The weather has been unseasonable warm lately. Highs in the mid 70s and sunny. It’s been like this all week…
I had a beautiful ride out to our lake access project on Burntside the other day. This is an interesting project in that there was no plan to begin with. Actually there was a plan but we discarded it almost immediately.

We originally started thinking we would be putting up a quick shell, log walls and a roof, but soon realized the owner actually wanted us to finish the whole thing. Wow. Didn’t see that commin…

This has resulted in the most haphazard progression of I project I have ever been involved in. We have been literally flying by the seat of our pants on this one… but it seems to be turning out OK. We haven’t shot ourselves in the foot too many times…

The wood floor is going in now, (before the frame walls, of course, nothing happens in order here). This is the widest solid wood plank flooring I have ever seen. I discourage flooring any wider than 6″, but this manufacturer says this will be fine. Whatever. I have seen the strength of wood. When it wants to bend or cup, there is no stopping it.

I recommended to our flooring installer that he use the glue that the manufacturer recommends so that we will not be responsible when it warps and breaks the bond. Just the shrinking and swelling movement with the varying humidity over the course of a year will cause these boards to change size by a quarter of an inch, pushing them apart and opening the tongue and groove joints. It really doesn’t go together very well either, it is so wide you can’t force out the bends in each piece and it isn’t real straight. It’s wood. You have to work with wood, you can’t expect it to be something it is not.

Very impressive boards though. Quarter sawn white oak, some as wide as 18″.

I managed to get a huge slab poured for a basketball court this week at the Ely Rec Center. The weather has been kind to us this year allowing us to get this done this year. The whole basketball court part of the project was made possible through a generous donation from clients of mine who I have been working with for about 10 years now. Wes and Linda Gibson have been a part of the Ely summer community and wanted to give something when they hard about the project. Here is the start of that. I will put up the hoops in a week or so, once the concrete cures enough.

These are the anchors for the basketball hoop posts. They will be set into the wet concrete:

The ground prep is done and the forms are placed. Steel mesh and re-bar has been placed and tied together:

…and here we go… The contractor I have doing the job is John Sjoberg of Sjoberg Masonry:

…and finishing:

Pretty cool stuff.