Pinecrest Pub Progress--Sheetrock

I think I have mentioned more than once that I feel very lucky to have the friends and family that I do. Truly, this house wouldn't be here at all, and if it was, it wouldn't be nearly what it is today without the help we have received from these special people. Today we add one more to the list.

Bob Pryor is a friend of my fathers. They met in Missoula during school and from the sounds of their many stories, they were thick as thieves throughout their time together. As they went their seperate ways after high school, they lost track of each other and just recently made contact again. I had the great pleasure of going hunting with my father and Bob this last year and it was a real treat. During that time Bob found out that I had a bunch of drywall to put up and he offered to show me a thing or two. Turns out he owned his own drywall company for many years. Today he proved it.

A special thank you to Bob. Our basement has really started to look good.

Here's what it looks like now, and below are pictures of the work in progress.

Pinecrest Pub Taking Shape

Construction of the Pinecrest Pub has officially started. When finished it will have 4 different beers on tap, a full compliment of liquors, sodas, wines, and a built in ice-maker.

Upgrading the Wood Stove

After a year and a half of service, our Blaze King gave up the ghost. The intense heat that is created by having a constant fire fueled by pine finally caused the welds to split inside the stove. This left us without any ability to damper the fire and caused a tremendous amount of heat loss up the chimney. After doing some research online I stumbled across the Montana Stove Works website. Truthfully, I found a review of their Cera Stove and then had to search for them. Here is the website for those that are curious: http://www.montanastove.com/ The direct link to the Cera stove is here: http://www.montanastove.com/page12.html

The owner/operator is Fred Seton and he's been building Boilers and wood stoves for 30 years. And as a bonus he is in Montana (Troy). After reading through his website, reading the reviews online, and then finally talking with him, Kelly and I decided to spend the $2600 to purchase the Commercial version of his Cera Stove. He claimed that it would put out enough heat to shut off the furnace. That's a pretty tall order here given the size of the place but he insisted that it would not only do it, but that we would have to give up splitting our wood too!! Woohoo!! The stove has a huge firebox and can take 15" diameter logs around 24" long. The firebox isn't iron like we are used to. It is actually framed with iron, and then poured with a concrete type material that they call "ceramic refractory". The end result is that you end up with a firebox that can withstand at least twice the heat of iron and it has a tremendous thermal mass that will continue to radiate heat even after the fire is out. This is exactly why the Vermont Castings Soap Stone stoves are so popular (and expensive). Another benefit of the construction is that the higher firebox temperatures actually prevent creosote buildup due to a more complete combustion. There are a bunch of fancy words that describe this but the end result is that your risk of a chimney fire is much reduced.

Three weeks later the stove showed up. 785 pounds!! Made moving it interesting and getting it up onto the hearth a bit of a chore. Luckily I have a couple of buddies that are always willing to lend a hand. Pete and Bob helped us make quick work of the stove install and in no time, the house was warming up. Fred wasn't kidding either. Before Kelly and I got it figured out we had the upstairs roasting at 77 degrees. The only time our furnace runs now is when it's really cold out and we decide to sleep in too long.

A special thanks to Pete, Sandy, Bob, and Erna for helping with the install and thank you Fred. Your stove has more than delivered on your promise.

Here's the finished product, and the pictures below it show how we got here.

Staining and Sealing the House

With Winter fast approaching we had to get the house stained and sealed. To get this done we rented a towable manlift and Kelly sweet-talked Butch into coming back up and helping for a week. Our buddy Vince loaned us a sprayer to make the application go faster too.

Kelly made the most of the time that I was at work. Her and Butch managed to do almost the whole house before I was able to get home and take over. I'm pretty lucky to get to work with these two.

The Stain we used was included with the package from Paramount Log Homes. It is made by Sashco and is widely regarded as some of the best stuff ever made for log homes. The stain is called "Capture" and we elected to get the lighest color they had to preserve the look and color of the logs in their natural state. The sealer is also made Sashco and it's a fancy clear coat that leaves a glossy finish on the logs. This stuff is spendy but the end result is worth every penny. I can see why Ray uses this stuff.

We ended up putting one heavy coat of stain almost everywhere but there were places that required two coats. The sealer went on very fast after that and one coat looked about right. To apply it we used the sprayer (airless sprayer made by campbell hausfield) to apply it to the logs/trim and back-brushed it with some large brushes. We used cardboard to guard the windows while we sprayed around them. We would always wash the windows afterwards but the cardboard made the cleanup lots quicker. There are lots of pictures below that show how it turned out. Thanks again to Butch and Kelly.





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Hammerhead

What would be the last thing you would expect to see hanging up in a log home in Montana? How about 10' long Hammerhead shark?

Ours finally arrived from the taxidermist in Florida. They did a great job on it and it really looks like a fish out of water on that big log wall! It's one heck of a conversation piece. And for the record, it's not quite 10' long, it's 9'-8" long. Weight was estimated at 450lbs. Finally proof that I caught a fish bigger than me.