This week at Blizzard Gulch: grass, snow, mud, stairs, and lights
With the threat of a big snow on the way, we were like squirrels this week, trying to complete one thing and another before the opportunity was gone until spring.
John backfilled around the house, as I’ve already told you. He got a layer of topsoil spread in one area and, without waiting for the soil to dry enough to rake smooth, we tossed grass seed in and pinned soil erosion matting over it. Daylight ran out before we could finish seeding everywhere. There was no time to take pictures. By the next morning snow was falling heavily, good news for the planted seed but quite likely ending this project for the year.
Half of the grass seed is orchard grass, a big bunch grass that has naturalized from pastures in the valley. The rest is the High Plains/Foothills grass mix from Western Native Seed in Coaldale, Colorado. By percentage, this mix contains:
| 22 | Bouteloua gracilis | Blue Grama |
| 20 | Pascopyrum smithii | Western Wheatgrass |
| 20 | Bouteloua curtipendula | Side-oats Grama |
| 6 | Andropogon gerardii | Big Bluestem |
| 6 | Sorghastrum nutans | Indian Grass |
| 6 | Panicum virgatum | Switchgrass |
| 5.5 | Oryzopsis hymenoides | Indian Ricegrass |
| 5 | Schizachyrium scoparium | Little Bluestem |
| 5 | Buchloe dactyloides | Buffalo Grass |
| 4 | Stipa viridula | Green Needlegrass |
| 0.25 | Sporobolus cryptandrus | Sand Dropseed |
| 0.25 | Muhlenbergia montana | Mountain Muhly |
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John quickly graded the road, filling low puddly spots. In the hope of diverting some of the runoff from uphill that soaks the road near the back steps, he laid 100 feet of perforated pipe. Bill Purvis, a Beulah-ite who drives for Donley Landscape Supply, brought two loads of 3/4″ river rock to cover the drain. The next layer was supposed to be some 2″ steel mill slag road base, to squish into the mud and make the road halfway passable, but we couldn’t find anyone who could supply it in time. We are back to rutted mud and four wheel drive again until conditions improve.
Shallow ditch for perforated pipe. That's our cool old sheep wagon to the left of the skidsteer.
Forced indoors, John began the challenging job of calculating and building the stairway to the second floor while Rejuvenation forced me to make a final decision on light fixtures by announcing a limited-time sale.
From the beginning we’ve visualized this stairway in terms of Timberline Lodge, with a forged handrail and a newel post carved with a forest creature, such as this fawn.
A simple and friendly pine cone handrail at Timberline Lodge. Whether this is part of the original 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA) construction or has been recently built I don't know. The rail's base wraps around the newel post at the bottom.
I didn’t go to the house to watch the stairs being built. On the last evening before he had to go back to work at the fire station, John fetched me to see what he’d accomplished. Even though the stairway goes only to the midpoint landing, and doesn’t have its finished surface, and the “newel post” is just two stacked chunks of log, I can see in it what we’ve seen all along.
Halfway to the second floor. If it looks this good by work lights, imagine how it will look with real lights!
My fellow bloggers will want to know which light fixtures I ordered from Rejuvenation. In polished chrome: Laurel. In burnished antique brass: Bend, Beaumont, Lyle, Forest Grove, Ventura, Baldwin. In black enamel: Forest Grove, Marquam Hill. In black porcelain: Skidmore. Several of these will inherit scrounged or eBayed shades. The rest of the lighting is salvaged and repaired, either by us or through eBay or antique stores. I’ll be sorry when all the lighting is procured and fixed because I’ve had a great time doing it.
This is the funnest thing I’ve ever done, other than hanging out with John. And — no architects involved! Well, except for Trent, who has an architecture degree and vetted the plans. We did hire a well-known local architect once, shortly after we bought the property. He claimed to know what we were talking about. What he came up with was horrifying so we paid him off and got out of there. I think he did us a good turn.
Hurry-up backfilling
“… we’re tracking a strong system for later this week … the mountain communities may get significant snow …”
How many times has it snowed already this fall? Five? Each time we’re engulfed in red mud, and, as the days grow colder, each time it takes longer for the mud to dry up. Last year at this time John was working outdoors on scaffolding, chinking logs for hours. Not this year. It’s about time to move operations indoors.
In the last two days before the most recent storm (which produced over a foot of wet snow) while the mud was nearly dry, John worked long hours to get as much backfilling done as possible. It may be months before it’s dry enough to do that again. We don’t want to go through another winter with water standing around the foundation and the road a rutted bog.
A skinnier skidsteer would be handy for working so close to the house. There's barely enough room between the foundation and the rock wall that's protecting the little trees.
Backfilled up to the windows and a layer of topsoil added. I wish it could be backfilled even higher to reduce some of the "grandiose" effect of the high basement wall.
The Blizzard Gulch soil is red clay and sand with very little organic matter. How grass manages to grow on it I don’t know. To encourage it we had some better soil hauled in from a neighbor’s large septic installation. It’s not outstanding soil but at least it is blacker than what we have.
For the want of gutters a lot of water runs off the roof. Last year too much of it ponded around the foundation. John dug a vee-shaped ditch around the uphill (west) side of the house and created a slope on the east side. This slope will probably erode from runoff but at least the water will move away.
Splashing roof runoff created the red stain on the foundation. Most of that stain is now covered by backfill.
The huge pile of dirt left over from excavation looks like Half Dome now.
We would both love to see the dirt pile disappear but we have to save some for adobe plastering. Experience tells us we can cover a framed wall with metal lath (“blood lath” – it’s got lots of sharp edges), give it a couple coats of adobe, finish it with clay paint or fine clay plaster, and it will be durable and look just like an adobe wall. That dirt pile is too high in clay content but in the arroyo there’s some gritty sand. I’ve been experimenting with samples. A half-and-half mixture may be about right. The main problem will be screening pebbles out of the dirt pile soil. It comes apart in large, hard, dense clods rather than crumbles, so it may be necessary to soak it for a day or two then sieve it as a slurry.
More pictures of our prototype in Idaho
Recently I received from our house designer, Trent Roman, some new images of the Stanley, Idaho museum which is the prototype for the Blizzard Gulch “Ranger Station”. Gretchen Roman was down that way recently and, knowing that I’d never taken pictures of this side of the museum, took these nice shots.
Stanley Museum (Valley Creek Ranger Station) from the highway.
This view, of the gabled main entry, is one I did not have when designing our log house. Had I known about this gable I might have felt obliged to copy it instead of drawing a hip-roofed dining porch. For our setting, though, I think the side gable entry might have been too grandiose and not located in the right place anyway. Due to the slope of our land it would have required a lengthy staircase.
Originally the “new” Valley Creek Ranger Station, replacing a 1909 ranger station, the building was completed in 1933. Ranger Merle Markle cut and hauled the logs, his wife Kathleen helped with peeling them, and a crew of men constructed the building. It had nine rooms and a bathroom. (I’m glad I didn’t know that, either.) Other outbuildings that still remain are a log garage/telephone office, log-sided barn, and woodshed/cellar.
I believe the building at left, with some replacement logs showing, is the garage/telephone office. It could also be the barn. Maybe someone can tell me.
All information about the Valley Creek Ranger Station (Stanley Museum) is from Les Joslin’s book, Uncle Sam’s Cabins: A Visitor’s Guide to Historic U.S. Forest Service Ranger Stations of the West.
Here are the pictures that I had when designing the house:
View from the parking lot. This side entrance became our main entrance.
Rear view of the Stanley Museum, from the parking lot.
At the time we were there, in the spring of 2006, the museum was closed and drifts of snow made looking around difficult.
Old stonework in Beulah — and ours
Pine Drive and Curtis Lane
Valley View Ranch
Pennsylvania Avenue
Near Middle Creek
Pennsylvania Avenue near Squirrel Creek
Grand Avenue at the Songbird Cafe and Music Hall
Cascade Avenue
Blizzard Gulch
All right, so the little deck piers in the last image aren’t quite as elegant as the previous ones, but it’s our first stonework project. The other pictures are just a sampling of the dozens of stone gate, entry, and fence posts that Beulah ought to be famous for. Many of them were built decades ago for by a fine stonemason named Anderson. Others, perhaps not as refined but just as interesting, were built by ordinary people. Some are incorporated into low walls around yards. Once you start looking for the posts you become aware of rocks everywhere in Beulah architecture.
Methodist Church
Pennsylvania Avenue
This week at Blizzard Gulch: snow, mud and stairs
If October’s weather is any indication, it will be a cold and snowy winter this year. After the recent dry years the forest could use the moisture, and sufficient cold may help kill off some pine bark beetles. However, it makes outdoor house work nearly impossible. The metal roof is too wet to walk on so the dormer siding won’t be completed. As the snow melts, mud surrounds the house because we don’t have gutters on yet. Trenching for water lines has been put on hold. And I had to go and hurt my back bending over to pet a cat.
There’s no lack of things to do indoors. We light up propane and kerosene heaters. Some days, if it’s warm enough to turn the heaters off, I can get another coat of varnish on the exterior door that’s camped on sawhorses in the dining room for weeks now. At these temperatures it takes at least three days for the varnish to dry enough to sand and turn the door over.
Nearly a foot of snow on the scaffold. No window trim work will get done now.
John decided to build stairs from the main floor to the basement. Stairs aren’t the easiest things to calculate and build, so he ordered a couple of books from Taunton Press. The one with the yellow cover is more basic and probably provided the most help but John found useful information in both books. Confusingly, the titles are almost identical.
Taunton's For Pros By Pros: Building Stairs, by Andy Engel
Taunton's For Pros By Pros: Building Stairs, Stairbuilding Advice from the Experts
Stringers, the notched boards that underpin the stairs, were traditionally cut from 2×12 lumber but, following advice in these books, John instead chose engineered lumber. It won’t shrink and leave the notches out of square, nor is it full of knots that, if located along a cut, would reduce the stringer’s strength.
The books all say that no stairs are ever perfect, but using the first stringer to carefully trace the rest helps assure that they match.
Engineered lumber frays when cut with a circular saw but this won't show in the end. A handsaw completes the cuts to make a sharp corner.
Stringers in place, ready for risers and treads.
Adhesive helps assure squeak-free stairs.
Star drive screws make the stairs strong. Unlike nails, they are easy to back out and relocate if you make a mistake.
John screws the final riser into place.
A job well done! Someday these stairs will be covered with "nice" risers and bullnose treads but for now these plywood subtreads and risers will be fine.
Index to my posts
From oldest to newest:
Building and blogging 9/17/2009
No well, no water service – what do you do? 9/18/2009
Floor plans 9/23/2009
This week at Blizzard Gulch: plumbing, cellar door, lighting 9/27/2009
Where to get good stuff for renovation and log homes 10/1/2009
Basement pitfalls and plans 10/2/2009
Globe finials: an old roof detail you can revive today 10/6/2009
Rough plumbing inspected and approved 10/20/2009
Log set Part 1 10/21/2009
Log set Part 2 plus a log building bibliography 10/23/2009
Useful web links for new old houses and log homes
I’ve got the linoleum loonies 10/28/2009
This week at Blizzard Gulch: snow, mud and stairs 10/31/2009
Old and new stonework in Beulah 11/1/2009
I’ve got the linoleum loonies
Why does everyone use vinyl flooring instead of linoleum, even though the latter lasts longer and is “greener”? Because vinyl is cheaper? Maybe, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that you can actually go to a store, see it, and buy it! Installers are everywhere in case you don’t want to lay it yourself. I’m finding out this is not the case with linoleum, at least in these parts.
The Colorado Forbo Marmoleum rep gave me the name of a company in Pueblo West that sells Marmoleum. We make a trip out there today to check the place out and, after much driving around, find the address. It’s a little warehouse-type building hidden back off the street in an industrial area. There’s no name whatsoever on the building and the door is forbiddingly steel and windowless. And it’s actually a painting business. Hmm! This doesn’t look right. Looks like it’s just a place where they keep their equipment.
So I call another Forbo telephone number and get the name of another Pueblo dealer. They have a display of Marmoleum Click, a different kind of linoleum tile that we don’t want. No, they can’t get what we want, not even by special order. Why? Because they don’t have a certified installer on their staff. What difference does that make, since we’re going to install it ourselves? Because they don’t, they can’t, they won’t, and they are about ready to get rid of the Click display anyway. And that’s that. Ye gods, how many sales do they lose because they haven’t gotten around to sending someone to the installation class?
Now what? Are we going to have to go to Denver or Colorado Springs to find someone who will sell us this stuff? Or buy it online from heaven-knows-who? In frustration I call the painting company, expecting to get an answering machine at best, and to my complete amazement a nice man answers and says sure, we can get it for you. He will call Forbo to make sure the colors we want are still available and let me know. He acts like he understands what I am talking about.
I should point out that we are nowhere near ready to lay linoleum. So why the rush? Because it’s getting close to the end of the year and very soon Forbo will discontinue some colors. You and I know exactly which ones those will be! They already got rid of Cool Green, a nice 1930s color, in their heavier weight linoleum but I think — and this has to be confirmed — that it’s currently available in a lighter weight material suitable for the upstairs bathroom.
Edit: I waited and waited for the painting company to call back. I had to call them twice before I got any help at all, and it was meager help at that. So in the end I ordered tiles by phone from Building for Health Eco-Center in Carbondale, Colorado. The owner, Cedar Rose Guelberth, was immensely helpful and tracked down everything I wanted. She even contacted Forbo Marmoleum and found out that they do recommend, and have instructions for, the use of their product as a countertop material. I’ll be ordering from Cedar Rose again.
These will be the linoleum schemes for the Blizzard Gulch “Ranger Station”. (Sorry for the fuzzy images. I haven’t figured out a way to make them sharp once they’re loaded into the blog post.)
First floor linoleum plan, all in the heavier-weight Marmoleum Dual tile. Moraine (gray) in the bathroom. Checkerboard of Moraine and White Marble (off-white) in the utility room and kitchen, except for a little "rug" of Bleeckerstreet (red) and Butter (soft yellow) in the kitchen.
Second floor linoleum. White Marble and Cool Green (both in the lighter weight Marmoleum MCT tile) in the bathroom.
In the windowless basement half-bath that we recently decided to add, a cheerful checkerboard of Bleeckerstreet and Butter.
Useful web links for new old houses and log homes
When you’re hand-building a period house, with unusual characteristics, in a rural area with wild critters, thinking of adding solar power and trying to incorporate some “green qualities”, you of course poke around on the Internet. It’s amazing how many resources there are!
Smith and Speed Mercantile homestead supplies and tools.
Cut and Dry Wood Chinking chinking with saplings, also restoration.
Formica VirrVarr and Boomerang classic countertop laminate.
Historic Colors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Valspar paint website.
Brown wall plate screws for those vintage brown bakelite switchplate and outlet covers from eBay.
A History of the Architecture of the USDA Forest Service
Forest Fire Lookout Association
University of Idaho native plant seedlings
Orchardgrass seed (naturalized in Beulah)
Harlequin’s Gardens well-adapted and native plants for Colorado.
Western Native Seed native shrub, wildflower and grass seed for the Rocky Mountains and western Great Plains.
Beulah School for the Natural Sciences webcam
Retro Renovation is an online decorating newsletter for 1940s, 1950s and 1960s homes.
Controlling Nuisance Woodpeckers in New Mexico
American Restoration Tile has period colors, shapes and patterns.
Our custom log builder, Pedersen Logsmiths, has a lot of information about log construction that is useful in the initial planning stages.
PEX tubing: what it is, what it’s used for, its advantages.
Edge trim for laminate countertops: New York Metal
Door and window details in PDF, DWG, and DXF formats. Without the DWG details to import into AutoCAD, I’d have had a much harder time designing the house. Thank you! to Eagle Windows and Simpson Doors.
Working With Linoleum Flooring by This Old House magazine
Discussion of the use of linoleum as a “green” countertop surface.
Another discussion, ditto.
A YouTube scene from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Another YouTube scene from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
The Preservation of Historic Log Buildings (National Park Service)
Rent a historic Forest Service cabin, fire lookout or ranger station
When visiting Grand Teton National Park, make reservations at Colter Bay Village, a collection of historic cabins refurbished for vacation rentals. Our bedroom is patterned after one of these cabins.
Cabin 1009 at Colter Bay Village, Grand Teton National Park. We copied the low-pitched roof, the ceiling boards, and the sliding bedroom windows.
Deco to Disco “20th century furnishings for the 21st century”. A shop in Portland, Oregon.
Log Set Part 2 plus a log building bibliography
Let’s continue with the log set. Back to Part 1
In reality it took several days of work to get all the logs up. Don’t let this post lead to you to believe it was all done in a day!
This particular style of log construction is called “round log chink style” or “saddle notch”. Chinking between the logs, which I’ll post about another time, fills the spaces between logs and allows for the taper and bumpiness of hand-peeled logs. There are attractive qualities about Swedish cope or “chinkless” construction that we considered. So, too, with square-hewn logs with dovetailed corners as well as the massive logs typical of Alaskan log buildings. Hewn logs are as typical of the early West as are round logs, and historically there were many hybrids and uncommon or regional methods of construction. These days you can have anything, including adobe/log combinations. At one point we even considered a log/straw-bale combination but that turned out to be too complicated. It was the log ranger station in Stanley, Idaho (which I talk about in my first post here) that finally settled the question of what style our log house would be.
You can learn more about styles of log construction at Pedersen Logsmiths and at the websites of other log builders. Various notches are pictured and described at Jeff’s website.
Okay, on with the show!
Think of how Lincoln Logs go together. Of the first course of logs, some have to be half logs, split in half lengthwise. Otherwise, you'd end up with a gap between logs and floor. Well, to be technical, this is the subfloor, painted for weather protection. The finish floor is a future operation, but if you look close you can see a 3/4 inch plywood rim that holds the logs above the subfloor by the thickness of the finish floor boards.
Where logs end without being notched together with other logs, such as at door and window openings, the log ends are held in place with vertical rebar and small plywood spacers. Here one of our helpers cuts plywood into 3-inch squares for the spacers.
Another helper cuts slabs of fiberglass insulation to place in the saddle notches (where logs cross).
Saddle notches are half-round-shaped cuts that allow logs to overlap. Here we have two courses of logs plus a half log. Eventually the half log will be trimmed out at the doorway. Notice how much redder the subfloor has become. The porch decking is so filthy it looks like the logs are sitting in dirt.
Here's where the big living room window will go. You can see the notches where the ceiling beams will fit in.
Jack Ferguson's boys spent all day balancing on the highest logs, guiding their dad as he lowered logs into place with the crane. Here it's a ceiling beam.
An early snow left the ground muddy. I've gone over the house several times trying to remove the red clay mud that got tracked all over but I bet I will never find it all.
Jeff Pedersen, our log guy, is as fearless as the Ferguson boys. And as muddy.
Jeff Pedersen had his hands full coordinating the crew of firefighters, neighbors, crane, and teenage boys. He is the best, no doubt about it. We found him by doing an Internet search for log builders. There was something about what he says on his website (www.pedersenlogsmiths.com) that we really related to, and a special visit to his log yard in Challis, Idaho, confirmed our choice. Jeff does perhaps a half-dozen houses and restorations per year. One of his early projects is featured in a book called Hands On Log Homes: Cabins Built on Dreams by Cindy and Art Thiede.
The big ceiling beams, which came from Canada, are supported by several log posts and one metal post.
One of the Ferguson boys keeps himself occupied.
Jeff sharpens his chainsaw.
In the main part of the house, the first floor logs and ceiling beams are in place. There will be two courses of wall logs above this, to form a kneewall in the second floor. The house is actually a story and a half, not two full stories.
I must have fizzled out about the time the gable assemblies were hoisted into place because I have no pictures of that. At any rate, they got there and now they are pinned together by purlins (roof beams). Someone has begun laying the tongue-and-groove boards that form both the ceiling for the first floor and the floor for the upstairs rooms. These, too, are now red with mud.
My watching and snoozing post, a storage container converted temporarily into a bedroom.
Firefighters can do anything, including laying floor boards.
Joseph, Truck of Many Colors, is a major contributor to the house.
Porch posts. The porch is tied to the house by an extra-long wall log.
With the porch posts in place all our crew (with the exception of Jeff, who had window and door bucks to install, and Jack, who would be needed in a day or two when the roof panels were installed) departed and the thrill of the log set was over. It was a grand time, made even more so by all the people who gave up a day (or two or three) of their time to help us and to share the work and excitement. Thanks to them, this will always be a house built with love.
Sometime I’ll tell you about the time when a bunch of folks came to help John install the floor joists under the subfloor. They kept us on schedule to get the logs raised and the house more-or-less dried in before the winter of 2008-2009.
A LOG BUILDING BIBLIOGRAPHY
These are the books that helped form our taste in log homes. For books that are out of print, check eBay and ABE Books.
Building with Logs: Western Log Construction in Context. Jennifer Eastman Attebery. University of Idaho Press 1998. 0-89301-208-4
Hands-On Log Homes: Cabins Built on Dreams. Cindy and Art Thiede. Gibbs-Smith 1998. 0-87905-80 5-6
Rocky Mountain Home: Spirited Western Hideaways. Elizabeth Clair Flood. Gibbs-Smith 1996. 0-87905-704-1
The Mountain West: Interpreting the Folk Landscape. Terry G. Jordan, Jon T. Kilpinen, Charles F. Gritzner. The Johns Hopkins University Press 1997. 0-8018-5431-8
Uncle Sam’s Cabins: A Visitor’s Guide to Historic U.S. Forest Service Ranger Stations of the West. Les Joslin. Wilderness Associates 1995. 0-9647167-1-2
Log Set Part 1
Raising the logs is the one aspect of log house building that everyone wants to see and participate in. (After that they disappear.) So, here are some pictures of our log raising in October 2008. At that time I was too sick to do much more than watch, take a few pictures, and sleep. Much of what went on I missed or don’t remember.
The ten-inch wall logs came from standing dead timber in Idaho and the larger beams came from standing dead timber in Canada. At the arid Challis, Idaho log yard of Pedersen Logsmiths the logs dried further while other jobs were completed. Jeff Pedersen predicted that there would be little or no settling of the logs after the house was built. A year later, we’ve detected barely any settling. (This is not always the case.)
Our logs lie in Jeff Pederson's Challis, Idaho log yard.
When our turn came, Jeff and his crew hand-peeled the logs, notched them, and constructed the shell according to blueprints from Trent Roman of Northwest Planning and Design. Each log was numbered according to which wall it belonged to and its orientation.
I know from first-hand experience how much work is involving in peeling logs.
Challis, Idaho: Seven rounds of logs are built and you can tell where the windows and doors will be. This picture by Jeff Pedersen was our first view of our future home.
Then the whole thing was disassembled and loaded onto two flatbed trailers. The trucks headed out to Colorado, about a two-day trip. Jeff loaded his pickup with tools, following the trucks.
Meanwhile, John had rounded up friends and firefighter buddies to help at the logset. For me, he set up a cozy bed in a storage building near the action so I could retreat when I got tired but still be able to hear and watch what was going on. A local crane operator was hired and he brought his family of teenage boys. A house was rented for Jeff, who would spend nearly a week supervising and doing detailed fitting work. We were all ready and excited when the trucks pulled in with the logs.
It's a house! The first truckload of logs pulls onto our street.
Volunteer helpers took turns directing Jack Ferguson (operating the crane) and slinging logs in groups to be unloaded into piles.
Bill and Tom guide the crane and put slings under the logs.
Jack Ferguson at the crane controls. We were extremely fortunate to have a local crane available rather than hiring one from Pueblo, thirty miles away.
The gables arrived partially assembled.
Each wall of the house is tagged with a different color slip, numbered according to its place in the wall.
Logs everywhere. You could hardly move around.
Here comes the first log, the beginning of the wall between the main part of the house and the master bedroom "cabin addition". There is no doorway opening in this log. Until Jeff cuts it out later, when the wall is stabilized, everyone steps over it. That's paint, salvaged from a local paint store's mis-mixed stash, on the subfloor. It's intended to help protect the plywood from weather.
Jeff Pedersen brought this apparatus for lifting logs with the crane.
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