Howell Cabin

Tuesday I came up today to discuss the earthmoving work with the contractor. I drove to Ellensburg and dropped Christina's snowmobile trailer off at the shop to have the deck wood replaced. I took a load of garbage to the dump. I stood in just the right spot to notice that the front of the deck framing has a 3/8" sag in the middle, probably because the framing lumber had gotten warped sitting out for a winter before it got installed. Another thing to fix, but I'm glad I caught it before I laid down the outer sets of deck boards. While I was there, I visited the gate shop and browsed fancy metal gates to replace our second iteration scrap-lumber "temporary" gate. They had some really pretty fancy gates... ...but I think we'll get one of these simple gates, so it can sit high above the snow plow piles.

Sunday Despite my attempts to plan the deck frame exactly right, it ended up just a bit too wide for a series of uncut boards to land in the right place at the outer edge. That means I need to adjust the widths of the boards. On the entrance deck, I did this by ripping (almost) every board down a little bit. It was a giant pain and added a bunch more sanding. The back deck boards are much longer, so this would be even harder. Instead, I decided to only rip down three boards, so the deck has a repeating and symmetric pattern of wide-wide-narrow boards. It's more visible, but a lot less work. Even still, ripping the boards was a real pain. There's no way I'm going to maneuver 18' long ipe boards (which are ridiculously  dense) through a table saw; even if I tried, they'd surely wander and end up with a kerf cutting inside the desired width. I fiddled around making a jig for the circular saw instead. The first jig failed. The second jig, the fence shown below, sorta wo...

Friday Our excavating contractor was out reshaping the hill in front of the cabin to make it more pleasant to walk on and protect against erosion. Jon got the first two rows of decking boards placed. We decided to have a metalworker build our balcony railings, rather than doing it ourselves. Jon checked to be sure there was blocking in the wall to mount the railing to. He also marked the stair posts for cutting before the railing is built.

Sunday Jon worked hard sanding and staining deck boards before the rain comes. ...which meant the last few steps happened after dark, in the cool rays of the LED work light. \