Now is the winter of my discontent .......

Not a good week. I was hoping to lift the roof timbers and put them in place this week but the crane is not available until the coming Tuesday. Some work was done to prepare the timbers and do other small, tedious tasks but, really, it was mainly a frustrating week that has come at the end of a number of weeks when more could have been achieved while the weather was good.

The weather has turned and as I write there is more than a foot of snow sitting on the cabin and it is still falling. To make it worse, it is wet, heavy snow that is impossible to push more that a couple of feet before it gets too heavy to move with a snow shovel. It will take three or four man hours of hard labour to shift it. And shift it I must before it either freezes to the logs and sub-flooring or melts and soaks everything through. The sub-flooring has already suffered some damage and I want to keep further damage to the absolute minimum.

I had it coming really. The weather so far this winter had been ridiculously mild with (frankly) very little snow. So there is a sting in this winter's tail after all.

The choice to build over the winter always carried a risk and on balance I have been very lucky. If I had delayed starting the build until the Spring of 2012, I would probably have spent the time travelling and exploring North America and probably Mexico as well and despite my best intensions I would undoubtedly have eaten into my meagre capital, which would have had serious consequences for this project. So, given the constraint of arriving in BC in August, I think I made the right decision to start the build in 2011 and have been very fortunate.

A conventional build would also have been quicker and would probably have been close to completion by now but that was a compromise I was not prepared to entertain. The dream was always a log cabin and life has already killed too many dreams.

A second footing for a post in the garage to support the garage ceiling and the roof above the room above the garage - got that? Two days hard labour!

The roof timbers cleaned and cut ready to lift in place ON TUESDAY. The logs at the gable ends will overhang the gables by 21 inches (the roof SIPs will overhang 2 feet). Each one (seven in total including the dormers), like the prow gable you can see in the middle above, will have an eye-ring in it. I have decided to put these in for future use as a belay point for safety when either cleaning windows or refreshing the log protection finish.

As I mentioned last week, mild weather can bring the bears out of hibernation in winter and before the latest snow arrived John, the homeless man, spotted a very large black bear near his camper. I am told this is unusual as normally it is grizzlies that come out. Anyway John is safe but sadly no photos.

The snow arrived on Friday evening and I was just putting the finishing touches to the steel bars in the latest footing for the second garage post when a friend decided to pay me a visit. It was none other than Ron Cavers, who house-sits for the Brit who owns the only other log cabin on this development. Ron invited me to join him, and about a hundred or more others, for a fund raising charity sled (skidoo) ride on Saturday on the other side of Cranbrook. The only hitch was that I would have to haul the trailer with the two skidoos on it. No problem I thought and agreed to go up to Ron's place and load up the trailer with the sleds that evening. About five hours later after much ado with grease guns, spanners and wrenches, it became obvious that we were probably not going to make it. The trailer was playing up - not all the lights were working, the jack support was broken and it was looking doubtful whether the jeep tires were up to being able to haul it all up the steep icy slope out of Ron's place. On top of that, Ron's skidoo was also playing up and appeared to be losing coolant as fast as we put it in and we couldn't see where it was all going or coming out. At nine thirty, covered in snow and ice, we called it a day and agreed a decision point for the next morning after a few hours rest and daylight that would hopefully help us solve some of the problems. I drove back to my accommodation in a snow storm and was grateful to get back without incident.

Next morning Ron called early to say that he didn't think going to the charity event was on but that we should go for a sled ride locally. I was a bit relieved myself as the roads were really bad and I thought we could have just as much fun in our local wilderness. So I went up to Ron's place and again after an hour or so of much fiddling about we set off on his two skidoos.

We rode a few miles up into the mountains to a small temporary cabin built and used by some of the locals as a survival refuge and general meeting place, where Ron (pictured above) and I had a beer and we roasted some sausages on the wood burning stove.

We had only been there about 20 minutes when we heard the distance drone of skidoos, which quickly got louder and louder. Within a couple of minutes Marilyn and Joanne appeared and joined us for a drink and a drive around the woods in the afternoon. I think they had come to check up on us to make sure we were OK. I am serious. They knew we were going up there and that Ron's skidoo was dodgy. That's what people do here - look out for each other. As it was, Ron's skidoo only played up a little bit and we all had fun and got back safely but, thank you ladies.

For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;

The weather continues to hold and we have wasted little time continuing to prepare for putting the roof timbers in place. We finished rebuilding the prow ready for its cross beam and we have built two gables, one for the kitchen wall and one to support the roof beam in the room above the garage at the intersection with the main cabin. To complete this work I also put in the solid blocking between the flooring and the beam below, supporting the garage ceiling, to ensure there is solid wood from ground to roof beam.

We have also built (partially in some cases) the side walls for the dormers. These will support the beams and SIPs for the dormer roofs. They have given a much better feel for how big all the upstairs rooms will be which, is much smaller than they have appeared up until now. With each step we get a little closer to being able to put the posts and beams in place but for this we are dependant on the availability of the crane to do the lifting. It would be nice to have the crane come this week and to get the framing in place. Then we can do the final measurements for the SIPs and get them ordered.

I have also been busy rubbing down the posts that will support the roof beams, before they are put in place.  I have done four and there is one more to do. They normally take about and hour and half each to finish and one sand belt should be enough for about four posts - depending on whether or not there is any sap in the wood. Sap quickly renders the sand belt useless and at $3.00 a belt it can be an expensive exercise. Put together, this week's work brings the roof a little closer.

I am continuing to press for more human resources to contribute towards getting all the work done that is needed to achieve lockup. There is still much to do and the weeks are slipping by. It would be nice to have the place in a condition to receive guests in the summer, even if it is not totally finished. The winter, even the mild one we are having at the moment, still slows things down considerably and also imposes limitations on what can achieved on a limited budget. With an unlimited budget virtually all the challenges of winter can be overcome but, of course, I don't have that luxury. There may yet also be a sting in the tail of this winter and that is a nagging worry that lurks in the background, waiting to pounce unexpectedly and unwanted.

We are all also feeling the strains of working long hours through the winter.  Muscles and joints are sore, cuts and bruises are taking longer to heal, cold injures are beginning to take their toll and outside pressures chipping away at morale. But a grim determination has also set in and each fall of snow or small setback is met with a hardening resolve to face every challenge with a positive attitude that there is always a way to achieve what we want to achieve and to overcome any hurdle. I don't dwell on what has happened, only why and how it can be overcome.

Last week I promised you a close up of these bad boys. They are monsters but will look magnificent when they are in place.

The dormer stud walls in place, here for the en suite bathroom for the main bedroom.

The kitchen and garage gables in place - all my own work.

A view of the south wing of the top floor with the dormer stud walls.

And finally, the prow finished ready for the beam. I think this feature is going to exceed my expectations of it. It already has a really impressive feel to it and it is not hard to imagine the finished room within.

With a town nearby, a road to it and car to drive there, it is easy to forget that a natural and wild world exists all around me and, living here in the fringes of the wilderness sometimes allows an opportunity to witness nature in its rawest and cruelest state. It reminds me that I am in the midst of an environment that in many ways is hardly touched by man's intrusion through it. The natural order of things in this wilderness is barely interrupted by man. The daily ritual between predator and prey that has existed here for millennia is still played out without emotion in the struggle to survive. The cougar, the wolf, the coyote, the lynx and bobcat still have to hunt to survive and their prey, the deer, the moose, the elk, the caribou still live in more mortal fear of them than they do of man. Even the seemingly heavy toll of the hunting season barely interrupts this natural order of things and the winter serves only to make it more difficult for both and to bring it closer to where I can see it.

Over the last few weeks I have been privileged to witness some of this nature in action. I had the rare and unexpected pleasure of witnessing the pair of eagles, on whose territory I live, mating to produce this year's offspring. There have been huge herds of two to three hundred elk down from the mountains to feed on the valley pastures. Wild turkeys by the dozen, now grown to full size lurk around the field edges and the barking of coyotes reaches through the still and frosty morning air as they wait patiently behind the eagles for their turn to feed on the dead carcass of an elk out on the ice of the frozen lake beneath my cabin. The warm periods have seen the chipmunks and other squirrels emerge from their winter dens, where they have been hibernating, in search of food buried in the autumn. The occasional growl of an unseen animal at the cabin, when I am there alone, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I pause for a moment to think how far it is to my car and my rifle and whether I can get there before whatever it is gets to me. With the mild weather it won't be long before the bears come out of hibernation, some may even get up now and go back to sleep if it gets cold again. Either way, they will stay at lower altitudes until the snow on the mountain tops melts and the high pastures offer an abundance of food for them and their new cubs.

And along side this, man's social rituals must also go on. I went to a garage party last night with a few of my new mates for beer and wings. I wore my best (cleanest) jeans and a denim shirt, slightly worried that I might be under-dressed - silly me.

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

We have worked hard all this week under good weather and we should really have more to show for it than we actually have. On Monday we started cutting some of the roof timbers but this was stopped in order to get on with the two gable ends still required to put up the roof beams. That is the gable over the prow and the one over the north (kitchen) end of the main cabin.

We got the prow gable about 2/3 finished when Dexter, who was building it, noticed that something was wrong. The logs on either side of the prow were not lining up with the ones in the centre. On closer examination of the situation we realised that there was an even more serious error. We were building the prow gable at the wrong vertical angle, only a degree or two out but, enough to affect how the SIPs would eventually sit on the framework.

For those interested, we were building it at an angle of 45 degrees which, is the angle for the cross section of the centre line to maintain a 12:12 pitch roof. However, the prow pushes out, away from the perpendicular cross section and therefore the base and hence the hypotenuse of the triangles on each side of the prow are extended and hence the angle of rise is slightly less than 45 degrees. Sustaining a 45 degree angle meant that we would have reached the top of the pitch before arriving at the centre line thus preventing the SIPs from resting on the central beam. So, we had to take it all down and start again. This time we put a string line from the top to bottom to follow as we built the prow and this is making sure that we keep the correct angle as we go up.

For the kitchen gable we discovered that we would need solid wood support down to concrete on the foundation walls and in the garage. I got on with this and it required moving my pantry door 12 inches to the left, putting in the fir post, putting solid beams between the kitchen wall and the utility wall, which will require a solid post to the garage floor when it has been concreted.

We also dug a hole in the garage floor for the footing for the central post that is required to support the post above it in the room above the garage that will support the roof timbers there. This was difficult, to put it mildly, as the garage floor is currently frozen solid to a depth of about 10 inches and it was like trying to pick and hammer our way through reinforced concrete. It took us a day and a half to get it done.

Having put the window frames in we started on the log work. The central column went in straight forwardly enough and you can see Dexter screwing one of the outside log pieces in place. The prow is surprisingly stable and solid and this is due to the angle it is set at and the binding of the two halves in the centre.

It was at this stage that we realised that something was wrong and both outside columns had to be dismantled and rebuilt. 

With string lines in place - you can just make them out if you look hard enough - this is what it looks like now with both sides back up to the middle posts. So we are almost up to where we were on Thursday.

And from the outside it actually looks quite impressive.

In the kitchen, the pantry door has been moved a foot to the left and this beautiful fir post put in place to support the gable above it. The post will be a feature in the kitchen.

In the utility area you can see the beams I have put in place and the solid wood coming down on the left hand side. This will have to be extended down to floor level in the garage once the concrete is laid there.

Now look here. This hole took Matt and me a day and a half to dig, hacking our way through the frozen earth with a pick axe, sledge hammer and our bare fingers - so you are jolly well going to have to look at it and marvel at its beauty and technical excellence - without whinging. Most of the stones came out broken, breaking before the ice would release them.

Last week I visited a local cadet unit in Cranbrook with a view to offering my services to them once the house is built and I am settled. I was well received and met many of the officers and supporting staff. It was a pleasant surprise therefore to meet the Commanding Officer and his 2IC (his wife) at the theatre in Fort Steele last night. Their daughter was performing in the gala show that was put on to raise money for refurbishing the seats in the theatre stalls. The gala was a bit of a cross between a nineteenth century music hall concert and a modern variety performance. All the performers were amateurs (I think) but that is not to say there was any shortage of talent or originality, with some of the acts deliberately, wonderfully corny. I took along my next door neighbour at the cabins, Tex, and we came away agreeing that we had been well entertained and that there was some seriously good talent amongst the performers. I look forward to seeing more of what the Kootenays have to offer in the way of the performing arts.

When I left England I was concerned that one of the things that I would miss most about the old country would be the performing arts, in particular the theatre and the opera. I was rather spoilt in Salisbury, which has three professional stages and at least one amateur. Last night helped to allay some of those fears. There is no shortage of will or talent here and if the resources are meagre I am sure there is the potential to over come that and I am sure there is sufficient interest in the local population to support a few performances every year. I am quite minded, once the cabin is built and I am settled, to throwing a considerable part of my energies into contributing to the performing arts here.

Count Your Blessings

Sometimes small things can be significant and so it has seemed this week. The timber for the roof framing has finally all made it to the site. About time too you may be thinking and I wouldn't disagree. It has taken three weeks and a small comedy of errors, with someone else's timber being given to us by mistake and having to be taken back.  I was hoping to see some of it cut this week but that didn't happen and instead we made a start on the sub-flooring for the top floor and this weekend I added a few bits and pieces to the main floor level, now that there is a bit of cover over it.

I also got agreement for a target date of May 15 for the completion of the work to 'Lock Up'. 'Lock Up' is what I have contracted for with the current Contractor and essentially means the outside of the building is finished complete with roof, windows, doors, decks, exterior finishing and including sewer, electricity and water connection but less any ground work such as extending the driveway to the house and garage.  Internally, it includes stairs and sub-flooring but little else.  As an incentive, I have offered the prospect of more work if the deadline is met.

The first load of roofing timbers arrives from the mill - Monday.

This is what they looked like unloaded.

Load number two on Tuesday.

Loads three and four - Wednesday and Thursday. The really large and heavy timbers are directly in front of the garage doors and sadly the photograph doesn't do them justice. I'll try to take some more shots of them next week so you can have a better feel for their size and weight. I am sure the largest is well over a metric tonne. They were put on the trailer with the use of a mechanical lifter and the only way we could get them off was to put short round rollers under them and roll one end of them off the trailer and then drive the trailer away.

On Thursday the top floor was also prepared for the sub-flooring (stacked) by removing most of the temporary OSP sheeting that was put in place for building the gable and dormers.

By sundown on Friday (actually mid afternoon when the workers went home for the weekend - I stayed until last light tidying up and preparing for the weekend's work) the sub-flooring for the master bedroom and on-suite bathroom was in place. The OSP boards in the foreground and on the right of the picture over the entrance will not be replaced with sub-flooring. In these areas the finished flooring of fir tongue and groove will be placed directly on to the beams and will be visible from below. There is no requirement for sound proofing insulation over the entrance and across the landing and therefore it will be a feature to see the fir boards from below. In all other areas a sound proofing layer will be placed between the main floor and the top floor. This is to ensure that the heavy snoring (or other noises) of visitors in the bedrooms doesn't interrupt my enjoyment of Mozart, Verdi and others on the ground floor. 

With reasonable cover for the main floor in place, over the weekend I put up some stud walling.  Here a cupboard/closet at the entrance for hats, coats, boots etc that will also serve to shape the entrance and protect the main floor space from the elements when the front door is open. The far end of this closet (where the snow shovel is) will also serve as a conduit space for services (water, electricity and sewer) for the south side of the top floor.

On this side of the stairwell I have put a full height stud wall. I am developing plans for this space and am considering a utility room and storage area. On the entrance side I am minded to keep the stud wall at half height to afford a view into the main living area on entering the cabin. There is room there for a bench or table and chairs.

The two stud walls seen from the study and ...

... the entrance, seen from the main living area. I won't put any of the doors or walls on the stud walling until after the roof is on and the wiring and plumbing have been inspected. There is nothing to stop me, however, from making the doors and paneling in readiness for putting them in.

Finally, I decided that, as the sub-flooring is in place and affords better protection for the main floor, I should sheet the window spaces with plastic to give it even more protection but, still allow in the light. I am sure that I will not regret the small expense of doing this.

As I was coming close to finishing building the stud walling the cordless screwdriver I was using slipped and the screw bit screwed itself into the index finger of my left hand. I was wearing fingerless gloves at the time and my fingers were frozen. I looked down and could see the damage but there was no blood and I felt no pain, so I carried on.  About a minute later and with little warning the blood suddenly gushed out and the pain arrived with a great fanfare, so I took myself off to the car where I keep the first aid kit for just such occasions (a toilet roll and some duct tape) and applying as much pressure as I could, I managed to stem the flow of the red stuff if not the throbbing. I finished the job just before the bandaging burst and had to be replaced.

That done, I got on with covering the windows. I was walking over to get some baton wood from the cast offs wood pile and was just thinking how icy it was and that this was just the sort of conditions that warrant me putting on my mini crampons when suddenly, I went arse over tit and landed on my coccyx. Unfortunately, my butt wasn't frozen and the pain was immediate and excruciating. It was so intense that I couldn't move at first and lay on the ice for a full minute writhing in agony and thinking that I had seriously hurt myself and with no-one else within several miles it crossed my mind that I might be in a spot of trouble. I then reminded myself that if I had really done myself serious injury, worthy of such concern, then I probably wouldn't be in such pain and I probably wouldn't be able to feel or move my legs. So telling myself that the ones making the most noise are probably the least injured and with a final flourish of uncharacteristic colourful language, I slowly turned myself over, raised myself onto all fours and gradually stood up and proceeded to walk it off.

After a few minutes I was back up the ladder hammering nails in as if there was no tomorrow when, I felt the ladder start to go. I froze and the ladder stopped, so I gingerly climbed down and tried to hammer the ladder into the ice to give it a better grip and in doing so smashed one of the plastic feet. F??? it I thought, and with that I red carded myself on grounds of lack of concentration, which might end in further injury, and retired for an early bath and a spot of blog writing.

As I lay in the bath, trying not to sit on my coccyx, soaking up the heat from the water, I reflected that it hadn't been a bad week.  The roof timbers were finally on site, we had made a good start on the sub-flooring of the top floor, I had managed to put up some good stud walls and put up some window covers and that really I should count my blessings. It could have been a lot worse.