House Looking Good...
A local country radio station out of Austin, KVET, entertains us every morning when our alarm goes off. It keeps us from being too homesick for CJWW, Saskatoon. Bucky and Bob are our “Moo Crew” these days - they play lots of our favorite classic country.
I CANNOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT GOT ACCOMPLISHED BY THE END OF THIS FOUR DAY WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At about 9:00 a.m. Monday morning, the trusses arrived at the building site. John and his crew were so excited about getting the trusses up and the roof on as soon as possible. However, upon eyeballing the trusses on the truck, something didn’t look right to him. Before unloading them, he asked to measure them. Sure enough, the trusses were 26’ instead of 28’. Turns out the person with the Texas authority responsible for ordering the trusses ordered them for the wrong house plan. Estimated time to get new trusses – at least 8 days. What a disappointment!
As the truck with the trusses drove away, it was necessary to find some other work to keep 14 people busy! Annette, Georgie and LaVonne working together, and Nettie, Suzette and I, working together, began the task of stapling up the insulation underneath the house – the space under the house varies from 36 inches to 18 inches. We spent the day basically on our backs.
Some of the guys put up interior walls and some started working on the front and back decks.
Tuesday, I didn’t go to work because I think I strained a pectoral muscle in my chest maneuvering around under the house. The other girls continued.
Tuesday evening we experienced some severe weather in Texas. Weather forecasting the way it is done here is totally different than in Canada. They can forecast all the weather they want in Canada, and 90% of the time it is inaccurate. However, the Austin T.V. station was giving weather forecasts of such a specific nature, it was uncanny! They were tracking a severe storm with 40-50 mph winds, rain and medium size hail, that they said would be a “quickie” – it was to hit certain areas at 9:35, and then certain areas south at 9:50, etc. etc. It was scheduled to go through Marble Falls and Smithwick at precisely the time the wind started blowing here. The rain pounded down and hailstones pummeled our R.V., for about 10-15 minutes, then it was over. The wind continued for the most of the night and we thought our R.V.’s were going to take flight. It was very upsetting to learn in the morning that 8 people had died in a tornado in and near Oklahoma City, just north of us.
The next day, everything was clear and sunny and we had the most beautiful warm day!
Wednesday, Andre helped Len install the windows and then several of the crew put up the Tyvec vapour barrier all around the house. Now we had a house with windows and a door, and no roof! On Wednesday afternoon, Warren received a call from the truss company that the trusses would be delivered Thursday morning. That was a big surprise! He was also advised at that time that unfortunately no crane would be available to put the trusses up onto the roof until Friday, which is not a work day for us, so we would have to wait until Monday…
On Wednesday, some of the crew started stapling up the chicken wire to hold up insulation under the house so it could not fall down.
Thursday morning, Ron and Sherman (aka Tank) continued building the decks. LaVonne (aka Short Stuff) was doing siding with Pete and Gerry. Nettie and Georgia were cutting the spindles, routering the edges and pre-drilling them. Len and Andre finished installing the doors and door locks.
Joanne, MaryAnne, Suzette and I worked at the camp, sanding the used veneer interior doors so we could paint them white. I had delivered the doors to the mechanic’s shop at our camp from the storage unit where they have been stored. We started priming the doors and worked until we ran out of primer. About that time, we received word from Warren that the crane truck was indeed going to be available around 2:00 p.m. so the trusses would be going up after all. Everyone left back at the camp agreed we didn’t want to miss that, so we all hopped into vehicles and drove out to Granite Shoals to witness and film the trusses going up.
It was quite a sight! Once the crew got organized as to who was doing what, the job went smoothly, and in 2 hours, the trusses were all up. John got a big sliver at the bottom of the thumb on his left hand on about the second truss, but stayed up on the wall arranging trusses until all 23 were up and in place. As soon as he got down, he performed some minor surgery with his utility knife (with all the women cringing and looking away, including the former nurse) and the sliver was out. Suzette and Andre treated us to their “BRAVO” song in French to celebrate a job well done. I tried to video it, but was disappointed that it didn’t turn out…
No comments:
Post a Comment