Working not partying

Apologies for the lack of anything last weekend, especially to all those who eagerly look forward each week to a new posting from me . The week before, some friends, who had outstanding work in Northern Alberta, needed help and so I went up to Fawcett Lake to give a hand. I didn't get back until Tuesday and not only missed doing the blog posting at the usual time but lost more than a week's worth of work on my place. So there wasn't anything to write about anyway.

Rumours that I was in Los Vegas partying with the son of the Colonel in Chief of the Army Air Corps are completely unfounded and I hope all the photos on the internet and in the Sun newspaper bear witness to the fact that I wasn't naked ….. I mean I wasn't there. I don't have any photos of Northern Alberta to show you either, so you will just have to take my word for it. I was however, working as hard as HRH was partying and we put in ten, twelve and even one fourteen hour day. As a result, I came back pretty well exhausted and still haven't really caught up.

I got straight back into the swing of things here and although it was a short week have accomplished quite a lot, finishing the deck framing, starting to lay the actual decking boards and one final half day logging to make sure we now have all the freely collectable materials we need to complete the decks. We will still need to buy some stuff (more decking and square timber for the covered deck roof framing) but at least there is plenty of stuff to be getting on with.

The lower deck framing all in place. Making sure all the posts were in line, upright and the joists were level was a major pain but the final result was satisfying.

So this is how it all looks now, starting from the front door, ...

… going around the first corner to the south side of the cabin ...

… and peaking around the southeast corner to the main deck area.

Then looking northeast along the main deck ...

… and from the kitchen corner looking south, back to the main deck ...

… and then turning around to look towards the garage and the kitchen door. The lower deck is over 1100 square feet and there is at least another 400 square feet on the upper level yet to be framed. So quite a bit of work to do yet on the decking. 

Finally, from the kitchen door looking towards the main deck. 

Steps will come off the deck opposite the kitchen door and in one place off the main deck on the southeast side. Latticework will hide the underside of the decking.

The decking itself is 1 x 6 inch fir, seasoned for more than two years. That means that it is very dry and hard and all the screw holes have to be pre-drilled to avoid the wood splitting. As two screws are required for each joist that means a lot of drilling and screwing. What did we do before power tools? There are over 600 screws required for the front deck alone.

You will notice that the last two rows of deck planks have not been layed. This is to leave room for the posts to be inserted and fixed to the framing and this will all become apparent as the posts, railings and spindles go up. As you can also see from this photograph, the colour of the fir deck boards is very attractive and I shall be applying a transparent wood stain to try to keep the grain at least from being hidden.

Most deck planks in Canada are layed tight up against one another but I have elected to have a small gap between them in order to allow dust and water to be cleared off between the boards.

The stain for the window trimming, internal flooring and the deck has been ordered and is awaiting collection at the shipping office in Eureka across the 'line'. I went down on Saturday to pick it up only to find, once again, that it was closed and so I will go down during the coming week. I took the opportunity however to visit the Builders 'Center' and found some solid fir quarter light doors on special offer and am seriously considering them for two out of the three entry doors, that being the main entrance, which will have a side light, the garage entrance and the kitchen door.  For the kitchen I would prefer a barn,or dutch door as the call them here, where the top half can open separately while the bottom remains closed to keep the critters out.

Talking of critters I saw a baby skunk the other day and thought it was cute until I reminded myself how unsociable they can be. On my way up north I also saw some bears including a grizzly, which was a first for me.

The quote we received for the roof was a bit on the high side and therefore we have called for another and someone is coming out tomorrow to have a look. I am hoping Owen will sub-contract the whole roof to him and that he gets started as soon as possible. Roofers are hard to come by at the moment because about a month ago there was a tremendous hale storm in Southern Alberta that damaged thousands of roofs and therefore materials as well as trained manpower is in high demand.