Just in time

I'm not sure how one smells it in the air or feels it in the bones, but, there it was, that feeling: Snow coming. Big snow coming.

I was pushing hard to get the windows in. Windows that, by rights, I shouldn't have been trying to lift solo, let alone hoist up a 30 ft tower and then out on a cat walk and heft and nail into place. But, there was that feeling about the snow, so seven four ft. by five ft. thermopane windows in custom, just-made casings got lifted up the tower by block and tackle. After squaring them and making certain of plumb, I nailed them off with wedges and 10 penny galvanized finish nails.

Three hours later the snow began. Overnight we got 14" and the tempature dropped to single digits. Autumn is over and Winter has begun.

The race is on

"Snow in the upper elevations" caught my ear on the morning radio.

Dang. I am so close. Trying to get the roof done, I have one more day cutting boards and then still need to get 30# roofing felt down to keep things dry thru the winter. We'll see.

Millie, the crane is shut down for the season, but she doesn't mind me using her boom to set up an old-fashioned block and tackle to hoist building materials up top.

Setting the principal rafters--eight of them coming to a point at a 12/12 (45 degree angle) pitch took quite a bit of head scratching. The rafters themselves are 2 1/2" by 5", 10 ft. long, sawn old-growth dough fir and are heavy as all get out. And to make matters worse, they all come up to a center metal bracket that I fashioned out of a 3 ft long chunk of 12" well casing. I welded sixteen 1/4 steel brackets with double thru holes for 1/2" grade 5 bolts around the circumference of the pipe to hold the rafter ends securely. The goal here was not to have to have any collar ties messing with the upwards view of the roof in my room.

But, how to get all this heavy stuff 12 ft. up in the air? I decided to use a 16 ft. long piece of 2" pipe with a pulley up top and a rope coming back down. My buddy Terry (all dicey projects of mine must involve Terry) and I pulled the 70 lb bracket assembly up the pipe like raising a flag on a flag pole. Once we got it up and suspended, then we began lifting up the rafters and bolting them into place.

As all of this is happening, the welding, the hammering and sawing, the figuring, and chance-taking and dreaming, I realize that this project is what I am supposed to be doing right now. There's this dead-on rightness that I can feel if I stop and become aware of it. This feeling that I am doing just what I am supposed to be doing.

simple pleasures

Pine has a smell all its own. And old-board pine even more so. That's one of the simple pleasures that comes from using hand tools. No screaming powered saw, no ear plugs, no safety glasses. Just the smooth even cuts of a 12 point Disston cross-cut with a sharp blade. Thumb guides the first few strokes and then long even pulls, letting the saw do the work--your arm just guides.

I am putting the roof boards on top of the newly-set rafters. These tongue-and-groove boards were rescued from the Park View Motel right before they tore it down. Beautiful knotty pine milled up in Twisp, Washington in the 1950's. A deep amber color made that way by time, varnish and sunlight.

As I measure and saw boards, I think about all of what these boards have seen over the years in the motel...families on vacation, lonely business men trying to be less so with a bottle, kids jumping from bed to bed, late-night rendesvous. And now it is my roof. Hopefully, the boards will look down at an equal amount of living in their new location.