Saturday morning broke beautifully clear and the first of the reserves came to work. They included brother Jim, our daughter-in-law's father, Roger and friends Chris and his son Kyle and coworker/friend Harry. Lisa was able to join us today as well and joined right in as usual. Lisa maintains that our construction group should be called"Three Brothers and a Sister and Friend". As hard as she worked throughout this adventure I would agree. The first thing to go up was the trusses which went up surprisingly quickly. This photo shows Tim and Harry installing the first scissors truss and the framework which will become the overhang on the gable ends. While they worked on that, others of the crew worked on installing the siding.
Remember our red clay gook? Well Kyle did yeoman's work keeping the floor clean enough so we didn't fall all over ourselves as the sun quickly dried things out. He used a squeegee to push all of the wetness out and let us see the original grey color. Thank you Kyle! His dad Chris was the power behind getting all of the trusses up on top of the walls. It pays to have friends who are both tall and strong.
By Lunch time all of the trusses were up and in place and ready for plywood. I couldn't believe how quickly things were coming together, we might even get this thing under roof before the weekend is done. Here a little ingenuity and a big Ford truck came to the rescue. We had to get about 70 sheets of OSB board up on the roof so that we could actually have a roof. Again, a lot of muscle and quick work on the part of Tim and Jim who placed and nailed all of the roofing into place. Lisa and I stood on the back of Tim's truck and hoisted the plywood up to them after Roger and Gary handed them to us. Thank God for acetaminophen.
Finally, all of the OSB panels were in place. Only one problem, all of the shingles were still sitting on a pallet way too far away from the roof. Fortunately, a neighbor was out using his tractor ( conveniently equipped with front end loader) who agreed to come over and lift the shingles up on the roof for us. Another angel to be sure. My muscles don't even want to think about what it would feel like to carry all of those shingles up a ladder.
Once the shingles were up, Mike and Jim finished the sheeting and built the dormers that grace the back side of the "Barn". Lisa and Mike framed out the front of the dormers which gave them a basis to work from. I have to admit, the dormers were Lisa's idea. She didn't want the barn to look like, well a barn. Her vision was to tie it into the style we had in mind for our house. As you will see, they turned out well and really make a difference in how the building looks. While they were completing the dormers we were visited by another angel. A roofer by any other name, Steve saw our efforts and stopped by to see who was going to do the roofing. Our reply was that we were going to do it. He offered and after some negotiation from Tim agreed to come back an join us Sunday morning "for about 4 hours".
With the dormers completed and a plan for Sunday, we all headed home ready for some much needed rest and grateful for the potential of some help on the roof. So far, everything has gone as I had hoped and we had prayed: the weather had been good, better than projected. Individuals and groups all showed up at just the right time to help us complete the task at hand. If things continued in this vein, we stood a good chance of having this building under roof in just three days.
Here's a view of the inside of the barn. the scissor trusses give it lots of room inside on top of 10 foot high walls and windows on the end wall are pre-framed but not cut out: we'll wait until we move out to the property to install those so we can limit prying eyes.
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