We have spent the last week prepping and placing rafters, and we are almost half way done!  We are getting better at placing the rafters (read not working as hard), but did I mention these suckers are heavy?

We have been making reasonably steady progress placing rafters, but the prep work is taking a lot of time.   Sandra picked out a very attractive stain for the rafters last week and we have been staining them before placing them.  In addition to cleaning and staining the logs, we have also been scribing (fitting) the logs to the walls they pass through.

The picture to the left shows the pocket for a rafter in one of the beams running north/south.  I am making the pockets and fitting the logs using a router (with a really long shank) and a chainsaw.  It takes a fair bit of time to fit the log to the wall (an hour plus) and with sixty wall crossings to account for the time adds up!  After the roof is on we will go back and clean up the logs in the beams and the tops of the wall.  The top two feet of the walls are starting to look a lot like a stacked log house … big surprise given our history!  The logs should contrast very nicely with the plaster over the tires when all is said and done.

We hope to place the bulk of the remaining rafters this week.  After that we will hopefully frame the front wall and finish fitting the rafters to the walls.