The only thing I DON'T like about a project...

...is being tied to it.

Soooo...is it going to rain again, or stop? If it stops, will Mark come? If Mark comes, when? And when do we squeeze in a trip to the grocery store?

So here we are; I'd assumed he would NOT come on Sunday, but since it rained yesterday, he told J. he thought he might.

I'm not good at being tied.

Journal Shed

I like to keep track of the progress in my journal--as you can see,
the arrows point you from step to step, above...

These are the rejected designs...I noodled around quite a bit before settling on the one I chose. Here, the one at lower left just didn't do it for me. The one at lower right is cool, but I think would need to be too large in order to have sufficient overhang. It was inspired by an old garage or shed in our town. The larger one on top almost made the cut, till I remembered how much I liked an old design I saw years ago, for a vacation cottage. It had exterior storage like our finished design.

This is the garage/shed I like a lot...too big, though.

Friday's work...

Mark was figuring on working today (Saturday), but it's been raining most of the day. Nice quiet day here, then...reading, noshing, and J. reintroduced my laptop to the USB ports (too many for the laptop to handle, though the ports are THERE?!?), so I could download pictures! Now if it would just recognize my old external drive...but that seems to be another problem altogether.

Meanwhile! Friday's shed progress...

Subfloor with the finished decking beyond...makes a good working area for Mark's saw...

YESSSS!! The west wall went up first...and quickly, with a nail gun.

This is all SO much faster than when I built the cabin. There, the generator didn't offer enough power to run the nail gun, so all nailing was by hand. Seems as if Mark put the wall together and clad it in 5 minutes!

There will be at least one small, high window here...this is looking east...

And OH yeah, the front wall, too!

This is looking to the west, with the opening for the big double doors. There's a slight difference between the thickness of the deck boards and the floor, but I'm figuring that's a subfloor anyway. I'll want more insulation, and some sort of more finished, easier cleaned floor.

We had hoped to get one more wall up this weekend, but I'm guessing not...

Yesterday's work!

Level, all the way around...

Floor joists!

...and deck joists, going the other way for stability. Mark doubled the front sill for strength, as well, and added another foundation support.

And finally, a floor!

Yep, just tongue and groove plywood, right now, and no idea what we'll do over it, but it feels real, now. You can see the deck boards going east to west, here.

After Mark finished for the day and Joseph went off to a Legion meeting, I went out and sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor...imagining a building around me, imagining working there, imagining meditating, reading, making art, listening to music or making it...

I do have the occasional brief moment of near-panic--"what am I DOING?! Is this going to WORK??"--and it feels odd not to be able to do more of the actual work myself. Watching rather than doing is not really my norm--blasted arthritis!

Of course that's part of why we're building this...it IS harder to get around, and hard to get to the cabin in winter or when it's too wet, and of course, difficult to get to the outhouse at times. This is close, easy to get at the facilities, and not so likely to need something that isn't available.

And hey, arthritis or not, I can still sit cross-legged on the floor.

Waiting...but not.

More lumber...

The back end is level!

Still waiting for the utilities to mark where things are, but since there hasn't been a house on that lot for something like 20 years and the bulldozer wasn't exactly cautious, not really worrying about it much. Digging CAREFULLY, in the middle.

Yesterday we made no progress at all on the shed, just playing the waiting game...not my long suit! (Of course on the home front I worked on the book and Joseph moved the big chest of drawers into the bedroom so there will be room for TWO people's clothes...we were using a couple of baskets on top of a pie safe to hold his socks and t-shirts and such, along with my leggings and t-shirts in another one. I got the last of the winter clothes out and we got them stored, and found most of the summer stuff...so progress of a sort!)