Sealing The Wood

It all began in the spring when our friends, Joe Radoslovich and Robert Wisdom joined Steve and began the long process of sanding the cabin's logs on the outside. Off and on during the spring and summer, Steve and I continued this process when we weren't busy doing other tasks. Now if this had been a new Pan-Abode building, the sanding would not have been necessary, but since ours had sat for many years, there was quite a bit of discoloring and quite a few marks left where the logs had been stacked against other logs. Again, if you remember from the first postings, there was also some rot in some of the logs we used, so we had to use wood putty to fill in these areas. We wanted to get the cabin sealed before the onset of winter weather. Then came my accident and quess who the chore of applying the sealant fell on...the ever trusty, Steve. He came by one day and we went to the hardware store to decide on what sealant we would use. Wheeling around a big box hardware store on one of those handicap scooters was rather fun. We decided on a semi-transparent oak brown stain by Cabot. When Steve was talking to his daughter about staining the cabin, she told him that she and her husband had just purchased a sprayer that we could use. Steve had to first cover all the windows and doors to protect them from the spray. That job alone took quite some time. Luckily the weather cooperated and he was able to apply the stain...very thankful that he had the sprayer to do so. The end result was a color that appears a little more red than the color we had chosen, but I think it looks really nice and am ever so thankful to Steve for all of his work!

Stain on back of cabin

Steve's fall chores were not done however.  We have had some terrific wind storms here the past few weeks.  While talking with his brother, Mike, Steve found out that a lot of trees had fallen in the Index area.  Steve had planned to go to The Drunken Bear to drain his motorhome in preparation of winter, so he thought he would head up the first chance he got.  When he arrived, he found lots of large branches that had broken off the trees but fortunately, no trees had come down.  What he also found however, was two of the metal ridge caps had been ripped from the roof.  These are the metal strips that run the length of the roof, capping or covering both sides of the roof where they meet at the top.  One of the strips was damaged beyond use, but the other was salvageable.  Luckily for us, when we got the metal roofing, they had given us an extra length of ridge cap.  So, Steve was back up on the roof securing the ridge caps.  He had not planned on having to do this and did not have his power drill, so had to do it all with a screw driver.  He says he has some pretty sore blisters from getting the screws through the metal using just a screw driver, but at least the roof is secure now.