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The Countdown begins

There are only ten days remaining

It was another beautiful day for work, but John and Mary Ann had a slow start.  We took time to read the Sunday paper after church.  About ten o'clock we started work on the sunroom.  John completed assembling the vertical supports for the main beam in the sunroom.  Next, the side walls were squared and OSB was added to give additional strength.  After lunch Keith came over and helped John move the components and laminated the layers for the beam.  It weights about 843 pounds.  We need to arrange for a crane to lift it into place.  The remainder of the afternoon, they worked as a team to measure, cut and install the "jack" studs under the window sills.  In addition, John worked out design details for the rafters in the bump out in the master bedroom.  Overcoming Mary Ann's fear of heights and ladders, she helped John set the first pair of rafters in the bedroom bump out.

The heat and humidity are back to stay for a few days.  More detail work was done The bump out on the master bathroom needed the gable set in place.  More of the OSB sheathing was cut,  fitted and nailed in place.  It was very labor intensive work with very little visible change.  The most dramatic change was raising of the king post.

John worked on putting up more sheathing.  The wall between the great room and the sunroom including the box for the fireplace, will give extra strength to support the rafters over the sunroom. John set up the guides and braces for raising the ridge beam in the living room.  A busy, less dramatic day.

John started early with the setup to have everything in place when the crane came.  The first thing that was done after the crane was stabilized was raising the king post that sat on top of the dividing wall between the sunroom and great room.  John had a scaffold set up and waited on the beam to receive the king post.  Mary Ann's job was to adjust and fastened the guide boards and brace to hold the post after John had leveled and plumbed it.  The next, even scarier, event was raising the 842 lbs. ridge beam into the notches at the top of the king posts.  John worked with the crane operator to guide it in place. On top of the extension ladder, John manually nailed the posts and beam together.  the remainder of the day John measured and cut the rafters that will be affixed to the beam.  Heavy dirty work for a hot and humid day,

As far as working, the day was a washout.  There were heavy rains over night and showers throughout the day.  The good news is that the humidity should be much lower for the weekend.  We went to Lexington in the morning.  We were disappointed that the door outlet we wanted to use was out of business.  Oh well, we weren't ready for a front door anyway.  It was a quiet afternoon and we had dinner and birthday cake with Brett.  It was amazing how much he has changed in a year.  The evening was cool and there was still two hours of daylight, so when we got home we worked on precutting the rest of the sunroom rafters and then moved and stacked some of the materials we won't be able to use  for a while.

Wow, what a nice day!  Oh how we wish there were more time.  We continued on with more details.  Work was done to add the sheathing to the master bedroom bay and the gable on top of it.  Additional scaffolding was rented to work on the rafters in the sunroom.  All of this is very labor intensive with very little visible change.  Mary Ann now has a much better understanding of John's comment during the design stage, "This  has a lot of detail work".  Keith helped John set the first set rafters for for the sunroom.  There were some difficulties in the fitting.  With patience and determination, they successfully met their goal.  Now that the adjustments have been made, the remainder will go faster.