Day 78 Thursday October 18, 2001

It was great having my Dad up to the hill. My dad is one of my heroes. I don't spend as much time with him as I should. I wish we could have spent a few more days together, but he had to head out for an important meeting. Even though he is just turning 69, my pop is on the cutting edge of trying to keep America producing cost effective and effective medicine. His particular job is controversial, but he fights the good fight. I admire that.

Meanwhile, he froze his ass off helping me figure out that damn gable end wall. You see, the log gable wall has outlookers that jut out perpendicular to the rafters. They are part of the roof, making up the part that overhangs the big trapezoidal windows. The overhang is longer at the top of the roof (4 feet) and tapers to 2 feet at the bottom of the roof. This is called a "prow". I wanted a prow because it keeps the summer sun out of the big windows in the summer, but allows the sun to come into the windows in the winter when it comes across the sky in a lower arc. This is a good thing since I only have a wood stove for heat. This is a bad thing because the gable wall on the other side of the house, which also has an overhang but no prow, uses 2x4 outlookers (which are 3 1/2 inches wide) instead of 2x6 outlookers which are 5 1/2 inches. And, the prow side of the overhang gets a piece of 1 inch tongue and groove pine sandwiched in between the outlooker and log wall. And the 1 inch tongue and groove is actually 3/4 inch. Got that? So that means the 2x6 gable wall has to be built 2 3/4 inches higher than the log gable wall while maintaining the same slope. Oh, and the blueprints don't tell you how AND they give you the wrong dimensions for the wall. So it took a while. Several trys. As usual, Dad was patient even when I got frustrated.

8 hours, mostly sunny and cool.