Windows and More

The back wall.

Part of the east-side bedroom, the laundry room,
the bathroom, and the west-side bedroom.

The first window opening completed (in the living room).

Sunset on a nearby mountain peak.

Steve taking in the view and enjoying a much deserved rest.

Both Steve and I had plans for last weekend...he went to Hood Canal, WA to visit friends and I headed south to Eugene to visit friends and attend the very fun Oregon Country Fair (click on link in upper righthand corner of this page) so no work was completed at The Drunken Bear.

Steve and Yoey headed to the property on Saturday, July 18th to continue putting up the walls. When I got off work there was a message for me to pick up more caulking. By the time I picked up the caulking and got to the property Yoey was gone...but the evidence of his work was very evident. The front of the cabin was really taking shape.

Now that we had more caulking, Steve and I proceeded working into the early evening. It is really fun and exciting to see everything starting to come together. We called it quits around 7:30 p.m. and headed to our favorite place, the campfire. A margarita quenched our thirsts and then it was on to dinner. I swear I eat better while we are at The Drunken Bear than when I am at home. Steve had barbecued some chicken breasts the night before and he added them to a very good Caesar salad. By the way, Yoey, thank you for the extra chicken we each got since you did not stay for dinner.

We get up pretty early in the morning, but out of respect for our neighbors we do not start working until after 9:00 a.m. We have our coffee and usually our standard campfire toasted bagel with cream cheese. This time of year we get an extra treat to add to our bagels...fresh huckleberries from the many bushes around the property. It is a good time to also go over the plans and discuss what we will be doing the rest of the day.

We started adding logs right away. At this time of day it is really pleasant as we are in the shade, but come early afternoon we are hammered by the sun. We have discovered that we are having to make quite a few of our missing logs and connecting pieces from those interior logs we will not be using. Once again, thanks for power tools! Around 2:00 p.m. I asked Steve if he was ready to take a break and have a hamburger. I headed in to Highway 2 and the Mt. Index Cafe (a little over a mile and a half away) and ordered two of their delicious burgers and fries to go. While I was waiting, I came across a card that I have since checked out and it is loaded with information about Index. If you have some time check out "The peoples website to The Town of Index - Small Town - Big Website" (click on the link in the upper righthand corner of this page). Anyway, when I arrived back at the property, Steve was putting the first log over the window to see if everything fit. What a site to behold for us! It got us all the more excited. But, we had to stop work to enjoy our burgers. We sat in the campfire area looking out over the river and ate. It was really nice sitting in the shade with a nice breeze blowing. When we went back to try working it was just too hot in the afternoon sun, so we decided to go back to the river and take a break until the cabin was once again in the shade.

Once we got back to work we continued adding logs until we were at window heighth. We have changed some sizes of the windows in the plans, plus we have added a few windows. In one of the bedrooms we will be adding a 7 foot high by 2 foot wide stained glass that will be visible from the road and as you approach the house. We hope to backlight it. This came about as this was the wall where we were missing the logs. When we checked with Pan Abode we found out each log was going to cost us approximately $90.00. We were thinking of ways we could avoid this added cost and came up with the stained glass window. We will be designing and making the window ourselves. We will also put another stained glass on the west side wall where a second doorway to the living room was in the plans. We will still have the double Dutch doors in the living room and another door on the east side near the kitchen.

We were really happy with the efforts of our work and called it a day. Once again we retreated to a campfire and drinks...and another good meal. Steve barbecued sirloin steaks, zucchini and squash. Notice how Steve does most of the cooking too. Luckily he loves doing it and is always trying new recipes. The rest of us get to enjoy the results!

After dinner we sat around the fire, enjoying the evening and listening to each other's stories. A comment here, a comment there, and you would be into a whole new story. This little bit of heaven is quite amazing to us. Sitting around a crackling campfire, hearing the rushing of the river, smelling the oil of a burning cedar stump, listening to song birds give their evening goodnights, watching the sun set on the many mountain peaks...what a way to end a day. When I mentioned the song birds, Steve said it reminded him of the time when we were at the ocean with one of our dear friends who is no longer around, Brian Lee. Steve said Brian, upon hearing song birds broke into the Barbara Streisand's Song Bird. If you knew Brian, this would definitely bring a smile to your face.

When I mentioned smelling the oil of a burning stump, I wish each of you could have been there. I was showing Steve a huge rock which somehow had been cut exactly in half with a very flat surface. We were discussing what we could do with this. It was in an area where some of the remnants of the clearing of the land were in a depressed area of ground. Steve noticed this stump and said we might as well burn this. When he threw it on the fire it started giving off this very black smoke. We were thinking maybe it had deisel or grease on it from the equipment used during the land clearing, but all of a sudden you got this very pleasant smell of cedar. You could also hear the sizzling of the oil in the root. We decided to pull it out of the fire as we want to share this with others. Steve talked about a lumber yard which used to produce a cedar oil product and after smelling the odor we got from the cedar root I can see why. Of course maybe the next time it will not be the same...in keeping up the tradition of The Drunken Bear, we had finished off the gin that night...and the night before we had finished off the tequila.

Monday morning we got up early again. This is when we made some changes to the sizes of the windows. When it was time for us to work, we added caulking to the log over the first window and put it permanently in place, added a few more logs, took a bunch of measurements and determined what logs were needed where, and called it a day. We are so happy with the progress and feel we will have all the walls done by mid-August.

Back on Track

Cedar drip cap and LTP4 brackets.

First layer of logs. 

Robert watching Mike and Steve making measurements.

The lovely make-up of our ground.

The walls are going up.

Looking up the river

It has been some time since I last made an entry so this posting will be a little long.

The cabin building progress had been a little slow. If you have been reading from the beginning, you will know we did not pass our first inspection and had to make some changes. At first we thought they were minor, but when you actually started doing the work, it required a lot of time. Changing of the washers from round washers to square washers was a relatively easy task. Some of the others were not quite so easy. Luckily Steve had some free time and was able to make it up to the property on several occasions to do a lot of the work. Holes had to be drilled in the cement bases of the supports in the center of the foundation. Bolts were then glued in these holes. An "L" shaped bracket was then attached to each bolt and support beam to increase the stability of the framing. Next, the blocking had to be changed. We had originally put the blocking at the end of the floor joists. According to regulations, the blocking must be done along the support. We also had to put blocking where the floor joists met the foundation. One other project was putting LTP4 brackets (see photo) every two feet along the outside, attaching the framing to the mudsill. Between the "lovely" weather we have had here in the Pacific Northwest and vacations we both had planned, it has been a little bit of work here and a little bit of work there. Once we got all of the corrections made, we made an appointment for another inspection. Well, as luck would have it, we did not get the same inspector and the new one found two more things which required correcting before we could proceed. Steve was able to get these done and we finally passed...yippee!

In the meantime, while awaiting an inspection approval, other chores were accomplished. We had a partial trench dug for the pipe and wiring from the pump towards the house. Our land is located on a former river bed with very rocky ground. There are large rocks everywhere you dig. Our friend Yoey (Joe Radoslovich) joined Steve clearing many of these rocks from the debris left over from the digging of the trench and started filling in the trench with the remaining soil and rocks. I too was able to partake in this little activity and it was not pleasant. Every time you stuck a shovel in the soil you would hit a rock...usually about the size of a cantaloupe or larger. Between the three of us we almost got the trench filled.
 

The next step in the building process was putting down the plywood sub-floor. Once again Yoey came to our rescue and helped Steve do most of this. Then Steve and I finished the work which required cutting smaller pieces to fill in what was not covered by the sheets of plywood. Once this was accomplished we added a cedar drip cap along the outside perimeter of the floor.

We had one more step to finish before we needed another inspection. Our friends, Doug Fisher and Bob Gove helped out here. This step involved putting down the first row of logs. To get to that step however was a major chore. When this Pan Abode was purchased the logs were in piles of 5 large stacks. None of the pieces were marked telling where they should go and not all of the same length of pieces were in the same piles. It was like putting a large jigsaw puzzle together. Every stack had to be checked out to find the right piece. Once again, most of this work was done before I arrived. Now I don't want you to think I am a loafer. Unfortunately, I am a mailman and I do not get every weekend off. I try to come up on my days off during the week and after I get off on Saturday. During the week it is just Steve and I, but on the weekends we have been fortunate enough to have our very loyal and good friends come up to help out. Anyway, we finished putting the first layer of logs down that weekend. These logs were first glued down and then lag bolts were drilled in to secure them to the sub flooring and framing. It was now time for another inspection.

This time we passed with flying colors...finally! The weekend after that inspection our friends Robert Wisdom and Mike U. came up to help. Once again it was finding pieces of the jigsaw. Once we found the pieces we needed it was time to add the caulking and start putting the walls up, piece by piece. Some of the logs were a little warped and took a little more effort to get down than others, but the work seemed to be proceeding rather quickly. Summer had finally arrived and it was hot, hot, hot! We were pretty pleased with the progress we had made this time.

The 4th of July weekend was more of the same. Steve and I were moving along when we discovered that one section of the building was missing. We finally took all of the piles apart putting all like pieces together and the pieces we needed were not there. Once again, evil thoughts were directed to the seller of this "2 year old Pan Abode". Steve had talked to me about using stick framing on the interior of the cabin. The reasoning behind this being that we may be able to use some of the interior walls to replace some of the exterior walls which were too rotted for use. We were trying to figure out if there was anything we could use for the missing pieces when our friends Doug and Bob arrived again. It was getting late in the afternoon of the 4th, so we called it quits for the day. We got a campfire going and started to relax. Doug prepared the famous ribs on the campfire accompanied by baked potatoes cooked in tinfoil in the coals of the fire and a great homemade coleslaw. We were relaxing having drinks and enjoying the evening. It was not quite dark yet when our neighbors starting setting off fireworks. Then a neighbor further down river came up and wanted to know if he could use our trail down to the water to launch a boat across the river to set off a bunch of fireworks he had. We convinced him the river was a little too swift and he would probably not be able to paddle quickly enough to get where he wanted. Instead, we told him he could set them off from the area below us. He left and a short while later he and a couple of friends came with a box the size of a table filled with fireworks. So, for the next few hours we were entertained with shots of exploding colors. It was a very enjoyable evening. I had planned to head into town that night as I had to work on Saturday, but I was glad to wait until morning for my commute. Of course, come 4:50 a.m., I was not so glad.

By the time I had arrived Saturday evening, Yoey was there and was helping put up as much of the walls as they could without the missing pieces. I had called Pan Abode to see about buying the missing pieces, but with it being a holiday weekend, they were not open. It had been raining on and off all day and was too wet to work any more that day. That night Steve prepared another wonderful meal...grilled toasted cumin seed coated chicken breasts and a salad to die for. Once again, Steve's daughter, Heidi, turned him on to another treat...a simple salad consisting of spinich, chopped pear, and praline pecans with a honey-mustard dressing.

When morning arrived we cleaned up around the site and everyone headed back into the city. On a holiday weekend one does not want to be caught on Highway 2 as the traffic is horrendous!