Good Day Sunshine

At last...no rain to speak of for three days! Mist doesn't count. Sunday Ed started by taking off the old plywood he temped up for protection from the wet. He spent the rest of the day putting the new plywood subflooring down. Now, kids, don't try this at home, because you could actually decapitate yourself, but he triangled the plywood on the forklift bars of the tractor and lifted them to the roof, being very careful not to tip the pile toward himself. If it slid off...well let's just say that the backhoe would be digging a trench somewhere down by the pasture for the funeral. I maintain a calm and serene facade while watching him do this stuff, screaming on the inside. Ed is very careful and is very good about moving stuff with the tractor but it's still scary to watch. Once the plywood was lifted more or less parallel to the subfloor, he went on top and pulled it to the building, glued and nailed it in place. Oh yeah, it's tongue in groove too, so he would get it set more or less in place and then do the Plywood Shuffle which consists of jumping on it with both feet while pushing forward with your feet to shove it together. For a guy that doesn't dance he did an amazing job! By the end of Sunday he had about half of the floor down.

Monday morning gave us another good weather day, so bright and early, Ed was back at it. He finished laying the subflooring and nailed it off. Yea! It felt like a milestone, mostly because he had been thwarted by the weather for weeks. **Note to self: When it's really windy and the compressor hose gets wrapped around the ladder...it can fall right over. Then you're stuck on the roof until a neighbor drives by, which out here can be a while!** In any event, Ed put up the last rim joist and began laying out the double curves for the eyebrow dormer. Who knew all that math we had to choke down in high school would finally come in handy? Good thing Ed remembers it all, because I would be lost! It was nice though to stand up there and look around. The view that we will have from the garage studio and the balcony on the house is going to be spectacular. In the summer all the trees and the pasture are green and lush. In the winter when the trees are bare, we will have a clear view of both pastures and the creek. We may thin some of the trees in the forefront to give a more clear view of the pastures. This is the southwest view. Out the north windows is a row of sugar maples that are stunning in the fall.

Tuesday morning was drippy and drizzily...not really rain, just enough to make us nervous. Ed and I went through the bundles of lumber still sitting in the driveway, and sorted them out. The pre-primed pieces and the cedar went in the garage, and we put the 2x4s and 2x6s in separate piles. After that, Ed started laying out the framing and working on the header for the eyebrow dormer. Now what shows here is one layer of the header. He made two more sets the same and puts them all together. You'd think by this time I'd be used to seeing Really Heavy Things, but I'm not. Next weekend he'll build the first wall, attach it to the header. Then after bribing as many male neighbors as possible, they'll lift it up and get the first vertical wall in place!