Progress

Have been working on the roof all week. We were making great headway until my helper layed out the rafters wrong and 28 of them were nailed up wrong. This drives me insane, I know we all make mistakes, but what makes good carpenters is constantly checking yourself and the accurarcy of measurements. I did'nt discover this until the last board was being put-in, and I thought that the house was a little off. Going back and checking, we found that after the sixth rafter all measurements were 2" off.  This put me in a bad mood, I had just commented on what a good day we had. Now the rafters have to all be cut out and reset, this kills time, material, and attitude. I dont do mistakes well, and I hate the attitude of almost all carpenters. "Oh well, everyone makes mistakes". They sure do, and they surely do alot more with such a cavalier response. I would rather not even do the project than accept "ah shucks". Now, this morning we will be hopefully doing the short fix of this mistake, and not the long fix that it could turn into. When I owned the countertop co., we would go months without costly mistakes. It was drilled into my guys head, we are professionals, perform as such. If you want to make good money, make yourself worth good money. They knew that pushing for perfection payed off even if we were not perfect. One mistake leads to others, and before you know it, thats all you do. If you accept mistakes, then thats all you get. To eliminate mistakes is all awareness and focus. I know Richard felt horrible, hopefully this wont happen much more.

Sweet Summer

I'll be honest, I really enjoy the summer up here. It's not the kind of heat that I'm used to, and it does'nt feel oppressive until August. By that time its almost fall and I know relief is on the way. Going swimming at the end of the day cools you down so much that the cool evenings feel great being outside. The past couple of nights have been in the 60's so I have enjoyed a fire down at the site. You get to meet cool people at the river vacationing who are all very curious about how we get to live here. And there are always kids at the river for Matt to play with. If I was'nt workin so hard, I would feel like I'm on vacation. I think our family forgets how fun it is here in the summer, there havent  been many visitors to the cabin in the past couple months. I guess I will start booking friends to stay in the cabin and keep me company. Made good progress this week, but the other crew still has not shown up. I am going to act like they are not coming, and just push on. I am thinking of ways to deal with the staggering height of the roof becouse I will probably end up doing it myself. The next 2 weeks will be huge if I can stay on track. Expect pictures of the roof and deck, and the completion of the main framing. Seeing the rafters go up has been a huge emotional lift, and has given me recharged batteries. One of the biggest challenges has been to keep all of my energy focused on the house day after day, and it will be so good to have the plumber, electrition, and hvac guys to keep things rolling when the framing is done. Thankfully, I have Robyn to run the store and to do so many other things that allow me to build our house.

Roof Appears

The beams are up. We are at the top of the house with the placement of the 28' beam in the master bedroom. Thank goodness the skyfork reached the peak, I dont think I could have lifted that beam standing on scaffolding 25ft. in the air. But, we did exactly that on the 22 ft. beam in the awesome room. In two days we have placed both of the big beams with 2 people and 1 skyfork, and we are closing in on finishing out all of the rafters. The goal for this week is to have as much of the roof on as is possible, that is if the other crew does'nt show up. If they do, we want the roof decked, tar-papered, and the 1x4 pearlings on. And , the deck started on at least. I am starting to be more productive and it shows, the last 2 days  we have really got things done. We are also hitting a differant swimming hole lately, the ponca bridge. Not my favorite, but Matt has been hanging with Charles and his grandsons havin a big time.