Building Our Own Home the Hard Way (With Five Beer Drinkers)

Douglas Robert Denison

Copyright 2014 J. K. Eckert and Company, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright laws.

Susanna Lagoon ™ Books

An imprint of J. K. Eckert and Company, Inc.

Nokomis, FL 34275

www.jkeckert.com

ISBN: 978-0-9913571-0-9

Photos and text by Douglas R. Denison

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to my crew:

Mr. Fish, Alberta Bob, Kokanee, Labatts, Molson, Moosehead, Pilsner, Curly (the one with no hair), and Frenchy. I started looking for men in Vancouver, but they wanted me to pay for their ferry fees, room and board. (What is that all about?) I then called the local high school in the area; the school master placed a note on a bulletin board. That got me two rather strong, young, and well-mannered young men. Well, we all know I needed experienced workers, so off to everyone’s favorite local bar. There was only one. I asked the bartender if I could make a plea for workers. He said he would do it. He yelled out, “Whoever wants work, see Denison here at the bar. Whoever he accepts will get a free beer.” I didn’t remember saying that part about the beer, but whatever works, right? I ended up hiring five beer drinkers and bought each of them, you guessed it, a beer. Frenchy, a local unemployed logger, just popped up at the site one day looking for work. So now I had eight workers. Of course everyone out of employment tried to beat each other to sign up, which was about 90 percent of the whole bar. That was about thirty people, including two women, one of which was pregnant. I asked questions like, “What experience do you have? How much money were you expecting per hour? Do you have a car or tools? How’s your health? When is the baby due, etc.?”

One guy had an old van and agreed to pick up all his beer-drinker friends. Alberta Bob said he needed a pair of work boots. I looked down and he didn’t even have shoes on. He lived in the back of a pickup truck in a camper in the bar parking lot. On top of that there was over one foot of snow on the ground. He walked in his bare feet to the bar just to bum a beer and a bag of potato chips for dinner.

The next day I picked him up because I always went to Sechelt for my usual coffee and omelet. Of course, Alberta Bob didn’t have a lunch or a coat. I bought him breakfast and then we found a store. I bought him a pair of work boots and a sandwich for his lunch. I gave him one of my old coats, plus he just had to have cigarettes. (I have always been a sucker for the downtrodden.) Oh, and I might add, he had no heat in his camper, so we went to the service station to fill up his little propane tank, which I paid for. I didn’t know he had a girlfriend living with him inside the camper. I wonder what she had for diner. He worked very hard that day. The guy with the van ran him back to town that evening after work.

The next day I went to pick him up and the camper was gone. His girl friend had hot-wired the pickup before he got off work the first day and took off. The bartender let him sleep in the atrium of the bar. He worked for about two weeks. He found out where his girl friend was and took off, never to be seen again. I held back from his pay what he owed me, and I let him keep the old sheepskin coat.

All the other workers lived on welfare or had money coming in every month from Mom/Dad. What these guys used their cash for--you guessed it--beer, chips, and peanuts. They wouldn’t take a check. How do you write a check to guys with those inventive handles (names)? If you pay your workers under so much a week, you didn’t need to report it. They made sure they didn’t go over that amount. Most worked off and on for all three years as I needed them. The night before I wanted them, I would leave a message at the bar. At least one would show up and pass the word. I never could count on all of them at once. However, when they did show up, most of the time it was freezing, snowing, raining, and the work was heavy and dangerous. When our home was completed, my first wife and I went to the bar one night with another married couple. The bartender gave us free drinks and all we could eat from the soup and salad bar. He thanked me profusely for hiring all those guys. He said they all came in and paid their old bar bills and remained steady customers. One of the men worked as a janitor for that bar, which was enough to always cover his beer and food.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks go out to the doe and her fawn who lost their deer run right where our new house was built and had to go around. Mother bear and her two cubs dragged eight of the neighbors’ garbage cans up to our lot for their lunch and dinners and drank the beer out of the half empties. Now they too had to circle around us. They all got back at us by leaving their deposits in my second wife’s lawn, flower beds, and driveway.

Oh, the deer ate all my strawberries and should have eaten my corn. You will find out later in the book why they didn’t. Fuzzbutt got tons of peanuts. I hope he was thankful for us furnishing him numerous new locations for his stockpiles. He got so many peanuts he was able to afford two female friends and liters every year. The baby skunk was partly responsible for the divorce with my first wife; I had a choice, her or the skunk. These critters all made enormous sacrifices of which I am truly thankful.

Douglas, the author, designer, contractor, carpenter, mason, and shop-vac operator.

Precision log home builders will have a good laugh over this project, I am sure, and they would not have used our ragtag logs. We couldn’t afford one of those beautiful log home packages, so we did it the ‘Hard Way.’

Map of the Sunshine Coast

The Sarah Palin cross hairs mark the location of our new home. We were situated one hundred and eighty feet above high tide. We could look directly north up the center of the Sechelt Inlet and directly south over the town of Sechelt, the Strait of Georgia, and Vancouver Island, B.C. Canada. If we were just a little higher, we could have seen the night lights of Seattle.

Introduction

Well, here we go. (The picture says December 1991.) My first wife and I bought the acre-and-a-half of land about one year before this. Now we are determining where we would like to position the house. Taking advantage of the million-dollar view meant everything to us, so we located an area where we thought we would destroy the least amount of trees. It was very difficult for my wife to work her way around the sloping hillside. It was very thick with ground cover. The moss-covered rocks were very slippery, and there were holes where one could break a leg. We both decided not to level the lot as most people would have, and we wanted to utilize the logs and stone off the property and to make the structures blend into the hillside without destroying any more of the lot and remaining trees than necessary.

We laid out a grid ten feet between string lines going north-south, and another grid perpendicular, going east-west. Even though there were numerous trees in the way, we improvised the best we could. We plotted all the trees on the grid drawing, and determined what trees might be within the house area and to about three feet outside of the house. The idea was, we would remove trees too close to the house later on, once the framing was completed, and we could look out of the window openings to see whatever there was to see.

From one station point I used my hand-held eye level, and my wife would tie a ribbon at the designated level I spotted on each tree. There was virtually nowhere to set up a tripod contractor’s level, and the eye level was “Close enough for Government Work.” Once that was accomplished, I measured from the ribbon to ground level. My wife would locate that measurement on our sketch of the plot plan that showed the grids and tree locations, and that is how we established the contours and grades. Now if our deer and bear wandered about and destroyed our strings, we were okay; we had a record. We went back to the drawing board and transferred all this information on paper. That site layout showed the placement of the building structures on the lot, the contours, and the tree locations, which became a part of the permit set two years later.

I took hundreds of pictures of this house as construction proceeded--as I did for all my projects--many for the building inspectors and the engineers who needed a record that things were carried on as per the ‘Uniform Building Code.’ There were many times they couldn’t be there to make their inspections. This is allowed once they gain your trust. (Aside from the head of the building department, there was only one inspector available out in our huge resort area. Actually, the poor young building inspector was spread too thin. It is a little easier for him if he has qualified, knowledgeable contractors to look after. It is the ‘want-a-be’ builders that took up a lot of his time.

Our engineer was in Vancouver, where I left him a set of preliminary drawings to review. He added notes all over my drawings regarding beam and post sizes, and he prepared a letter for the building inspection department complete with the calculations. The engineer was only able to come out half way through construction for an ‘Inspection to Cover’ any time we changed something, and that was often. We faxed him. On his final inspection, he produced the final engineer’s ‘sign-off letter’ for the building department. It was required before we could get occupancy. The engineer and his wife spent the weekend with us in our new home and charged us a ridiculously low price for his services. I had done some design work for his new home and worked with him for several years on many, many sizable projects.

I hope you enjoy the stories and the pictures. There may be a picture or three that are not too clear but relay something important for your information should you ever build your own home. I have completed many wonderful projects through the years. This house was one of them, a real kick. Note, I was not trying to win any photographic awards. The conditions were awful, what with the fog, rain, snow, and campfire smoke. Sorry about the black and white pictures, but costs were an issue.

So, you pretty well have to throw the book away on standard building practices and rewrite the book. You are reading it now.

--Douglas R. Denison

Building Our Own Home the Hard Way

This is the final result. The intent was to finish the carriage house up in the back as time and money allowed. We sold the house at this point. I will relay the sad decision to do that at the end of the book. All that was left to do on the big house was some staining on the trim and logs and to complete the interior trim in the basement.

After purchasing the lot in 1990, my wife and I were just too busy to start construction right away. She did her church volunteer work, her bridge parties, and just generally being the perfect housewife. Our three children were all grown-up, and all had their degrees and great jobs by then. I was the project manager of a high-rise in downtown Vancouver and then off to project manage a big time share hotel in the resort village of Whistler.

I whipped out drawings of our new one-level home. Once the drawings were at a point to price, I gave a copy to all my favorite subcontractors and suppliers. It took a few days to recover after the shock of the prices, and then I went back to the drawing board. When you are designing a new project, just do preliminary drawings, just enough to get your pricing. No need to spend big dollars for completed drawings and throw them in the round file because you can’t afford them. This time we went to a two-story home. This cut the excavation, foundation, and roof cost, in half because this house was not spread all over the top of the hill between the trees like the first plan. The price was still staggering, but at least obtainable, as long as I could scrounge up a lot of used building materials and supplied as much of my own labor as possible. Since the lot was sloping, we were able to add a daylight basement as a bonus, hence a three-and-a-half-story home at the back, facing the Sechelt Inlet.

The forty-five degree pitched roof allowed us to place a stairway to the second level reading loft on the left, connected by a bridge that looked down into the living room, entry, and dining room. To the right of the bridge and the massive king post we had a very large guest master bedroom suite, complete with its own sitting area, a walk-in closet, and another closet in the hallway for linens. The large bathroom had a Jacuzzi tub for two with a shower over that, a toilet, and a lav. Off that bedroom there was a large covered deck facing north to the snowcapped mountains and part of the inlet. There was a very large skylight over the entry that allowed morning sunlight over the stairs and the loft/hall and into the living room. There are many pictures of the interior rooms in this book.

As you entered the house on the main level, you looked under the upper bridge, through to the sunken living room, through the wall of glass to the west to see the inlet with the treed hills beyond, and I might add the sunsets were gorgeous. After going through the entry, you would turn left to the open bar-kitchen and on to the formal dining room and a very large covered deck facing south. From there we looked over the inlet and a small island, the town of Sechelt, the San Juan Straights, (part of the Pacific ocean), and on a very clear day we could see Vancouver Island. We’d watch the fireworks display on the first of July (Canada’s Independence Day) and the cruise ships on their way to Alaska and back. The last year we were in the house, there were over two hundred and eighty cruises a year. They were an enjoyable sight at night, with their enormous array of lights.

Upon entering the house on the main floor, you would pass the stairway and turn right at the king post and turn left into a huge master bathroom that doubled as a guest bath. Then there was the main floor master bedroom suite, with a sitting area and a very large walk-in California closet, complete with twenty-two lineal feet of rods, twenty-one feet for my wife, and twelve inches for my formal clothes. My casual clothes were in the upstairs bedroom and my work clothes were in a basement closet. My wife’s closet also included a lot of built-in drawers, shelves, and shoe racks. The view from the bedroom was west and north. Also to the right was a smaller guest bedroom (or office) with its own closet. This room was an extra bedroom for my first wife and an office for my second wife. When not being a housewife, my second wife wrote short stories for her grandchildren and stories about our numerous trips. Between the office and the main entry was a nice utility/sewing room and a stairway to the basement. I will get into describing the rooms in more detail under the pictures as the story unfolds.

From the entry one would turn right and right again to go down a stairway to the basement. The basement had a sunken fire pit large enough to seat twelve people. The wood stove in the pit could heat the whole house to a desired temperature in about forty-five minutes. The minute we entered the house we usually turned up the electric baseboard heaters (our back-up system) from 50°F to around 72° to 80°, depending on which wife was with me at the time. Then I would fire up the basement wood stove. We turned off the electric baseboard heaters once the wood stove kicked in. When I was off to do a few large projects in Seattle for two years, my second wife would use the baseboard heaters during the week, and I would light up the wood stove when I was there every Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, long holidays or time between projects. She was a little afraid of the wood stove (and any bug with more than two legs, or anything that slithers.) However, I always left her enough pitch-wood kindling and firewood for the fireplace in the living room out on the covered deck. We both enjoyed the snap, crackle, and pop and the smell of a cedar log on top of our Douglas fir logs every night.

Back to the basement. Aside from the sunken fire pit, there was a door leading south to the outside where the covered hot tub would have been installed some day and storage under the house for about ten cords of wood. The basement had a fireproof walk-in vault room lined with two layers of five-eighths drywall for our valuables, i.e., all my plans of projects, filing cabinets, etc. The pool table area was large enough for a small sitting room and two large book shelves and there was a small guest bedroom. Near the bedroom was a space for another bathroom; however the basement was an afterthought and was too low for gravity flow to the septic tank and would have required a pump. That too would have been another future project. There was also a very large open deck facing west. This was our only uncovered deck, a nice sunning deck, and completely private for our friends who liked to sunbathe in the buff.

The lot was fully treed, and off a well-maintained subdivision cul-de-sac, and a killer three-way view. We made our own view on the uphill side of the house. We added a waterfall, a reflecting pool, a spiral cedar shake wall on the side of the shop, and some flowers. There was also a beautiful moss-covered cliff about twenty-five to thirty feet high, and of course all the trees. All this was the view from the kitchen, the east side of the south deck, and the utility room window. The morning sun shown in these same windows and the roof skylight created a nice warm cheery feeling while sipping on a hot cup of coffee on the south deck or at the kitchen breakfast bar.

From the cul-de-sac we had an eighty-foot climb (drive) to the top of our cliff. With the high appraisal on the lot and my high salary, we were able to build the house for the price we told the bank. We took a year longer because I was doing a lot of the work myself. The bank didn’t like it, but what the hell. I am sure they liked the high interest they were charging us.

I started gathering up all the used materials I could find in dumpsters, etc., at my job sites in town about six months before we started construction. I arranged with my favorite lumberyard in North Vancouver for space to store all the stuff I could gather for our house. They had forklifts and trucks for our use if required, for a fee, of course. I had asked the company I worked for if I could have leftover stuff from projects. They said yes, as long as I paid for transportation. This saved them from paying the labor to have the stuff removed and brought to some other site or just have it all hauled to a dump. The forming contractor on the high-rise gave me truckloads of stuff, even plywood. Would you believe we received four hundred and eighty sheets of three-quarter inch pieces, ranging from quarter to full-size sheets? The lumber included some huge beams from all their other large job sites and their huge storage yard out in the country. None of the stuff was pretty, but it was okay with us. It was all going to be buried in the house anyway. Only the used windows were exposed. A few pieces of form plywood saturated in diesel were burned.

I asked every trade who had storage warehouses if they would like to clean out the stuff they had accumulated through the years. Everyone had something. The electrical sub-trade had thirty recessed lights from some project that had decided to go to something else entirely. The plumbing firm had a double Jacuzzi tub that some interior designer changed to a different color. It had not even been removed from the original crate. On and on, I will pass a few hundred more tidbits on how to save money throughout this text.

My first wife watched the ads for used items. She located an ad in the paper for a very large estate home that was remodeling its kitchen, the butler’s pantry, and numerous bathrooms. We got all the cabinets and vanities, appliances, a Jenn-Air cook top, a Jenn-Air drop-in stove with an oven below, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, two KitchenAid dishwashers, two hoods, two built-in wall ovens, (one was a dish-warming oven, or a bun warmer, whatever you prefer), two sink disposals, a very expensive stainless steel sink, and a micro-wave. A lot of the things didn’t even look used, like the expensive guest bathroom sink and toilet; there were faucets and fittings for all of the above, (very expensive). I think we paid one thousand five hundred dollars for the whole works. However, we had to pick the stuff up from their triple garage right away, oh well. It just so happened, all fifteen project managers and general superintendents for our company had company-owned pickups and SUVs. I had one of the pickups. I had to make three trips in my small pickup with the stuff my wife bought, and every weekend when we went to the site we would be carrying something we couldn’t buy out in the country. Of course all our trips to the house had to be made on a ferry. (I did pay for all the pickup truck gas and kept all the receipts for the company. In fact, I was using my own gas to do projects for the company for two of those years since they were nice enough to let me use the pickup.) Incidentally, lumber prices went through the ceiling when we were building this house. Cedar as much as doubled and tripled. I had expected to build our window frames out of two-by-eight cedar and ended up using clear vertical grain Douglas fir. It was much cheaper then. We went to Spruce flooring, not the Douglas fir we had planned on. (There is a small lesson to learn on that score later in the book.)

As we were gathering up all the materials we could get our hands on, we were doing our own surveying, getting the health department blessings, and building permit. Note : Before one gets a building permit, we needed to get a letter from the water department saying that water was available. Strange, the water department was in the same building and just across the hall from the building dept. They could have done that themselves. We were told the installation of the water meter would be six hundred dollars. When the meter was finally installed, we got a bill for nine hundred dollars. There of course was small print saying that they had the right to change their prices any damn time they wanted. We also had to pay a nine-hundred dollar ‘Street Damage Deposit,’ which we got back once we received the occupancy permit. They had our money for over three years. I asked if we got the interest they made on our money. I got a few laughs out of that one.

When I had arranged for the excavation company of our choice, (one of our company trades) I included in their contract: “When they came back to pick up their equipment, they would pick up all my stored lumber, plywood, etc. from the lumber company in West Vancouver and deliver it all out to the building site.” They split the five hundred dollars for the ferry with me and didn’t want any more money as long as they didn’t need to load and unload the materials. They had a huge semi-trailer for their monster excavator. No excavation company in Sechelt had a large enough machine to cut-in the road up the side of the rocky cliff to the house. They even had to do some blasting.

When it was all said and done, moving that huge load of lumber cost us eighteen hundred dollars, including the lumberyard storage fees and handling fees for the forklift and some trucking from the sites to the storage yard. So basically, I got about 75 percent of the lumber for the house for eighteen hundred dollars. The local lumberyards in Sechelt gave me prices on all the lumber and plywood for the house before we started. Their prices were 20 percent higher because of the ferry fees.

Of course we saved tens of thousands of dollars doing it my way. It took a little of my time to arrange all this, but I think it was definitely worth it. It was fairly easy since I worked with most of these people every day at my construction sites anyway. Not only were they happy to get rid of junk they were stuck with, but they got to clean out their warehouses and yards. We were doing them a great favor. Sure, I always offered to pay them something, but they would take a very small amount or nothing. All I had to do was pick up.

If you don’t know anyone in regard to all of the above, you can still make a few calls to distributors and say, “I am building my own home. Do you have anything sitting around you would like to get rid of?” If your wife is so inclined, she could make the initial call. If she gets a bite and she is very busy, you can take it from there. Even with all this, we still spent many thousands of dollars at the local lumberyard filling in missing lumber, paint, caulking, tar paper, hangers, lag bolts, nails, sanding belts, and about fifty chain saw chains and round files. I would not use the new building paper they use today. I am an eighty-pound tarpaper sort of guy, (some habits don’t change).

Note : I was involved in the internationally known investigation for the moisture/mildew problem Vancouver was having at that time, and we discovered that the other paper everyone used because it was cheaper, deteriorated over time, especially from the lime in stucco, allowing moisture into the walls. There used to be a saying back in the 50s that “Your house is only as good as the tar paper surrounding it.” How true that is even today. Shingles, stucco, stone, marble, and siding were only applied over the black tar paper because it was more aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but it was there to protect your tar paper as well. What really annoyed me was when siding crews beat the hell out of the building paper with their staplers and hammers. That was your protection. Look at any project where tar paper or any other moisture protection/vapor barrier material is being applied, and you will see what I mean.

We had no problem spreading our money among the local businesses. When this house was almost completed, everyone knew us in the little town. “Oh, you are the couple building that eccentric home overlooking the inlet in Sandy Hook.” There you go, now you know why we were known as the ‘Hookers.’

I am going to spread the rest of the story of building this house under each picture. As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I am not going to bother you with that nonsense. I’ll try to keep my stories short. Try to get through the humor, some things were not so funny at the time, but they are now. Like when I fell about ten feet off the living room floor backward onto a rock covered with six inches of moss, (thank God) even though I had my armor on. I had a tee shirt, a sweatshirt, a vest over that, another wool shirt and a thick coat and suspenders holding up my nail bags. I still broke two ribs. About six weeks after that I slipped on a rock near the entry to the house and cracked the same two ribs again. That was really funny. Of course, no one was around. I had an awful time trying to breathe. Both times I was able to drive the four minutes to town to get x-rayed at the local hospital. They constricted me with Ace bandages around my chest, and I went right back to work the same day, very slowly I might add.

It took the excavator ten days to work with me. We had to eyeball every possibility to making this road work and save as many trees as we could. I did the logging, bucked the trees, (de-limbed) them and the excavator or cat loader would drag or carry the logs up the hill to our two designated log sorting areas and at the same time try not to bruise or damage the logs, as they were all going to be worked into the two houses. Logs used for posts and beams were in one pile; exposed rafter and ridge logs were in another pile.

One of our log-sorting areas. This piece of equipment could remove a stump or large stones with no trouble at all. I always say, “If you want to do a job right, you need the right equipment, or if you have to drive a nail, use a hammer, not a frying pan.” My dad told me that one.

There was a local Cat operator who would come out to the site within an hour or so right after he was called. He unloaded and carried all the building materials up to the building site from the street in his track front-end loader. My little light pickup couldn’t even make it halfway up the first leg of the driveway because of the gravel being too fresh. We decided to have a local concrete crew come in the early spring. I just parked at the bottom of the hill or I drove up until I spun out for the first winter. I wanted this driveway to settle a few months first with the heavy rains and snow. Both the excavator and this loader went up and down numerous times through the winter. The front-end loader carried the best part of eight thousand bags of pre-mix-in-a-bag up the hill as well. The compaction of the new driveway was ready in the spring for concrete.

Before we did anything, we built this bunkhouse and toolshed just as winter was setting in. We needed a place to sleep over the weekends, holidays, and vacations, and we needed a lock-up for the tools, the grinder, chain saws, chain hoists, drills, nails, bolts, and such anyway. We built-in a nice double bed for my wife and I at the back. There was a small window over a sink that drained outside the wall. I had a bucket of water just for freshening up in the morning. There was also room for my drafting table, with a window facing the site. My wife stayed once. All she could do was complain about the nonexistent toilet facilities. She was afraid of our silly old black mama bear. There was a multipurpose bench with a vice, mainly used to sharpen the numerous chain-saw chains from every day’s work, and it was my kitchen work area as well. Our kitchen consisted of a Coleman stove, a kerosene lamp, and a cheap Hibachi B-B-Q for my T-bone steaks, baked potatoes smothered in cream corn or butter and/or sour cream. Eat your heart out. Note : About every other evening I would go out to eat in Sechelt.

The interior bunkhouse walls of our bedroom were lined with blue ridged insulation board, even the ceiling and the floor. I had to take my shoes off at the bedroom door. The heat from a candle or a kerosene lamp could keep me warm at night even when it was freezing. All I had to do was crack one of the windows a little. I wasn’t too worried about security when I was not on-site, as neighbors lived halfway down the hill full-time. They said they would walk up two or three times a day just to walk their dog. Big black bears make very good security guards, and they love steak bones with barbecue sauce almost as much as I do. I never had to clean my plate. The bears licked it clean.

We built this disposable bunkhouse on skids, just in case we needed to move it. We had an extension cord stretched all the way to the cul-de-sac power pole. We had to turn everything off just to operate one power tool because it was so far, about one hundred and fifty feet. Later we had our electrician run a power line up to the top of the hill.

There were ten piles of used building materials brought up from the cul-de-sac to the top of the hill by the front-end loader; all of it was used up by the end of the job. About the only thing we had to buy of any value were a few two-by-ten floor joists and all the two-by-ten rafters for the main house roof. Also we bought a few two-by-six’s for the walls. Even after we cut all the broken and damage out of the four hundred and fifty sheets of the plywood, we didn’t need to buy one sheet.

Concrete solved the access problem up to the bend on the right. Then the road took a sharp turn to the left. From there my little truck did just fine because the level was not quite as steep from there on up. This was as far as the concrete line pump could reach. Loaded ready-mix trucks or a crane could not make the bend to the top.

As a curtsy to our neighbor, we provided two parking spaces for their cars on our land right to their front entry. Originally they used that stairway going down two stories to their car below their house. A few months went by and they came up to the site with a check for thirty-five hundred dollars to help defray costs for half the driveway from the street to their front door. That was a nice surprise. Later on they built a stone wall, a nice firewood enclosure and landscaped. It was tastefully done.

This section of the drive was poured by hand. Our two sons came up from the States for a week just to do this. There were six hundred bags of pre-mix and two wheelbarrows going all the time. Once they got another two feet up the hill, they would come up to tell me they were ready for another screeding. Then the surface was raked with an ordinary garden rake or a very heavy broom to make a nice rough surface for good traction. This brought us up to about two thirds of the way to the carriage house/carport. The balance of the driveway and the two double-car parking areas were poured from a huge wheel front-end-loader, which filled up its bucket from a ready-mix truck down in the cul-de-sac.

On this very foggy day, we built batter boards off of trees and strung three rows of nylon string lines and tied ribbons on the string where we were supposed to have footings. Then we located the footing as per the ribbons. Of course that didn’t work in a few cases because of the rocks or a stump. We never had a piece of equipment in this area; we did not want to disturb the foliage. We probed around under our string lines until we found a suitable place for a footing. It was usually only a few feet away from our original drawing. Once we were completed with the footing and piers, I faxed the engineer any changes and he resized a few beams to fit the shorter or longer spans.

We removed loose rocks and roots to reach suitable bearing for our footings. All were on stationary rocks like you see here. This footing was for an outside deck. It was not supporting the house. Therefore we only drilled two holes in the rock ten to twelve inches deep and epoxied the rebar in place while the holes were still dry. All the other footings for the house had four holes except the king post, which had eight, and for one footing location we had to remove loose rocks down about four feet before reaching suitable bearing. Since it was the corner post for the main house, the engineer asked us to increase the size of the footing and the circular-tube-form, and we added more rebar. This type of work involves some final hand-work to remove roots and dirt.

For this work site we needed to build a plywood ramp from the upper drive storage area down to the work area under the house. The terrain was such that there was no way we could use wheelbarrows or even hand carry any pre-mix, lumber, or plywood without the wood ramp. You will see ramps off and on throughout the book.

This next picture shows the tripod that we used to lift all our heaviest post logs, all except the king post. We made the tripod out of three smaller logs or heavy timber and attached a chain hoist at the top where all three logs were tied or bolted off. We then manually hoisted our log post over a pier and lowered it into the saddle. But first we made sure the bottom of the log was a square cut and would fit the pier saddle and then we sealed the fresh cut with a few coats of preservative. We then placed a few layers of tar paper, or if we had a piece of rubber membrane, we would prefer to use that on top of the pier. The post’s weight would press down into the tar paper or rubber and close off any chance of moister, carpenter ants, or termites entering the log. We would hold the post vertical with two-by-four bracing. Once we had all the posts in a row, we would then make sure they were all lined up by readjusting our braces accordingly. We did not apply our lag bolts in the saddles until we were absolutely certain the post was in its final adjusted position, which was a month or two later when there was a considerable amount of weight on them. We just used large spikes in the saddles until we were sure.

The temperature was now getting close to the freezing point, (see the snow on the log at the back of this next picture) so we wrapped each pour and left the round cardboard form on until we were nearly completed with the project. You may notice the smoke. We always had a fire going in each hole we cleaned out for a footing. It made cleaning the twigs and roots out of each footing location easier, and with the rocks slightly warm and damp, we could pour each footing the same day. Engineers love it when the concrete bonds directly to the stone base or footing and clean rebar.

Speaking of rebar, we were able to get enough cut-offs from the projects and the forming contractors in Vancouver. We didn’t need any reinforcing longer than about thirty-six to forty-two inches, except for two piers that were higher, and we could buy longer rebar at our local lumberyard if required. Notice the propane tank in the preceding picture. We used that for our torch for burning out the roots, drying the mud, and melting any ice in each footing form. We immediately poured it; if we ran out of time, we covered up the rock with a thick layer of insulation so it wouldn’t freeze and warmed up the footing a little if we thought there might be ice (but not too hot) the next morning before we poured.

The king post pier was almost in the dead center of the house. It was sixty-six inches high. It took sixty-six bags to pour; that’s one inch per bag of pre-mix. There were four half-inch flat bars about three inches wide and three feet long with rebar anchors welded in the lower part embedded in the concrete for holding the king post in place. We rented a metal strap-tying tool to hold the form together. We kept the form from spreading with the wedges.

The astute building inspector came up to the site unannounced, just to tell us that the head of the building department didn’t want us to pour concrete in freezing weather. We were in the process of building this tent when he arrived and had already located one propane tank and a torch at both ends. He reported this to his boss, and we got approval to proceed. I learned many years ago in this business, there are four people you don’t piss off: the client, the architect, the engineer, and the building inspector. Oh, I forgot my wife. I guess that makes five. Luckily we only had to use propane for a few days. The cost of propane can kill a project; it is so expensive.

The workers really appreciated this warm space. The newly poured piers were wrapped with insulation and a piece on top just in case the propane tanks ran out of propane during the night. Remember, concrete creates its own heat and will still feel warm or even hot if you strip off the forms the next day.

Note: You need to realize that when you take trees out you leave many of the perimeter trees unprotected and exposed to the elements when they weren’t before. Many times when a stump is removed too close to another tree the other tree, roots may be loosened as well, and some of those trees will come down eventually.

On a reclining log we placed a level line on each end and nailed two-by-fours on each side up to the level line, then we cut off the round part in line with the two-by-fours, and that gave us a reasonably flat surface. We snapped a line on the flat surface to the width of the beam the engineer wanted. We were allowed to go bigger if we wanted. However if we did leave the beam bigger, we just had more weight to handle. When the lumber guide was nailed in place we made a ninety-degree mark on the ends of the log with our carpenter’s square. This gave us a relatively square cut. The trick is to keep the flat side of your chain saw blade parallel with the two-by-four cleat that is nailed on top. We came fairly close. At least it was much better than out first cut. Most of these logs disappeared in the building. If any were exposed, we shaved a little off later. It is hard to keep in mind that this house is supposed to look somewhat rustic.

Safety Note: The key to a well-run chain saw is to clean out the carbonator regularly, keep your chains sharp, and keep the chain saw blade oil holes open at all times. If you don’t keep the chain oil running in a clean groove on your blade, the chain will heat up and freeze on you. I brought the saw down to the chain saw repair store about once a month for a thorough cleaning. I could do the basic cleaning myself, so could Frenchy. For safety sake, keep your chain sharp and oiled. Otherwise you will work yourself to death, and on top of that, it is very dangerous and can jump, bind, and kick back, and you will be missing a few fingers or your hand. If using an axe, make sure your feet are flat on the ground and out of the way.

Here we are building our platform (staging) to within waist high of the main floor joists. If I can do a job without bending over and lifting (without bending) over fifty pounds, I am happy. We lined up the posts, cut them all off at the right height. We used a water level, one of the most advanced ways of leveling anything. I suppose a laser would do just fine, but we didn’t have one. They were just starting to hit the market when we built this house. The staging platform made it a lot easier to place our beams and our floor joists. It is a hell of a lot better than working off ladders. I had a back operation about a year before this job was started. They put four screws and two rods and a fusion--let’s not go there. Good thing we picked a nice easy house to build.

This is close to the time an eagle flew over our site with a huge salmon in its claws. You could see that the salmon was still alive. The salmon wiggled its way out of the eagle’s talons and plunged just on the top of the cliff in front of us. We all went looking for it, but it slid off the edge and disappeared. We would have started up the barbecue then and there and had ourselves a great salmon feast.

Also about this time I had a new friend. I named him Fuzzbutt. My wife liked the name Snoopy better. He was our resident squirrel. I then had to buy fifty-five gallon barrels of peanuts to support his bad habit. We swear one year he had two females with a litter of six to eight fuzzy little critters. It just came to me, he must have gotten all that energy from all those peanuts. I think I’ll eat more peanuts and see what happens. (There may be another book coming up folks, sorry.)

Safety Comes First

(I never let anyone use my chain saw accept Frenchy, who was an experienced logger.)

It was impressive how many logs we got off this lot just from the driveway and the house location.

Did you notice the ‘Cant-Hook’ Frenchy in the coveralls is using. The wood handled tool is used to roll logs. The suppliers didn’t sell them anymore. Logging in British Columbia was almost at a standstill when we built this house. One of the high school boys said his father used to be a logger. Sure enough, his old toolshed had one, and it sure beats having to roll a log by hand or using a two-by-four. We had to use a chain hoist to drag the larger logs to the house.

We called our little V shaped trough Skid Road.

At this point, I bet you are wondering why the bark is still on the logs. Well, some old timer years ago told me, “If you leave the bark on while the log is curing, there is less chance of it checking or splitting.” In other words, the bark will slow down curing time. Also the bark protected the logs from dings, bruises, and black marks from excessive handling.

Notice the thermometer on the tree. That was to satisfy the inspector when he was about. If he made any inspections in the area he would just pop in. Note the beams lying on top of the posts. Once we had them all cut, then we installed them. All the posts were cut off at different levels because each beam was a different depth depending on the span.

There was a drop in the living room floor at this point. The top board extended over the log would be cut off to length once we squared off the raised floor for the bedroom wing on the left. The bark, once removed, will just about be in line with the floor rim-joists above. Once the basement was in place, all this disappeared behind the plywood sheathing. If it was too fat, we trimmed the bulge off with the chain saw. Looks like a nice fit if I have to say so myself, and look at that nice chain saw work on the square beam on the lower right. The key is a sharp chain.

We drilled holes about the size of the rebar that was driven through the top of each beam and into each post. Most of these rebar pins went in the posts about eight to twelve inches. You must not drill the hole too big. By the way, we always had a can of preservative open to brush or pour on all raw cuts we couldn’t get to later. We even poured the preservative in the pin holes. I have always been paranoid about water penetration into the wood. If there is a leak in the bathroom some day, and it works its way down into the wood structure hidden under the floor, there is no way one can tell until your tub full of water falls through the floor with you in it.

Also notice that the post is pealed. Every time we needed to rest a little from some strenuous activity or there was an extra laborer, we would attack the bark somewhere.

We have now raised the ramp from the staging area to the main floor; it is the little things that make life simpler. You can see it on the page before this one.

Once we removed the staging under the main floor, we were convinced that we would make this into a basement someday. We had always had a small storage room and mechanical room down there on the drawings and included in the permit set. So now we went back to the drawing board and produced a drawing with the new basement for the building department and got their blessings in no time. We had to pay, I think, about two hundred dollars for a permit, but it is better than doing it a year after we moved in and get caught without a permit. I don’t recommend it, never have. The fines alone are excessive. A licensed contractor can go out of business that way.

The building department is very concerned about codes, safety, and setbacks, and the client should be as well.

Back to our house. Many small jobs I could do by myself when no one showed up for work I didn’t call anyone until I was ready. I called for help only when it was heavy work or the job would take more than one person. Normally it would be one of the high school boys. If I was doing a lot of chain saw work, I felt more comfortable with someone around.

Loggers have a very high rate of accidents. I was on one project once standing under a tree to keep out of the rain when I was knocked to the ground by a ‘Widow Maker.’ The wind and rain dislodged a loose branch lying up on the limbs somewhere. The butt end came straight down and hit me dead center on the head. I bled profusely. As it worked out, it was a small branch and didn’t do too much damage.

I always raised the pitch in the roof to accommodate extra rooms if we needed any. Because our roof was designed at a forty-five degree pitch, we were able to place a few rooms in the attic. Did you know that is the cheapest space in the whole house? Why build another story and then a roof over that if you don’t need to? A good way to determine the height of your side walls up there is to use your mirror height in your bathroom. If the mirror is going to be on the short wall, six foot four inches works for me. You can go lower at the back of a bed headboard, say five feet if you like, or even shoulder height if one is somewhat normal, and there are a few of us, (somewhere). You can stand with your shoulder next to the short wall. The top of your head will just touch the forty-five degree ceiling. Then you can measure the floor space to see if that leaves you enough for a decent sized room. The bigger the floor space, the shorter the side walls.

I built the exterior perimeter walls on the floor, by myself. When they were framed and ready to lift, I called the workers back to help raise them. Notice the plywood is in place at the corners of the walls. That enabled me to build the walls square, and that acted like cross bracing. That is required at each corner of your house anyway, and of course we couldn’t do it from the outside without setting up scaffolding. We had to do that later when we installed the rest of the plywood, tar paper, and cedar shingles.

I didn’t want any workers on that floor until those walls were up. Otherwise we would have had to build railings. In Canada, everyone automatically has health insurance. However I would never be able to live with myself if anyone got hurt. When I hired these men, I asked if they had any physical problems. One had a bad back, so everyone made sure he had help when it came to lifting, which included me as well.

The corner post of the house, the one closest to you in the picture, was the one where we had to dig down over four feet to suitable bedrock. We used more pins in the rock, a wider and deeper footing, and a larger round tube-form, as well as a larger log post. Of course, once we added the basement we had far more stability. It really tied everything together. You will notice in another picture where we added cross bracing under the house. It was much like the old trestle bridges. The engineer did not require this work, but I did. I slept better at night. However, I had my doubts when I heard the king post split.

One night while my wife and I were sleeping in the upstairs master bed room, (that was because it was completed first and had a working bathroom) the king post cracked right up the middle. You will notice it in one of the pictures of the living room. I sat up in bed thinking the cliff was splitting in half. It was as loud as a rifle shot. It took me a few weeks to discover it was the king post, and that was only because it decided to do the same thing while we were sitting in the living room one evening. It scared the hell out of my first wife; she thought the house was coming apart.

That was near the time the little baby skunk walked into the living room and sat down and watched TV with us. My wife calmly got up the next morning, dressed, and drove to Vancouver to stay until I assured her on my grand pappy’s grave that there was no way any critters were going to get in the house again. At first Fuzzbutt used to come in and sit on my Lazy-boy chair arm and share peanuts with me while we watched TV. That didn’t seem to bother my wife too much. The mechanical room downstairs had a dirt floor at that time because we were still running electrical and what not into the mechanical room under the house. We ran an extra conduit under the wall if required in the future and poured that sucker the next day while my wife fled the premises as fast as her long legs could carry her. Hell, if I didn’t do that, I would have had to cook for myself, wash my own clothes, etc. (Sorry, I just had to say that.) (Ouch, that hurt!&*^+$#@!!)

The logs for the living and dining room floor were laid out roughly where they were to go months ahead of time. We saved them just for the purpose of holding up the laminated spruce floor system. You will see what I mean in a few more pictures. The logs automatically rolled over as they were being placed, crown down, if there was a crown. We then marked a level line on the end of each log about eight inches (up) from the top of the beam below. We chain sawed a flat notch on each end of the log and flipped the log over. Now the crowns are up. It was then that we spiked each log in place, but only after we installed the king post. You can still see it lying on the ground.

We dragged these logs from the log sorting area and across the main floor before we framed the walls, saving us having to drag them through the trees, rocks and around the house later.

If you look carefully at the far end, there is a footing under the last log that was going to support the outside glass wall of the dining room. Outside that wall you can see two more log posts. They are for supporting the extended deck. Due to the span of the dining room logs, we decided to add another footing and pier in the center of the window wall to give added support for the dining room. I felt that due to the sizable dinner parties we had with most of our slightly overweight guests, it was a good thing to do. Folks, sometimes you have to anticipate the future. I never liked a spongy floor system; scary.

This is the only shot I have of the curved wall in the house. This was at the hall leading to the small guest bedroom off the main hall. This side of the wall is in the utility room. There was one small one in the passageway round the king post, which I framed later. You will see that in the completed interior pictures. I decided to make all our walls out of two-by-six studs. Code requires two-by-six walls on the exterior perimeter walls for the insulation, and I always did the same for plumbing walls. This only left a few short walls, so we just went with two by six’s throughout. It comes in real handy if one wants to soundproof any walls, the utility room being one of them.

If you are not familiar with building houses and the codes, you will see the solid blocking in the center of the floor joists. You can use cross bridging if you prefer. I don’t; see why in the glossary.

Now comes the fun part. You have to think of every detail in this type of construction, because there are no written instructions on how to build a building like this. We needed our king post next. We couldn’t get a crane up to the top of the hill, as explained before. In large logging operations, there is usually an enormous tree, called the ‘Head Tree’ or ‘Heel Boom,’ but we did not have one in the right location to lift the king post. Some of the techniques we used on this house were from my experience as a logger for my father, who built concrete and timber bridges and cleared logs from reservoir banks for dams in western Montana.

First we decided to walk/drag our log/ridge beam up to the top floor, using the small tree at the end of the house. We had two chain hoists, one to pull, and one to lift. We just raised, pulled, and pushed about twelve inches at a time, a long process but it was the only safe way. To do this we placed extra bracing on the perimeter wall inside the house to counteract the enormous pressure from this very long ridge-log. I wanted to cut the weight down on the ridge-log so I faxed the engineer and he allowed us to cut the sides off part of the log. The part over the living room we left round for the appearance we were after. Have you figured out why we needed the ridge beam first? It became our boom.

We called this ‘Walking-the-Log.’ Our V trough or Skid Road ended at the house by a tree we wanted to tie our chain hoist to for lifting. You need to know this before you even start moving logs in place for the second floor.

One chain hoist is fastened to a tree right by the house. It is used for lifting the beam a few inches to a foot, and if you look carefully, you can see where the other chain hoist was connected, down the beam about six to eight feet by that small tree in the center of the picture. Once we were able to get the beam balanced on the center point of the ridge log on the second floor, we used roller logs (in this case round firewood) to move the beam to the other end of the floor, an effortless procedure. It is reportedly the same technique used by the Egyptians when rolling those humongous stones to the pyramids when their helicopters weren’t available. Many trees, right next to the house, were cut down later after we were finished using them for bracing or lifting.

That end of the king post, the small end, is dragging on the ground in the kitchen area at the moment. Noticed we rolled all the logs for the floor system out of the way. They had been laying there for months, curing and drying out. One very important thing to remember, when you are doing anything that could be even a little dangerous, plan ahead. In this case, if a log decides to break loose, run like hell. But first before you start this kind of work, make sure you have a clear path to run on, or a good stout tree to hide behind. If our six-ton log broke loose, there is no way you can guess how much damage it will do. Never, never, never work under someone above you, and always watch your fingers and feet.

Think Safety First

Now you can see why we needed to place the ridge beam first; it had work to do. The scaffolding is sitting on a double layer of two-by-twelve’s on the upper floor. If we didn’t do that, the scaffolding legs would have gone right through the plywood sub-floor. Aside from the weight of the king post, we had the weight of the ridge beam and the scaffolding, etc. There are two beams on the scaffolding, one to rest the ridge beam on, and the other one above the beam was used to lift the ridge beam onto the lower beam. That upper chain hoist was still under tension, which took some of the strain off the lower beam across the metal scaffolding. Also, the lower beam has extra posts under it. The upper hoist had a dual purpose; you will soon see. As an extra precaution, we tied down the other end of the ridge beam, or ‘boom’ so it wouldn’t turn over or flip when in use.

Note: When you think you are ready to do something very dangerous, step back with your crew and hash out what could happen, and if there is any chance something may happen, fix it before you start to pull on the chain hoist. I always told my crews you can never over-brace or tie down something. In this case we decided we needed another four hundred feet of rope to stabilize the scaffolding before we continued.

We measured the size of the king post before lifting. Remember, the one laying on the ground, and forwarded that information to the engineer to get the approximate weight. It fell just under the six-and-one-quarter-ton limit of our largest chain hoist. We had the other hoist there but didn’t need it. The stump to this tree is under the house about six feet away from where the king post was erected. A good thing that tree was there, as we probably wouldn’t have been able to drag a log that big across the lot without a lot of time and hassle. Had we needed to drag a log, there was a logging company nearby who logged with a team of horses, and we would have required a block-and-tackle system. Note the concrete pier with the four metal straps for the king post.

It started to snow an hour or so after we had our lunch break. By the time we cinched up the chain closer to the center of the king post, it was almost quitting time.

NOW: “Houston we have (had) a problem.” Because of where the log was sitting, we had the thicker end near the pier, and we were forced to lift that end first, putting the wrong end of the log in the air. We tried to turn the log around before we started pouring piers but couldn’t even budge it, so we had to leave it there with the idea that we would place the smaller end on the pier. It was only about four inches smaller than the fat end, so I didn’t think anyone would even notice it, so I said to hell with it.

Well, all but one of the crew left for the day to resume in the morning. One of our high school workers stood there and had the gall to tell me that we are hitched up so close to the center of the king post that maybe we could flip it. We lifted the log just a wee bit off the ground, and sure enough, it looked like we could do it. We strung more lead lines on the log so we could control it and flipped the damn thing and set it in the saddle and quit for the day. The guys came the next day and couldn’t believe it. Of course, I gave all the credit to the smartass kid.

Let me explain here and now, I thought that kid was going somewhere in this life. Then he bought an old clunker to fix up after I tried to talk him out of it. It was at this point I had my doubts about him. I tried to tell him to save his money and go to college. I couldn’t convince him. He had this gorgeous girlfriend, and he, like me, wanted to impress her by having a car. After I knew I lost the argument, I said why not save your money until we are done here and buy a nicer car if you have a mind to. Well, he couldn’t wait and spent all his wages on a fixer-upper. He made over six thousand dollars off this job and spent the whole damn thing on that piece off sh*t. He worked on it until he got it to run. He was so pleased with himself he drove it to the site. While going up our hill it froze up on him. He later sold it for parts. He did however go to a tech school to learn to become a diesel mechanic, married his girlfriend, who had a good job with the city, and then they bought a new car.

Now comes the hard part. (Why don’t you go get another cold beer before you read on?) Now you know why we set up the scaffolding the way we did. We have one more major lift, and we did not want to take everything down and set it all up again. I was able to find a piece of leftover round tube-form about the same diameter as the ridge log and cut a saddle in the top of the king post. Here again we ‘walked’ the ridge-beam into place. The ass end of the log, the end with the sides cut off, rested on the second floor, and as we lifted the ridge a little, we ‘walked’ the log on the floor and up through the saddle. This of course added strain on the king post, wanting to push it over. That is why it was tied off so well. Some people would have cut off the top of the king post and notched the ridge beam. I figured the notch would have weakened the ridge log, therefore we left it solid. Have you ever cut a notch in a tooth pick and bent it until it breaks. It will always break at the notch.

Note : We nailed two-by-twelve’s on the hallway walls on the first floor so we would have a safe platform to work on for stabilizing the king post. In order to get the king post plumb, we dropped not one but two plumb bobs down from the top of the log, one on the east face and another on the south face, and cleared some bark off the top and bottom of the log so we could get a precise measurement and nailed the sucker in place. I asked the guys to leave the plumb bobs in place during construction just to see if the king post would ever move. When you see us placing the ridge beam over the king post, you will see why I was concerned.

Later on we had a large band of steel bent to the shape of the ridge log and down both sides of the king post and through-bolted the bracket to the king post. You must remember, wood shrinks, so before we placed fasteners, i.e., hangers, saddles, straps, lag bolts, or bolts, we waited as long as we could, and that was just before we installed the plywood sheathing, roofing, drywall/sheetrock, whatever.

The ridge beam was raised level, and we installed a cedar post in the bedroom and tied everything in place. We just completed before the really heavy snow came. Remember we installed the footings and piers in the snow, so this must be near the one-year mark. Getting this ridge beam set was the crowning jewel on this job. The rest was relatively easy. This was the day we all went to town to the bar, and I bought the crew double-meat hamburgers and of course lots of beer. I loved these guys. They were all real gentlemen. One reads books continuously, like me, and the others had part-time jobs. One had his own band. One pumped gas. One was a part-time cook, and of course the two boys were students, and ‘Frenchy’ the only married worker, had a new gorgeous wife at home and they were making babies. (They told me so.) The other student completed college, not sure what in, but I am sure he is doing well. (Oh, neither one of them were on drugs or that really nasty stuff, beer.)

Note : When you tie off a rope holding something in place, tie the rope near the bottom of the anchor tree. That way, if the wind comes up, the swaying tree will not loosen whatever you are trying to stabilize. A gigantic rock would be even better. We also used some of our piers to tie off to if there were no trees or rocks handy.

Rafter logs: this was a long drawn out affair, well the whole damn house was really, especially when I worked alone most of the time.

We placed all the rafter logs in position first and tied them off at the top before we cut in the bird notches at both ends of the log. Once the logs were in place, we stung a nylon string across the top of each log. Of course we had to remove some of the bark to get it as perfect as possible. This meant that some bird’s mouths were deeper than others because each log was a different diameter. I wanted the tops all in line, so when we nailed the exposed two-by-three decking across them, there wasn’t too much waviness. I really didn’t care about the bottom of the log, which was exposed in each room. Once the bird mouths were cut, we planted big spikes into the top four or five plates of the outer walls. Then we went back to the ridge and removed the bark where wood was touching wood and chiseled a small saddle to match the diameter of each rafter log. You can see what we did there; some of the logs were so tough we had to drill pilot holes for the spikes. We placed the bolts with washers in the holes and tightened the nuts three times because the logs were still shrinking six months later.

When we were completed with the walk-in-gutter (there’s a new one for you, you will see what that is shortly.) I have always believed that in rainy country especially, one should always have a good over-hang to protect your house. The other pet-peeve I have is why in the hell do designers design a house in rainy or snowy country without an overhang of some sort over the front entry door or at least recess the entry a few feet? Just let your guests stand out in the hot sun, rain, and snow! Also, the overhang protects the entry door you just spent big bucks on. In the south, overhangs keep the house cooler as well. Now with weather patterns changing every year, you even need to do the same in Mexico. I know because I have lived here for close to eight years now. This house ended up with a forty-two inch overhang on the sides and twenty-four inch at the lower end of the gables and thirty-six inches at the peak. All but one deck was covered. Here again I like to use the covered deck at the south end of the house year-round to BBQ and to enjoy my wild pets, especially Fuzzbutt, rain or shine.

Once we got the ridge log level, we had to get the ridge parallel with the house and level. We used a level, but we also double checked it two other ways. One was we cleared off the top of the log ridge and hooked the measuring tape on one outside wall, up and over the ridge and onto the side wall on the other side, then we centered the log. Next we had snapped a center line on the second floor and plumb-bobbed from the center of the ridge log to the snapped line on the floor. Both were within one-half inch of each other. Then we placed two cedar posts under the other end of the ridge beam at the exterior wall and the other on the outside deck. Then we started installation of the rafter logs. Keep in mind when you locate where the cedar post is sitting, you need to add solid blocking or extra floor joists to support the log post. As you can see, we built a platform to work from for placing the rafter logs, roof decking, etc. The two cedar posts were the only ones in the whole house, (all other posts were Douglas fir). That bedroom always had a slight but not overpowering cedar aroma, thus making this my favorite bedroom. Note : There were lots of cedar trees on our property, but we worked the location of the driveway and buildings so we did not have to cut them down. There is nothing like living in the country, driving up to your home and smelling the cedar trees when you get out of your car.

Once we had the floor logs for the dining room and living room floor notched and in their general location, we let them rest there for a few months to let the crowns settle down a little before we spiked the ends into the beams. Here I am leveling off the top of the log-beams. We used a water level to establish the levels of the two-by-fours nailed on the sides of each log.

Then I cut off a flat spot on top of every log. Once all the tops of the logs were cut off, I went over to the outside of the logs and eyeballed across the whole floor to see if it was as near perfect as I could get it with the chain saw. There were a few high spots, so I planned those off with the chain saw. (Now we are ready to install the laminated floor, one board at a time.) I was so excited.

We were going to install a real oak floor on tar paper over plywood subflooring and two-by-ten floor joists when we found out we had all these logs left over, we went to this system. It’s a whole lot cheaper, especially since I was doing all the labor and the logs were free. (The only cost of course was a few T-bones every weekend for my labor.) Then we decided to use Douglas fir two-by-threes on-edge. Then lumber prices shot through the roof and the yard suggested using spruce if we really wanted to save a lot of money. At that time it was the only wood product that did not go up in price. I called my favorite flooring installer and asked him what he thought. He had two comments. One is we should cut out as many imperfections as we could and that the wood was soft and might dent much easier than Douglas fir. He was right on both accounts, so we went with spruce. It was much faster to install, and this project was supposed to be a little rustic anyway, and the price was an issue. The spruce was KD, kiln-dried, so shrinkage was not going to be a major problem either.

I was doing approximately five feet of floor width every weekend. Had I had someone cutting for me, we probably could have cut the seven weekends in half. There were about three hundred and fifty rows of two-by-threes on edge. You will notice in one of the pictures that we stacked the delivery of spruce with spacers at every row and left air spaces between each board as well. This is the way all lumber should be stacked. That way moisture is not trapped between every board. Why get kiln dried lumber if you are just going to let it get socked in water again?

Most lumber comes with a wow, a bend, a warp, a split, and bad edges, maybe even some pitch pockets, bark, and over-sized knots. I cut all that out. I would get about twelve pieces of two-by-threes about fourteen feet long over to my chop saw and cut out whatever I felt would cause a problem later. Once I had a bunch of various lengths, I started hand nailing each nail six to eight inch apart. Normally if the piece came close to a bearing point (over the log), I would cut the board so that two pieces were centered over the log. I also made sure the joints were staggered. The spruce was ‘toe nailed’ in the log below and the side nails were staggered, one low on the board and the other high. I tried to keep the outer edge of the nail head at least a quarter inch down from the top. If the floor sander hit one of those nails, there goes a very expensive sanding belt, and of course you don’t want to see the nail anyway. Another thing, I always had my carpenters square handy to check to see if the boards were ‘tipping.’ For example, if you nail the top nails tighter than the bottoms, the board will tip in at the top. The pressure from the blow of your hammer has to be the same throughout. There were many fifty-pound boxes of three and one half inch commons in this floor. Once I had the floor completed, I called my workers back to start the wall and roof framing in that area. (Why didn’t I use a nail gun? First of all, I didn’t have one, and I wasn’t going to spend the money to rent one, and I needed to lose weight any way. As it worked out, my lower arms looked like Popeye’s and were like steel, and my stomach, well, we won’t go there, thank you very much.

The bark below the flooring on the logs was removed later once we started work in the basement. Note : The bark has to be removed, otherwise every friendly termite and carpenter ant within miles ‘wood’ have a feast.

We couldn’t frame this end of the house until this floor was in place. Notice the tarp; it was one of two throw-a-ways from one of my high-rise roofs. We were just completing the spring rains at this time. When there was any threat, we always covered the floor. It wasn’t one-hundred percent waterproof, but it helped. When in British Columbia expect rain any time, it doesn’t all go down to Seattle. Note : Even though you cover up something, you need to remove the protection as soon as it stops raining or snowing, so whatever you covered can breathe and air-dry.

This floor system made a beautiful ceiling for the basement. What was outside the basement had to be insulated under living areas. You will see how we did that later. Notice the rough edges or imperfections of the flooring; the good side was always up. We didn’t care one way or the other if this was in the rustic basement. The heat from the wood burning stove in the fire pit seeped through this floor just fine. My first and second wife enjoyed the warm floors. I wasn’t too pleased because I always thought they kept the house too hot for my comfort level. We also had a few metal heat register grates over cut-outs in the floor as well. We never had to turn on electric heaters in the loft or upper rooms.

I loved my big king post. I still can’t believe we got that sucker in there. It’s okay to laugh. I did, and incidentally the king post never did move. I thought at one time we couldn’t raise the king post, and would have had a framed wall there, heaven forbid. When we tied the roof rafter beams in place, we found the outside walls in the living room were bowed outward a little, so we looped a rope around the outside beams and placed a two-by-four in the middle between the ropes and twisted, which pulled the outside beams straight, and then we cut our bird mouths and spiked the rafter logs in place, perfect.

Our sky hooks again, note the ropes. We raised and lowered the hip-log numerous times until Frenchy or I got as close a fit as we could with the chain saw. When all the rafter logs, hip and valley logs were in place, we had the iron man up to measure iron plates/straps to lag bolt or through bolt on top of all our log connections before we covered. There were also many spikes used throughout. The house seemed to actually grow from the king post. You will notice later on in one of the interior pictures the log brace we cut into the king post and under the ridge log to counter the additional load of all the hips, valley, and jack logs from the living room. We also had all the roof rafter logs in place at the other end of the ridge to offset the added weight of the hips over the living room.

Once we were dried-in, just before sand blasting the ceiling decking, I took my trusty six-inch belt sander to all the rough-cut edges on each log that was exposed. We left this scaffolding up until all the sand-blasting and staining was completed, which was just before we sanded the spruce flooring. We moved our furniture in about two weeks later.

We are looking through the living room at the second level master bedroom at the back.

Are we having fun yet? I am. One would almost think we got a hell of a bargain on two-by-three spruce, ‘wooden’ it? (Love playing with words)

Every weekend I would come out and do three feet more up the roof by the full length of the house. The reason for that is that tar paper is normally thirty six inches wide. I never left the site on Sunday evening without covering my work. It helped somewhat to keep the rain from swelling or water spotting the spruce. The spruce was nailed with four and a half inch spikes in the edges of the decking about three in the field or between the log rafters. I had to save somewhere, so I did not go with tongue-and-grove or V grooved decking. It didn’t matter to us.

Just before we moved in, we sandblasted the exposed part of the decking only in the living areas. It was absolutely beautiful. All water stains that might have been there, all metal banding marks, mud, scratches, and maybe a hammer mark, (pecker-tracks as some of us call them, you know, like in woodpecker,) disappeared once the stain was applied. Note : Once you are completed sandblasting, go through with your air hose to blow all the sand out of the seams and joints in the wood decking.

We did not cut a flat spot on the tops of the log rafters supporting the roof decking; we only trimmed a knot or two now and again and cleared a little bark off as well. Those logs were almost perfectly straight, incredible. The reason we were not concerned about a little bump in the top of the decking was it was covered up, see the second picture below.

Beautiful, isn’t it? Now we are almost ready for our insulation. Notice that we did not run the two-by-ten rafters out over the overhang. We didn’t need to. There is no insulation required out there, and this is where the walk-in gutter was placed. You will see very soon. The two-by-tens were overlapped at the top and thoroughly nailed and some were bolted. There are very few nails penetrating the decking in the ‘field’ (roof). That was because we didn’t want nails poking through our beautiful decking. The only exception was if we were over a log rafter. However, there are toenails at the ridge and at the bottom just over the wall plate, and then of course you have the furring for the cedar shingles to tie it all together. Hurry, I can’t wait to see the next picture.

By the way, we still had lots of crocked two-by-three spruce decking left over for our furring. One-by-fours are commonly used for the roof furring. We had a job once where one of our workers fell through a weak one-by-four with a big knot in it and straddled the bottom cord of a truss. He could never have children again. It looks like it is going to snow, and it did soon after this picture was taken.

Was that good timing or what? This is the end of the second year of construction. During the winter, I built the Douglas fir window frames and installed all the glass. I also installed all the insulation, fire tape, etc. myself. The electrician and plumber completed their rough-in. From the last two high-rises, I cut a deal with the window company for the leftover windows. Most of the glass had a few very minor scratches or flaws, or the windows were made the wrong dimension, or maybe the frames were scratched, or even some were left over due to a design change.

During the weekend I would go to the site and take the aluminum frames off and store the insulated window units in one of our lock-ups in the parkade. When we were ready to ship them to the site, we had eighty sealed units. Remember, these came from two high-rises; they were also made to withstand very high winds. If I remember right, every four floors in a high-rise, the windows are made to withstand a higher wind velocity. Most of the spaces between the sealed units were one inch.

I measured all the windows. Then I went home and made cut-outs of every one. Then my wife and I put like pieces together so my wife could see them. Then we picked the rooms we wanted them in. For example, there maybe two sixteen inch wide and two twenty-four inch wide, and they were all the same length. They went in one of the master bedroom walls, so on and so forth. For some odd reason, we had just enough patio door glass to wrap the whole dining room, living room, and one wall in the fire pit, perfect. They were all of a height but different widths, so we just made different combinations. I then made the frames. All joints were dadoed in, glued, and screwed, and then I glued and placed the window stop on the outside. Then I caulked again and placed the sealed units in the frame and caulked again and glued and installed the interior stop. And that was the biggest item I did all winter. The only thing we had to buy was gable glass for the upstairs bedroom and bath. Each room had a locking vented window. We had to buy a door to the outside from the fire pit and another French door from the pool table room to the outer deck in the basement, and we found a slightly damaged door for the temporary front entry door. All were damaged in some small way, and most of the doors were half price. Who really cared about the basement anyway? Well, maybe Fuzzbutt did, but he didn’t complain too much. He did chatter a lot about something, actually about many things.

Incidentally, I used Butyl caulking everywhere. We had a few tubes left over from the high-rises, but I still had to buy more. They are not cheap. The window wall contractors always have a few cases left over that just sit in their warehouses getting stiff. I got those also, and most of them were useable. Butyl caulking does not crystallize and crack like cheap caulking does, and that is why they use it on high-rises. It is not easy to fix caulking on the outside of a high-rise without a great amount of expense, so the caulking is designed to last a lifetime. I don’t have stock in the company that makes it, so use what you like. Normally when I do something I want to do it right the first time. I am always too busy somewhere else to worry about coming home to fix something. It also cost too damn much time and money to make repairs to shoddy work.

Note : Always stack you lumber, windows, doors, plywood, cabinets, etc. on dunnage to keep everything out of water, and let everything breathe.

It was winter. One of the neighbors visited the site one evening. Actually, every Sandy Hooker was up at one time or another, walking their dogs or just taking a walk with their friends. Anyway, one was installing a new fireplace and had this old ‘Fisher’ for sale. He said if I bought it he would throw in his wife. (It kind of reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield). I think I bought it for four pieces of used three-quarter inch plywood. That would have been about one hundred and twenty dollars back then. I also told him I already had a wife. Or was I in between wives then? I don’t remember.

We moved the Fisher fireplace in the living room where I had my table saw, chop saw, and an assortment of other necessary equipment and tools for making the window frames. It was perfect. We produced enough wood scraps to keep the fire going all winter. Before I had breakfast every morning, I would light the ‘Fisher,’ go break my fast down in town, and when I came back, the house was warm enough to work in. Of course we had cords and cords of firewood, but it was better to let it dry for a year or two. Note : If you burn wet (or green) wood in your fireplace, you are asking for trouble. Eventually your chimney gets coated with an oily tar-like substance and it will catch fire someday, and up goes your house and insurance payments.

Before I get into why we did our utilities underground, I need to update you on the look we wanted for our property. To begin with, our first meeting with the electrician of our choice was to discuss overhead electrical, TV cable, telephone, etc. The power company would have to place a pole right at the top of the cliff, eighty feet up the hill, install a transformer on the pole, and run heavy wiring to the house.

Of course this did not sit well with my wife and me at all. They wanted us to remove all the trees fifteen feet on both sides of a dedicated utility easement, thus making the entrance to the top of the hill look like a rock quarry. We only had forty feet to begin with at the bottom, and it flared out at the far end of the property. Huge trees would have to come down, and we would have to pay to blast a hole for the pole and pay umpteen dollars to set the pole with a new transformer. So, wanting the park look, we elected to go underground. All in all we probably spent nearly the same thing what with all the PVC underground pipes, some blasting, and labor. But we got the look we wanted. I am sure Mother Nature has filled in a few bare spots with ground cover by now. We installed landscape lighting down the edge of the driveway all the way to the street just before we sold the house. It was exactly what we envisioned when we first bought the lot. Note : Never be afraid to ask what all your options are on costly items, design, etc.

Before the excavator left the site, we had him blast a trench across our proposed driveway, and they had to do a little on a bank to widen the driveway coming up the hill. The water line, power line, TV cable, and telephone were to come through these pipes; you cannot have a power line next to a TV or telephone line or you will get interference. We installed an extra conduit for the future if we needed it. As it worked out, we had to move our water pump from the mechanical room under the house halfway down the hill. The city water pressure couldn’t reach the top of the hill to our pressure pump during the summer when many of our neighbors arrived. The city could get thirty-five pounds of pressure to our lot at the cul-de-sac. The most we ever got was fifty pounds, maybe five times a year; that was it. So for about five hundred dollars we just moved our pump.

We had to run power down to the new pump location and do some fancy water pipe connections. Of course we had to build a little pump house on a concrete slab with a light bulb in it to keep the water line and pump from freezing. Once in place, we had plenty of water, even for our landscape sprinkler system. The underground power line could be in a conduit less than twenty-four inches deep only if it was incased in concrete. Three feet was the minimum without concrete. This also gave us an opportunity to provide an outlet for power tools, power washer, blower, etc., if we required that equipment to remove snow and general cleanup for the lower part of our lot and driveway.

Then there are the lines to the seventeen-hundred gallon holding tank from the house. Those are the pipes the cubs are inspecting. The city had asked us to locate a place for the laterals for the sewage and show it on the permit drawings. We told them it was impossible. They said there would be no building permit without it. They should designate what lots were for sale and what are not. One of the gray conduits was for a line to our bells and whistles down at the cul-de-sac. Now everyone knew when we were full of sh*t, and there was an awful noise. It was so loud you would have thought the British were attacking.

The city knew they would have a major problem with me if they didn’t accept a holding tank and have it pump out when full. Incidentally, that was about once a month when we were there full-time. My wife was there seven days a week, and I was there two days a week, especially when I was working in Seattle for the last year we had the house. I told her she would have to pay six sevenths of the three hundred and seventy five dollar dumping fee every month; it was a nice try but no cigar.

The building permit department insisted that we show an area on the permit set for the septic tank and laterals. I laid out a spot and showed six test holes. One was one inch deep, two were two inches, and the others three inches. They finely got the point and okayed the holding tank, but they needed to see a contract for pumping it out as part of the building permit. Of course after three years the first pumping contract was null and void. In fact, the person who was going to do the pumping had died; it took us so long to build. To get the final occupancy permit we had to contract someone else to pump out the tank.

As a back-up system for the future, we hauled in about thirty loads of sand three to five feet deep to allow a spot for a future lateral system. We would just have the sewage water in the tank flow into those lines and not have to worry about pumping. Maybe by now the new owner has done that. He was aware of that when we sold the house.

All these lines were buried in sand, and we had about eight to ten inches of loam brought in once we cleaned up the lot ready for landscaping. I installed a stone wall and a crushed gavel walkway from the large lawn area to the underside of the house.

Everything was foamed. A pissant couldn’t get in that house. It is the only way to get all cracks and holes closed. This shot is at the underside of the roof decking. The foam was cut off flush. Tar paper went over that in a bed of calking around the edges and a cedar trim board was scribed to fit the curvature of the logs at both ends in a nice fresh bed of caulking. You can just see the cedar shingle wall approaching from below.

This is our eighty-gallon hot water heater, and there’s the water pump and pressure tank, which had to be moved halfway down the hill toward the street. There were thirty-six breakers for this house, with an underground line going up to the electrical sub-panel for the shop, car port, and studio. On the left side of the panel were the sprinkler system controls, the security alarm system, and the panel for the telephone. There was a drain in the middle of the concrete slab for the overflow on the water tank. You can see the baseboard heater near the water tank. I don’t think it ever went on, as the water heater and the pump threw off a lot of heat. As another precaution, we always left the light on in that room during the winter. There was a hose bib in this room as well, which we left open a skosh if the temperature dipped too low, anything to keep the water moving so it wouldn’t freeze.

The Sechelt Indian Band, along with numerous other ingenious endeavors, has a cedar shake plant, and supplied and installed most of the cedar shakes for houses in this quaint resort. They also owned a whole mountain of some of the best gravel anywhere, as many as two seagoing ships loaded up at their high-tech loading facilities daily. They are great people to work with.

House number III. While we were away, lightning hit a tree that was beside our south deck, splintering it off about eight feet above the ground.

After I got the building permit for the squirrel house we started construction. (I am just kidding of course about the permit). I then took my trusty chain saw and cut four vertical grooves in the sidewalls, just big enough to slip in three stained glass windows. The other was made into an opening with a revolving door. (I am just kidding on the revolving door, and this is a good time to say ‘this guy is a nut.’) We had some empty wine bottles, so I broke off three bottoms and slipped them down into the chainsaw grooves and caulked them in, wouldn’t want a leak, would we?

I then went up to the shop, cut four triangular pieces of plywood to make a pyramid, and then I cut two square pieces, both with holes in the middle, and nailed the largest piece at the bottom and the smaller piece halfway up from the bottom. Now we have the makings of a three-story town house, the concrete floor included. He even had a deck. In a few months he had crammed the whole damn thing with peanuts. I guess he had already filled up all the rafter spaces in our house and ran out of room.

I think this is a good place to tell my packrat story. My first wife and I built a cabin up at Mount Hood, Oregon. We sold the house in Portland practically the same day it was listed and had to move up there with our two boys and our two-week-old baby girl before the cabin was nearly completed. One day my wife called me up in a big panic: “I am leaving, I had it, I am gone from here, now, I want a divorce,” all in the same breath. The resident packrat happened to lose its grip on the roof decking above the kitchen sink and fell in her dishwater as she was washing dishes. She panicked. (The damn thing needed a bath anyway.) I told her she couldn’t leave until she had all the dishes done. Yeah, sure.

I panicked. I told the office personnel in town that I had to do something to revive my marriage. So I told them what happened. There were a few snickers, then someone had to laugh his fool head off, and then eight or ten of us had to join in. Yes, we laughed so hard some of us had tears in our eyes, (where else.)

After we settled down a bit, one of the ladies said we better do something about this; women are so practical you know. So I went home with a pregnant cat, (I didn’t know it at the time) and a twenty-two rifle and a pocket full of bullets. I shot the hell out of the inside of our house, but no sign of blood. It was the damned cat that got it. We woke up the next day after the war and lo and behold, there at the front door were the innards of a packrat. Marriage saved, again. It seems like I was trying to save our marriage for thirty-seven years.

I loved ole Fuzzbutt. He figured out that I always had one pocket in my nail bag designated for his peanuts and a few nails. One day while I was up on a ladder he climbed up the ladder, up my jeans (on the outside folks, wrong nuts) and into my nail bag. I reached in to pull out a nail and got a piece of tail instead. (Damn, I better watch what I am saying.) I got a little nip and away he ran. Funny thing that, my wife would have done the same thing.

You have heard of ‘sidewalk superintendents’ haven’t you? Hey sis, “Do these steps meet code?” This picture is a little fuzzy, but aren’t cubs fuzzy any way?

Back to work. This young buck, and he knew it, is building the chimney from the inside-out. He asked, how do we do that? I said I will cut the plywood twenty-four inches wide, then we can sneak them up the inside of the chimney, and he could reach over twenty-four inches to nail them. We saved the narrower sheets of ply just for this type of application. We had to do the same thing at really high walls at the back side of the house also. Other than me, this young stud was the only other carpenter on this site. (I have been a member of the carpenters union for sixteen years.) From time to time I was required to join other unions, Teamsters, Heavy Equipment Operators, and the Laborers Union.

A cricket: Some builders just place flashing up the wall and up the slope of the roof--no-no-no--they are just asking for many callbacks. Since no one gets up there regularly to clean out leaves, peanut shells, trash, fir cones and needles--all this just sits there and traps moisture. Moss comes next, and before you know it, a fern or a tree will start growing and all this will rust out the flashing and rot starts in your whole chimney and costs someone a lot of money down the road. Do the cricket, please, and save yourself a lot of trouble and cash later.

Hey, grandpa, did you read the instructions?

We left the logs extend out under the fireplace enough to rest scaffolding on. As an extra precaution, we placed a few temporary posts to the ground at the ends of the log for added safety. This was the only cedar wall shingled by our other carpenter. I did the rest of the house, one stinking row at a time.

The basement deck was the only deck not covered. It made a good platform for our scaffolding to finish the outside of the house. I never liked extending floor joists through the wall and outside for a deck because moisture can eventually penetrate around each joist at the wall. However I placed a bed of rubber caulking on the side of each joist and then installed the solid blocking into it. I didn’t block and then caulk up the outside like everyone else does. The caulking is exposed to the weather and will eventually fall off the surface and allow moisture to get in the walls. Place two angle flashings, one up the wall and out over the joist, then install your decking. Before you install your siding, place another flashing up the wall and over the top of the decking. This way if you only have the lower flashing, leaves, pinecones, sawdust, and other junk will trap water and rust out the flashing and then rot out your joists. Why do I know this? When remodeling homes, one is confronted with these problems every day.

The seventeen-hundred gallon holding tank comes in two sections. We found a natural flat place to place it on. We added a load of sand, compacted it, and we were good to go. There was only one problem, we couldn’t get it low enough for plumbing in the basement. There are pumps available if we want to do it later.

We immediately hooked up the sewer line so we could get my wife back out. We now had a working bathroom after about two and a half years. This was just before the skunk incident. She would take the bathroom but not my baby skunk. Some people are just weird.

What I liked about this system is the solenoid valve was placed on the main waterline going into the machine room in the basement. When the tank was full, the alarm went off and shut down the city water to the whole house. What will they think of next? The alarm caused every neighbor within a hundred miles to come up to our place with a huge array of weapons and cans of gas. (Just kidding, again.) Not only was that annoying, I couldn’t get any sleep for all the bitching, because “Why didn’t I do something?” What could I do? I got in late from Seattle and went straight to bed, and I didn’t look at the panel inside the house with all the blinking warning lights. My wife lost sleep thinking she might have to use the acre and a half for a toilet again with mama bear running loose. Damn it, I should have married a Montana high school girlfriend of mine. She would have told that bear what for, in fact she bagged a bear or moose every year, mostly by just talking them to death.

The basement floor had to be insulated, so we nailed plywood and/or chipboard under the floor joists. This required me to lie on my back in the dirt, and then we laid insulation batts in between the joist spaces. We still had twenty-four inches of clearance under the floor at the uphill side so we could do repairs as needed. Then we closed-in (Skirt board) around part of the crawl space, just to keep little critters like the baby skunk out. A really fine way to treat my friends, eh? In the space on the outside of the rim joist on the left, we poured a concrete stem-wall to support the exterior walls, and we placed perimeter drain-tile and gravel to keep the water out of the basement.

Note : The building inspector always carries a moisture meter with him when you call for your inspection to cover, Actually, I had my own meter, and when I was satisfied we met the required ten to twelve percent, then I called him. To ‘cover’ means all your rough-in, insulation, vapor barrier, and fire-stop is in place and you are ready to drywall/sheetrock or panel. If your building is framed in the rain, it will take much longer to dry out. Your building has to be completely closed-in--windows, doors, even a temporary locking door or a window is allowed. If your heating system is in place, wonderful. With us, we hooked up a few old electric baseboard heaters, (meaning we didn’t have to rent any) left over from other projects and used a few fans to distribute heat evenly throughout the house. Expect your electrical bill to make a huge jump, but it is necessary. This is a very important step. The house has to be dry through and through.

I refuse to use propane at this stage because it adds moisture and fumes and it is very dangerous.

The upper deck over the main floor master bedroom ceiling had to be insulated. The furring strips allowed the air to move to the outside edges where you can see the baseboard with holes in it. The air would pass under the subflooring, up behind the baseboard and out the holes. I cut a kerf in the top of the baseboard deep enough to be below the holes, then we slid a double screen in the kerf, see below.

The yellow cedar decking is installed over a rubber membrane applied over the slopping plywood subflooring. When driving nails through the decking and rubber waterproofing, the rubber took the place of gaskets or washers normally used to seal the nail or screw. Also we had a wide overhang over the deck. In the two years we lived there, I never saw a drop of rain on that decking. The trees around the house caught all the driving rain before it could touch the house. All railing pickets are screwed in place, otherwise they can be kicked out.

Once the ridged insulation was installed under the living and dining room floor with glue, we then went back and installed long screws with washers into the bottom of the spruce decking above.

This was an excellent place to cure our firewood. We had enough firewood from construction and logging to last at least five years. Then our property provided one or two blown over trees every year, or broken branches, and we had a huge forest right next to us with tons of fallen trees for firewood.

The bolts extended out were cut off and all exposed metal parts were wire brushed and painted with Galvacon, the paint recommended by the engineers on all my larger projects. Rust-Oleum would have been my second choice. Both of these products are good as long as you wire brush any rust that may have accumulated first. Eventually the paint will wear thin and break down, allowing moisture and air at the rust you didn’t get, and you will then see that dreaded rust leaching through, leaving stain marks all over your house.

This cross bracing and ‘She Bolt Washer’ system is a must for this house, I figured. The engineer didn’t think it was absolutely necessary, but I just felt better if it were there. Construction is full of personal choices. My thinking is, just do what you think makes you feel better. The contractor of your choice may say it isn’t necessary, but it is your money and your house to do as you please. Sleeping at night knowing you, your loved ones, and friends are as safe as possible is well worth the effort, and this is not all that expensive, especially if you do it yourself. Not many people have the time or know-how. It is done for the old train bridges, so why not here? (This area is well known for its earth tremors). I have seen timber bridges that my father replaced because they collapsed, the nuts and small washers pulled right through the huge beams.

‘Blue’ Stellar Jays, Camp Robbers, Blue Jays, etc., are smart. This one stole peanuts from ole Fuzzbutt’s pile, flew somewhere and brought thirteen of his buddies with him the same day. Don’t tell me they don’t communicate somehow. Or they see their buddy with a peanut and have to follow him/her back to the source.

We moved into the house before the wall shingles were installed. The roof was the platform for cleaning the roof, the skylight, and the gutters. I loved installing cedar shingles. It is one hell of a long process though. Once we could see out the windows we selectively removed some trees we didn’t like, even one very large one outside the main floor master bedroom. That tree was broken off at the top from some bad storm forty to fifty years ago. It had one huge branch that banged on the roof at night while we were trying to sleep. A tree surgeon said to drill a hole in the tree to see it if was hollow like the one at the south end of the house that blew over. They were right. I drilled a hole, went in about three inches, and hit mush; out the tree came. There had to be five or six cords of firewood in that tree and loads of pitch. We also felled an old broken off tree about thirty-six inches in diameter and about thirty feet tall. When it hit the driveway it shattered and millions (maybe more) honey bees filled the sky. Honey was pouring out all over the driveway. What a mess that was. I am sure mama bear misses that tree.

Every shingle I installed went into a bed of Butyl caulking where they met a post, the roof decking, or a window. By every shingle, I mean the starter shingle, the overlapping shingle, and the next overlapping shingle, giving us triple caulking protection. People make the mistake of doing their thing and caulking after. They only get the top, not down in the crack/void where water gets in and is trapped, and of course most do-it-your-selfers use the cheapest caulking they can buy, and then they wonder why they have rot throughout the house.

Here’s a good place to talk about the walk-in gutter. The roof shingles were stopped just over the wall line. There was angle flashing under the shakes and down over the fascia board. You may have noticed there are two fascias. We tucked a rubber membrane up under the flashing down the face at the back, across the sloping over-hang decking, over a four-by-four cant-strip and up and over the outer fascia board. We left the thick rubber sheet sit in the gutter in the hot sun to find its shape first before we secured it in place. Fortunately the roll of rubber was long enough and wide enough so we didn’t have any overlapping. When one wanted to clean the roof, you just climbed up a ladder at the front entry. Take your shoes off or use rubber soled shoes and swept out your gutter and scuppers and blew the needles and leaves off of the cedar shakes. At the rear of the house we needed to use a ladder from the south deck. I swept out the gutter twice a year and broom cleaned the shakes once a year. One year I cleared off about two feet of snow. All scuppers and gutter drains were copper.

It is difficult to see the electric infrared heaters along the beams on three sides of this deck but with them we could BBQ all year round in comfort and eat outside even when it was raining or snowing. By the way, they are not cheap, so get your electrical contractor to buy things like that wholesale. I was working in Seattle by this time and got my electrical contractor down there to purchase them, saving at least 30 percent. It was much cheaper than buying them in Canada.

Notice that the ends of the beams were eventually clad in copper. All the deck floor joists are pressure-treated. The decking is cedar. The vertical rebar pickets on the front entry deck are set in holes drilled at the top and bottom of the logs. The bottom holes were filled with rubber caulking before we shoved the rebar into the holes, the same for the interior loft railings. When building this deck, we poured a slightly slopping concrete footing along the bank up to a big rock. Once the pressure treated joists and cedar decking was installed, we poured an exposed concrete sidewalk about three eights of an inch short of the decking so we could clean out that small gap now and again so moisture would not be trapped and rot out the treated rim joist. Most people will pour concrete right up to the rim joist. Water will get trapped in there, and you can’t see it until it has rotted through. When you cut any pressure treated lumber, apply a preservative, even when drilling holes in it.

Note : You can build everything so things won’t go wrong, but if you don’t maintain your house, things will rot, rust, mildew, and fall apart. So, clean off the damn roof now and again and the gaps between all your decking and the wet junk sitting on all your flashing--just do it.

We are all but completed except for a little staining here and there. Note : When the tree to the right of the house was broken off by high wind and lighting, it took a lot of branches off the Douglas fir tree to the right of the fireplace. When we sold the house, numerous little sprigs were already growing back. Ordinarily I would have only removed enough branches to see the view and left the rest for shade, rain, and sun protection for the house. Many people would have removed all those trees, not realizing that they keep the house cool in the summer and protect the house from the elements, and they make your property beautiful. Looking through the branches at the view always appealed to me.

Access to the built-in gutter at the back of the house was from a ladder off the south deck. Once up there the worker had to walk along the gutter to the chimney and climb over the cricket behind the fireplace chimney to access the rest of the gutter at the back. If you look out your windows when it is raining and no water is pouring out of your scuppers or rain drains, it is time to get up on the roof and do some cleaning.

The basement window is looking out from the fire pit just behind the cross bracing. The basement door is just to the right of the windows. You can see the Pacific and the inlet from there as well. The hot tub would go just outside the window some day; it was covered by the living room floor above. I am sure the new owners may have done that by now. We roughed-in the hot and cold water lines, electrical, etc., to that area for the future from the mechanical room just in case we wanted to use the eighty-gallon hot water tank for the hot tub. It is a very good idea to rough-in these things if you think you may do something in the future. It saves from having to tear your house apart later and spending a lot of money needlessly.

A really good place to install high-rise windows don’t you think? The three windows on the left are two inches narrower than the one on the right. Who really cares if they are equal bays? Even the sliding patio door on the right side wall was from a high-rise. I think there was a small ding in the aluminum frame. Note : There are copper flashings over every wood ledge around the house.

We still have the construction door in place. The plan was to have the ‘Plank entry door look’ some day.

We had our favorite oak flooring company come out to finish the spruce floor. I had called them before we made the decision to use spruce. They warned us up front that it would be softer than oak and Douglas fir, and that was okay with us. They sanded, filled, sanded, and filled again, then did the matt finish. As they were sanding, the sand paper would fill up and start skipping or kind of hop-a-long because of the soft spruce flooring. They just had to be more careful. When we rolled the heavy Sub-Zero fridge through the house to the built-in cabinet in the kitchen, we turned over a piece of carpet for under the refrigerator and drug it to its niche. We found out what they meant about the spruce flooring being soft when we slid the refrigerator off the carpet into its space. It did leave an indented trail under the appliance. We did however watch very closely when we moved the rest of our furniture into the house. We are accustomed to always taking our shoes off at the front door. In the two years we lived in the house, there was not one indention, except for when my first wife threw a corkscrew at me and missed and it imbedded itself in the floor.

It is very hard to see, but there are Arbutus leaf imprints in our ten-sack concrete fireplace mantle. The lot is full of Arbutus trees. (Madrone in the States.) We took some of the leaves and glued them to our mantle form and poured them in place, once we removed the form and the leaves we had a beautiful imprint. I also took my belt sander (very lightly) to the concrete surface to get rid of the glossy look, and this of course made the leaves stand out more. Then we sealed the surface with a non-glare sealer. Bonito. The surround around the fireplace opening and the hearth is granite, left over from the kitchen top.

If you look closely under the window to the right of the fire place there is an electrical heater. In the floor in front of that is a floor register covering a hole where the heat from the wood stove in the sunken fire pit directly below the living room radiated up. There were four in that room, and there were others to the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, and utility room. The hot air just naturally found its way up and out each register or just though the floor. This system worked beautifully. Just remember, hot air goes up and sh*t goes down. If you screw that up you are in a heap of trouble.

We installed horizontal blinds on the south window walls (living and dining room). Originally we were completely against doing that, but the sun was just too hot in the summer, and we wanted privacy on that side because of the deck. Sometimes our friends would come to our house unannounced and come in that way instead of to the front door. The west side of the house had trees to protect us from the sun, and because of the cliff on that side, privacy was never an issue.

The picture on the left is looking down from the bridge on the second floor. My shoulder is leaning up against the king post. The second picture shows the formal dining room. When my first wife moved out, I made it my design studio/office. It was perfect. The view was fantastic. With just two of us living in the house, who needed a formal eating area any way! Every time we could, we ate out on the deck, even with guests. We could do that year-round because of the deck heaters. The morning sun warmed the deck and shone through the kitchen and utility room windows as well as the skylight over the main entry. That’s a good thing to remember when you design your house. Once the carriage house studio was completed, I would have moved my office up there.

This was the formal dining room for a few months until my first wife left. There is a story behind that dining room table. It was made out of un-oiled form ply back in 1974. It is the only dining room table we ever had. When the humidity changed drastically, like when we moved from Oregon to Colorado Springs, it opened up, then it closed, then it opened, like it was alive. It was always a conversation piece, as if we needed something more to talk about. Don’t you just love the floor?

The granite counter top is twelve-by-twelve by three-eighths inches thick wall tiles, (left over from a hotel) with no grout joint. It was all epoxied in place. This is an incredibly cheap way to go. The only full piece was the bar top. We were very pleased with this look, even though most of it was used. People will use tiles on counter tops with grout joints. It’s not a good idea, because eventually the grout will stain and fall out.

The laminated spruce floor at the king post was made from leftover scraps. (I never throw anything a way.) The pieces are wedges, like a huge fan, about forty-two inches long, and the floor slopes about one and a half inches. In all homes I designed, there was no way to look into a bedroom or bathroom from the living room or family room. I always hated looking at someone’s toilet or tub, and most people like privacy when they are sick or just catching a nap in the bedroom. Notice the sloped ceiling in the bedroom. It would have been a shame to close that in. It gives one the illusion the bedroom is much bigger without adding more square feet or lots of mirrors. The upper master bedroom is just above this room. The flat ceiling in this room is sound insulated and the master bedroom above has a thick-plush carpet and a good quality under pad. We couldn’t hear a thing from our over-sexed guests above us. Note : Notice the cracks in the king post I mentioned earlier.

Now we are well into interior finish. The upper picture is the main master bath on the main floor. There is an electric floor warming mat on a timer in front of the vanity and shower. (It was left over from one of my projects). My wives loved it. The vanity was bought used. The Corian counter top with the brass inlay came with the unit. So did the sink and fittings. The new soak tub is a step-in and sit-down tub. Just throw your leg over, step down, and sit. The shower was at the left end of the tub. There was a glass window in the shower wall that overlooked the tub and looked out at the inlet and mountains and sunset. We weren’t too concerned about privacy. The cliff was right there, and any planes that flew over the inlet usually flew right over the water, one hundred and eighty feet below us.

The utility is large enough to sew and iron in, and there was a TV cable in there as well. Does anyone know how Victor is doing in The Young and the Restless?

The small guest bedroom on the main floor was turned into an office for my second wife. It had a partial sloping ceiling, just like the master bedroom. The window looked north. My second wife’s contribution to this project was the landscaping, the fruit trees, and the sprinkler system. She loved gardening.

Not a good picture of the upper master bedroom, but it is all I have. The view is to the north and the snowcapped mountains. The covered deck is very large, and an excellent place for guests or your mother-in-law to stay forever and ever. This room had a great master bathroom, with a double Jacuzzi tub, and of course all the rooms upstairs had that beautiful slopping wood ceiling and logs.

All the wood ceilings were sandblasted. That got rid of all the blemishes and gave us a great look, exactly what we wanted. We did not sandblast the logs however. Have you figured out what the railings are made out of? (Reinforcing steel left over from one or two of my building sites). Holes were drilled into the bottom plate and down into the top of the beam below. The railing cap was drilled to match. This was a very strong railing. After wiping the rebar down with vinegar, we spray painted them with two coats of stove black, but any color would do. We decided to make our railing forty-two inches high, basically so that when we sat down up there we wouldn’t have the railing spoil the view of the fireplace and the view outside.

There is a groove in the hand railing going downstairs, which satisfies the grip code.

“A sight for sore eyes.” We are looking south at twilight.

This is what this project was all about: the killer views, the natural landscaping, the smell of the cedars, the crystal clear air, the wildness, the critters, and the wind whistling through the trees. The only houses we could see were across the inlet. At night one would sit by the wood burning fireplace, have a cold one in one hand and your other hand on old Fuzzbutt’s tail. You could turn your head just a little and see the cruise ships with their myriad of lights or watch the fireworks on Canada Day. Personally I have never built in such a beautiful place before. Many were close, but not like this.

With all the leftover logs and the ones we cut down that were too close to the house, I made a very crude interwoven log structure all spiked together around the holding tank. Eventually the vines will hide the whole thing. Or we could enclose the whole thing with stone walls later.

I was not meant to be a farmer. Now I know what they mean by cash crop. I told my wife it was time to pick the corn and we would have sweet corn on the cob for dinner. After picking corn I was totally disgusted. I set the cobs on the table and called my second wife and asked her what she thought. She looked at the corn, she looked at me, she looked again at the corn, she looked at Fuzzbutt, who was smelling the corn, and started to snicker, then laugh uproariously, and of course when she laughs like that I have to join her. I told her if this was her response I would grow more corn. A good laugh is hard to find.

I set up a twelve-foot by eight-foot area near my strawberries, fenced it all in, high enough to keep the deer out. (Whatever for?) I went down to the local nursery store and bought twenty-four potted corn plants.

I also brought in a few bags of nice rich top soil, a big bag of fertilizer, and sat back and watched my corn grow. I spent about one hundred and fifty dollars cash on all this (not including labor) and look what I got. It must have been the city water. I don’t think the deer would have even eaten them. I guess I had better stick to design and construction.

On the other side of that big fir tree at the far end of the lawn was a flat spot on top of the rocks for a few future picnic tables, a fire pit BBQ and just a nice place to relax and take in the view. On the lower right corner I had my everbearing strawberries. I had two built-up boxes with chicken wire laid over them to keep the deer out; it didn’t work. My second wife thought that was funny. How dare she? I am not married to her any more either. This picture was taken around eight in the morning.

By now I am a little tired of working all week in Seattle, Vancouver, and Whistler and working every weekend on the house. It was time to just sit back and enjoy.

My second wife and I would sit out on the south deck and sun bathe and play a game of Scrabble. (I could never out spell either one of my wives.) Cribbage, strip poker, and Duplicate Bridge were my games, and we took care of our pets. Fuzzbutt would lie with his feet up in the air between my wife’s ample breasts or her tummy and bask in the sun, or Fuzzbutt would sleep or sit in my lap and help me eat peanuts. Funny thing, that. He would eat the peanuts on the spot that were not in their shell. Any in a shell were carted off somewhere. One day Fuzzbutt and Blue were after the same peanut on the deck railing. They were about six to eight inches on each side of the peanut, inching their way closer and closer. There was all this screeching and shattering. Fuzzbutt finely won. One day a huge wild turkey was sitting on Fuzzbutt’s branch. Fuzzbutt was giving the turkey what for. The turkey just shrugged its shoulders (can they do that?) and flew away. By the time I located my camera, I missed both incidents. My wife (number two) and I were barbecuing a couple steaks. Fuzzbutt picked up a peanut and headed for his favorite perch, which is on top of the BBQ lid. I just came around the corner, and there was this fuzzy thing jumping up and down on that hot lid, completely befuddled. I reached over and grabbed him by the tail, and he grabbed my shirt sleeve and ran and sat on my shoulder licking his hot feet, no kidding. I loved my little Fuzzbutt.

Looking west, we would watch the barges go up and down the inlet. Many were hauling mining, logging, or construction equipment or fuel. The float planes (we knew some of the pilots) would fly just above the water, delivering fisherman, loggers, etc., somewhere in the interior. Sometimes the pilots would buzz the house and wave as they flew by. The really nice hospital in Sechelt was continually in use from logging, fishing, and mining accidents. Really bad accident cases were flown straight into Vancouver. From here we could see the air currents create interesting patterns on the surface of the water. A few years before we starting building, there was a pod of whales that decided to clean the fish out of the inlet. It was fun watching the numerous eagles diving for salmon all year long.

The double carport was very wide and deep. I always hated driving into a damp, smelly, poorly lit garage and opening my car door and slamming into it into a post or the car beside it and not having room to walk around both ends of the cars. With the large cabinet shop at the end of the carport and a large closet for the carport, there was no need to have sh*t all over the place. This was much like parking your car in a garden.

Just to the left of the carport picture was my last project before we sold the house. The six-foot high waterfall, just on the other side of the log curb, was a water trough, and the water would cascade over the spillway, down a wide irregular stone face, and into a reflecting pool. When you looked out the kitchen window or were leaving the house, you would see the shingle wall to the right or the waterfall to the left. With the wind and the sound of the water pouring over the rocks it was heavenly. The reflecting pool was our way to provide water for all our critters to drink and for birds to bathe in. We even had two flat boulders beside the waterfall for reading while one soaked their feet on a hot day.

Once the studio over the shop and carport was completed, it would be large enough to rent to someone to live in or just for my own office/studio. There was a place for a small but nice bathroom with a shower, a free-standing fireplace in the sitting area where a king size bed could go, or my drafting table, computers, TV, my lazy-boy chair, and a desk. There was also an area for a nice mini kitchen with a stove and refrigerator. The breakfast table would be located right behind those wood windows in the front or on the ample deck. Those wood windows were left over from a job in Whistler. Since we traveled a lot, it would have been nice to have someone living in the studio or the main house while we were away. This was the condition of the project when we sold. It sold the first day for our asking price, a very good indication that the price was too low. (I will get into why we sold it in a minute.)

The upper stone wall by the carport was built by a crew that was out of work for some time. I did the stone wall just left of the house by the path from the basement entry. All the stone came from this site, just like the logs.

We used some more of our logs for the curbs. We left vertical rebar embedded in the very deep thickened edge of the driveway. Since the logs would always be exposed and accessible to rot and decay, one would just slip the log off the rebar and replace it when needed. There always needed to be a spacer underneath to keep the log up out of the snow and water.

The eighteen-inch cantilevered window wall in the office/studio or living quarters was a perfect place for the last of our smaller windows from the high-rises. We had to pay for custom-cut gable pieces. The bottom of the shop walls were about thirty-six inches from the rock bank on two sides. This area was for storing pipe, conduit, and other items we might need for the shop. There is a thirty-six inch overhang on the sides and at the peak, tapering down to twenty-four inches at the lower ends, thus giving this building almost full protection from the elements. The view was to the south, towards Sechelt. There were more trees to look through, but you could still see the evening lights of Sechelt. One never tired of the different views. No two were alike.

I loved doing these spiral shingle walls. I don’t think I have ever known anyone who has ever done one just like mine. To find the splash line I waited for a heavy rain and marked on the wall the highest splash water mark, which is where I nailed my angle flashing, then I installed the four-inch thick stone wall up to it. (It would not do the shingles any good to be exposed to the rain.) This is the look from the kitchen window and the main entry from the main house. It was spotlighted at night when we had guests, or we were going someplace. The lights were on a motion detector. The wild critters loved turning it on and off every night. By the way, when you have as many trees as we did, rain normally came straight down. There was no slanting rain to get at your decks or house.

Hey boss, I am damn tired of peanuts, peanuts, peanuts every day. How about a cashew, a filbert, walnut, anything, but no Brazil nuts, I can’t crack those. Fuzzbutt walked around and around this jar. He was perplexed. He could see the peanuts, but when he went to reach for one, he ran his nose into a wall of glass. Finally he stood up. Another thing I discovered, Fuzzbutt never reached out and grabbed a peanut with his nice sharp claws. He always grabbed it with his teeth.

This was a perfect fireplace day. Fuzzbutt normally stayed inside with us.

When we had guests, we could easily park ten to twelve cars up here near the house. The cul-de-sac and street below could handle the overflow.

The south end of the house. There is a copper cap over the end of the ridge log and I still needed to sculpture the horizontal pieces over the posts. There always seemed to be lots to do, which is good because I love puttering. This picture shows the ramp from the deck to the bank.

I also wanted to show you this picture because of the railing treatment. Now we are down to the very last of our logs, the really skinny ones. I snapped a line down the length (center) of a log and used my skill saw to make a cut about two and a half inches deep. On each end of the log I marked a ninety degree line from the first cut, snapped a line, and made another cut. When completed, there was about one quarter taken out of the log. Then we lag bolted the log on the top of the posts and nailed our one-by-two inch cedar verticals (pickets) with a four-inch space (code) between each picket. When you nail the verticals, angle your nails. It will be harder to kick them out, or if you use screws, you should drill a pilot hole first. Otherwise you will split most of your verticals.

Hey, look boss, a perfect color match. “Take the damn picture. I am hungry, and my feet hurt.”

Note : I trained Mr. Fuzzbutt on the meaning of no. I knew I could do it with dogs, so I thought I would see if I could teach Fuzzbutt. First he got used to me giving him peanuts. Months later I would say no and snatch the peanut just before he could grab it. At first he was afraid and would run like hell. After a few months he would look at the peanut, I would say no, then he looked at me as if to say please, and then he would take the peanut.

Financing: Construction was nearing completion and we had the occupancy permit for the main house only, and the framing inspection approved for the carriage house. This was a requirement from another bank before they would give us a permanent mortgage.

We were offered much more then we needed from the other bank, mainly because the land (which we originally paid twenty eight thousand dollars for) was shooting up rapidly, especially for acreage. Funny thing, the first bank appraised our lot at fifty six thousand dollars, twice what we paid for it. About five years later, the second bank valued it at twice that, one hundred and twelve thousand dollars, plus something extra for the basement, which was nearly completed. Then there were the buildings at so much a square foot and massive lot improvements, so the appraisal was much higher than we expected. We only borrowed enough to pay off the construction loan. We also wanted to keep the monthly payments down. We were in no hurry to complete the carriage-house-studio and basement. The shop and carport were already completed. As it worked out, my first wife and I divorced, and we had to sell the house as is. Incidentally, in three years of construction, plus the two years my second wife and I lived in the house, I personally worked a total of four thousand hours in this project. If I had to pay a journeyman carpenter/foreman the going rate of say twenty five dollars per hour (or even double that) that comes out to $100,000/$200,000 dollars not counting room, board, and the ferry.

Glossary

Note : Keep in mind the terms I used here are local. They may change depending on where you are from. Case in point, some people like to say sheetrock, others drywall, and a few other places Gypsum wallboard. For instance I could not find a meaning for a deer run or a bear run so I explained what I meant in my own words. You may find this glossary a little longer than most, but I had important information that I thought was very useful. This was a very dangerous job, so as they say, ‘listen up,’ or ‘pay attention.’

A real kick: A thrill, a blast, fun.

A sight for sore eyes: When I arrived from one of my projects on Friday evening from Seattle, Whistler, or Vancouver, and drove up to the top of our cliff home property, it was like a new incredibly beautiful world. It is much like delving into a good book when you go to bed at night.

Depending on the weather and if I had my SUV windows open or not, I could get a glimpse of the sunset on the inlet or moonlight, maybe see the lights of downtown Sechelt or the lights of the cruise ships. I’d smell the Douglas fir trees and the cedar trees waving in the evening breeze in that crystal clear air. I knew I was in heaven. This is what I want heaven or the Happy Hunting Grounds to look like.

Affidavits: In our case, a written notarized declaration that one has done the work or supplied materials to a certain address; in other words, did something.

Arbutus trees: Or Madrone trees. Reportedly the Sunshine Coast is as far north as these trees grow. They grow all the way down the Pacific coast as far south as Northern California. Our local Indian Bands in British Columbia use the bark for medicines. My first wife thought these trees were too messy. They shed their light tan, brown, or red bark most of the year. I remember when the Sechelt Indian Band sent their children out to gather up the bark and get paid so much a sack. One thing most people notice about Arbutus trees, other than the shedding of its bark, is how unpredictable growth is. It seems about every year or less they have to grow in a different direction. I doubt if one could find the trunk of the tree straight for more than twenty-four inches, thus eliminating that hardwood useful for furniture. It does make great firewood, however.

Baby Skunk: This little baby or (kits) had a white strip down its back and must have come up from the basement quiet-like one evening. I saw its little head peak around my first wife’s sofa while we were in our new living room enjoying the fireplace and watching TV. I got my wife’s attention and put my figure up to my lips, indicating she should not say a word, and with a bit of sign language told her to pull her legs up under her on the sofa, then I pointed. The little baby skunk either didn’t see us (skunks are born blind), or I guess it could see well enough to climb the stairs and was attracted to the flickering lights on the television and/or the warmth of the fireplace. My poor wife was completely flabbergasted. She didn’t know what to do. After a few minutes, ‘Flower’ (the name of the baby skunk in the movie Bambi) got up, and waddled back to the stairway to the basement, never to be seen again. My poor dear wife headed for the bathroom and she drove back to Vancouver the next morning. I was very lucky to ever see her again.

I never intended to get close enough to see if the skunk was a male or female. Facts about skunks I found on the computer states that they only live two to three years. How sad. We have had two friends who had skunks as pets. Their little glands at the back were removed. When we were invited to one of our friend’s homes, we were told to enter very slowly and not to be afraid when the critter starts to run straight at you, (bears do the same thing) don’t show any fear whatsoever, ignore them, and stand perfectly still. It stopped, and I sat on the sofa, and the pet skunk rolled up on my stocking feet and went to sleep. My wife headed for the bathroom (again) and I noticed my friend’s mother wore army boots while in the house. The skunk kept nipping at her ankles. When the skunk ran at her, she yelled and screamed and started kicking.

Bagged a bear or moose: We had one lady in our small town of Thompson Falls, Montana, who used to be the first or only lady to shoot a bear, moose, or deer every year. Maybe the only lady in the whole state. She was around fifty-five to sixty years old.

Batter boards: Most projects will layout the building grids for footing locations off the batter boards. In our case we placed two-by-fours on trees at each end of the house and pulled three strings, parallel to each other, at the dimensions shown on the drawings. We then tied a ribbon on the string where the drawings showed footings. Then we dropped a string from the ribbon down to the ground with a nail or rock tied to it, kind of like a plumb bob that would indicate the center of each footing.

Beams: Most of our floor beams were made out of logs. Normally these beams are built-up out of dimension lumber and span over every window and door opening. The large beams under the whole house supported the floor joists as well as the deck joists or the floor logs supporting the spruce floor in the living room and dining room.

Bearing point: Any piece of material, i.e., the ends of beams, headers, (logs) where the weight of the building will be transferred to a post or wall, which will be bearing on one of our piers.

Beer Drinker’s Handles/Names: Aside from the two high school kids and Frenchy, I never knew the other five guys names. Kokanee, Labatt, Molson, Pilsner, Moosehead. I experienced this situation before when I was working for a vacation home builder in Houston, Texas.

Bird mouths: Notches cut in rafter’s ends (or in our case rafter logs) where the material sits on the top plates at the top of an outside wall and at the top of the ridge beam.

Buff: In the nude.

Building Inspector: When I started out in the construction industry in 1954, I was 14 years old. Building department inspectors at that time were not degreed. Construction experience was mandatory, or they hired knowledgeable carpenters, plumbers, and electricians or contractors, and many years later, degreed Construction Technology graduates. Years after that, there were degrees offered just for Building Inspectors. I was offered the chance to be an inspector numerous times. I did fill-in a few times back in the 50s and early 60s when they were short-handed.

Bunkhouse: Our bunkhouse (a ranch/farm term) included sleeping quarters for my wife and me. She slept there once because there were no bathroom facilities. She was paranoid over mama bear. The bunkhouse also doubled as warehouse and tool storage and for cooking meals when it was raining or snowing.

Butyl caulking: Is a rubber-based caulk that was specified for two of my high-rise projects. It is more difficult to use, but I figure if it is used on high-rises, it has to be good, since one does not want to be repairing caulking thirty floors high very often.

Cant-hook: An interesting logging tool for turning logs. It works much like a lever with a grappling hook and spike at one end of a stout wood handle.

Cant-strip: We used this piece of wood in our walk-in gutter. You take a two-by-two or a four-by-four and cut it diagonally from corner to corner, forty-five degrees. Normally this is done when you have a product like our rubber sheeting. ‘Rounding or a slight bend’ in the rubber was much easier than trying to make the material bend to ninety degrees. This cant-strip also gave support to the fascia board and made the gutter easier to walk on. Remember, most materials have a memory, kind of like cutting the ends out of a tin can. Open up the can and nail it flat on something. When you take it off it will want to go back to its original shape.

Carriage House or Coach House: Usually a smaller building near a manor or estate home that was used to house horse carriages/buggies and might double as a stable for the horses. The caretaker or carriage driver lived on the upper floor, which was normally within the roof structure. Later on, of course, these buildings became car garages or nice mother-in-law suites upstairs.

Cedar shakes: We used No. 1 ‘heavy cedar shakes.’ No. 2 or 3 shakes will cause you no end of grief down the road. If you use ‘flat-grain’ shingles they will cup, bend, twist, and look very unsightly. Look at any cedar shingle roof on your way home; you will see what I mean. When they are replaced you then have the new look, leaving your roof looking blotchy. When you look at our steep roof it isn’t anything you want to patch or fix in the near future. Some people would put fiberglass or metal, but that was not the look we wanted.

Chain hoist: Aside from the chain saw, the chain hoist makes lifting of the logs nearly effortless.

Cinched: Tied down.

Clear-vertical-grain (CVG): The wood grain is parallel to the length of the lumber and needs to nearly go right through the board, not a flat grain, (that will ‘cup’ the piece of wood), the wood normally will stay straight, not bend, twist, or warp and will have very small or no knots. It is commonly used for furniture, door, window, and cabinet frames, and in my estimation is most attractive when finished with a clear sealer or a light stain.

Close enough for government work: (Slang, used during World War II) with our very preliminary survey, we were able to establish the location of the house, cut down trees where required, and start building.

Concrete form tube, round: There are various names for these forms. They are lightweight, usually are twelve-feet long and are made out of very heavy paper. They can be cut to length with a hand or power saw, and the big thing is they don’t need whalers or ties. I usually leave the paper form on until we are nearly completed with construction, mainly because it protects the concrete from staining, scratches or any other form of damage. The form leaves a perfectly smooth finish and is beautiful in my way of thinking and does not need any plaster, filler, etc., not even paint if you like the concrete look. The largest we ever used in a high-rise lobby was thirty inches and was left exposed.

Confirmation Memos/Faxes: Many times we would get instructions over a fax, the phone, or in person. These should be backed up in writing.

Construction Loan: We set up a loan based on our estimate to build the house, not counting free construction materials and my labor. We would let the bank know how much we needed every week or so based on our invoices. They would place some money in our new construction checking account as needed. My first wife would provide a statement for the bank, complete with all the invoices, meet the bank manager, and when the money was in the account, she wrote the checks. She would draw out whatever I needed for cash for our workers, small purchases, i.e., my T bone steaks (my wages). The bank only came out twice to check on us. If they wanted to, they could call up one or two of our suppliers or trades for confirmation.

Contours: See grades and elevations.

Cords of wood: A cord of fire wood is four feet by eight feet by four feet high. We always liked to air dry our firewood for about a year depending on where it was placed. Reportedly a cord of wood weighs around thirty-five hundred pounds. Wet firewood hardly throws off any heat, sizzles, and smokes, and the bad part it creates creosote in your chimney. At night, when I was around, I would burn Douglas fir full of knots. Knots burn hot like coal. Since I always got up around 5:00 a.m., I didn’t need to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the fire.

Cricket: A framed sloping roof normally used to direct water away from behind fireplace chimneys or next to a vertical wall.

Cross bracing: Here again I have my own preference for floor joist spaces. One-by-four cross bridging or solid blocking was the standard umpteen years ago. One-by-fours were much cheaper and faster to install but more difficult to keep each joist space equal and keep the joists square and plumb to each other. They also come in metal. They wood would split too easily when nailed, and the trade would just leave it that way. I liked solid blocking. You can line up the tops and bottoms more easily, thus being reasonably assured that each space is plumb and level. They did not split as easily. Normally one would use the ‘cut-off’ from each floor or ceiling joists. Normally these ‘shorts’ were thrown away as waste, and for me the most important was solid blocking acts like a fire stop and the floor felt more solid. With cross bracing fire can travel the whole length of the joist space. When trades used the joist space for electrical, plumbing, heat ducts, etc., the cross bridging was just pushed aside usually with a hammer, destroying the cross bridging completely. At least with solid blocking they could drill a hole. If ductwork went in the joist space there was not much one could do unless there was room for a wood or metal stiffener at the top and/or bottom.

Cul-de-sac: The paved circle at the end of the street to our lot.

Custom Metal straps/Hangers: Once every log was in place and had a few more months to cure (shrink), we had the local metallurgy shop measure every connection where we needed custom straps, hangers, etc.

Cut-off reinforcing: Rejects. Short pieces cut from longer pieces.

Dado: A groove cut into a piece of material to accept glass, plywood or another framing material. In our case we had one near the top of our wood railings and utilized as a grip.

Daylight Basement: In our case we were open on three sides.

Deer/Bear run: Almost every day about lunchtime a doe came from the mountains on the east side of us. Each day she became a little tamer but never close enough to eat out of our hands. Once she thought she ate all of our sandwiches she would continue west down what must have been her normal trail, or deer run. Mama bear and her two cubs would come up to us about twelve feet before mama would call her cubs back. One day a doctor friend of ours stayed the weekend and left a huge bag of dog food out on the entry deck. It was like food from heaven for the bears. Of course they always came onto the deck every time they were around looking for that bag of dog/bear food, which was about once a week.

Drawing: For me drawings are drawn on a drafting board, with or without a drafting machine. Drawings are required to get any kind of building permit. I remember back in the 50s when any ordinary person could present his/her drawing(s) on the side of a paper shopping bag. No certified architect or engineer was required. Of course they are a legal representation of your project. Now these drawings are produced by professionals and sealed, and are part of the contract between the client and the contractor. And they become very useful down the road when something goes wrong or additions are made.

Dried-in: Everything in the framed walls, floor, and ceilings had to be inspected before closing-in with the finish materials.

Drywall--sheetrock--gypsum board: The finish on all of our interior walls.

Effluent waste water: The water coming out of a sewage treatment plant that is supposed to be drinkable. It probably is if you can stand the smell. Many treatment plants around the world use that water for tree farms and pulp trees, poplar being the one used near us.

Electrical sub panel: Our house had a main electrical panel; any smaller electrical panels are called a sub-panel. We had one for the carriage house/shop/studio.

Epoxy: Is in a class called ‘structural adhesive,’ or ‘engineering adhesive.’ We used it in the holes we drilled into the rocks to hold our reinforcing bars/pins in place that extended up into our concrete piers. In other words, epoxy is the only thing holding our house up on the top of our cliff. If it was specified for many applications by project engineers for my larger projects, it was good enough for me.

Essential tools required for this type of project: table saw, chain saw, chop saw, drill, belt sander, a carpenter’s framing square, plumb bob, plus carpentry tools, most of which will fit in a tool belt. Everything else was rented.

Exposed concrete slab: Once a slab or step is poured you wait for the concrete to set up a little bit and then you use a light spray from a water hose and a brush or broom to lightly wash off the surface. Normally that will remove the trowel paste, which is mainly very light sand and cement, and this will not disturb the embedded larger pea gravel and three quarter inch gravel. It is very easy to over spray (gouge the surface) because concrete vary seldom cures evenly. The mix in one wheelbarrow may have a wet load and the next a dry load. If per chance you can’t get to washing off the surface of the concrete right away, you can trowel salt or sugar (commonly known as a retarder) into the surface paste and remove it later, sometimes the next day.

Extras: It is so easy to say, “Oh, it is only a few hundred dollars to upgrade or make a change.” Every client I had through fifty-seven years of building had the same problem with a few extra bucks here and there. One client’s (a few hundred here and there) added up to thirty thousand dollars by the time all rough-in was completed and we ordered the cover Inspection. In fact, he sued us and lost because we had signed ‘Change Orders.’ Where we didn’t have CO’s, we had signed affidavits by the sub-trades and suppliers and ‘Confirmation Memos’ of all of the client’s instructions, which were all faxed or presented to the client by hand for every change. I only had one client that didn’t pay me nearly twenty nine thousand dollars before he had a heart attack and died. His ex-wife got involved in a big battle with the client’s new girlfriend, who also had money in the house, and that really screwed everything up. When my attorney told me what I would pay for legal fees I would have broke even if I was lucky. I had too many other things going. My claim was at the bank that held the construction loan, and we left it at that. Soon after that we moved to Saudi Arabia for five years. My attorney wrote later: “Forget about the twenty nine thousand.” Neither the girlfriend nor the ex-wife had any money. The bank construction loan stopped paying when the client died. Consequently there were no funds. The bank sold the house as-is (about to be drywalled) for the amount of the construction loan.

Fascia board: The final look of you project depends on how good your material is and how well it is installed. This trim must be straight, no twisting, no large knots, and your carpentry has to be perfect or nearly so. When ordering trim materials, or any finish material for that matter, tell the lumber dealer what you want. Here again they will hand-pick a good piece out of their pile and may or may not charge you a little extra.

Flashings: This is an item that just may be the most important moisture protection that you will have on any project. The most effective in my estimation is stainless steel, but it’s also more expensive than copper or aluminum. After that, galvanized metal will work, for a while. Remember, galvanizing is only on the surface of a piece of metal. When you bend the metal or fill it up with nail holes, you have cracked the galvanizing, rendering your flashing useless. Avoid overlapping. Order full-length pieces when possible. Do not use any kind of penetration in the field, such as nails.

Floor heating mat: This was another item both of my wives enjoyed. First thing when they went into the master bath was to flip the timer for the heat floor-mat in front of the shower and vanity sink. When they got out of the shower, the floor put a smile on their face. The key is the timer. These electrical mats use a lot of juice, so you don’t want to leave it on indefinitely.

Form plywood: Normally form plywood is three quarters to one and a quarter inches thick. To make the form plywood last longer, we would spray on the surface a form release agent. It could be water-based or petroleum-based. In the old days, it was all just straight diesel oil sprayed or brushed on the plywood. We did find a few sheets of plywood soaked with diesel. These we cut up in smaller pieces and burned them. They would not work well if used in the house. You would always have the smell, and it was toxic.

Framing inspection before cover: During the building process, there were numerous inspections. Each time the inspector arrives on the site, he/she will look at all the work and will refer to the permit set to make sure there were no changes. If there is a change, the inspector may request an SK drawing by an engineer, architect, etc. Being the designer of record, I always had the necessary paperwork done before the inspector arrived. The plumber needs to call for an inspection before he covers any pipes, above or below ground. Once he/she installed piping, clean-outs, etc. they have to call for a pressure test inspection. The electricians have a few inspections, and the foundation requires inspections. Once all of the above inspections are completed and approved as well as vapor barriers and fire-stop, you called for the inspection to cover. On one estate home where I was one of two project managers, it required nearly one thousand inspections. That project had twenty-four thousand square feet of living space in three buildings, took three and a half years to complete, and cost close to one thousand dollars a square foot to build. You need more than your fingers and toes to count that high.

French door: A passage door with glass in it.

Fuzzbutt: There is so much said in this book about Fuzzbutt I think I have said everything. Even though he was cautious of everyone around him and became quite tame. He would nip at people if they freighted him, but he never broke the skin. It didn’t take too long for him to know I was the only one on site with peanuts, and he figured out that they were always in my right pocket in my nail bags. Once or twice a day he would be climbing all over me, up a ladder, lying on my back under the house, whatever. I would feel his little claws working their way up my leg, around my shoulders. One day he even sat on my hat to eat the peanut I put up there while I was sitting on the south deck with my second wife having lunch. Fuzzbutt did not like my first wife. He did however love my second wife so much that I became overly jealous. Animals know if they are liked; they just know.

Gable ends: The north and south ends of our home have triangular walls and gables instead of a hip or a slopping roof. Both have windows and doors and covered decks.

Gable glass: In our project we had a few windows that were cut at an angle/rake to match the slope of the roof at the gable end in the upper master bedroom in the main house and in the carriage house/studio.

Galvacon--Rust-Oleum: Most of the engineers on my larger projects specified Galvacon to stop or inhibit the growth of rust. My second choice would be Rust-Oleum, which was one of the first rust primers in the marketplace. Both can be used on any kind of metal exposed to the elements. Removing rust with a wire brush and cleaning with vinegar is the key before you apply either one of these products.

General Superintendent: This person works for the project manager and normally spends most of his time out on the job, not in an office.

Grades and elevations: Before we started to shoot the elevations on our lot, we located a forestry topographical map of our area. This map showed us the contours going through our property. Each contour line had an elevation number on it. This told us roughly how high we were off high tide in the Sechelt Inlet. We then were able to locate the cul-de-sac on that same map and it give us that elevation. Thus we were able to determine the elevation difference between the cul-de-sac and the top of our treed lot where the house was going to be located. In our case, eighty feet was close enough. We were able to locate all our metal survey property stakes easily enough without calling for another survey or using a metal detector. When one buys a piece of property, a legal survey is included, or should be. On your first inspection, the inspector normally asks to see the property pins. If one cannot be found or is missing, he will ask us to call a certified surveyor.

Grandfather Clause: Old rules or provision(s) on a piece of property. Let’s say a subdivision has been recently expanded. And there are all new guidelines, like fences cannot be any higher than six feet. No trees can be cut down without approval, you have to have sidewalks and curbs and gutters, etc. Normally if the Grandfather Clause home wants to make improvements, which are less than fifty percent of the cost of the house, they are not required to build by the new guidelines. Only a few were mentioned above.

Grid: We made a grid with strings ten feet apart going north-south and east-west in the area where we wanted to locate the main structure.

Gutter drains/scuppers: Ours were copper. Galvanized will rust out in no time. Drains will plug up. That is a fact of life, so when it rains, look out the window to see if water is coming out of the scuppers and drains. If not, clean them out right away. Be forewarned that if you have a lot of trees around your building and a high wind comes up, you will get a lot of debris, cones, leaves, needles, and branches in you gutters.

Hand-held eye level: This is a level one looks through; it’s kind of like a telescope and has a bubble on top. When sighting through the level you can see when your bubble is level, and you mark the spot on a tree, wall, survey rod, etc. This of course is a very crude way to establish elevations, but it is good enough for what we were doing. You will see most heavy equipment operators with one in their pocket or attached to their belt. For example, the equipment operator will locate his eye level (mine is six feet) on his piece of equipment, i.e., bulldozer, front-end loader, backhoe, etc. He then walks a ways down the road or excavation he is working on and looks back at his mark on his machine with his hand-held eye level. If he is three inches up or down from his mark on his equipment, then he knows he has over or under excavated and can make corrections if it is critical enough.

Happy hunting grounds: This is where my stepmother from the Blackfeet Indian Reservation went when she died. Actually her ‘happy hunting grounds’ fit our lot to a T. The only difference was we don’t have buffalo. Deer and bear, yes, but no buffalo.

Head tree/Heel boom: When a new area is being logged, they will locate the largest tree that is in an accessible location and attach a boom, block and tackle, cables, whatever is required to pull, drag, and load all the logs onto trucks.

High-wind velocity: Hurricane windows can resist up to one hundred and fifty mile per hour winds, more if frames are heavy construction and the glass is thicker. Reportedly every four floors in a high-rise the glass can change in thickness.

Hip-log: This log was the terminus of two sloping roof plains.

Hot tub: This was a feature we never got around to installing. It was to be located just outside the fire pit area and under the upper living room floor, which protected the hot tubers from the rain and snow, but you still had the feeling that you were outside. The rough-in, hot water pipes from the main eighty-gallon hot water heater and electrical conduits were already installed in our basement walls to the mechanical room.

Houston, we have (had) a problem: To coin a phrase. This was what Astronaut Jack Swigert said to NASA on April 13, 1970.

Infrared deck/patio heaters: What a wonderful invention. I know a lot of people who love cooking, lounging, eating, or even drinking that foul stuff called beer. I found out our electrical superintendent could buy wholesale, so we had him buy our three heaters for a third of what I normally would have had to pay. Note : I have to put this invention right up there with the first outdoor public facility, the outhouse, and the first hygienic tool--the tooth pick.

Insulation batts: Insulation can come in flat batts, rolled up, blown, or ridged, ridged being the most expensive. For small voids, spray foam insulation in a can works very well.

Jack logs: Logs between hips and valleys.

Kiln dried lumber: Means the moister in the wood has been reduced to 10 to 12 percent. If the moisture meter reads above that, your framing inspection will fail.

King Post: This was our ‘crowning’ (pun?) achievement. It seemed the whole house grew around this one massive tree. Normally much of a building is connected to this one post.

Lag Bolts: Galvanized bolts came in many different lengths and widths, and they held all our log posts in our pier saddles.

Lead Lines: Because of the danger associated with the work we were doing, we elected to purchase nearly one thousand feet of rope. Even when we left work for the day, the king post, scaffolding, and ridge beam were securely tied down on no less than three sides. I think we would all have died if all the hard work had to be done over again. And the frightening part of all this was the residual damage it could have caused, (like a domino effect).

Lumber imperfections: Warps, splits, bad edges, and wows, pitch pockets, bark, and over-sized knots: Any wood product will normally have one of the above wrong with it. When buying lumber, you usually have to take the good with the bad. If you hand-pick your pieces, someone from the lumber yard will complain, especially if it is a lot of pieces. This will leave a pile of inferior or useless lumber. The lumberyards our company used would have a surcharge if it was a lot of pieces. I normally allowed for a certain percentage of bad, those I would run through my radio-arm-saw or chop saw and use for shorts. You always needed a few somewhere. One day I went to one of the huge mega home supply stores for discounted materials to get two pieces of pressure-treated two-by-fours for bottom plates. I was there maybe thirty minutes, going through hundreds of pieces and found zip/none. I was madder than hell and told them so. If you are perceptive when you are in those places, you will see a ‘radio-arm saw’ set-up. There is normally a yard man cutting the bad out of every piece, or should be. I think it is absolutely wrong for anyone to try to sell inferior materials.

Metal strap-tying tool: An ingenious tool used by companies tying large crates together for shipping.

Million Dollar View: In our case we were bordered by the Sechelt Inlet on three sides. There were year-round snowcapped mountains on the north. On the west side we had incredible sunsets, and looking south was the town of Sechelt, the Strait of Georgia, and Vancouver Island. East there was moss-covered bluffs/cliffs and more mountains. And of course too many beautiful trees to count, and lots of ground cover. Moss and ferns were everywhere.

Motion Detectors: When living in a remote area and you have, “Dangerous wild animals were all over the place,” according to my first wife. Motion detectors are a great idea. One is they limit the use of electricity, and they immediately let you know when you have guests. Where we were we didn’t always know when people were coming, and it was dangerous walking anywhere on our property without lighting.

Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will, count on it. One is fighting the elements, rain, wind, snow, ice; theft, beer drinkers not showing up for work, materials are damaged, or the wrong material is delivered. We got one load of lumber dumped in the street that was for someone else’s project. Extension cords are destroyed, tools break down, smaller tools go missing, measuring tapes break. The only way to avoid major Murphy’s Law issues is to anticipate--think ahead--and one can save a lot of headaches. Once you have decided to do whatever you are going to do, think about what can go wrong, and you will be one step ahead of yourself. This is a good time to ask your beer drinkers what they think, before you move on to anything even remotely dangerous.

No cigar: No way José.

Occupancy Permit: Once the structural engineer gave us his final approval of the house and the inspector approved all the safety issues, i.e., hand-railing heights and picket spacing’s, stairways are the right width, the risers and treads are to code, exhaust fans or venting windows, even the address has to be posted somewhere visible at the street and we had to have the electrical and plumbing finals as well. And as mentioned before, we had to have the holding tank pumping contract before we could move in.

One-by-four roof furring strips: Here again is something I learned a long time ago. The usual specification or code for roof furring strips is one-by-four No. 2 material. Many times it was spruce. One really had to watch his/her step when installing. One of our workers stepped on a piece he just installed and fell through and straddled the bottom cord on a truss. He could never have a child again. From then on we went to ‘Standard and Better’ on all my projects. But the big thing is cut out knots bigger than your thumbnail.

Overhangs: In my estimation, the overhang on any structure is very important. No matter where the building is in this world, it would be better off with extra protection from the elements. This may only apply to one- and two-storey structures, maybe three stories. Anything above that would only get protection to the upper two or three stories. I have spent my life (fifty-seven years) remodeling older buildings, some only a year old. I highly recommend anyone who has something to do with construction to either pay attention to what remodelers do or say or at least read what I have to say. Or you could get a contractor’s license and go remodel something. It is a great learning experience.

Penthouse: The residential suites at the top of high-rises.

Permit set: The drawings for the permit set must include: plot plan, (complete with project address and street names), layouts of every floor, elevations of every side of the building, (don’t forget hidden elevations), roof plan, foundation layout, important cross sections (fireplace included), general notes and dimensions, including the overall height of the building. General specifications must be part of the permit set as well.

Piers: All our piers on top of our concrete footings were poured, reinforced concrete. They supported all our log posts that supported the house.

Plot Plan: Normally a plot plan shows the location of the project on the property. Sometimes there will be a small location map of where the lot is in the city, and the drawing has to show north.

Plotted: My wife and I located the trees within our work area. We measured the diameter of each tree, guessed at the center of that tree and measured to the closest two strings. That was the first plot plan I did at the main house location, and it became part of our permit set.

Posts: In our case we used a lot of logs for posts. They were used at all exposed bearing points.

Pre-mix-in-a-sack: We had delivered to the site about eight thousand bags of premix. At eighty pounds each = (640,000 pounds, who cares, right?) That works out to one hundred and seventy eight cubic yards of concrete. There are approximately four hundred and eighty bags per semi-truck load, or over sixteen truck loads, most of which was brought up to the top of the hill in the bucket of a front-end loader. Almost every time I left Vancouver to go to the building site, I usually had ten bags or so for ballast in my small pickup so I could get up to the top of the hill, otherwise I would spin out in the first six months before the first part of the driveway was poured. Since we were using so many bags, the lumberyard was able to swing a very nice discount from the local manufacturer where they kilned, mixed, and bagged the pre-mix. Normally my workers mixed one, sometimes two bags in a wheelbarrow right beside a footing or pier, which is a whole lot of wheelbarrow loads. We used a local ready-mix truck to do all but six hundred sacks worth of driveway and the carport and shop slab-on-grade. We hand mixed the concrete for the slab-on-grade for the small floor in the mechanical room under the house and the landing at the bottom of the stairway to the basement and the steps outside between the rocks near the carport. Note : A lesson on cement verses concrete: Concrete is normally a pre-determined mix of three-eight pea gravel, sand, water, and cement. The term pouring or finishing cement is really incorrect. Cement is only an ingredient, but the label has stuck.

Project coordinator: A professional person working for a developer specializing in taking a piece of property from scratch and making it into an industrial park or residential subdivision, to name just a few. He/she puts together the team, which normally consists of an architect(s), civil engineer(s), and numerous other engineers, cost estimator, sub-trades, or a general contractor.

Project manager: After a project has the permit to start construction, a project manager is assigned to build it. He/she normally takes care of the business end of running the project. Also see gen. supervision.

Propane: Is used a lot in construction and works fine if you have good ventilation and you are not worried about moisture.

Rafter logs: These logs take the place of dimension lumber rafters and are spaced approximately three feet apart with decking across the top. Because insulation is required in freezing country, we placed two-by-ten rafters above the decking with batt insulation in the rafter spaces and a cedar shake roof over that. This still gave us the log and wood decking look that we wanted.

Ragtag Logs: Logs that are all different sizes, none the same.

Railing pickets: We wanted to get as clear a view through our railings as possible. We also had excess half inch cut-off reinforcing steel that varied in length from thirty-six inches to forty-two inches. So we cut everything to a desired length, wiped it down with vinegar and spray painted everything black. We could have alternated colors, red, white, and blue--too patriotic. Knowing we were going to do this in advance, we installed a solid header over the walls where the railing was. We placed a CVG Douglas fir two-by-six flat over the beam and drilled half-inch holes four and a half inches apart about six inches deep. We also did the same spacing of the holes in the CVG railing cap. We then filled the upper and bottom holes with rubber caulking and clamped the whole thing in place. It gave us the clear view we wanted and was incredibly strong. When one looked up from the sunken living room floor, you didn’t even see the rebar without looking twice. We did the same thing on our entry porch. The other open and covered decks were one-inch by two-inch cedar pickets, screwed in place. There again we pre-drilled holes for screws. Nails were just too easy to kick out, even if you used two nails at opposite angles, and splitting was a problem.

Renting: Renting tools, scaffolding, etc. Figure out how long you need the stuff. We bought the scaffold and chain hoists used from a huge rental company in Vancouver, a firm our construction company used a lot. Then we sold them back at the end of the job, or if we had a sub-trade come up to work on the carriage house, we paid most of them with whatever we didn’t need any more. It worked out that we nearly got the carriage house built for nothing. We sold the remaining items we bought for at least the same as we paid. In other words, we got to use two chain hoists and five levels of scaffolding for four years for nothing.

Ridge Beam: All roof surfaces, roof joists, rafters, rafter logs, hip rafter, and jack rafters are supported on our log ridge beam.

Ridged insulation: We installed ridged blue insulation board between the logs under the house to get our required R-factor. We used paneling adhesive and regular nails to hold it all in place. The next layer was applied the same way except we used longer screws with washers made specifically for installing thick foam insulation.

Rotten to the core: Some of our reject logs and some of my friends. The saying actually comes from a 1965 British comedy.

Rubber gutter liner: We were able to buy heavy rubber sheeting wide enough to line our walk-in-gutters and long enough so we did not need to overlap. This wide gutter gave us a walking-working surface to clean or repair our cedar shake roof.

Saddle: Every pier had a steel saddle poured in the top to hold the post logs in place for the house. These saddles came in numerous shapes and sizes. The saddles came with one or two holes near the top to accept galvanized lag bolts and a twisted shank, or a small piece of rebar or metal welded on it to act as an anchor in the concrete.

Sandblasting: This procedure took a while, one week by one worker. He would have to move the scaffolding numerous times, keep placing bags of sand in the sandblasting equipment, and while sandblasting, he would have to hold a thin piece of plywood up against the side of each log rafter, as they were not too be sandblasted. Once an area was sandblasted, the air hose blew out any sand that happened to get up in any cracks. This procedure removed all black metal banding marks, equipment dings, pecker-tracks (hammer marks), scratches, water stains, and ink or paint.

Screeding: Once our driveway or a small reinforced slab-on-grade was poured level with the forms, we found the straightest piece of lumber long enough to reach the edge forms to level the freshly poured concrete flush with the forms. Sometimes, if the slab is too large, one will put screed boards in-the-field between the outer edge forms. Leftover pieces of rebar or wooden stakes can be placed at the right height to act as a guide so you don’t have any excessive highs or lows in your slab. When you ‘bull float’ (a huge trowel with a very long handle used to level the slab-on-grade before final finish troweling) your work, you need to remove the screeds and fill the voids. Because of the steepness of the driveway, we used a very heavy broom or a garden rake to roughen up the surface of the concrete for better traction.

Sealed units: Insulated glass windows can come with various air spaces between the panes; ours was one inch, which I think is the maximum.

Septic field: Normally if there is no city sewer, a drawing must be included in your building permit set showing the location of your septic tank, with two areas indicated for the drain field or leach field. One area is a spare for when the first one cannot absorb any more. There have been situations when there was not enough room for a second field. In this case, all the contaminated soil must be removed and a new approved bedding material installed. In our case we had to resort to a holding tank, which had to be pumped out when full. However, we needed to level out a flat area where we wanted to plant a lawn, so we hauled in thirty loads of pit-run sand and many loads of topsoil over that, thus providing us a future area for laterals. Of course when that happens, the hauling fees would disappear.

She-bolt washers: These washers are probably the strongest washer made. Many are very thick. They come with a flange on the surface. You can buy them with or without the nut attached. They are used predominantly on very heavy concrete forms or timber bridges. One could use thick square or rectangular steel flat washers as well.

Sign-off Letter by the Structural Engineer: This person came out from Vancouver and approved the structure and presented us a letter with his seal stamped on it for the inspector. Thus permitting us to start interior finishes.

Sit-in soak tub: I believe the Japanese soak tub may have been the first of its kind. The one we used took up a space forty-eight inches by forty-eight inches, and was thirty inches deep. My first wife had the beginnings of MS and had trouble getting in and out of ordinary tubs. This one she could step into, sit down, soak, and wave to the pilots of the float planes as they flew by.

Sketch: A sketch for a contractor is different than one for an artist. Sometimes one needs to get out his pad and pencil and throw a few lines and general information on a piece of paper and quickly get out of the snow or rain. With contractors, designers, architects, we normally use quarter-inch lined graph paper. Artists can complete a sketch and call it a completed piece of art. With me, I can’t remember all the complicated details on anything the next day or years later. I have always envied people who can do that. (Digital cameras work for me). While in Saudi Arabia, we built faster than the architects could produce final drawings. We, my foreman-superintendent and I, would do a sketch over breakfast, DHL the sketch to the main office a thousand miles away to our hoards of engineers. They would review it and call back and either okay it or change a dimension, size of rebar, etc. This house had a huge file of sketches by the time we were completed.

Skid Road: A road or a path where loggers used to skid logs. In the old days, one would use horses, mules, oxen. They use elephants in India. We used five beer drinkers. They are probably cheaper to feed then elephants, even though they live on peanuts.

Skid Row: Once loggers completed their day’s work on Skid Road they would go to town to find Skid Row. There they could let loose, bathe, shave, and get their hair cut every three or four months, whether they needed it or not. They might want to hit the restaurants next or head straight to one of many taverns or go to the flop houses (Whore houses), not necessarily in that order. Somewhere they had to let off a little steam. When I was in Ketchikan, Alaska, every Friday night the miners, loggers, and fishermen would take their ax handles, pike handles, or harpoon handles to each other just for fun. One such district in Vancouver, British Columbia, is called Gas Town. A must-see if you are visiting Vancouver.

Sky Hook: This term is used when it appears like nothing is lifting anything. Remember we could not get a boom or mobile crane up to the building site. For the king post, once we got it vertical and it was leaning up against our structure, we needed to get it higher so we could set it in its’ saddle. So we moved the chain hook down the log. When lifting the king post straight up, it look like it was floating.

Skylight: Our skylight was right over the main entry and was approximately three feet by eight feet, double glazed. It added welcome morning light to the second floor bridge and living room.

Small Potatoes: Means nothing, immaterial, forget it.

Spacers/Dunnage: It is essential to place anything on a construction site on something to keep items up off the floor or ground and the material should be separated or spaced so it can breathe. You do not want items that can be destroyed sitting in water; even moisture from most floor systems will get trapped under something laying flat like a box of books. Moisture trying to escape up through the floor will cause mildew and ruin the books.

Spikes: Perhaps the largest nails made.

Spiral Cedar Shake wall: Years ago I did one of these walls inside one of our custom homes and another around a clients hot tub. I took a few pictures of the largest one and sent it to Sunset Magazine. They acknowledged the letter and were going to come out. We got an offer on the house and sold it before they could come out, so we never heard from them. Doing a shingle wall is like most everything I did. I just put my head down and jump into things. I could work all day on the shingle wall, wrap up for the day, get my wife, show it to her, and she had the audacity to say, “Look at all the sawdust throughout the whole house. What did you do all day?” My second wife was always a little more tactful. She would have said, “When you clean up this mess, I’ll take you out for dinner.”

Splash line: Have you ever seen water marks on cedar siding, stucco, or anything for that matter? That is normally caused from water/rain constantly hitting a flat surface, a shrub, rocks, or even a chain that is next to the house.

Spruce: Spruce is very common in the Northwest. It is not used much for its structural ability like Douglas fir. It was mostly used as stud material or furring. We elected to use it in our floor system, on-edge, which gave the appearance of a huge wood chop-block, much like the one used on your kitchen counter. Or like the one we used to have out on the ranch where we cut off chickens heads.

Staging/Scaffolding: Staging can come in many forms. While in Saudi Arabia, some of our projects used bamboo staging. Dimension lumber works well, but one has to adhere to the guidelines set by OSHA or an engineer. In our home we used tubular steel scaffolding.

Stainless steel nails/screws: If you have any common nails exposed to the weather, as in wood siding, fascia boards, trim, frames, or even decking, expect rust stains. Stainless steel nails or screws are the only way to go. They are not cheap, but then again they are never unsightly and last forever.

Standard construction practices: This is good to know if you are serious about being in the construction business. There are proper ways/guidelines for fabrication, installation, storage, and protection of all materials used in construction.

Station Point: Once we located the trees, we found a spot near the center of the proposed building area, and with my hand-held eye level, I sighted a spot on each tree where my wife tied a ribbon, being careful to stand right on the Station point every time. My eye level is right at six foot height, so that being said, all the ribbons on the trees in the building area were set at my eye level. Then we would measure to the ground line. If it is eight feet from the ribbon, then the contour of the property dropped two feet.

Stellar Jays: Have a black ‘top-knot’ (an Indian name for the hair on your head). Also in Montana, we would call them ‘camp robbers’ as well, but normally that handle was meant to be used for the Gray Jay. ‘Blue,’ as we called our Stellar Jay, got so tame he would steal food right off our plates while we were eating. Fuzzbutt was never that daring.

Stem walls: A short concrete wall with a framed wall above.

Street Damage deposit: The city, county or whoever has jurisdiction in your area for streets does not want to clean up or repair the damage to the sidewalks, curbs, street, or landscaping caused by your project. Just pay their deposit, fix your damage when completed, and they will give your damage deposit back, without interest. Note : I have paid up to $3,000 for a house. $20,000 for commercial or industrial, especially where you have lots of curbs and sidewalks around the property exposed to crossings.

Structural Engineer: This individual was required to check sizes of posts and beams, trusses, any part of a project with long spans. Sometimes he/she would check to make sure soil conditions were acceptable for proper bearing.

Sunken fire pit: Our fire pit was approximately two feet deep. Twelve people could sit comfortably on three sides of our wood stove.

Tar paper ‘moisture barrier’: This product is asphalt impregnated felt paper used for water proofing your building. Eighty pound was used, ‘overlapped’ at each course for our heavy cedar-shake roof. We used thirty pound tar paper over-lapped at every course under our number one, sidewall cedar shingles.

Nowadays, tar paper is installed with a staple gun. If the applicator tips the head of the staple gun, it tears the paper, leaving a hole for moister to get in. Why have the moisture protection at all? I liked the old fashioned way, galvanized roofing nails placed flat with the paper, it takes longer to apply, but there is a lot less ripped paper. Also do not over staple or nail. It is better to have less holes in your moister protection then too many. Remember, you are going to have numerous nails from the application of your siding, which will hold your tar paper on as well.

The field: This area is where nails are in the center of a piece of material, plywood or drywall. The nails around the edge are edge nails.

Threaded rods: If we couldn’t buy bolts long enough, we used threaded rods with washers and nuts at both ends. All our custom-made metal fasteners or hangers were designed to be used at nearly all of our log connections in the roof. I preferred though-bolts/rods over lag bolts for the roof connections. Any movement in the house will eventually shake something loose

Timber or log tripod: This was a three-legged structure used for lifting and setting all our log posts too large to rise by hand.

Toe-nailed: Nailed at an angle through one piece of wood into another piece of wood.

Tripod/Contractors level: Normally if the building site is clear and reasonably flat, he/she will use a stationary tripod and contractor’s level. We did not have that luxury on this project. There are tripods, levels, and rods in the market that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Our company had this expensive equipment, but it was not necessary for what we were doing.

Uniform Building Code: The preface for this code book reads: “Is dedicated to the development of better building construction and greater safety to the public by uniformity in building laws. The code is founded on broad based performance principles that make possible the use of new materials and new construction systems. It was first enacted by the International Conference of Building Officials... in Phoenix, Arizona, October 18-21, 1927. Changes to the code are processed each year by supplements... These changes are carefully reviewed in public hearing by professional experts in the field of building construction and fire and life safety.”

Valley: Also the terminus of two roof plains. There will be a very wide ‘Valley flashing’ going directly over the center of the Valley. The best has a ridge going down the center; this keeps the rain water from running down one side of the roof and going under the shakes on the other side of the valley.

Walk-in-gutter: Many of the problems of building in the North are cleaning roofs, any kind of roof, but I will just concentrate on our system. Cedar shake/shingle roofs get literally tons of snow on them that may have to be removed if too deep. Ice builds up and can extend higher than wall flashing; water can enter vent piping and roof vents, etc. Also one needs to brush/blow/power wash needles and moss out of ever shingle space. As the shingles age, they deteriorate, rot out, lift up and twist with the hot sun and require replacement. So, we gave ourselves every possible access to the roof as possible. We could have gone with no gutter at all but we were concerned about maintenance of the roof.

Wall corner bracing: All exterior wall corners have to have a cross brace or plywood. The cross brace, if a one-by-four or a one-by-six were used, had to be cut-in to the wall studs from the top plate at the corner of the wall, forty-five degrees down to the floor. This hasn’t been used on any of my projects for many years, since plywood was accepted as an alternative. A metal strap can also be used.

Water level: Now here is an interesting ‘simple tool.’ Go buy a clear plastic tube, three eights or half inch. Make sure the tube reaches both ends of whatever you are leveling. Fill the tube up with water. Make sure you don’t have any bubbles. One worker on each end can level a beam, floor, etc. If you don’t have help, just clamp one end at the height you require at one end and take the other end to your next location. It is simple, and very inexpensive and very accurate.

Water Meter: For an accurate reading, always use a meter that measures the moisture ‘in the wood,’ not on the surface. It is of the utmost importance that there is no moisture trapped between two or more pieces of wood. Normally bottom wall plates have been sitting in the water for months in rainy country. One suggestion is to use spacers between each top and bottom plate, and solid posts wherever you had partition or corner bucks and headers.

Widow Maker: I encountered one of those. This is where one woman kills another woman’s husband. (All kidding aside). Logging is one of the most dangerous lines of work there is. Many times a log can fall on you, the chain on your chainsaw breaks and a few fingers go flying or you lose an arm or a leg, heavy equipment runs over you. I knew one fellow up in Montana who was feeding a steel cable into a winch on the back of a giant bulldozer. The frayed cable got caught in the man’s leather glove. He couldn’t break loose, and his whole arm ended up in the winch and was pulled lose. My brother in Alaska felled a few trees on his property. Branches got hung up in other trees as a tree fell. A branch broke off and came flying back and took half of my brother’s face off. He was alone in the middle of the winter. He tried to pull the skin back over his face with a bandana he always carried in his pocket and walked over ten miles in the freezing weather to a friend’s house. The wife sewed my brother’s face back on, and they let him stay in their heated garage for over a month before they could get him to the hospital in Anchorage. The doctor said she did an incredible job of stitching and he only had to do a little work near one eye, which he nearly lost.

Window and patio door frames: These leftover windows and frames would be scratched, dented or have any number of flaws. There was nothing a little touch up paint couldn’t cover. Normally the window supplier would provide a small can or bottle of paint.

Window pane, dings, scratches, etching, cracks, broken--rejects: All our windows (except some gable glass) were rejects from one high-rise and one hotel. In high-rises, most of the windows have to have the words ‘safety glass’ etched in one corner. If we couldn’t find it, that window was a reject. Some windows could be scratched. One or two had wavy glass. Some were made the wrong size, and some were leftover from design changes.

Wood burning stove: The firewood supply in this area was boundless. Our acre and a half could supply years of firewood, and the Provence Forest Lands were practically across the road. Downed trees were everywhere, just waiting to be cleaned up. Sure it is a little work, but many of us could use the exercise. A group of men and boys would form a team every year; gather up a few pickups or small trucks, a few chain saws and axes, mauls and wedges, and the most important item, many cases of beer. However, if we didn’t have time, we would order-in split firewood, which was very cheap. Both of my wives would not have anything to do with the wood stove. “There are little thingies crawling in the wood. We might break a nail. There is pitch and slivers.” I still say I should have married that Montana gal. So, whenever I was at home, most weekends, vacation times and in-between projects, I would keep the home fires burning. Wood burning stoves were not allowed in the big cities due to pollution.

Yellow cedar decking: This is one of the wood decking materials used on ship decks. It is a soft wood but probably the hardest of all the rest of the cedar that can be used for decks. In our application on the second floor deck, we found pre-drilling for the stainless steel screws the only way to keep the boards from splitting. There was a rubber sheet directly under the cedar, which was placed directly on top of a layer of tar paper and the plywood subfloor. The rubber acted like a rubber gasket around each screw.

Epilogue

Through the years in the demolition/remodeling business, one would ask, why did many of those building fall apart, many beyond saving? It always boils down to protection from the elements. The exterior of buildings is where most deterioration starts: bathrooms and kitchens would be a close second, and third, utility rooms and butler pantries--wherever there is water. If one has an indoor pool, that is another can of worms. As I have mentioned a time or two in this book, flashing, quality materials, good application skills, good supervision, and not wanting to spend one’s whole life redoing shoddy workmanship were very important to me. Maintenance I can accept. The elements (there’s that word again) do take their toll. Just take a look in the mirror--sorry. Life could be so much easier if the job was done right in the first place.

Rot was always present in remodels. Using pressure-treated lumber is one way to combat rot, but somewhere you are going to cut or drill a hole in a piece and you have unwillingly destroyed the integrity of the pressurizing. Brushing on a preservative helps some, but it is not the same as pressure-treated. Another hint, pressure-treated lumber should always be Standard and Better, not a lesser grade that you can find in some of the huge building supply centers that are not true lumber yards. And many times rot in a building stems from rusted-out flashing or very bad moisture barrier application. Here again one should read the manual on ‘Excepted Building Practices.’ A lot of this information is in the ‘do it yourself’ books at most building materials sales desks. Never nail flashing in the field or the top surface where water sits or slides down; nail only the edges. The best practice is to use stainless steel nails or screws and rubber gaskets, but very few people will go the price. But they will pay dearly down the road, or someone will.

Now, I don’t think many of you are going to take on a project like this one. It was hard work. It was very dangerous. It was wet, freezing, cold, and a few times we even ran out of beer and had to shut the damn job down and run to the nearest gas station or store. I have always been one to make a decision, put my head down, and do it. My father thought I was nuts. (Well he always thought I was nuttzo.) The only time I saw my family was if they came out to see me. Fortunately my two sons and daughter liked beer.

I couldn’t even dream of doing this again. I am retired now. My back is bad. My knees almost work. My arms are nearly useless, and my neck keeps me awake at night, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

On second thought, my dad is ninety-eight, meaning I may still live another twenty-six years. From my apartment I can see a hill behind the distilleries here in Tequila, and the volcano has an abundant supply of free stone. Just maybe I can build a castle overlooking José Cuervo or Sauza. I’ll find me a beer or two and start planning tomorrow.

In most of my endeavors as a builder, I refrained from building cookie-cutter houses. I would refer those people to my builder friends who specialized in that sort of building. I was basically known as ‘The Odd-Lot Custom Home Builder.’ Most of the properties owned by my clients meant something special to them. Another thing, if there was no view, we made one, i.e., your master bedroom can look out into a private fenced-in courtyard of its own, or even your formal dining room can look into a private garden with a fountain. There really is not a window in your house that can’t have its own view. And a few beers may improve your ‘outlook’ on life as well. Pun?

Well, I’ll end this book with, “Sorry, this is my best side.” It seemed I was staining those 11,678,486.5 shingles forever. Don’t take my word on that. I’m not going up there to count them. It would be heart-breaking to see that house that took five years to build with my own hands with a little help from my beer drinking buddies and Fuzzbutt. If I had buckets of money to buy it back, I wouldn’t even hesitate. However, I have heard that the house and property sold recently for over seven hundred thousand dollars, double what we sold it for.

We sold the place because of a divorce. There may have been a few things that upset my first wife. One was the innocent baby skunk who only wanted to watch TV with us one night, and another was the driveway. So after thirty-seven years of marriage, it was all over just like that. Selling the house damn near broke my heart. As my second wife and I were driving down the driveway for the last time, I had to stop the SUV at the bottom to wipe the tears from my eyes.

I hope you enjoyed the book. It was fun (and a little sad) digging up all the old pictures and records and reminiscing. There was so much here, I just thought I would pass it on to someone who likes to work with their hands and is thinking of building in some remote area. It was a real kick. By the way, if you do want to build, go straight to the local lumberyard. It is a good way to find out who are the best, most honest and most reliable people to work for you. However, a few beer drinkers won’t hurt, at least they are focused. The building permit department is another good source. They are a little reluctant, however, because they shouldn’t show partiality to any one builder, plumber, electrician, etc. But a couple of beers will loosen them up, sometimes.

Since my retirement to Mexico, I have shifted through my lifetime collection of slides and pictures, all thirty-five thousand of them. I had been hauling them around since I got my Nikon camera for my high school graduation in 1960. I have pictures of all our trips, and of course of every project, two high-rises, three hotels, one golf clubhouse, three penthouses, one hundred and two custom homes, (one was twenty four million dollars) plus six palaces in Saudi Arabia. (One of them was forty five million dollars.) And there were many condos and commercial projects, some highway projects, and small jobs, too many to mention here. After dividing all of the pictures into thirteen piles, I came up with that many books that I can write.

All the old memories came back because of the pictures, the good times, the bad times, the fun and sad times. A contractor’s life is chock-full of profitable years, and “Where-is-the-next-damn-meal-going-to-come-from--DEAR?” If there was no more work in the town we lived in, we just packed up and moved to the next hot spot. Money is funny. It doesn’t just disappear, it moves around a lot. I moved twenty-two times with my first wife. Seven of those moves were in Canada, one time to Saudi Arabia with my wife and two of our children, and the rest of the moves were in the States. With my second wife, we moved four more times. I have never been out of work more than one week in my life. What the hell, how can you send three children to fifteen years of university if you don’t? It was nice being married to Canadians. However; it made it very easy to cross the border. Many times I would have projects on both sides at the same time, and you better have a good accountant.

Douglas R. Denison, retired and author of three nonfiction books and fifteen more on the way.