August 31st Post: I think we're all ready to leave for the season tomorrow morning. In the morning Betty will take Squatty and Tiger Lilly to the vet for their annual exams while I winterize Fish Camp's water system and close everything up for the season. Tomorrow will start a new chapter and we're looking forward to warmer and dryer weather. It's been chilly and rainy all over south central Alaska these past several weeks. We're outtahere!
August 30th Post: Forgive me father for I have sinned...it has been 12 days since my last post. I've recently received a huge outcry from our readership about not posting frequently enough so I'm now forced, through popular demand, to come out of sabbatical and say a few words to keep my abundance of fans from becoming suicidal. We've been readying to leave Fish Camp for the season so our building efforts have pretty much been put on hold until next spring when we return. It's definitely fall here now. On the 12th I posted a picture of Fire-weed in near full bloom. Here is the first picture along with one I just took this afternoon confirming that cold weather is on its way so its time for us to head South.
August 12, 2011
August 30, 2011
So, here's a couple of shots of what we've been working on:
I winterized the drift boat - just turned it over
Ed will be down soon to winterize the big boat
Our sign over the warehouse door from the old cabin
I installed this small luggage rack made for our portable generator. Mike's welding in Sterling turned this out for me and I just installed it this morning.
Generator rack
We plan to leave on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning after Squatty and Tiger Lilly have seen the vet and gotten their new health certificates (Canada travel requirement). We'll go to Ft. Richardson/Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage for a few short days while we get our refrigerator repaired and visit family and friends then we'll start down the highway headed for America.
August 18th Post: I've been working these past few days on plumbing (water supply side) and electric while Betty works on log walls inside the cabin. When I sandblasted the logs a few weeks ago to remove all the handling marks it left the log surfaces pretty rough and hairy so Betty decided to sand and coat the entire inside. The theory is that the rough hairy surfaces would catch and hold dust over time and would not be easy to clean so sanding and coating the logs with a polyurethane sealer would not only make them look better but make cleaning easier in the long haul. Here's a couple close-up pictures of how they look after chink has been applied, one sanding, and two coats of clear polyurethane:
Inside wall chinked, sanded, and sealed
Betty's hard work shows best in the dining room
Scroll down and compare the photos of Betty sanding on the August 12th post below to see how much her work improved the looks of the logs. The clear polyurethane coating allows the natural log color and grain show while doing a nice job of sealing the wood fiber so the logs may be dusted or washed when needed. It is also supposed to prevent yellowing from UV rays. We'll see over time how good that promise is. We'll also have to wait to see who will actually dust or wash the logs...which reminds me that I haven't bought Betty any flowers in ages.
Meanwhile, I've been working on the water supply side of the plumbing and wiring the cabin for electricity. I've already used 600 feet of Nomex wiring (at $97 for a 250' roll) and have about 200 more feet to go before it's done. I decided to use recessed can lighting in the living room, kitchen, and master bath hoping that it would be superior to standard ceiling lighting. They cost more and are a real @## pain to install and wire so this idea better pan out.
Kitchen ceiling cans ready for wire
Sheet rock and plaster between the round log beams will come later. I'm pretty sure I'll hire that job out because I'm really sick of sheet rock. Especially the heavy stuff for ceilings!
Bath tub can light prior to wiring
Can lights over the master bath double vanity
Master bath double vanity water supply and electric
I should mention that some plumbers use red Pex tubing for hot water lines and blue Pex tubing for cold water lines. Because I'm trying to be penny-wise I couldn't bring myself to buy two expensive rolls of Pex tubing when one would do. My theory is that the water really doesn't care what color tubing it travels through and the sheet rock will cover this all up anyway. As a footnote I have to say that "some plumbers" buy materials with the homeowner's money and get paid for doing their work while "this plumber" is spending his own money and doesn't get paid.
Anyway...the color change shown in the photo is not really for looks, of course. Truth is the red tubing was on sale. In this picture the red tubing is 3/4" and the white tubing is 1/2". Pretty much all household fixtures (faucets, etc.) accept only 1/2" connectors to I have to reduce the tubing size immediately before the final fixture. I actually used 1" tubing from the pressure tank under the house to very close to each fixture before reducing it to 3/4" then 1/2". Doing this helps keep prevent water pressure loss, especially in a second floor application. I learned this the hard way on the first cabin I built when my upstairs shower only dribbled because I used 1/2" plumbing exclusively. In the short run I saved money since 1/2" material is less expensive than larger sizes but over the long run I was very disappointed with my shower.
Incidentally, all the wood shavings on the floor are because I had to auger about a million holes to install all the Pex tubing. Thank God (or whoever is responsible) for DeWalt power tools .
August 12th Post: I've had a challenging day today so I quit work early and took a couple of pictures. The challenges? First I used my good friend Bill Donner's forklift as a work platform to paint the facia boards on the rear dormer. That worked OK except it's mighty high up there and the roof is too steep for me to get on it so I had to rig a step ladder on the forks of the lift and a super long extension handle for a paint roller. Although it worked in the end, my knees haven't quit shaking yet. I have to explain that the ground immediately around the foundation is all sand and the forklift, being a warehouse type, gets stuck in the sand quit easily. For the rear dormer its only a short distance of sand to operate the lift on so I can use plywood sheets to drive on. That works pretty well but to get to the front dormer its a different story...about 40 feet of sand to traverse and then turn the forklift to put it into position. I got it stuck in the sand big time...right to the frame. After unsuccessfully trying to get it unstuck I went to plan B: Go get my good friend Bill Donner and tell him I'm done with his forklift - he can take it home now. Being the good neighbor I am I volunteered to help him get it out. It took about an hour of me offering advice and him shoveling for me to get it out onto hard ground. Somehow I didn't get pictures of any of this mainly because there's no one to blame it on so why photograph it? Besides Bill is bigger than me and for some unknown reason was unusually cranky with me today.
The day wasn't all bad because it started about 7:30 this morning with a phone call from another good friend, Bruce Bowman, just as I was getting started to work. Bruce is one of the "good guys" out there and I always enjoy talking with him. Bruce and Celia are currently in New Mexico. We had a long and fun conversation going over all the maintenance issues with our identical Montana's. Bruce is a wealth of knowledge about these things and I always rely on him to have good information when I need it. Anyway, his birthday was yesterday and their anniversary is tomorrow. Happy both occasions, Bruce and Celia!
Now, I won't go so far as to say that Bruce's morning call jinxed the rest of my day and caused the infamous "fork lift incident" but I'm considering that possibility. I'm trying really hard to remember if I talked with Bruce on the phone the day I blew up my black water holding tank while in Harrisburg, Oregon. I suspect it was just a fluke that I had a bad day after his phone call today but I'll be paying more attention to what follows a conversation with Bruce in the future.
The day wasn't a total loss, however. Betty sanded logs on the inside of the cabin all day today even though I wasn't very productive. Here's a couple of shots so you can see what that looks like:
I'm glad somebody is working
A smiling sander-dust covered model
Since I'm getting tired of working on the cabin for this season, and because it's looking like we're going to have an early fall I think we'll head south a couple of weeks earlier than originally planned. Betty canceled her September 13th appointment so we'll stay until the vet appointment for Squatty and Tiger Lily to get their health certificates updated on the first of September and then go to Anchorage/Wasilla for a day or two before hitting the highway for America and points south.
Alaska folklore holds that when the Fire-weed blooms reach the top of the stalk and the pedals start to wither its the end of summer and colder weather will return very soon. Here on our property the Fire-weed is nearly in full bloom - a sure sign that soon Dan and Betty will be hooking up the 5th wheeler. Here's a picture of a Fire-weed. You see that the blossoms are about half way to the top so I expect that in the next week or so the blossoms will reach the "start-getting-the-Montana-ready-to-travel" point.
Fire-weed blossomed half way
August 11th Post: A few days have gone by since my last post and we've made more progress on the cabin. I took yesterday off to let my old bones rest some but was back at it this morning. We finally got natural gas hooked up. Enstar workers came out yesterday and tied us in to the gas line on a nearby road to the tune of a little over $3000. Now we'll be able to set up gas connections for a range, clothes dryer, and gas/log stove to heat the cabin.
In the meantime I've been working on framing some interior walls downstairs while Betty is sanding logs on the interior...a dusty job that takes lots of patients. Here are some shots of the downstairs as of today:
Utility room and half bath
Lag bolts connect the wall to beams at the top
LOST POSTS: All the posts and pictures of our cabin construction, starting with digging the basement and pouring the foundation, were lost. Sometime in early September, after many posts showing construction, as I added a post and saved it to blogger something went horribly wrong and many posts between May and August disappeared. I think it happened because at Ft. Rich (where I was updating posts later) I had a pretty weak MiFi signal. The lost posts were mainly filled with my ramblings about building our cabin along with pictures of each stage of completion so probably no big loss since I still have the pictures. I can't remember the dates or my comments so when I have a good enough connection to support uploading of pictures I'll re-post some of them that will show how the cabin looked at different stages of building.
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