Work day at son Bill’s place

My oldest son, Bill, built his own fabulous log home — right from trees in the woods, over a period of about five years. We were living far away then, and couldn’t help out. But now, we’re only a hundred and some miles away and when he started work on a garage addition, we happily contributed. About a month ago, we went down and helped pour cement. That went well, although it wanted to set up way too quick, so everyone worked like crazy to get a decent finish on it.

Bill’s been busy since, building a short block wall, framing and sheeting the three sides. He set yesterday for “the” day of raising the pre-bought trusses. Slowly, over the last four years, he’s been accumulating material for the large addition: the trusses, on-sale OSB, rough sawn lumber, etc. Finally, he was ready and had cash enough to pour the concrete and get the addition up!

So early Saturday, Will and I drove down to help set the trusses. David had gone down the day before and is staying today to give extra help. Darn if the wind didn’t blow like sin! Thirty some mile an hour gusts hit us as we fought to get the trusses in place and nailed down. AND braced! Luckily, Bill has a Bobcat and borrowed a large boom from the place where he works. That simplified things and made it a whole lot safer than horsing those heavy trusses into place manually. It took awhile, but pretty soon we developed a strategy.

We were one truss short, so it took quite a while to build another, but Bill’s father-in-law, uncle-in-law, and Will went back and forth from that project to measuring and setting the rafters for the back of the addition and finally it all got done. (The back of the addition is a big open bay so Bill can pull an engine or run a motor home or trailer in to work on it. So it needed an open ceiling and rafters, rather than trusses.)

We worked hard, had fun, and ate plenty of good food made by Bill’s wife, Kelly. It was after dark when we finally had to quit, but the rafters and all but two of the trusses were up. Bill and David will be doing that today, as well as starting to sheet the roof with OSB.

All in all, I’d say our garage raising was a great success. Check out the smile on Bill’s face! Nobody got hurt, nothing was broken, and the job got done quickly. — Jackie