2023 Posts
Last visit for the year? I made what might be the last visit to Skookum for the year, hiking in the mile and a half from the base of the jeep road with Phil Battle and his puppy Tilly. The snow from last week had mostly melted, making for a muddy trip. There were just …
Buttoning up My posts have slowed down, and will slow down more as the winter months settle in. Since Logan left, I’ve been up to Skookum 3 times to tear down the camp and prepare for winter. I hope to get up there one more time, but overall things are pretty well set until the …
The roof! Putting the roof up consisted of first, putting up the SIP panels, which are 4 ft by 16 ft panels that are 1 ft thick (OSB sheeting on each side with foam insulation in the middle). As with pretty much everything else, we had never used these before. Then, based on some skimpy …
A pretty good week The Alaskan mill is put away. The scribe is put away. The chainsaw work is almost done. All the logs are up. This week was all about getting the roof support system up. The purlins in particular were challenging, as they had some awkward bows that were hard to accommodate. Also, …
Roof and Rain A major rain storm came in and cut this week short at Thursday. Mark and Logan worked on Tuesday, and then I went up on Wednesday, so we only got two days of work in. However, we’re working on the roof and it’s fun to see the progress. https://youtu.be/zYEQTfLPBoI Mark and Logan …
Near Disasters and Progress This was a full week with Mark here, and following a tradition set last year, much progress was made and a (near) disaster occurred. The progress is described with the images below. The (near) disaster was that Logan cut himself with a chainsaw, which resulted in a trip to the Emergency …
9/11 Anniversary — almost fitting I am posting this on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. This past week wasn’t that disastrous, although there were more near-misses than we should have had, as noted below. Progress was considerable, as all the SIP panels for the roof are on site, the steel for the roof is …
Short Week We had a very short week, as Logan needed a break and headed to Alabama for a long weekend. For the 2+ days we worked, we made good progress. Things will get exciting as we will (hopefully) soon start on the roof. We quickly finished up the last two walls to complete the …
Walls going up This week was all about putting up walls and we made good progress without major mishaps. We’re a bit over halfway done with the fourth row of logs out of six. As we refine our process we’re making faster progress and doing better work, although the approach is still not what anyone …
Ramping up… I hope As usual, we didn’t get as far as I had hoped, but progress was made and nobody was hurt. A couple of Logan’s friends showed up, plus we got rained out for a day, so we only got about three and a half days of work but we completed the second …
HUGE Sill Logs! This was our first work with logs, and of course you start with the bottom (sill) logs that are the most difficult, and also the biggest. Logan, cleverly, took most of this week off to spend with Sabrina, so Tom came over to take his place. The progress is described below, followed …
Not much progress, but not zero progress Everything seemed to conspire against making progress this week. The weather was unusually wet, we swapped out the excavator for a telehandler (which took time), Sabrina arrived so Logan is taking some time off, my truck died (temporarily) in a highly inconvenient spot, and of course there was …
Too fast! Mistakes! And good luck? This week was ambitious and so we had to move fast. This led to mistakes, and of course problems happen even without making mistakes. And in the end we ran into a major problem… but at exactly the right time. As a result, we began a pivot and will …
The original plan for this week was to backfill the cellar, set up and pour footings for the walls, and then work on the stem walls. We changed this by shifting to dirt work after the footings so we could access the main floor with the excavator for leveling. Also, I changed up the schedule …
This week saw some progress, but it was also frustrating. The images below show the progress. The frustration was largely due to my ignorance of concrete and flawed thinking on what Wylie would like. The ignorance was that I didn’t figure on time needed for concrete to cure before backfilling. The flawed thinking was that …
Logan arrived, and we have had a busy week, not without hiccups and dumb-ass attacks. We finally finished up the cistern, applying 2 more coats of sealant. I used a fan with dryer venting that Wylie and I made to blow in fresh air before going into the cistern. Additionally, I parked the tractor over …
Over the past week or so I have been trying to get going so we can hit the ground running when Logan arrives. Most of the supplies are ordered and the following images show the process of getting the new camp up. We dug holes to set posts, then built a simple 2 by 4 …
There was plenty of melting since my last visit a month ago. Side by side photos shown below are dramatic. May 6 April 9 The cistern appears to be in good shape. I need to get inside it to seal it in June. May 6 April 9 The tractor (covered in tarps) was almost buried …
I hiked up to Skookum today and found — no surprise — LOTS of snow. The top of the cistern air vent is just under the tripod and about a foot out of the snow. I painted the air vent black and built a tripod to protect it from animals. The cistern last fall. The …
Preparing for 2023. The garage is full of Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs), a pallet of cement, concrete dye, sealant, and more. We won’t be completely ready, but it should be better than last year. At the end of the summer in 2022, we bought a truck. It has a dumptruck bed so we can haul …