18 August 2011

Chree and the dogs left for Virginia via Connecticut soon after Perry arrived.  He and I set to work building the west wall, which, because it has 13 feet of doors in a 20 feet span, had to have an enormous header made from two 2 x 10 x 20’s sistered together with pieces of ½″ plywood to make a beam 19′ 6″ long, 9¼″ high, and 3½″ thick… which weighed in at 125 pounds.  Omph!  Once we got the wall built, the two of us were able to raise one side 3 feet off the ground onto my sawhorses… but that’s all we could do.  Marty!!!! While we were waiting for a rescue party from the north to arrive, we went off to Perry’s friend Don Ross’ place on Lake Dunmore to liberate four sections of scaffolding.  Returned to Fern Lake, with Marty’s he-man help and some grunting, we hoisted the west wall to a vertical position.  Meanwhile, Tim Clark stopped by with his written estimate for installing a standing seam metal roof on the shed.  His price went up $500 from his earlier verbal estimate… and is nearly $1,000 more than my budget. Hmmm!!!!  On a positive note, Mike Many (who lives a half mile north on Lake Dunmore Road ) and his son, Pikey, stopped by to look at the roofing job.  Unfortunately, their verbal estimate was in the same ball park as Tim Clark, but we’ll see (next week) what their written estimate comes in at.  After Mike and Pikey left, Perry and I cobbled together the framing for the north and south walls, raised those walls into position, and plumbed perfectly vertical all four walls of the shed.  Figuring we’d done enough damage for one day, we put away tools and cleaned up the job site (thunderstorms in the forecast for tonight), then repaired to the comfort of Kate & Dan’s porch for a couple of cold ones and to figure out what lumber to order for building the roof.