PB&J Twisp

 With the help of friends, yesterday (Friday) and the lucky appearance of a boom truck, we got the main house trusses up.  Today (Saturday) our lovely son-in-law forsook his family to help us get the second smaller roof trusses in place and finish the bracing of the trusses. Friend Gail and boom operator Jerry The last truss is gently put in place. Voila! a house with a roof! Working in the rafters placing braces. Darling Noah helping us with secondary trusses and bracing Secondary trusses in place over the laundry/mechanical room

 Trusses arrived at 10:30 on Wednesday, June 22, with 2 wide-load pickups. The driver barreled right up our newly-groomed road. Offload went ok, but afterwards Bill said the boom operator appeared to be inexperienced and was not able to put three of the truss bundles where he wanted them, so Bill was very frustrated.  And as that driver/operator backed down the road with his empty trailer, he wasn't paying attention to the right-side mirror and his trailer wheels started going off the road over the bank.  He was able to use his boom to put the trailer back on the road but struggled to pull the rig forward up the hill to realign the trailer to continue down the road.  By brute force and digging big holes in our road, he finally got it backed down and off he went. The porto-potty guys did show up to empty both potty and RV black tank. That's a relief!  Once the excitement was over, I went off to do laundry in Twisp. Oops!

 Excavation wrapped up yesterday with Marcus finishing the sewer line from the house to the septic tank and then digging a narrow ditch from the meter box to the RV power post next to the shed for the 50 AMP service that we've had buried in a shallow ditch along with water hose and extension cord. In total, 5 days of dirt work. So happy it's done. We don't anticipate any more excavation work.   Today is three weeks since our last porto-potty pump-out.  It's way overdue because of extra use from the garage door guys who still have yet to wrap up their work. (Their boss says they will be here soon (?) to finish.)  Porto-potty guy took over the business from the folks we used last year and is struggling to fine-tune schedules which is obvious as our pump-outs have been erratic. So today we find out if the road work will accommodate the truss truck. Haven't had confirmation that they will arrive today, yet, but it's only 9AM as I write this. Bill went to Omak HD ear...

The garage door crew returned on Friday to finish up, we thought, installation of the 20 ft door.  They left, though, with handles for all three doors, interior manual slide-lock devices, and coded exterior access openers uninstalled.  We expect they will return to complete the job next week.  A spur-of-the-moment visit brought Win over also on Friday with her diabetic cat and, of course, Archie.  We visited a couple of quilt shops, one in Winthrop and one in Twisp, enjoyed more rain episodes, gathered rocks to define the newly groomed septic area, and visited the Twisp Saturday Farmers' Market where people-watching once again encouraged our positive body image mantras. Our puzzlement during her short visit was trying to identify a bird that we watched during the day climbing up snags, descending quickly to the ground and hopping on logs.  Descriptors of black head, black body, wide gray neck band, red breast, narrow long beak and tree climbing ability like a wo...

 The excavating work continued today with Marcus digging up the drain field line to fix the pipe that I damaged when we were trying to determine where all the septic arms went the first couple of weeks we were here last year. He will return on Monday (going camping with the family tomorrow Friday) to tackle the ditch for the sewer drain from the house down to the septic tank by the shop. While Marcus was placing new pipe, Bill and I were at the house putting up steel bands across the windows and door ways.  I measured and cut the blocking for the areas that extended beyond the beams, and he followed by putting up the bands.  Afterwards, as we were enjoying our well-deserved wine and beer, an impressive thunderstorm descended as we were sitting with the dogs under the awning (bright sun to the west and downpour above us), then the awning collapsed from too much water. We hustled inside and were able to fix it when the deluge abated. The damaged pipe is exposed. Nicely groo...

 Our excavator showed up yesterday and began additional grooming of the road up to the house. It had an "S" curve in it that was problematic for delivery trucks, and since the trusses will be arriving next week, we wanted to assure a successful delivery with no issues like we had with the 70-ft rig that showed up with trusses for the shop and garage last September. He also put in another 20-ft piece of culvert and widened the driveway access.   Bill returned from Anacortes today where he took back the material hoist and stopped at Skagit Steel to get metal plates for the porch beam joints. The off-the-shelf variety were $24 each which he wasn't willing to pay since we need 12. He had to drill the screw holes in them but that was easy work with his drill press.  Connecting the new culvert extension to the old Wider driveway up to the house and ditch prep Prepping the ditch for the culvert

 We finished the west side porch beams then Bill went on to put up the knee bracing. I burned a second pile of scrap wood (as the June 15th burn ban is looming) and continued weed-whacking the parking areas. Garage door guys will be back tomorrow to finish up. Yesterday I made a trip to Twisp to get wood filler for Bill, dog food makings and check out the senior center thrift shop for a lid to one of Al's cooking pots. It was $1.50 day for a grocery bag full of whatever you wanted (usually $3.50) so I took some time and found 7 shirts that only filled the bag half full.   West side beams with knee bracing

 Though we didn't get back to Twisp from Anacortes until Wednesday, we've made significant progress this short week.  Two garages doors are installed, we finalized the truss design (to be delivered on June 22), and the beams for  the east side porch of the house are proudly atop the posts. Bill rented a material hoist to lift the beams! East side beams in place! 20 ft garage door looking good! 8' shop door just as sassy!

 On Friday, June 3 we went to Newport to clean out Al's storage unit. We stayed in a motel there for two nights. Will, John and Eric came out Saturday morning and we all sorted and tossed, tossing 2.14 tons of garbage at the transfer station at $150/ton. It's a relief to have that done. Al is paying for it, of course. On the way home Sunday, we checked on the remaining garage door panels at Omak Home Depot and they were in; HURRAY! We now have three complete garage door systems awaiting installation. I notified the installer and, amazingly, he will be out tomorrow, June 9. Because of dental appointments yesterday, we went home on Monday, the 6th. Laundry and weed-whacking the ditch were my priorities.  Bill's was to pick up 4x6 10-footers at Burlington Home Depot and cut them into 20 braces for the porch post and beam supports.  I stained them, so they are ready to put up as soon as the beams go up. Storage unit before. After. Loaded for the dump

 June 1st brought the long awaited 20 ft garage door from Home Depot. The first one was damaged when it arrived HD from the manufacturer in Auburn, so it was reordered causing another 2 month delay in delivery.  Because of the problematic nature of the last two garage doors (this one and the 12 ft door for the shop which arrived at HD without the door panels themselves -- or HD misplaced them 😏, only the frame hardware and springs were delivered), HD chose to deliver the 20 footer with all the damaged pieces included (as they had no way to store it or do away with it, apparently) for no charge. The 12 ft door panels are due any day which we will pick up at the Omak store soon, I hope. In the meantime, Bill and John went through a small portion of the stuff in Al's storage unit last Sunday. The 8x12 (or bigger) unit was full, front to back and nearly to the ceiling, of buckets, boxes and milk crates that had been filled helter-skelter with no sense of organization in a hurry, ...