What we were doing...
In the over 100 years our cabin has existed, some of the logs in the cabin had rotted out. This project was approved at the 2015 Annual General Meeting to replace several damaged logs and ensure the Main Lodge was in good shape for years to come.
Summary of the project
The work camp group arrived around noon on Saturday, September 4th, with a crew of Ned Riley, Mark Farmer, Eddie Bachle and Steve Bachle. We unloaded camp supplies, tools and materials and got to work taking up the porch floor.
We found much of the porch floor was in poor condition and the beam that was supporting the ends of the floor joists on the east wall, was completely rotten under the door. We asked John Best to get some additional materials that would allow us to fix these items also.
Sunday, John Best arrived around noon and brought with him a new piece of true 6" x 6" lumber milled by him to repair the floor joist along with a bundle of flooring to repair the floor. He also brought lots of tools (jacks, bars, supports, chainsaw, etc...) and the timbers to fix the 2nd story floor joist near the fire place and a large cedar log to replace the lower timber under the porch door on the north side.
We got to work right away repairing the rotten beam that supported the end floor joists.
We then started to support the building to allow removal of the two lower logs on the lake side of the porch. At around 6:00 we called it quits and Mark took John fishing for a couple of hours while we did some clean-up and cooked dinner. Everyone was beat so it was a pretty early night.
Monday AM we started to measure and form the lower timbers so that they could be installed with John Best manning the chain saw. Despite the size and weight of the logs we were able to move them into position fairly easily using straps, rollers, ramps, levers and a bit of persuasion with sledge hammers. We certainly proved that brains can match brawn. The second row of logs were a little more difficult as they had to fit into a tighter space. By early afternoon the front logs were in place.
We then started to work on the North lower log which proved to be a challenge. This log was not part of the original scope but also had lots of rot and needed to be replaced due to the extensive damage caused by carpenter ants. Since we did not want to remove the flooring along the East wall the log had to be removed piece by piece. We finally got the new log into place and called it a day around 6:30. Had dinner and played a little cards with John and off to bed.
Tuesday AM we got into repairing the 2nd floor joist that runs along the South side of the fire place. This log had been rotted by leaking around the fireplace for many years. We supported the 2nd story floor and cut the old log to remove the rotten section. The new timber that John brought was formed to fit with the remaining wood and a special heavy duty splice bracket that was designed by John and Steve and fabricated by Mark Bachle.
Many thanks to Mark as this was done at no cost to the camp! John again worked his magic with the chain saw to make everything fit together. It took a number of tries to get the fit correct where the log meets the fireplace. Once in place the splice bracket was supported and everything was fastened together using 5/8 x 9 1/2 long bolts.
Tuesday afternoon we did some additional fine tuning consisting of trimming the door openings, installing plugs in the lift holes, trimming the log ends and we started to do some grouting at the front lower log supports.
John Best also helped us remove a rotten maple tree that looked dangerous for the west side of the boat house. While doing that we also took out two hemlock trees near the boat house ramp.
We then gathered all John's equipment and got him to the dock around 6:30. We returned to camp and had dinner and called it a day.
Wednesday AM Eddie Bachle left for home and Mark Farmer went to town on a material run. We needed some wood to fix the East door opening along with hardware, caulk, mortar, a decent wheelbarrow and miscellaneous other items. While he was gone Steve finished the grouting of the supports of the lower East log and near the fireplace, secured and repaired the floor joists where they meet the lower East log and started to replace the porch flooring. Steve cut up a bunch of the wood from the trees that were dropped near the boathouse. Mark worked on altering and hanging the North porch door. Again a late dinner and pretty early to bed.
Thursday AM awoke to rain and it continued most of the day. Good thing we had mostly inside work to do. We worked on securing and removing the East door frame and installing new timbers (2 3/8" x 10 that were milled for us in Parry Sound). Once the door frame was secure Steve went on a dump run and Mark worked on getting the door altered and hung.
We went upstairs to put things back in place and found that we still have a big leaking problem around the interface between the fireplace chimney and the roof. It has been repaired a number of times and still is not good. Unfortunately there was nothing that could be done since it was still raining. Left unfixed this was going to ruin our repair to the floor joist.
Mark and Steve worked till around midnight to finish re-installing the floor. Near the end Steve overloaded the invertor system when running an electric planer and the system shut down leaving us in the dark. When we tied to start the Onan it was totally dead so we had to switch to the Wacker. We took the battery off the Onan and put it on the charger and then called it a night.
We got up early Friday AM and we were hoping to leave before noon but had a lot of items to finish up. We diagnosed the Onan problem as a defective voltage regulator. It was probably caused by the damaged brushes that we had to replace in our August camp. Luckily there was a spare voltage regulator in camp that Mark had bought last year! We cleaned up all the tools and construction mess and Mark made some repairs to the boat house railings that was caused when we cut down the adjacent trees. We trimmed the plugs that were installed in the front lodge wall because they were actually separating the old logs from the new logs. We did our best to re-seal the roof flashing around the chimney with tar. Time will tell if we were successful. The lodge roof certainly needs to be addressed as the shingles are starting to look really bad too. We made notes for the next camp and gathered our stuff and finally pulled away from our dock around 2:00.
Things we still have to do
Unfortunately we simply ran out of time and there are a few things remaining to be done. Steve is hoping to get to them in the Riley late September camp. These include:
- Re-mount electrical outlets on the left-hand side of the porch screen door
- Restore the knob and tube electrical around the new splice bracket
- Remove the support for the 2nd story floor joist. This was left in place to allow the mortar to cure properly.
- Make and install the threshold at the front door.
- Paint doors and jambs
- Apply preservative to new logs on outside surfaces (some of this has been done)
- Caulk and chink between old and new logs
- Nail mitered corners at new logs
- Add cedar shims to fill gaps at corners and new log on North side.
- Possibly sand and paint porch floor