Playing Catch-Up

August party - Yoey Radoslovich, Paul Davison, Mike U.,
Robert Wisdom, myself, Steve Carlson.
(photo is courtesy of Michael Osterman) 

A very expensive campfire!
This is some of the rotted wood we will have to
replace at about $9.00 a foot. 

Inner walls with logs from the kit.

Inner walls being enclosed into rooms.

The last two trusses waiting for installation (on the left).

Steve putting the plywood down.

The tar papering is finished.

Snow drift in front (snow slid off the roof as planned).

Snow drift in back.

The cabin covered in the new metal roof.

A stand of alder trees nearby.

I have been pretty lax in updating this blog and thought I would try to catch-up to the current status. Since the last entry, much has been accomplished. We are at the point now where you can see what the cabin will look like when we are all done.

Just after the last entry, we had a great 3 day weekend party to celebrate a friend’s visit from Sweden. Mike Osterman, formerly of Seattle, returned for a short visit. It was also the weekend for the 4th Annual Index Arts Festival. Yoey brought his motor home and others brought tents. It was an extremely hot weekend with the temperatures in the high 80’s and low 90’s…a little too warm for me. The river was a wonderful retreat and many of us spent quite a bit of time in the water. Early Saturday morning we walked into the Arts Festival and really enjoyed it. There were some great artists displaying their work plus there was a stage set up for different performances…singing, dancing, reading, etc. Our little group contributed to the success of the festival by purchasing over $300.00 of various artists’ works…so you can see we appreciated what we saw. We returned to the cabin site for lunch and the required refreshments…bar is open! At night, Steve and I were psyched as we spent our first night in our cabin…sort of. We had our air mattresses (we are old you know) laid out on the floor. It was great to lie there and look up into the clear sky and see all the stars as you slowly went to sleep. Well, that lasted until the middle of Saturday night when it started clouding over and lightening started lighting up the sky on a regular basis. You could tell the lightening was far away, but it still caused a little unrest. We finally retreated to the motor home once the rain started falling. When morning rolled around, we had breakfast around the campfire and then everyone got packed up to go. It was a fun weekend with great friends. Sorry, but I don’t have any photos from that weekend. If you look at the last photos posted, you will notice them to be a little strange. My digital camera was on its last leg and I had not purchased a new one yet…they sure don’t last long! (Update - a picture of most of those attending the party has been added courtesy of Michael Osterman.)

After that weekend we continued working most of the weekends up through the end of September. In the last entry I was commenting about getting walls finished and complaining about all the pieces we had to create. After we got to that stage, we determined what logs were missing in order for us to complete the walls. When the list was complete and the order was placed, it added up to about $1,000.00. These logs are not cheap…they run $9.00 a linear foot. So when you look at the photo where we are burning pieces of logs that were unusable due to rot, you can see how expensive our fires were. I think I will make a little doll similar to the person who sold us this kit so I can burn him in effigy…ha!

Once we got all the logs from Pan Abode installed, it was time to put up the wall running the length of the cabin which will enclose the rooms. This went amazingly fast...again, thanks to Steve for knowing what to do. This wall was originally supposed to be made of Pan Abode logs, but since we had to use so many of these logs to replace other rotted logs on the outside, we did not have enough for this wall and decided to use stick framing instead. In the long run we think we will appreciate having the stick framing in part of the house.

After we finished the walls it was on to the roof. Mike U. came up and helped Steve get the very first trusses into place. Mike works in this field and was able to give Steve some insight and advice, compared to a rookie like me who does not know anything about what we are doing. His help was greatly appreciated! When I came up, Steve and I finished putting most of the trusses across the cabin frame. Later, our friends Bob and Doug came up for a weekend gathering and helped put the last two trusses into place. It was sure nice to have that extra help too. We next had to run a metal bracing along the trusses to steady them. It was now time for another inspection and this time we passed with flying colors…yippee!

Now it was on to the plywood sheeting. I would grab a sheet of plywood and carry it up the ladder and hand it to Steve and he in turn would lay the plywood down and hammer it into place. Once all of the roof was covered in plywood it was on to the tar paper. I am not good with heights and was having a difficult time getting it down. Luckily Steve did not have near the fright I had and was able to put the paper down while I did cleanup on the ground.

Steve and I went to Albuquerque for the Hot Air Balloon Festival the first of October. We stayed with a long-time friend of ours, Ken Funk, and his partner. It was a great getaway. If interested, here are some pictures from that trip. And, just before leaving for Albuquerque, Steve, Yoey and I went to Leavenworth, WA and attended their Oktoberfest. That was a blast and we hope to encourage others to go with us next year.

Once back home, the order for the metal roof was placed. I came down with a staph infection in my leg and was incapacitated for nearly a month. And that metal roof…well, not having help did not deter Steve from getting it installed by himself…what a great person to have as a building partner and a co-owner! I am so grateful he was able to do that and surprise me when it was done. And, how lucky we were to have that metal roof installed. Index got hammered by snow this winter and as you can see, the snow slid right off that metal roof. Great job Steve…thank you so much!

We have not been doing anything since then, but soon we will be back on the construction schedule. The last weekend in March we will be installing the windows and the doors. We may be going up to do some other work before that, but as of now nothing has been decided.