Starting the Second Floor
With the second floor beams all in place we temporarily laid the 3/4" OSB down in order to have a work space and be able to walk around up there. There's still a lot of work to do before the roof goes on.
The first order of business is to finish the final two complete log courses. This is course 15 and this course took some special preparation prior to installation.
	Course 15 needed to have a notch cut into the base to allow the finished ceiling for the first floor and the sub floor for the second floor (3/4" OSB) to slide under the edge of the log. This gives support for the second floor at all log walls.
The cut out itself is about 1 5/8" deep and about the same height. One of the things to remember when making this cut is that you don't want to cut out sections where there is no second floor to support. We had to pay special attention to this since our great room has a vaulted ceiling and is totally open to the loft area on the second floor.
Here are courses 15 and 16 completed.
Both courses 15 and 16 start the division between our loft and the bonus room we added above the kitchen area. Here is the door opening between the two rooms. This wall, as you will see later, will become one gable end of the main section of the house and will be the last full log wall we will have to build. Everything else on the second floor will be conventional framing with log siding.
One of the lessons you learn building a log home is that there can be some unique challenges when working with real wood. As you can see this 10' log is a little warped (to the tune of more than 5")! Not to worry though.... a little muscle during installation was all that was required to straighten it out.
After log courses 15 and 16 are installed the tongue on the top of course 16 needs to be removed. This is done because a conventional 2x6 wall will be built above these courses. An electric hand held plane makes quick work of this task.
The next task is to continue laying logs on the gable end of the house. As the wall goes up a couple "bucks" are installed and braced in the doorway to keep the wall plumb as each course is added.
As the gable end goes up you can start to see the 10/12 roof pitch on the front of the house. The notches you see are factory cut and will receive the purlins in our beam and purlin roof system.
Here you see the "Boss" using an electric impact wrench and 12" Lag bolts to secure another log on the gable wall.
The wall between the loft area and the bonus room is getting there. Only 10 more log courses to go.
That's all for this week. We didn't get quite as much done as we would have liked, partially because we were extremely tired after our "rest" in Louisville and second because we were fighting the weather all week. We were shut down by thunderstorms twice this week and had to make special trips back down to the house a couple times to remove about a half inch of water from the entire first floor. The monsoons have officially started. That's the bad news. The good news is that temperatures are back in the 80's where they belong. Next week we hope to set the last logs. Keep your fingers crossed.
					Check back soon.