On Our Own

We’ve been back in Torrey a little over two weeks now. We wanted to complete some of the timber frame work - as much as was possible for two novices working on their own. We discovered that’s what we truly are. In all of this time we’ve only completed three trusses. That means we’ve used a grand total of 18 pieces of timber. That’s including the six we used when Adam and Jake were here.

Just when we thought we were doing great, we’d make a mistake...cut a line we should have erased, made a one and one half inch tenon that should have been a two-incher. Yikes! Luckily we will be able to salvage the timbers with those mistakes. There truly is an art to all of this, and we are rank beginners.

Scott has said from the start, “A big project is like eating a whale. It’s done one bite at a time.” Today he said, “I didn’t know this was going to be a blue whale!” I guess he was hoping for a minke.

Now I’ve got to go back to work, but in October Scott plans to be here two more times on his own. He hopes to work on posts, girts and braces. I’ll return one more time before Halloween...the end of this year’s building season. The week I’m here, we’ll put the lath on the exterior of the garage. (When we plaster the garage, that will be practice for our house.) That week we’ll also ready the yurt for winter (basically put the scaffolding back in place to help support a snow load).

When we get back to Logan, we’ll begin making lists for the next building season. A BIG plus for us...Shanna and Doug (Scott’s sister and her husband) are going to be here next summer to lend much-need helping hands. Hooray!