After we finished the roof and the main floor, we had to put in a log to act as the front beam of the second story loft.  I could have put it in during the wall contruction but for various reasons I thought it would be easier to do later.  Amazingly, this turned out to be true.  All we did was cut two holes in the walls in the places that we wanted the log to sit.  We planted one of my old lifting poles in the ground 15' from the wall and rigged it up with two lifting systems (you can see them both in this picture).  We used the jeep winch to do the actual lifting and a rope system to hold the log in place while we moved the lifting point.  Then a come-along to pull the log into the hole.  Once half of the log was inside the house we switched to lifting off the ridge pole and put the come-along on the top of the far wall.  We were very surprised how well this worked.

This is what the interior looked like after we got done hefting in that log.  Even in this very dark photo, you can see how nice the underside of the roof looks.  This is why we went to all the trouble to put the insulation on top.  We finished the 2x6 TnG with a clear satin sealer before we nailed them up because they're much harder to work on from the bottom side.

The loft log will form the front edge of the second floor.  The area to the right of the log (in this picture) will remain open to the ceiling.  The area to the left will be the loft and will have a railing to prevent small children from falling and spoiling everybody's fun.  The area we're looking at right now will become the kitchen.