Some finishing touches

Chloes sister amy arrived on friday and we all went up to the cabin yesterday. We stopped at Hills Flat Lumber for our twice-a-weekend $100 Torx screw and various other parts fix. We also got a replacement for the dangerous and leaky 20 year old gas can that my parents had found. I'm no safety officer, but even I draw the line when you end up with only one third of your gas in the generator gas tank and the remaining third on the power cord and control panel of the generator. We all water sealed the existing structure, and most importantly the lower deck onto which water will spill.

While Chloe and Amy went off for a little hike (they found some really amazing tasting blackberries!) I put in some diagonal joists to support the decking around the corners of the tub. This is what the frame looked like when I got started:

Next, I cut redwood decking and attacking them until I ran out of nail and screws AGAIN. Here's the deck sans nails

I also made a pine lid for the tub as well as a pine door for the Chofu water heater. Thankfully, Chloe and Amy came back and offered to go back to Hills Flat to get some more lumber and screws. While they were away I cut the rest of the redwood for the deck and attached the final diagonal joist. When they got back, we nailed all of the decking, attached the pine lids, and water sealed everything. We also attached the pine siding. This is a shot showing the hinged lid


Today Chloe and I carried the last sheet of half inch plywood down to the cabin, measured and cut it and fired up the bath. While the water heated up, chloe attached hasps for the lids and I made a redwood railing.





I've been impatient to get the tub and platform done, so I've relied mostly on modern building techniques an materials, which has meant no Japanese style joints. All of the important joints have been Simpson Strong-Tie which have the added advantage of making leveling easy. However, I wanted to make at least one set of nice joints, and I decided that the railing was a good place for that. I didn't try anything too fancy

The only thing left now is to attach some more supporting crossbars, and make a cover for the water heater... but apart from that it's almost done! we all got a turn soaking in the tub before packing up for another four hour drive back to Mill Valley (We had dinner with Amys aunt and uncle). We were a little more careful about how much wood we put in this time, and closed the door at 95 degrees. It still ended up getting pretty hot, so next time we'll try closing at 90.

This is the almost finished deck: