We Made It!!!

The roof is on! We got half of the tar paper on too! The other half will be on before the week is out. Mother Nature really cooperated with us so that we could fihish the roof and keep the snow out this winter.The finished roof!
This was from last weekend. Justin was the cutter, Mindy was the runner to Kody, Cameron and Josh on the roof.
Here is Cameron on the roof wearing the required by mother safety gear.

This past Saturday Josh, Cameron and Justin came up to put on the roofing paper. Cameron and Josh were on the roof and Justin moved the forklift around for them. It was COLD!!!

the wind was blowing and the temperature was . . . well we don't even know what the temperature was, but it was really, really cold. After fighting it all day, we called the metal roofing guy and he is going to come this week and finish the other half of the roof with the paper. We said goodbye to the forklift today also. It was great to have it for the past three months, but it had finished it's job and it was time to let it go!

We are now really done for the winter! We will still go up and check on things and I'm sure that Randy will find things to work on inside the cabin, but the major stuff is done until spring.

Decking Faries!

When we left the cabin on Saturday night, this was all the decking that had been put up.
And not all of the purlins had been put in.

We ran out of light to finish the other side on the front porch.
When Randy and I arrived on Monday morning this much decking had been put up! It goes all the way into the great room!
Also, the rest of the purlins over the porch had been put up.

Thank you purlin and decking fairy!

The Beam is Up

So I'm not going to say anything about winterizing and shutting things down until spring! The men of my family obviously don't think that it is time yet. With the good weather we had last week, they knew we could keep going. The crane was ordered for Saturday and the beam and prulins for the center roof went on.

Our great crew stopping for lunch. From the left Josh, Kody, Randy, Mindy, Jared,

Justin, Cameron, Bryan. They got a lot done in a short amount of time!
So once the purlins were in place the next step was to put up decking. Cameron and Bryan got the safety equipment out and climbed up to get started.

The first piece goes up!



At this rate, we may get things covered before it snows.
Now you can really see what the profile of the finished cabin will be.

Winterizing???

So, I'm thinking that we're going to the cabin to cover things up for the winter. When I arrive this morning the crew decided to put up more posts out front on the deck. You can see the plastic covering the windows, and now all seven posts are in place.

I know you are probably counting and saying she's crazy there are only six posts there. The seventh is in the middle and only goes up as far as the bottom of the deck. There will be stairs coming down there as you come out the front door.

Josh couldn't quite reach the rope to untie it from the forklift when he was in the boom, so he climbed onto the forks of the forklift. He started breathing again when he was back in the boom!

The last purlin was placed on the outside of the northeast side of the cabin. Now the decking for the roof could be put up on that side.

The last post going up!!!

The view from the road as we were leaving. Sorry it is so blurry. I was having issues with my camera, so I took this with my phone. We have had a lot of fun this fall building the cabin. We appreciate the time that everyone has spent at the cabin so we could get as far as we have this fall. It has gotten cold, wet and muddy, so I think that we really are about done for this year. There may be a few more little things that we can do, and a bit more winterizing. But no roof for now. When I look back at the pictures from the beginning, we really have accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. I'm sure there will be trips up the canyon during the winter to check on things and hopefully to have some fun playing in the snow. Afterall, Randy and I have new snowshoes to try out and I'm thinking we have to check out the hills for tubing!

Good News, Bad News

Well, the good news first. We found out that at Scofield they get fluffly soft snow that will be really good for playing in during the winter. The bad news, we found this out before the roof was put on!

We arrived at the cabin this morning to find about six inches of snow on the stairs and in the great room. It had drifted into the downstairs bedrooms too. It took us a couple of hours to get it all shoveled off.
I've shoveled a lot of snow, but never out of a house!

Randy getting the snow off the cement out front.

There were some little tracks in the snow. I don't know what they were from, but I hope they got out of the cold! Hopefully it will warm up this weekend and we can get things ready for winter.

A Room With A View

The last wall is now in place. It was a major step in getting ready to place the last beam for the roof. This back wall is mostly windows so that we have a great view to the mountain. It doesn't look like it would be very hard to do because there are so few logs, but they were very labor intensive logs.

With the boom there I decided to take advantage of it on Friday and start chinking (putting the stuff inbetween the logs to keep out cold air, water, etc) up high. Randy stayed safely on ground level and took these pictures.

The chinking continued on Saturday.

Mindy and Jen chinking. Jane arrived to help also.

Zac, Isaac and Brancen did a great job helping Grandma on her side!

Isaac and Trevin found a rope dangling from the second level and thought it looked like fun to play with. Trevin couldn't quite reach it so . . . . .

Isaac gave him a boost!


The fireplace wall was put up on the second level. This is the second contact point for the big beam running front to back. Now only one more contact point out front on the deck to go and the crane can come up to help us raise the beam up. It was a great day Saturday and we accomplished much!

Almost there!

We got the beam up on the other side and all of the purlins set. Now we have

two thirds of them ready for decking.

Okay, Cameron and Josh said that since I showed the hole in the floor that the beam made when it got dropped, I had to show my mistake! One of my jobs on Friday and Saturday was to put the half logs in between the purlins. They are set on an angle so that when the decking is nailed to the top of the purlin there is not a gap. It was rather difficult to keep the log in place as it has to kind of sit on an angle towards the back of the log below and flush with the purlin. There is glue there too making it a little slippery. Then it has to be screwed down. This particular log had given me fits for quite a while. First it was too long and had to be cut off, then it was too tall and Randy had to cut some more off the top so it would'nt stick up too high. Finally it fit in place, but kept sliding down. Finally I got one screw in the right place and thought I had the other two in good until Saturday morning when Josh and Cameron noticed my two screws that didn't make the correct angle into the log below! I'll be correcting that this Saturday!

Lael and Dave came to check on the progress of the cabin.

Getting the beam into place for the rest of the purlins on the southwest side.

Slowly, but surely!

Each day bring us one step closer to the roof. And each day of warmer than normal weather is a great help too! Friday when Randy and I went up, the southwest side looked like this.

We wanted to finish the triangle so that when the crew came up on Saturday we could get the this side's roof purlins up and in place.

We accomplished our goal!

The septic tank got delivered and is in the process of being hooked up. It should get burried sometime this week.

Lots to catch up on

So much has happened at the cabin in the past few days. It might take a couple of posting to get you up to speed.

Thursday Kody and Randy went up and unloaded the last truck full of logs. Hopefully this will be enough to finish since this is a figure out what exactly we need as we go project! They were able to work on some more of the walls upstairs in the bedrooms.The excavator was there digging the holes for the septic tank and drain field. This is a great time to get these in so we won't have to fight the wetness of spring. If next spring is as wet as this past winter/spring, we may not have been able to get the septic tank in until July!

Septic Tank Hole

Drain Field

The plan is to have the septic tank delivered on Monday the 2oth, Inspected on Tuesday and then burried on Wednesday. The best news about this is that first thing next spring we can hook up a real toilet in the cabin and not have the "Honey Bucket" on the property!! I'd insist on one next week, but I don't want the freezing issues to deal with this winter.

Friday Justin, Randy and I went up and continued working on the bedroom walls upstairs. We had a great assembly line going - once we could keep the chain saws running!

Friday Morning's wall height


Friday afternoon's wall height. It made it this tall in the back also. which you can't see.

Randy Josh and Cameron headed up early Saturday morning. I stayed to get the store open and a few thing done (like shop for food for lunch!) Jen and Jane and I drove up to fix lunch and see what we could do to help. As we were coming down the road and could start to see the cabin through the now leaf-less trees this was the sight we saw!

The beam was in place to start the purlins for the roof on the one side! It was awesome to drive up and see that sight!!It was quite the process to get the purlins in place. There was only one mishap, and that happened before the crowd got there to watch. The main beam got out of balance on the forklift and fell from the top and went through the tongue and groove floor of the second level and crashed through the floor of the main level to the basement! It was a good thing we weren't there preparing lunch yet!

The hole in the tongue and groove, covered up with a peace of plywood on top.

There is a lot to show about getting ths purlins up so I'm going to show you it in a slide presentation.

We appreciate Jared, Mickey and Cooper coming up to help on Saturday. Even Lofi got into the action! It was a great day to get much accomplished. Maybe winterizing at least the two sides isn't so far away afterall! Keep your fingers crossed for good weekend weather.