Touching the Sky with Rafters

I invited Cheryl out to take some pictures, knowing that she would be pleased to capture my fear of heights with her new lens. But first I had to get this 12-foot ridge beam in place. Heavy.


Willow is back in charge of project development while Jam is busy doing crochet with Cheryl. He'll be back.


The straight rafters came next. These were easier than I expected to install, but getting the first one right was a pain.


What I'm really excited about is making the curved rafters for the corners. Here's what my Sketchup drawing looks like.


In this photo taken by Cheryl, I am back on solid ground, my dignity and confidence restored, grateful that I did not wet myself while up on the ladder. However, I know that to finish the roof I will eventually have to crawl up on top of it.

Moving One Ton of Sand, Just Cause

It's been raining all day and our roof did not leak. Most people could say that sentence casually, without a second thought. But for us the concept is so hard to grasp that I still can't quite believe it. After 11 years and 4 roofing companies, the roof is finally watertight, or it appears to be, at least in one small area above the stairs. Shoot, now I am afraid to get up from my desk and check again, for the 100th time.

This weekend I finished grouting the stone patio around the grill area. But before I get started on the new roof (the one for the patio, not the leaky one in our house), I decided to move the remaining sand (about one ton of it, literally) from the side yard. Shovel by shovel, then in a wheel barrow ride of about 40 feet, and then shoveled out into another huge bag, so that we're able to do the landscaping next to the pergola before summer gets here. I'll be using the sand to make stucco for the old grill.

Also, I've left our lime tree next to the grill patio where it is clearly in the way. I don't know why--it just seems to belong there.




Next: building the new roof. Maybe with copper tiles.

Self-Confidence and Luck

Self-confidence is an adolescent, drunken friend tempting you to do things you should not do. It is a bad boy with no common sense and no grip on reality and especially no concept of what it means to grow older. It convinced me that I could lift the 12-foot beams onto the posts by myself without pushing the posts off center.


Self-confidence is a brother to self-delusion, working together to prop you up. But when one goes away, so does the other, which is sad because they are fun to have around.


I spent the afternoon listening to them. And then by accident I found a way to steady the posts and balance the beams long enough to stair-step them into place. It was luck, not planning.


So I feel pretty good about myself. Self-confidence, self-delusion and luck are my friends, at least for today.

Grill Area, A Pattern Emerges

The start of any project is ugly. Demolition creates a disturbing chaos, visually and emotionally, because we can't be sure that such destruction is necessary. After all, someone years ago installed the concrete picnic table in our back yard, and no doubt they stood back to gaze at it with affection. I'm sure they had some pleasant dinners on that table, but not us--we've neglected it, let it grow mold, and never once had a meal on it.

And the picnic table was in the spot where I plan to build the new grill area. But what to do with half a ton of concrete? Break it up and throw it away? No, I decided to knock it down and use it as a foundation for the stone patio, elevated so that a heavy rain doesn't flood the grill. It just took a few minutes and the table top and benches were flat on ground. No going back now.

Then I moved some of the old concrete tiles to complete the base area. A pattern began to emerge from the chaos. I filled in the gaps with rubble, like paint on a canvas, and the pattern came to life.

I almost ran into the house to get Cheryl. "There's something really beautiful in the yard I'd like you to photograph," I said to her with some pride.

We walked out and she curled her eyebrows at me. "Are you kidding?" she asked.

"You can make it beautiful," I said. (After all, I did get her that really nice camera lens for Christmas...)

"OK," she said, "but we aren't going to actually see this, are we?"

I explained that it will be under the stone.

A future homeowner will uncover my artwork some day and wonder why we buried a perfectly nice picnic table. Maybe I should leave a note.

The Secret Jam Cam

On Wednesday we installed some surveillance cameras so that we can watch the dogs while we are out. Specifically, we hoped this would give us a chance to have a normal and relaxed Thanksgiving dinner at our friends house while Jam was home alone. Here's what happened.

2:15pm
The dog have been walked and pooped and fed early. The house has been picked up so that Jam doesn't have any obvious temptations. I walk Cheryl to the car but then come back inside so that Jam might think it's a normal work day. Cheryl pulls out of the driveway. I come back into the house and watch TV for a second, then I go out the back door to trick Jam into thinking that I'm just doing some yard work and will be back soon. I walk around the house and then get into the car with Cheryl.

2:20pm
We turn on the iPhone app that controls the cameras in the house. I expect to see Jam at or near the back door, waiting for me to come back. But there's no Jam. I switch to the living room camera. We can take pictures of the video feed, so I got this one of him on the couch looking out the window to the driveway. I love this.

He knew I was lying about working in the back yard, but he's not sure where I am. We drive away.

2:25pm
I switch to the kitchen cam, and there is Jam snooping around, checking out the counter tops. Bad boy. But there is nothing frantic about him--he's calming walking around.

2:26pm
Then seconds later we can see that he's opened a cabinet door (despite the baby locks) and he's taken out one piece of Tupperware (see the arrow) and put it on the floor.

No big deal, but we circle back to the house. Cheryl parks on the street and watches Jam on video while I run around to the back door and come back inside, as though I had been working in yard the whole time. I put the Tupperware away and give him a mild scolding. Jam is truly surprised to see me.

2:30pm
We're back on the road. We can see Jam at the backdoor. Then minutes later he is taking a nap. We are relieved to see this.

2:30 - 6:00pm
We continue to check throughout the afternoon, and Jam slept the whole day. What a relief to see that he is not stressed out. We had a very pleasant day as a result.

6:00pm
It's dark outside so the cameras have gone into nighttime mode. Here are Willow and Jam, sleeping on the couch in the living room.

We had a very nice Thanksgiving.

Filling the Tiny Cracks

My allergies continue to fill my head with so much fluid that I can barely think. One good thing about keeping a blog is that I can go back and check my memory, specifically to find out when my allergies were ever this bad. Was it in October? Yes, turns out it was in October 2011. So maybe it's something in the October air.

Unfortunately, I am unusually tired all the time, the type of fatigue that prevents me from concentrating for long. And almost everything that's worth doing requires some concentration.

Over the weekend I decided to tackle another area of the patio, replacing the sand (and dormant weeds) in the cracks with mortar. But unlike the walkway that I recently grouted, the big patio was laid with stones very close together in places--my thinking at the time was that tiny cracks would discourage weeds from moving in. But I discovered that weeds love those tiny cracks.


If I were floating in the mortar, the job would go pretty quickly. But I don't want to stain the stone, so I'm tucking in the mortar (using very dry mortar and pressing it into the cracks). And tucking the grout into those tiny cracks requires real patience. After a couple hour of this on Sunday I was exhausted, physically and mentally. What a pathetic creature I am...


At this rate I may not finish before Florida sinks beneath the sea. I will finish it, though, even if I need to get some scuba gear.