A new project

I want to tell about our new, very exciting project.

This one is completely different because, for the first time, we have hired someone to do the work.

Until now all aspects of the build and set up here have been done by us, along with some help from family and friends.  The only (minor) exception was hooking up the propane to the cottage because it had to be done by a licensed contractor for insurance reasons.  Frankly we could have easily done that, but insurance …

This one however is different.  We wanted to get the exterior of our cottage refinished.  By refinished I mean take off all the old stain, and put on new – hopefully with a result that the entire building looks kinda, sorta new.

First – some history.  Our cottage is a Panabode.  This is a specific style of shaped western red cedar logs that are assembled together like Lego or Lincoln logs.  It dates from the 70’s, but the company is still in business today

www.panabode.com

We actually bought it disassembled from its original location and moved the pieces 6 hours away and used the pieces to rebuild in our location.  Not every piece was usable, but most were.  As we reassembled it we did miscue a couple of times and put the logs in a new order – which resulted in some funny patterns on the outside.  Additionally, there were a number of areas where we had to fix things up as best we could.

For example it had some "snaggle toothed" corners

That we repaired by cutting and fitting in new wood

And areas where the original build must have had something on the exterior that was subsequently stained around.

The result appealed to us in that it looked like it had always been in its new location.  That said we had always planned that some day we would get the exterior redone.

Last year we began the search for some way and some one to do this.  We knew that this was going to be a task of significant magnitude and frankly I could think of other things I would rather do with my time. 

So – enter the blasters ….

Most contractors who do refinishing of this sort blast the surface with some sort of grit (walnut shells, Corn etc).  They took away a couple of left over logs from the build and ran their process as a sample.  Now – while they were optimistic the results were very disappointing.  Because cedar is a soft wood, and these particular logs are pretty darned old the result was that the wood was worn away significantly and the resulting surface was wavy and coarse.  Plus, a miscue could easily damage the integrity of the wall (we thought).  On to Google where we found a blog from a gentleman who sanded his Panabode over the course of 4 summers (one summer per wall).  So – OK – sanding was a good idea but the size of the task was terrible.  This fellow had even invested in excellent tools, but still.  Finally – I managed to connect with a couple who restore log homes via sanding them. 

We booked these folks last year (and paid our deposit) and waited….  and waited …..

Finally –  they came by and dropped off some scaffolding.  Good News!

And the man part of the couple showed up and began to sand!!!!

We were over the moon.  The surface is coming up just as we had hoped, and even though the task is huge he really seems to like his work.  His ear protection gear has a short antenna and is blue tooth enabled and we can hear him sanding and singing away.  All good

It went like this for about 2  or 2.5 days.  Then it started to rain (and rain).  We have hardly had 3 days in a row without rain since.  Of course he could not sand in the rain, nor could he sand a wet building.  Our excitement and progress came to a crash halt.

Lonely rained upon scaffold

But it can’t rain forever right?

Latest estimate is that he will be back at the end of the week.  We shall see. 

Progress update will come when there is progress to report.