Tom came over for a few days and we made great progress on the ceiling. Among other things, Tom can still work like crazy and he wore me out. Niko came up and had a frustrating time, but we do have electricity from the solar system and there was progress with the solar hot water, but it’s unclear that it’s working correctly.
We put in the tongue-and-groove (T&G) pine boards parallel to the purlins and ridge pole logs. This meant that the T&G boards next to the logs had to be scribed and cut to match all the way along. Some turned out fairly well, others less so. The left photo shows the scribed and cut match for the first boards we put up, and the right photo shows the scribed and cut match to a purlin (the farthest row of boards to the right).
Note that the T&G boards are two different colors (right photo). After putting up the first boards, Tom (correctly) noted that we should sand the boards before putting them up. The sanded boards are much lighter in color and cleaner. Tom told me I should sand the other boards soon… and knowing me, he sanded most of them before he left to make sure it got done.
This may seem strange, but the first night Tom came this week was the first night I slept in the cabin, so it was a milestone! We celebrated appropriately with chess, wine, and steaks.
The T&G boards were 16 feet long, so there is only one seam needed for each row across the cabin. Tom put a 45-degree cut into the boards for the joints between boards and most of them came out quite clean. We alternated from East to West the sides from which we put in the long board, so you can see a joint in every other row in the left photo — two of the joints are fairly visible, but one is nearly invisible from this angle and the final board has not yet been put in for the joint farthest to the right.
The cabin is still quite full with the stack of lumber, chess table, and so forth, thus setting up scaffolding required some creativity (right photo). In the right photo you can also see a green laser line on the ceiling. We lined up the laser level with the Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) blocks as the reference to keep the T&G boards square with the cabin foundation.
We worked late, but at the end of the day we did squeeze in some time for good food and fine wine. The stove kept the cabin warm, and with electricity we had nice lighting for relaxing evenings.
Though a little cool, the weather was exceptional for late October. Tom used a palm sander to clean up each T&G board (left photo) and then cleared it of sawdust using tack cloth (right photo).
The left photo shows the contrast between the ceiling with T&G boards installed and the OSB (particle board) underlayer of the SIP panels. Until you see the T&G, you don’t realize how lacking the OSB is. After going all day followed by solid relaxing, somehow the dishes didn’t manage to get washed…
Above is a photo of the ceiling with all the T&G boards installed. It came out great! Thanks to Tom so much for making this happen. Among other things, several times he solved problems I couldn’t figure out and there’s no way this would have gotten done without him.
i think that is cheating. (getting that much help)!