2007_08_22 First floor of logs just about up

Well, I went up to the job site to take a check to Scott and took a couple of pictures. Yeah, that's right; a couple of pictures. That's 2 pictures. I had dropped Kathy off in Springville to get her hair cut and then went to the property. I had to pick her up again so I didn't stay long, but I did get to talk to Scott and that always means that I get to ask him questions!

You can see that the 1st floor is just about finished so the logs are just about done.

In the closer shot below you can see better what they are doing. The log they are working on is on its side while they do some custom cutting to make it fit better with the one below it. Steve is cutting it to fit.

Scott was there to pick up the check and to pick up some of the boards that they had been going to use to finish the deck but were not straight enough so he could take them back to the place he bought them and get them replaced.

We also got to talk about what to do with a couple of other things. First, we may decide to leave off the steps on the front porch altogether and replace them with a 'bridge' that will go straight out from the front porch to the ground out in front of it.

That will allow a power chair or wheelchair to drive straight up onto the porch should Kathy need that later. If we have steps we'd also have to have a ramp or 'bridge' somewhere off the deck in front anyway. Scott says that we can probably have it go out to a concrete parking pad or concrete driveway or to a sidewalk or stone path, etc and it could still be almost perfectly level since the 'yard' in front goes up slightly from the front porch.

Also, it looks like we'll have the steps at the rear of the deck go off of the back corner outside the screened room. There will be a landing off the back corner and the steps will then go down and back toward the garage door entrance and come down right there onto the driveway beside the back portion of the garage door.

Regarding the different coloration of the logs due to some being in the sun and other not, etc due to the fact that they have been in the sun with some in sun and some in shade (due to being stacked onto others, etc) they have a plan for that. Roberto and his wife will later bleach all the logs inside and out to make them more consistent in color and get out (or off) markings that might not should be there. They they'll sand the inside of the logs so that they are not rough.

The outside of the logs will be stained and protected by a Honey-colored preservative and stain combination made by WoodGuard. Scott recommends that we not stain the inside walls and just keep them a natural color to keep them light colored. We may just do that since we both like the natural look pretty well.

The honey-colored preservative/stain can also be used to stain the deck as well. It will be light. I think that we agree on that also since if we were to stain the deck darker then any of our beautiful Alabama red dirt that we got on our shoes would leave noticeable tracks on the deck. Clay concurs that dark is not good for the deck since he said it was a problem in their Woodstock house when they had a dark reddish color on their deck.