All posts by bkrijger

Canyon Lake Marina

A new find this year is Canyon Lake Marina and the Baja BBQ shack.

Baja BBQ shack

Arnoud and myself had a bite to eat and a few beers, whilst listening to live music: Jimmy Spacek was playing some pretty good blues.

Canyon Lake Marina is 10 minutes from my log home and serves good food with live music on the weekends.

Fading colors

Colors fade under the influence of UV light. And Texas has plenty of UV light,
so fading happens fast. The cedar that has gone up last year, (unstained) turned grey.
Today I stained the west gable end, again overcoming vertigo on a ladder on a three story scaffolding.

Here’s a picture halfway: Pretty clear which part I have stained.

After staining bottom to top, it looks like this:

Now only the extension needs staining, but I’m running out of stain too,
so another thing for next time.

Let there be light

Sometimes it’s handy to be an electrical engineer. For instance when you want to save on installation costs. Today I added two outlets and a lamp over the table. The light is smart, so by voice it can be dimmed, and set from cool to warm. There’s something cool about entering your home by telling your watch to unlock the door and then ask Siri to turn on the lights. A boy has got to have his toys 🤠

The one thing that I did not count on is the pre-drilled holes for power cables in the log walls weren’t properly checked; spent 1,5 hours poking a hole in a blocked log before I could get the wire in. Guess that’s why the quote from an electrician to do the wiring came to 10k. I’d rather spend an hour more and save 9K

Chinking inside

Today was a good day. Started out with a run at Canyon Lake park, not too long as I wanted to do some Chinking as well.
And so I did. Almost finished the last pale, so I will have to order at least 3 more pales to finish all walls.
But for now it will have to do. The master bedroom is now for the first time not visible from the great room.
And I noticed how the R-value (insulation value) keeps increasing;
today was 87 degrees (30.6 Celcius) and inside it stayed very comfortable downstairs. Upstairs not so much,
as the roof still has no insulation, so it was above 90 upstairs. At night I noticed the same thing;
in the great room, it was comfy late at night, were as in the master bedroom (non insulated) it was pretty nippy.
I may put in an exhaust upstairs to let the hot air out when needed.
Below is the two now mostly chinked walls of the great room.

Rope expansion

Funny how rope expands when it dries up. Notice the curves on the ropes in the picture below after a nice sunny day.

Yesterday, after a wet 24 hours with heavy thunderstorms and rains, the ropes were completely horizontal; I could almost play the base on them. I may have to engineer something to keep ‘m straight even when dry, as that offers a little more security.

Backsiding

Not a very rewarding job, as it is the only wall that isn’t visible unless you climb up the hill,
but it needed to be done; siding the back wall. After 2 years I guess it’s about time siding went on there.
It’s not finished, although a bit further than shown on this picture, as I ran out of cedar.
I had to buy cedar as the cabin builder has not supplied enough to cover the back at all.
As he did supply cedar that I ended up using for the railing inside and table,
I won’t push him to supply more. I’m kind of done with him. Another 6 boards and I should be done.
Hopefully I will be able to stain the sides and east gable end,
as they are now quite grey compared to the stained log walls and west gable end.