Finally we start using some logs on our log home.

July 8, 1996
Once again I have rented a crane in order to lift two steel "I" beams into the garage area and two 28ft. Log beams into the great room. Karter, my builder, offered to "shuck" the beams into place. I think that means he and his crew would lift the beams into place by hand! I didn't want to see anyone get hurt and to speed things up I decided on using the crane.

One of the garage "I" beams spans almost 24 feet and even though its steel the architects have placed a steel post as support in the middle of the beam. I called Wilderness and spoke with the architect and he recommended a larger steel beam if I wanted to eliminate the steel post in the middle of my garage. Of course the local supplier of steel beams doesn't keep the larger beam in stock and ordering one would take several weeks. Since I didn't want to delay the house by a couple of weeks I compromised and put in the original "I" beam and ignored the steel post!

That's not as crazy as it sounds, I have a temporary support under the steel beam until I can get a structural engineer to take a look at it and see what he/she thinks. I firmly believe architects over engineer things just to be safe, (you know, the "no way am I getting sued" mentality) so we'll wait and see.

Tub/shower units are normally too big to fit through doorways so they need to be roughly placed before the bathroom is framed in. I was planning on using the crane to lift the two tub/shower units onto the second floor but there really wasn't enough room. These units are made of fiberglass and relatively light so it shouldn't be too difficult to lift them into place by hand at a later date.

I picked up Ian from school so he could watch the crane. He really enjoyed watching the 2^nd floor laminated joists get lifted into place. When the crane operator got done he let Ian crawl into the cab and play with all the levers. He had a blast but I'll spare you yet another photo of my handsome son, (he takes after his dad :).

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