Volunteers are so cool.

Since the beginning of June, Elizabeth, Helaman, and I have been working on our buildings by ourselves. This has been quite the challenge with only three of us, especially considering the limited construction skills of Elizabeth and me.

Well this past week we were fortunate enough to have some fantastic volunteers. About ten very hard working and enthusiastic folks joined us from Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado. Which by the way is a brilliant organization that you can check out here: http://www.voc.org/. If you want to get involved in the outdoors in the middle of the Rockies, this is the way to do it.

So from Tuesday through Friday we were able to accomplish an outstanding amount of work. The garage/soon-to-be-bunkhouse got a new roof. This was a great project that I think I enjoyed more than anything we've done so far. First we had to get the shingles. This actually happened several weeks ago when I took a trip down to Denver to pick up a few thousand pounds of the cedar pieces.
This was not the part I enjoyed thoroughly. Driving this load from Denver to Lake City wasn't exactly a care-free task. It was a little bit scary but I did it without incident thankfully.

With the shingles in place at the Guard Station, our volunteers went to work first stripping all of the old shingles off the roof. This was no easy task, not only did they have to get all the shingles off, but each and every single nail had to be removed as well. That's a bit tedious. Once that was done, we got to work assembling the new cedar shingles. This was fun! Being the perfectionist that I am, I really enjoyed this process. It's also super fun to strap on a harness and walk up and down the roof, almost as cool as being on a fun climb.
We got a lot done on this building, and I must say that it looks fantastic. It was also fun to see the monstrous bonfire we lit to burn all of the old shingles.


In addition to the roof of the garage, we also worked on fitting new logs into the barn. We're not doing a whole lot to the barn other than stabilizing it and squaring it up so that it will maintain, or rather, regain it's structural integrity. If there ever was equestrian traffic up here, people could actually use the barn for their horses. Though we're not doing a major rehabilitation project on the barn like the other two buildings, strengthening this building is still a LOT of work. Like is so common on old log buildings, the bottom logs need to be replaced due to rot. I'm still amazed at what a simple jack and some manpower can do.

Just look at this building without the bottom couple of logs. Can you even believe it's still standing. With a few jacks and some cribbing we're able to fashion the new logs complete with notches to fit into place. Here's a picture of volunteer Sean working on a notch in a new log. I started the notch with a chainsaw, not exactly 'historic' craftsmanship, but quick and efficient nonetheless!



Fitting the logs into place is complicated. Unfortunately we didn't get that done this weekend, but we're so much closer thanks to the awesome energy of the VOC volunteers. We also began the foundational construction for the solar energy panel shed. That's right, when complete the main cabin will have solar powered electricity. This is a pretty awesome way to bring this historic cabin into a more user friendly 'rehabilitated' habitat. My only wish is that it had it now! The volunteers did a great job with this:
It was amazing how much quicker work goes with a few more hands. I only wish these rockstars were staying longer than four days! Fortunately we'll have another week of VOC volunteers next week, oh if only they were here for the next 7 weeks with us. Not only were they great workers, they were a lot of fun to have around and added some much needed moral and energy. If any of you volunteers happen to be reading this, do come back- we miss you!