Preparing the foundation

On Saturday, we showed up with a concrete mixer and a rock auger to set rebar into the bedrock. But, it turned out I had misremembered where the bedrock was exposed: it was exposed at the first site we considered, but the new site, set down the hill thirty feet, was covered with soil.

On Sunday, we rented a cute little digger from Home Depot in Issaquah and towed it up the hill. When we got there after lunch, Eiot asked for the keys to drive it off the trailer. Oops. The keys are still in Issaquah. Three hours later, we're digging.

Because of the late start, we did quite a lot more digging on Monday.

We didn't get very far before we hit bedrock after all. Here Eliot's trying to make a flat spot to place our footing blocks on. After twenty minutes of bashing away at this rock -- and it was a soft rock! -- he said, "I now have a greater appreciation for the people who built the pyramids."

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we built a jig to level and position the beams. We trimmed the beams to length: for some reason, our 16' beams were 16'1". We leveled and squared and leveled and squared a dozen times.

Then we cut and positioned the concrete form tubes in place, positioned metal support brackets on the beams, and lashed rebar into place to strengthen the columns.

Colin and Calvin came over to help.

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The trim finishing journey begins

The last time we installed wood trim (almost two years ago!), we sanded and cut the material inside the cabin (it was winter) and installed it unfinished. Finishing it meant taping everything off and applying three coats of finish in place. Removing the masking was frustrating (the finish glued it to the wall in places), and in other places the finish still got where it didn't belong. Now the cabin is full of nice, finished floors, cabinets, and counters. It's not a shop. So this time, I'm sanding and pre-finishing all the boards outdoors. Thankfully, there's still pretty nice weather; that black tarp garage heats up pretty well when the sun's out. Today I got the first batch of wood sanded and a coat of finish applied. Christina installed eight receptacles in the kitchen and great room. My mom came up to enjoy the warm ambiance of the not-yet-active wood stove.

Uncrating the wood stove

I drove up to the cabin today to meet a tree contractor. Since I was up there anyway, I took care of some other business. I got the wood stove out and ready to install on Monday. I vacuumed up the tiny particles of styrofoam packaging material from last year's roofing panels that would have been much easier to clean up last year. I put the bathroom outlet back into its adjusted place above the backsplash. I corrected my installation of the heat pump wiring with a pair of reducing washers. Now it's really done. I replaced the emergency brake battery system in the flatbed trailer. I bucked a bunch of old logs into rounds for firewood.

Odds and ends

I made progress on a bunch of little things today. I painted a fencepost in 12" segments and pounded it in at the property line, where the outdoor camera can see it. Now we can measure the snow accumulation. I worked on finishing up almost-complete receptacle branch circuits. The first one I worked on was a little mystery: all the receptacles were installed, but the power didn't reach past a certain point in the line. After some investigation with a wire tracer and watching through the videos we took before covering the walls, I worked out what had happened: two receptacles shared a stud bay, facing into opposite rooms. The plan had been to bring power up to one box, jump over to the other box, and continue back down to the crawlspace to the next box. We forgot the jumper. I couldn't fish a wire between the boxes myself, so that repair waits. Upstairs, installing two receptacles completed the branch. The bathroom vent hole in the tile backer board was a skosh too small. ...

Howell Cabin

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