Le Mansion Next Door & Le Storm

You might have seen the craziness of Biceps and I pouring our neighbor’s new concrete steps.
For the last several days, Biceps and I have been strapping on our tool belts to build that same neighbor an overhang to match her beautiful new steps.

You can see Biceps half on the ladder, half on the roof making measurements and solving riddles on how to tie on the rafters.
I am down below sipping water and documenting things.
I needed a break.

This purty columns rests on a cinder block which we filled with concrete and then wrapped in 3/4” plywood.
Those suckers ain’t goin’ nowheres. (Okie talk).
They aren’t painted yet, so don’t get your shorts in a bunch. They’ll look much better when finished completely.
Our neighbor said her home was starting to feel like a mansion. How cute is that?

After installing all of the rafters, cross bracing systems and the spine board, we decked the top with 3/4” plywood and then covered it all up in tar paper. This took way too long and I have way too many bruises from this process.

Next came the horrible day of shingling the roof. By the end of the day, I had roofing tar stuck under my fingernails, on my face and somehow in my ears.
Did I take a nap on the hot roof? Who knows, the hot sun makes me do strange things from time to time.

I added some facia to attach the gutters to. I cried when my second board came up too short.
I had even done the ‘measure twice, cut once’ routine.
What is the matter with me? Too much tar in my system is my excuse.

We added tar paper to the front of the overhang, although it didn’t really need it. We’ll put vinyl siding on the face of it soon. But, we heard a storm was a ‘brewin and wanted to take extra precaution to keep the entire thing dry.
And thank God for Biceps’ biceps. He had to manually lift up this entire overhang with a 2×6 while I stood on a ladder and slid the wainscoting over the pillar tops.
I kept making references to Samson, but somehow he didn’t find them funny at the time.
We nailed all of the wainscoting in place, and not a moment too soon.

I felt a drip and then another.
‘I hope it’ll blow over’, I tell Biceps. ‘I want to get this thing done!’

However, the sky in a matter of seconds turned into this.
We made a mad dash to pick up all of our tools.

The wind picked up speed. The trees rustled. The kitties hid.

It looks like the sky is about to swallow up my neighbors.
Run Lee and Ina! Run!

At about this moment, I decided maybe I should head inside and give up my hopes of this storm ‘blowing over’.
And force myself instead to enjoy a nice cup of coffee and a shower.
It was a tough decision, let me tell you.