Rot Week III: The final showdown

Well, not quite final. We still have one pesky corner left, but we did finish all of the work on horizontal logs that were rotten. The last corner will have to wait a few days – I’ve got the day job part of this week and our sore bones could use a rest. Plus we have plenty of cuts & bruises too. Working with large logs is fun, but heavy work.

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Rot week, continued…

On to another wall today. See if you can guess what we changed around (besides just swapping out for new logs).

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Rot week begins

Just some photos as our rot removal and full log (sometimes partial log) replacement saga begins.

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And today we conclude picking

We’ve had a busy week. A wedding to attend out of town, and visitors (my folks) for several days. My mom is a regular blog reader and general supporter of the cabin, and she very much enjoyed hanging out of the porch and reviewing stain and caulk choices.

One goal for the week was procurement – and we are done with that. Stain and caulk decided upon (we are going with WeatherSeal in Saddle Brown), and Conceal caulk in Grizzly Brown. I note that here so I can’t possibly forget in a couple of years when we need to inevitably touch up! Luckily, a local log cabin shop carries WeatherSeal (shipping on a 5-gallon bucket is pricey), but of course that’s the one color they were out of. Knowing how Murphy’s Law in always in effect, we anticipated something like this and asked about it ~3 weeks in advance, so it was ordered and we picked it up on Friday. Caulk and backer rod are in the mail.

Friday, we finished removing the old finish (K is a master with the grinder and wire brush), and turned to the interior, where we have been picking out old oakum, and various other types of ‘chinking’ like pieces of people’s shirts, fiberglas insulation, more caulk, a diverse collection of dead bugs, etc. On Friday, I found a place where all the oakum smelled like peanut butter. Pretty nasty, but that’s why we bought really nice masks. Today we have just one last small section to do – our arms and shoulders died before the long daylight of the first day of summer did. We’ll head out soon to conclude the picking. The cabin smells and feels better with all that old crap out of the cracks. Coming up this week: replace all rot. This one should be fun (and also gross). Stay tuned.

Cabin helper and cabin supporter.

We had an audience to do the second coat of test stain

Love the look and feel of this stick stain/sealer

And test out two types of caulk (winner shown here)

We finished stripping the old finish.

And it looks like a log cabin again!

Picking out interior chinking (mostly oakum) was not as bad as outside

But still, it was a few days of crap. This is a SMALL pile.

And if we don’t have the hanta virus by now, I think we’re good.

Icky, sticky bubble gum

We spent much of this week figuring out a system for removing all of the old stain and chinking from the cabin. Hopefully this weekend we can finish up? After thousands of nails, staples, and about 1300 feet of gooey, sticky caulk, we are looking forward to the finish line on this one.

Little roadside flowers appeared.

Before: what we think is opaque stain?

And myriad types of chinking, caulk, putty, and silicone. Worst part is picking it out.

The grinder turned out to be the magic tool.

Logs, looking like logs again!

Goodbye, crappy red color.

Front, nearly done!

We also hiked to the lake for Frankie’s first swim of the season.