Today was the opening day for the fair. I was worried about getting there on time, but Melissa and I used the park-n-ride service which was pretty painless. I think the exhibit was well-received by most of the visitors. Some weren’t interested or simply weren’t buying it, but many people seemed genuinely intrigued by what we had to say.

Pam, our media contact, and a crew from the NBC station stopped by in the morning. They asked me for a little 30sec sound bite which they ran on the evening newscast. Check out minute 7 – hopefully the link stays active for a while… KARE 6pm Newscast 8/25/11

Brittany and I presented on the Sustainability Stage in the evening. It’s hard to gauge exactly how interested people were – I suspect many of them were content with just resting their legs for a while. But if someone has an idea as a result, then I guess it was worth it. One audience member, an architect with Vincent James, seemed rather interested and visited with us for a while after the presentation. A few others stopped by to get a closer look at our concrete samples.

We weren’t expecting to do a great deal at the fairgrounds today. But like Monday, little odd jobs seemed to keep popping up. I spent some time with Nic and Dusty dressing up our solid-wood wall mock-up. I also cut and taped process photos to the shelving with Peter.

We did all meet as a group and review our concepts for a short time. I expected the meeting would be longer, but time was short. Brittany and I seized the opportunity to test our presentation slides. It’s a good thing since we found that the screen has a 16:9 format (I had assumed there would be a projector with a 4:3 format). It’s no big deal but it will require some resizing of our slides. I’ll try and finish the slide show tonight so we can rehearse the presentation a bit after our shifts tomorrow. I think we’re both worried since there really hasn’t been enough time to prepare a proper presentation, but I guess we’ll just have to roll with it…

Today was supposed to be so simple – just mop up the last few things – but it turned into one of our very longest days. Right away in the morning, Paul, Ty, and I installed the track and trolleys for the bathroom door. They Ty and I spent some time building a small, intermediate step between the shading structure and the pavers. It really turned out nicely with everything sitting flush with everything else. Unfortunately, it’s also hard to see so Nick will be adding an aluminum angle to make it more visible.

The biggest job of the day, however, was an unexpected one. Somehow we became responsible for building two ramps between the pavers and the concrete floor. Ty and I ripped a bunch of lumber down to the proper size and then built a jig to make the angled cut. Half the boards needed some additional trimming but we managed to get them looking uniform. Then we had to cut some blocking before finally adding the OSB.

The whole process was pretty involved and not very pleasant – not the ideal way to end work on the project. But now the cabin is essentially complete and looking awesome; it feels great to have been a part of it!

After working on gabions day after day, it was nice to tackle some other projects. Paul and I put the cedar bench together on the south side right away. It was really easy work since Paul had already cut and adjusted the pieces yesterday. We just glued the pieces together and fastened them.

The rest of the morning and afternoon I worked with Chris. We took little pieces of 1×1 which had cut to size and outlined the profile of the stairs. After lunch we made the final adjustments to the loft railing. We took the remaining slats off the front, cut them, and placed them on the backside to better display the floating burlap panels. We also added caps to the railing posts. It’s a simple gesture, but it mimics the language of the shelving nicely.

Ty and I were asked to trim the inside of the door which was the very last thing to be trimmed. The joint where the door’s rough opening meets the little electrical shelf is pretty odd, but I think we handled it as well as we could have. We also discovered an inexplicable wave in the siding which necessitated some re-cutting. Believe it or not, it was my first time truly working with richlite on the project. It’s a really remarkable material though not forgiving at all; I can now empathize with my classmates who have been using it for over a week.

The project is really winding down now. We had another great day of work from everyone; the whole cabin is starting to look really nice. Luke and I even got a little break from the gabions. Instead, we started by building a toe kick for the south side. We attached a piece of richlite to some otherwise unusable redwood and then nailed it down. Then Luke began adding rock between it and the windows while Mikey worked on trim. The richlite is pretty subtle, but should be enough to prevent any unintentional kicking of rock.

The rest of the day, Luke and I worked on finishing the gabions once and for all. He attached the cages to the north wall while I manufactured a new angled gabion. (The original was banged up on Tuesday, but we were able to salvage it and move it to the east side.) We didn’t have any more material, so I salvaged one of the badly damaged gabions. I cut it apart entirely and straightened the mesh as much as possible. After adding new edges to the metal, I began stitching the pieces back together which took most of the afternoon.

We finished attaching and filling all the gabions by the end of the day. They look very clean – much better than the first attempt.We also took advantage of the work being done on the north side window by realigning of the weather membrane to match the edge of the wainscoting. If you step back, it looks as if the gabions have been cut and peeled back along with the rest of the wall.