this tarp to make the tent, and then when the OSB is on, or even when I leave at the end of each week, I will just collapse the tent so that it lies flat on the roof and covers it.

The first order of business was to make a ridgepole, or equivalent, for the tent. For this, I planned to use a stout 3/4" rope stretched tightly from the center of the ridge on the roof, over across the small side of the roof to a tree that stands about 10 feet out from the building. There is an ideal branch about 35 feet up in this tree that I wanted to get a rope over. I tied a rock to a long length of small rope and after many attempts I successfully threw the rock over the branch and got the end of the rope back down on the ground. Then using this rope, I pulled a 3/4" rope over the branch so both ends of it were on the ground.

I fastened a big double block to the end of this rope going over the branch toward the building and ran two separate 3/4" ropes through the block - one over each sheave. One of the two ropes was to be the ridgepole, and the other was to be the outhaul that would be fastened to the center of the edge of the tarp. Then I heaved the other end of the first rope and hauled it back away from the building and tied it to another tree 30 or 40 feet away. This pulled the block with the two ropes in it up against the branch and held it fast.

Next I did a lot of work in 40 degree rain on top of the building with nothing but slippery wet rafters, and slipperier wet tarps to stand on or to cling to. I started out rigging up the ridgepole. I had a rope fastened to a tree on the other side of the building. The rope ran up the big roof, over the ridge, and down across the small roof. I used it to hang on to to keep me from falling off while I worked on the small roof. I tied a bowline loop in this rope so that it lay on the big side of the roof just short of the ridge. This loop became the anchor for both the safety line and for the ridgepole rope.

Back on the ground, I hauled on the other end of the ridgepole line, pulled it as tight as I could, and snubbed it around one of the logs sticking out of the north corner of the building and the ridgepole was in place. It was starting to get dark by then, so I quit for the day.

It rained all night, and Thursday morning it was still raining cats and dogs. I got on my full rain suit and went up on the roof with the big tarp.

A 30x40' tarp is unwieldy enough to unfurl, but in those conditions, it took a lot of concentration and time, not to mention the energy and fear. I'm thankful there was not a breath of wind or I wouldn't have been able to do it. I used the big side of the roof to get the tarp opened up and laid out straight, hanging on to a safety rope with one hand and doing all the work with the other hand.

I fastened the end of the outhaul rope to the tarp and then pulled the low end of the tarp up the roof so the tarp was bunched up in a line all across the rafters up near the ridge. The final plan for this tarp was to have it cover the small side of the roof with 6 feet of it on the other side of the ridge, so I got the 6 feet of tarp lying smoothly on the big side of the roof with the rest of the tarp bunched up on the other side. Then I nailed the edge of the tarp to the end of the ridge, and stretched this 6 foot line across the ridge and nailed the other end to the roof.

The next thing was to tie a rather long rope to each of the two corners of the tarp and throw those ropes over the edge of the roof so I could get at them from the ground. I started with the north corner, and after tying on the rope and throwing it down on the roof, I needed to get down to the low part of the roof to pull that corner of the tarp down. The only way to get down there was to 'spider walk' down a pair of very slippery rafters. I was gripping the top of one rafter with each hand, and my feet were standing on the same rafters a couple feet below. I knew these wet rafters were super slippery, but by keeping my stomach muscles tight and hanging on tight with my hands, my feet didn't slip, and I had no problem walking down about 3/4 of the way.

Then, all of a sudden, my feet slipped out from under me so fast that I didn't know what happened until I was in a complete prone position in mid-air looking down at the rock cliff 20 feet below and falling face first. Fortunately for me, I was just about down to the OSB sheet that was nailed to the rafters and my feet hit the edge of the sheet just as my legs were fully extended. Meanwhile, I kept my grip on the rafters and as I fell, my shoulders hit my hands and I stopped. I stopped, that is, except for my back. It was like I was bottoming out doing a pushup that I didn't plan on doing. My stomach muscles were already tight, so I was able to keep my body from falling down between those two rafters even though I could feel quite a compression strain in my spine.

It only took about 50 milliseconds for what I described in the previous paragraph to happen. When it was over, I lay there, seeing nothing but the rocks below, and the space between me and them, and I did a little reflection. I wondered if I had taken a dangerous risk. . .Naaah. After all, my shoulders didn't fit between the rafters so it was impossible for me to fall through. On the other hand, the rest of my body did fit through. So what was the worst that could happen? I would just end up dangling over that cliff by my armpits. . .But then might I start sliding down? Accumulating big wet slivers in my armpits as I went? And then how would it feel when my back crashed into the edge of that OSB sheet?

I reached a point where I didn't want to think about it any more. I did the other half of that pushup and got myself down on the OSB where I felt quite a bit safer.

Then I pulled on the corner rope and pulled a bunch of the tarp down on top of the rafters. Then hanging on to my safety rope, I crossed the roof on the OSB and went up the other side to pull that corner down. Back up on the ridge, I pulled on the outhaul rope and it was beautiful to see that big tarp crawl out over the ridgepole rope and turn into a big tent. It made me feel like I was a sailor on a tall ship a couple hundred years ago, high up in the rain handling a big sail. I was thinking that those sailors would have liked to have had my lightweight tarp, rather than their heavy canvas, but then again, they probably had more to hang on to than I did. Anyway, being one of those sailors was a childhood fantasy of mine, and now I sort of feel that I am getting just about as much of that experience as I want.

When the tarp was pulled tight at the corners, it marked the last time, I hope, that the building would be uncovered. From now on, there shouldn't be any rain or snow falling inside the building. A momentous occasion. The new roar, caused by the rain hitting that big tarp and reverberating through that big hollow building was sort of like a drum roll signifying the event.

To help me celebrate the occasion, a flock of 8 or 10 gray jays showed up for a handout. I fed them all the peanuts that I had in my pocket, and then I went down to the trailer and shelled a bunch more. I fed them most of these before they took off for some reason. Most all of the birds were very adept at eating out of my hand, but there were two of them that still didn't get the hang of it. These two birds were the only ones that had white necks and breasts; all the rest of them had light gray feather in that same pattern. I don't know if these two were youngsters, a different variety, or what.

I wondered what to do next in the downpour. I felt like I had my fill of working on the roof so I decided to carry OSB sheets up to the building instead. That had to be done sooner or later anyway, so it wouldn't be a waste of time. Furthermore, they were getting wet where they were and now with the roof covered, I could stack them out of the weather. There were 22 sheets left in the stack and it took me until about 3:00 to get them all moved up and stacked. Since I was pretty worn out by the time I finished, and I didn't feel like taking on a new project in that downpour, and since there was only about an hour and a half of daylight left anyway, I quit for the day.

It was still raining on Friday morning and I had to decide whether or not to try nailing up some OSB. I still couldn't work under the tent until I erected some poles to hold the sides up high enough to work under. I made a half hearted attempt at this, and then did some rationalizing. I figured that it would take the better part of an hour to do that. Then it would take about an hour to lift and nail on a sheet of OSB, and then it would take an hour or more to collapse the ridgepole and tighten the tarp flat down onto the roof. I didn't want to leave the tent up when I left because if the wind came up, it would just tear it apart. Furthermore, with this rain, there might be snow in the pass, and/or flooding along the way home, and being Friday, the traffic through Bothell would be slowed to a crawl. All of that was sufficient for me to abandon any thoughts of nailing up any OSB.

When I started to collapse the tent by casting off the ridgepole rope, I found that it didn't collapse. The weight of the wet 3/4" rope hanging 35 feet down from the block was more than the weight of the tarp so the ridgepole only sagged a little. I tried pushing up on the rope, but it wasn't stiff enough to do any good (just kidding). I reverted to stone-age tactics again. I tied a stone to a light rope, and after a dozen tries, or so, I threw the stone and the rope over the outhaul line between the tree and the tarp. I should have tried again and gotten the rope over the ridgepole line, but I figured the outhaul line would work.

It sort of did. I loosened both the outhaul rope and the ridgepole rope from the ground, and then pulled down on the light rope and got the tent pretty well collapsed. Then, after a couple errors and corrections, I snugged down the corner ropes and got the tarp held down pretty secure and flat. Then I quit for the week and pondered whether or not La Nina is going to make the rest of the winter as miserable for working as this week was. I sure hope not. I left for home at 11:00. There was quite a bit of flooding that I saw on the way, and I missed the bad Friday afternoon traffic. I was glad I left when I did.

11/16-18/99 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 10:50 and the weather was nice and dry. It was 50 degrees out. I started out by insulating between the rafters on top of the south wall and screening all the cracks and holes to make them ant proof. Then I decided I needed to move my extension ladder to the outside of the building because with one more course of OSB on the roof, I wouldn't be able to get up there between the rafters from up on the scaffolds on the inside of the building. Just as I was taking the ladder down, Earl showed up.

Ten seconds later, as I was carrying the ladder down the low scaffolds, one of the planks slipped out of place and out from under me. Earl watched me fall on the rocks below holding on to the ladder. Fortunately, I landed pretty comfortably and didn't hurt anything. Earl asked me if I did that very often. I tried to convince him that I didn't and that that was the first time that plank, or any of the planks in any of the scaffolds, had slipped out of place in the four years they have been there.

Anyway, I got the ladder relocated up against the northwest edge of the roof and Earl helped me nail on 5 sheets of OSB. He was a great help and doubled my normal speed. He would nail down a sheet in almost exactly the same time it took me to get the next one up onto the roof.

Wednesday was also dry but a little breezy and I took full advantage of the time. I got up at 4:45 and started untiing the tarp ropes while it was still dark. I took a half hour lunch break and worked until dusk. I got 9 1/3 sheets up.

On Thursday, I was out almost as early and got another 3 2/3 sheets on and then got all of it covered with tarps. Larry stopped by and chatted while I was doing the tarping. There are only 3 2/3 sheets left to do on the entire roof now. Finally, I made some significant progress and I felt good about it. I left for home about 2:00.

11/30-12/2/99 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I skipped last week because of Thanksgiving, and also because of the weather. If the weather had been good, I might have gone up just for a day and a half, but it wasn't.

I arrived at 11:30 and the weather was dry. In fact, the sun came out a little now and then. After I moved in, I carried 5 old doors up to the building and 3 shop lights. By the time I finished that, the weather looked a little more threatening. I rolled the big tarp up to uncover the roof all the way to the ridge so I could start nailing on the last 3 2/3 sheets of OSB, but I no sooner got it rolled up than it started to rain. I rolled the tarp back down again and got down off the roof.

In about 5 minutes, it stopped raining and looked like it might clear up again. I went back up and rolled the tarp all the way up again and started rigging up a sheet of OSB to lift it up. About the time I hooked it up, it started raining again. I put the sheet back , went back up on the roof, and rolled the tarp back down. By then it was 3:00 so I decided I wouldn't work on the roof any more that day. Just about then, Larry Copenhaver stopped by and we had a nice chat. When he left I started installing the 3 shop lights. I decided to hang them from the loft floor beams so I wouldn't have to move them once I started working on the main floor. I didn't get much done on them before I quit for the day.

On Wednesday the weather was nice and dry, but rain was predicted for the afternoon. I got all 3 2/3 sheets up and tacked in place as fast as I could in case it started raining again. Fortunately the weather held. Once the sheets were all in place, I nailed them down and I felt really good when I drove in that last nail. I took some pictures and a lunch break at about 1:00. The roof is now completely covered and I will never again (I hope) have to shovel snow out of the inside of the building.

After lunch, I dismantled the crane I used to lift OSB sheets, and covered the roof with tarps for the final time (again, I hope). Just as I was pulling the last corner of the tarp tight, it started to rain. It didn't play around this time. It settled down to a steady downpour that lasted all night. I worked inside until 6:30 and finished installing the shop lights. It was a new and different experience being able to work in the rain and in the dark and yet be dry and be able to see. When progress is so slow, you really appreciate these significant steps.

During the night, the rain had turned to snow, so on Thursday morning, there was 3 inches of snow on the ground and the trees all had a heavy load of snow. The radio predicted a snowstorm in the mountains for the afternoon so I decided to leave early. While I was putting tools away, the snow started falling off the trees and it was pretty spectacular. I witnessed the tarps on the roof shed all the snow as the big blobs of snow fell from the tall trees and landed on the roof starting avalanches. It's a good thing the snow makes a lot of noise as it slides down so that you can get out of the way before it falls onto the ground.

I left about 10:30 in the morning, but I promptly got stuck and had to put the chains on to get the pickup off the property. I got out onto the road and took the chains off by 11:00. The roads were treacherous with about an inch of slush on them but I made it over the pass with no problem.

12/7-9/99 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

This was a disappointing week. On Monday, I called Marson and Marson and ordered the lumber for the two floors. I scheduled delivery for Wednesday at 9:00 AM, or so I thought. I also scheduled Mike Dickinson to clear the snow out of the driveway on Wednesday at 8:00.

I arrived on Tuesday at 11:00 and there was about 8 inches of snow on the ground. It took me an hour to shovel out the parking place and dismantle the log gate. This marks the end of driving up to the trailer for the season.

After I moved in, I moved the three 32 foot TJI beams, that will go on the lower eaves, from the rack that they were on to a new rack I built under the porch roof. They were covered with tarps where they were, but they were still getting wet. This way, they will stay dry and I also freed up a couple tarps that I can use to cover the floor material when it is delivered.

In the evening, I called Mike Dickinson and confirmed that he would clear the driveway in the morning before 9:00.

Mike showed up at about 8:10 on Wednesday morning and in about 20 minutes, he had the driveway cleared. I paid him for the job and then started getting ready for the lumber delivery. I dragged 4 short logs down to the driveway to use as dunnage for the lumber to keep it off the ground.

When the truck hadn't shown up by 10:00, I called Marson and Marson and found out that my delivery was scheduled for next Wednesday, December 15. This was a big disappointment. I still can't figure out how the miscommunication happened. Since I was unexpectedly thrown off the critical path, I set about doing a lot of odd jobs that weren't necessarily critical but needed to be done anyway. In a way, it made the week sort of relaxed but I still didn't like the setback.

I did some playing in the mud inside the building to improve the drainage. Water leaks through the footing on the high side, and runs across the crawl space floor creating a lot of puddles. I dug a narrow channel to drain the water down to the drainpipe so that the puddles would dry up and keep the crawl space a little less damp.

I also removed the ladder from the outside of the building and moved it inside so I could do the high rigging so I could winch the floor materials up the cliff and in through the windows. Removing the ladder from the roof was a little tricky because the ladder was holding a huge load of snow all the way up to the ridge. The rest of the roof was clear of snow. I didn't want that load of snow avalanching down on me when I was 15 feet up the ladder unhooking it from the roof. The snow seemed frozen down pretty tight so I don't think there was any danger. In any event, I got the ladder removed without any problem.

Next, I started hauling a stockpile of roofing paper from the roadway to under the porch roof. I found that most of the rolls were stuck together with ice and I couldn't separate them without ripping the paper. After moving the rolls that I could get loose, I covered the rest of them with plastic to keep any more snow or rain off of them, and if they ever thaw out and get unstuck, I will move them under shelter later.

Next, I hauled a stockpile of pressure treated 6x8's that Earl Landin had given me up under the porch roof. These will form the deck ledger and I needed to move them up to the site sooner or later. This was a good opportunity to do so.

While I was just starting lunch, Larry stopped by for a visit. We had a nice visit inside the trailer while I fixed and ate my lunch.

After lunch, I moved the winch back up to the winch shed and connected it back up to a tree with a log chain. The winch was down on the roadway under the walkway because I used it down there to pull the OSB up the roadway. Since my elbows were hurting pretty bad from pulling the OSB up onto the small side of the roof with a block and tackle, even after a couple weeks of rest, I figured that if I used a rope and pulled the floor material up the cliff by hand, I might really injure my elbows. Instead, I decided to use the winch to pull the material up.

I rigged the winch up in the winch shed the same way I did for use with the crane. The cable will go through the crawl space door to the same block attached to the northeast wall. From there, the cable will go to another block hanging from a purlin inside the building. From there, it will go out a window and down the cliff to the material stack on the lower driveway.

Getting at those purlins from inside the building with no floors is pretty exciting. I rigged up the ladder to get up to the loft level and then from the temporary platform up there, and with some careful tosses, I was able to get a chain up over the purlin. Then I attached the block and completed the rigging by throwing the end of the cable out the window. All I need to do now to be able to winch the material up, is to make some kind of skidway to keep the loads from hanging up on the lower part of the cliff. I think I will use a couple of 16 foot 2x4s and the two 8 foot panels from my Chip Box for the pickup. I'll do that next week when I start moving the material.

Another low priority job I did was to remove the nails from a stack of boards that I had used for various temporary things and hadn't completely dismantled.

When I went in for the night, I called Mike Dickinson and scheduled him to scoop out the driveway next week the same as he had done the day before.

It snowed some more overnight so that on Thursday morning there was another couple inches on the ground. There was a snow advisory for the Cascades for the middle of the day, so I decided I would leave early again. I did a little more fine tuning on the drainage system, which was working pretty well, and then I gathered up my construction waste, put it in a garbage bag, and loaded it into the pickup. I left for home at about 11:00 and had no trouble getting over the pass.

12/14-16/99 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

There was a lot of new snow so chains were required going over the pass from about Scenic on. There was enough snow on the road so I left the chains on all the way to the property.

I arrived at noon. Since I already had the chains on and I was going to have the driveway plowed out anyway, I didn't bother to shovel out the parking place. Instead I got a run at it and drove as far up the driveway as I could. There was about a foot of snow on the ground, but with the chains on, I got up to within 20 feet of the trailer. This made unloading a little easier.

After moving in, I mixed up a big batch of Tim-bor and treated the insides of the 4 sill logs. The floor will cover this surface up, so this will be the last opportunity to treat it. I intend to treat all the logs one more time before I put the finish on them.

Next, I strung some strings and made some measurements to determine where the joists and rim joists should go. Then I removed all the joist hangers that I had put up to hold up the temporary snow roof. Finally, I made two beam hangers, one each for the south and west corners, out of strap steel.

On Wednesday morning it was raining cats and dogs and it had turned all that nice fluffy snow to deep slush. It continued to downpour all day so I put on my full rain gear. Mike showed up at about 8:30 and plowed the driveway out. He also dug out one of my dunnage logs that I couldn't find under the snow. When he left, I backed the pickup back out to the road. Just then, Sally Van Deusen stopped. We just started talking when the lumber truck showed up.

The truck backed into the driveway in the pouring rain and the lumber was unloaded by 10:00. I rigged a come-along and chains and pulled the stack of plywood back up onto the dunnage. One end of it had slipped off and was down in the mud. With that done, I covered all the lumber with tarps. I dragged 8 long 2x10s up the hill one at a time and stacked them up against the building. I didn't want to start moving the plywood or TJIs in the rain, so I figured I'd move the 2x10s and start using them to make the rim joist and beams.

About the time I finished moving the 2x10s, I noticed two guys running through the woods to the neighbor's house. I figured I'd better check them out, so I walked over there. I memorized their license number (WA 468 CVI) and then went on to talk to them. They turned out to be legitimate, but it never hurts to check. They were there to pick up some ski equipment for the owner.

One of the guys told me that Scott Eberhardt, the owner, had told him where to find the key, but it was buried under about 5 feet of wet snow. Since I had rain gear on and they didn't, I started digging in the snow to find the key. Then I suggested calling Scott to get more specific instructions on where the key was. I also felt that a phone call would prove that these guys were legitimate. I had my phone with me and we were close enough to the trailer so that it worked. After calling and getting specific instructions, we found the key and I went back to work.

Before I quit for the day, I had time to mount two beam hangers on the B3 PSL. I used the gwizzard to flatten the faces on the PSL. It worked very well.

The weather was nice and dry on Thursday morning and the sun was out most of the time. I took the tarps off the lumber so it could dry off, and then went to work fixing the tarps on the roof. The rain had removed all the snow that was on the tarps, but there was still a lot of snow on the area that only was covered in tar paper. I peeled the tarps back and removed all the partial rolls of roofing paper that were up on the roof. Then I fastened the tarps back down, and fixed the places where it had come loose. This took all morning. When I finished, I put the tarps back over the lumber pile and stapled it down so it would stay. Then I had lunch and left for home about 2:00.

12/21-23/99 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way up, I delivered a few jars of Ellen's blackberry jam to friends and neighbors, so I didn't get to the property until about noon. The weather was sunny and dry, and I was happy to finally have some good weather.

After moving in, I winched a bundle of seven sheets of 3/4" plywood up the cliff. That worked pretty well, but it still took a long time and several trips up and down the cliff. I also carried two sheets up by hand just to see how hard that was. It wasn't too bad, but I didn't think I wanted to carry all 44 sheets up that way.

I had ordered ten 14 foot TJIs and the lumber yard had delivered them as five 30 footers. Using a hand saw, I cut three of these into 14 foot lengths and carried them up to the building. By then it was too dark to see so I quit for the day.

On Wednesday, I winched up 7 more sheets of plywood and it took an hour to do it. This was after the rigging was all in place. I figured I could carry them up by hand faster so I did. It took about 4 minutes to carry up one sheet so I got 12 carried up before lunch, and the remaining 16 after lunch. I was interrupted after lunch by half a dozen gray jays that stopped by for peanuts. They are getting a lot tamer. This was the first time I ever had two birds on my hands at once, and there were a few times when I had three at once.

Just as I finished carrying up the last sheet of plywood, Larry Copenhaver stopped by with some peanut brittle that Roberta had made, and we had a nice chat. After he left, I cut the remaining two 30 foot TJIs and carried the 14 footers up the hill.

Then I rigged up to winch the 28 foot main floor joists up the cliff and in through the windows. I started with a bundle of three joists and wasn't careful enough when I pulled them through the window. They smashed into one of the shop lights I had installed, left the fixture dangling from the power cord, and caused the GFI breaker to blow. After going down and resetting the breaker twice, I finally unplugged the lights and decided to fix it after all the lumber was moved. By then it was getting too dark to work so I quit for the day.

On Thursday morning, I got up at 5:00 and was out working before it got light. I pulled up another bundle of 3 joists and a bundle of 2 and got them laying across the main floor beam and sticking out the windows. With the rigging in place, and the technique fairly well developed, it still took me an hour to pull up one bundle. I figured I might be able to do it faster by hand.

I rigged up a rope through a pulley hanging above a window, and after dragging a joist up the roadway by hand, I used the rope to pull the joist in through the window. This worked pretty well but still took a half hour per joist. I could see that at this rate, I wouldn't have time to finish pulling all the joists up this week. I got three joists pulled up and into the building this way.

It started snowing at about noon, so I covered up the remaining lumber, had lunch, and left for home about 1:30.

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