Finally, we got a break on the weather. Not only was it NOT raining,
it was actually cool in the evenings. It was great campfire weather, which
is good 'cause we certainly have plenty of firewood.

Of course, something had to go wrong. The scissor lift we rented
was broken. Mike discovered first thing Saturday that it would go up and
down, it just wouldn't roll. We needed it to move. So Mike called the
rental company to get a replacement.

Mike waited at camp while I went into town to get some building materials.
I took the camera with me and was pleasantly surprised to see these
deer at the end of our road.

When I got back from town, we unloaded the lumber. The replacement equipment
still hadn't arrived, so I decided to clean up the piles of tar paper. I kept
finding toads, so I decided to throw them in a bucket to see how many I'd catch.

Mike caught me dumping the bucket.
See the little guy in midair?

There were 8 toads all together in the bucket.
But that doesn't include the first big one I had caught
and released before deciding to count the toads.

Toad twins!

Unfortunately, toads weren't the only critters hiding under the tar paper.
This guy was only about a foot from my face when I noticed him on the tar paper.
Mike said, "What?" after I hollered "holy shit." You'd think by now he'd
know that means, in Kathy-speak, I found another HUGE spider.

How huge? I could hear his footsteps when he ran across the paper!
I put a quarter next to him so you'd get some idea just how big he was.

Here he is climbing up the wall. I used a tape measure because I was curious
to see exactly how big the sucker really was. He was 3 inches from the end of his
front leg to the end of his back leg and 2½ inches from one side leg to the
other side leg.

It felt like he weighed a couple of ounces, too.

The guys from Lowe's arrived with our windows and doors while I
was playing with my spider.

Here are the front and back doors, which need to be painted.

Shortly after the Lowe's truck left, the guy from the rental company
arrived with a replacement piece of equipment. They didn't have any more
scissor lifts, so we got a boom lift instead, which was much cooler.

Mike put it to use right away.

The first chore was to put plywood sheathing on the front gable.

I got to drive the boom around to the back of the house
so we could put sheathing on the rear gable, too.

Here's the boom parked in back of the house. We got about 75% of
the gable covered before we ran out of daylight.

I'm getting close to graduating from my position as "unskilled laborer."
Mike actually let me operate the boom AND a tape measure at the same time. We
had to frame the soffit for the gable ends of the roof to hold the fascia board.

There's so much we still need to get done before we can leave.
But we did take a short break to attend a neighbor's cookout.

Sunday night we installed the first garage door.
Notice the nice, neat soffit and fascia board?

We got an early start on Monday and started installing the new, heavier tar paper.
We had to quit when the sun started hitting it and making it slippery under our feet.

Mike ended a break early to start working.

He was supposed to be working, anyway. But he was playing with the boom
instead. "The view is great!" he said from 51 feet above the ground.

This is where C hides whenever we're using power tools or running the generator.
She doesn't like loud noises.

We were trying hard to get everything finished, but we both had to miss work
on Tuesday because we just weren't able to get done. We did manage
to get the second garage door installed early on Tuesday.

Since we had some extra time, we were able to just about
finish applying the tar paper, too (only the peak remains).

It is really starting to look like a house now.

I eventually got to "enjoy" the 51 foot view.

Mike was enjoying it.

I wasn't so sure.

Check out the view under my feet. Can you blame me?

The dogs weren't so happy either.

Two proud and exhausted laborers.

Mike and the girls enjoy the final break on Tuesday.

We boarded up the one remaining opening to secure the house
and our new doors and windows before leaving for home.

Next weekend we get to wrap the house with Tyvek® weather-resistant
barrier and install the doors and windows. Oh boy!

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