A rainy Monday morning.

I promise we'll move on to other things after this post, but much of this week was also dedicated to the porch.  On Wednesday it was the two week anniversary of my start date of the wood construction, and I really wanted to have all the roofs up.  

I just made it, despite the spitting rain that kept up for most of the week, and came in with a vengeance last night.  Along with the humidity, we were graced with very warm weather, so I was able to work in a t-shirt, and sweat profusely, for most of the week.

First verticals up on the upper deck:

A look under the vaulted section, the raised platform will be a screened in sleeping porch.  Working around this magnolia has been a royal pain, and I'm even more annoyed that two of the chickens have been roosting in it each night.  That alone isn't a problem, but they poop all night long, and seeing those piles on my fresh cedar floor each morning is driving me bats.  I grabbed one last night and carried it back to the hen house, but I couldn't reach the second one.  

Even so, having the tree inside the porch makes it feel like a tree fort / tropical cabana.  

I like the look of the wood I'm using from the local lumber mill.  Much nicer than a stamped piece of dimensional lumber with rounded edges.  However, each piece has slight variations where the bandsaw might have flexed a little going through a knot, so each rafter has to be custom cut.  It's not terrible, but it gets a bit tedious, especially on a 40 ft run.

Sloooowly coming along.  Third vertical, and some fun working around the chimney.

We're really enjoying having Alexe back.  We put up the Christmas tree, harvested from the back field, and had a nice evening decorating it.  The harvesting party was not everything we hoped it would be, the three year old decided to melt down as we started trooping through the fields, and didn't give it a rest until after we had cut the tree, and carried it all the way home.  The decorating was more fun, a day later.

Pretty girl.  

We have a huge plastic tub full of the Christmas stuff.  The kids reacted like it was a giant box of presents, and were overjoyed with every find.

Still cutting rafters...

Annaliese has been cooking up some amazing imaginary meals.  She's got an eye for plating, which can only come from Dixie.

Ha ha, roof up, completely decked, within two weeks.  It took another day to get a layer of tar paper up, which I am not a fan of, but as we continue our discussions on what the forever roof will be, we need something to keep the place semi-dry.

Alexe committed Annaliese to be a model for a photo shoot meant to capture an image for the front cover of a poetry book that I believe is being self-published, kind of, a son printing his departed mother's last book of poetry.

Then Alexe went on a date with Dixie, so I did my best to get the kids to town on time, 5 minutes after learning we needed to go.

Annaliese was not enthused by the whole affair.  Caspian, on the other hand, loved the hats.  

I have held a quiet hope that I could use the old wagon wheel fence sections as railings around the porch, but until I was finished putting the porch up, I couldn't bear to take measurements and check to see if that would work.

Amazing luck, four sections fit almost perfectly, (within an inch or so,) across the front.  Also luck, a friend popped by, and manned the tractor to help lift these up to the second story with me.  These sections are solid steel, and there was no way I was going to get them up there on my own.

Now I just have to cut down 7 sections of this fence and re-weld to the appropriate size.  No problem...  

A cute set of curved stairs to get up to the sleeping porch.

I'm a little proud of my porch.  The kids are a little tired of me working on it.

Alexe and I traded nights out, and Friday was my turn.  I dropped the kids off with her in Oxford, and hit the town with John and Jav for a pleasant night of catch up.  We hit up Snack bar, my first time, and had a great appetizer, as seen below, and a mediocre (sorry John) duck sandwich, in a packed atmosphere.  I was asked to take off my hat to meet the dress code, while sitting shoulder to shoulder at a raised, 18" wide snack-bar, surrounded by posing young professionals and rich college students.  It was lucky I came with good company.

Saturday morning, with the porch up and at a good resting point, we had a clean up session.  The kids helped move the scraps of wood around, and most of it found its way to a pile they designated as "for our tent fort".  They want something built in the yard that doesn't get taken down.  I'm going to blow their minds when I introduce them to tree forts, but not until after Alexe gets her garden.  That girl is not very patient.

Another $5 well spent visiting the dump.

And, as much as I cringe at the act, I brought some things home from the dump.  Three 12 ft sections of 6 rail wood fence, which are destined to hold goats or sheep or a couple cows, and two big chunks of wood that were the ends of a huge laminate beam.

One I used to throw together this work table on casters to roll around the workshop.  The other, I'm pondering uses for.

One more picture of the porches.  Sigh.  Now I need to get the french doors, and start gutting the future kitchen.

Annaliese is home with Alexe right now, after a night and morning of throwing up.  Caspian is at school for another 40 minutes, Alexe's day off has been cut short by a sick employee, and I need to go grab some welding rod before getting the boy, and then I hope to have some time to play on the tractor before Alexe has to leave and I'm on kid duty again.  And the weather is turning chilly.  And we have some new tenants who will be moving into the apartment, and before that, will be camping out in my office for the next month until it becomes available.  A cool couple, photographers, well known and well travelled, just back after 5 years in Istanbul.  Funny how the times are always busy.