We weren’t quite done with the steel. We put up the two remaining crane beams, extensions of the yellow ones. The red ones terminate at the dividing wall between the shop and living space. One day they will all be the same color.
We wanted to weld the crane beams in place before moving on. Sam is a good welder, but he had too many other things to work on. We recruited Aiden, our neighbor from town, for the job. We weren’t sure how to proceed since we didn’t have long enough extension cords for the welder to reach the power. The Kreps help us out again. The generous family lent us their service truck with a welder! I wonder how many more of their trucks we’ll end up with. (We’re still using their bucket truck.)
After a brief lesson on operating the scissor lift and a little brushing up on his stick welding skills, Aiden was good to go.
He welded the crane beams in place.
The welding truck was really handy. We’re lucky to have great neighbors on both sides of the river.
Finally the steel parts are complete! Onto the wood! We began with the roof. First, we cut a lot of purlins. Purlins (“puh-lins” in Australian) are like rafters but run in the horizontal direction. Aiden returned and helped John cut 100 purlins one day. That is a lot, but we need over 400! The 2×12 purlins range from 14 to 18 feet long. The wood is not dry yet, so they are not light.
Roofing started off slow, but we eventually came up with a great process utilizing the bucket truck. We put a stack of purlins on the telehandler near the roof. Then we fly over it in the bucket truck, pick a board up with the wench, and fly it over to it’s position on the roof. The bucket truck saves so much work since you don’t need to climb on the roof, and I can’t express how fun it is to ride around in a bucket.
We made some progress over two days, and out of nowhere it rained! The morning after, we arrived to see “Lake Ramboard”.
We were stunned, as rain was not in the forecast. We didn’t know what to do with the mess, so we drove into town to fuel up the bucket truck.
We hit a roadblock on our way back. In the 10 minutes we were at the gas station, a tree fell down and was blocking both lanes. No one was around, and we didn’t have a chainsaw. Now what? Use the wench on the bucket truck of course. Sam pulled the tree to the side of the road while I stood down the road to stop traffic (one car). What a scene!
It was still raining when we returned, so we put up a mailbox. It’s a big one!
We ended the rainy day with some casual work on the roof. Luckily, “there’s a hole in my bucket”…
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