Raise the ROOF :)

Saturday and Sunday (sept 10/11) were HOT, HOT days--
we hit temps in the 90's again.

I guess you could say perfect weather for setting up rafters :( or not.

These poor boys worked hard in the heat and we are

ever so thankful for all the great help,

especially considering the not so favorable heat

that made a diffucult job even more challenging.

 So of course when they deliver the rafters they can't possibly

stack them in the order your going to need them.....

therefore, Dave, Sam and Brian spent the first hour of the day

arranging the rafters into piles so we could get to them all!

FINALLY, we're ready to attempt setting the first one, let's see how it goes:

First the forklift master: Tom and rafter holder: Dave

fetch the first one!

They get positioned and now they're ready to signal Tom

to let it down in ALMOST the right position, the boys

have to use their muscles to pull/push/tap the rafter

on the pre-marked lines that Brian and Sam measured

to set it EXACTLY in the right place!

 There's that HOT sun shining down on Brian

Mike and Brian are the middle men holding/supporting the rafter while

Sam and dad get it set into place and nail it down.

These gentleman finished

the southwest side of the house by lunchtime!

Then after lunch break we had more great

 help show up and developed a system!!

 Brandon would help load and guide the rafters
while Tom delivered them to us

 This boy put on a lot of miles with these trips back and forth!

 And this young lad had a lot of stress on his shoulders running this machine

and following someone's direction to get them in just the right spot and avoid

the innocent bystanders walking the rafters, trying to set them in place.

Then Brandon would climb through the window and up the ladder

to give direction of where the rafter should be set!

Amongst the innocent bystanders walking the rafters and helping with

this proccess are: Dave Kuehn, Sam Gramling, Jim Whiteis,

Brandon Beer, Tom Beer, and Brian Beer

By mid afternoon we had a few more helpers show

up, much to our delight!

THANKS Cody Wetzel, Jake Sycks, and Derek Gibbs!

Taking a time-out for a moment of deep thought....

Who can read these plans anyway?!

We'll just tweak the plan a little!

The sun has finally started to go down!

Earlier we did allow for a beer/sandwich break--

thanks for sending sandwiches Abby!

Brian was pretty excited this weekend to have so many of his best buds

working together, ALL UNDER ONE ROOF!

And every day is an August Schell day when Dave's in town!

Evening fell and this pretty much concludes Saturday......

Sunday=FUN day! ha, or not.

Surprisingly many of our helpers returned on Sunday (THANK YOU!)

Sunday involved sheeting the top half of the garage for support

so the floor trusses and rafters could be set.

The sheeting went smooth and fast but then came the girders :(

From this process I've learned a girder is a set of roof trusses/rafters (4 in our case)

that are nailed to each other to provide a strong base of support.

In our house the girders are supporting both the floor trusses and our

roof trusses (or rafters). Sorry to all you who know what your talking

about, I'm sure I'm butchering the explaining part of the process!

Anyway, there are two girders above our garage which have to be set first

before we can lay floor trusses and the rest of the rafters for the bonus room

which will be above the garage and will house 2 full bedrooms, 1 full bathroom,

 a linen closet and a living area.....eventually (we are only framing it in for now).

New to the Sunday crew is Danny O'Keefe!!

That's Sam up there figuring out just where exactly we

are going to set this girder!

We better have a beer while we ponder our strategy!

 Here comes the first rafter of 4 that will be nailed together to form girder #1.

These boys were nailing machines, the air compressor couldn't

keep up with Cody's fascinating speed!

I hope Cody was only kidding when he said there's over $200 worth

of NAILS alone holding this girder together :(

  Unfortunately I missed the raising of the first one but

 I think I might have girder #2 going up on the next blog!

And here Sam is finishing securing it, in Brian's words:

"Hey Sam, your up really high!"

And finally Sunday's work is done, the weekend is over and it's

time to empty the cooler; Thanks Cheeseburger, you were a great help with that ;)

Following is a snapshot from each angle of the house of the progress so far!

And to wrap up Sunday we had a VERY special visit from the Gieseke's :)

Thanks for stopping in to see us!! Sorry, as you can see the batteries on my camera

were fried at this point otherwise I'm sure I'd have a picture to prove it!

So come on out to see the progress with your own eyes, pictures only

do so much.....and you can just be a spectator but we do have extra tool belts ;)