Weekly Update: 9.30.23
It's the last week of September, but it feels more like June with these balmy upper-80s temps. Despite the heat, we've been enjoying the extended summer. The Ozarks are still a brilliant green, with splashes of autumn colors just making their appearances. It's been a very productive week, with each day full of all kinds of progress in one direction or another. We've made an effort to take time to get out and have some fun, too.
We wrote about our Saturday visit to the Bois D'Arc Primitive Skills Gathering and Knap-In. For days afterward, our nephew was talking about the different kinds of flintknapping.
Later that evening, we took a drive over to Greenfield for their annual Bluegrass on the Square event. In a little park adjacent to the town square, a stage was set up. The audience was composed of several rows of mismatched lawn-chairs, evidentially brought along by the event attendees. We sat for awhile and enjoyed some sandwiches we brought from home. Our brother sampled the Clucking Pig food truck fair. He said their meat was really good.
While listening to music, we meandered over to Doc Rob's Kettle Corn stand. We enjoyed meeting the owners, "Doc" Rob and Lorie Harris, who served up their popcorn with friendly smiles and warm conversation. They offered us samples of freeze-dried candy while we looked over the popcorn offerings. We opted for a bag of traditional as well as some salted caramel. A little while after we had went back to our seats, they made a batch of popcorn right there at the stand. It was definitely a festive addition to the festival. And I have to say, we were impressed with the quality of the kettle corn. It was the best I've ever had. The salted caramel was delicious as well! It makes me want to sample one of their savory flavors.
We headed home early from the event due to a storm rolling in. We got home in time to get ready for the storm and get everyone down to the shelter before it hit. It was a long night, as the storm pounded our tent and build site. When we finally came up close to midnight, we could hear water rushing through our dry creek. Exhausted from the day of work and play, we slept late and spent half of Sunday cleaning up the mess.
During the first part of the week, us ladies worked on framing the half-walls. It felt funny, building miniature walls -- in some ways it seemed more difficult than the larger ones, as short pieces of lumber are less forgiving of irregularities. Bonnie-Jean helped quite a bit with these walls, and she learned to use our framing nailer along the way.
We also started whitewashing our rafters. We decided that, rather than paint our open rafter ceiling once it's up, we would white-wash it ahead of time. After researching our options, we decided to whitewash with paint mixed with water. After doing some samples, we decided we liked the look of one-part-paint, two-parts-water. It goes on smooth and, as a bonus, dries very fast. Even so, it's been difficult to reach our planned quota of rafters every day. It takes longer than we imagined to complete each 20-foot 2x10, even with two of us working on it non-stop.
On Wednesday we had several surprise cloud-bursts, which slowed us down on the whitewashing. We used the opportunity to finish bailing out and cleaning our pool so that we could take it down. We had been planning to pack it up in a deck box over the winter when we noticed it appeared to be leaking -- again. We considered trying to patch it, but we have been disappointed with other aspects of the pool. Despite being set up on a level pad, several of the legs had started leaning in one direction or another. There was substantial rust on and inside the supposedly-galvanized pipes. A design flaw led to mildew issues along the top in pockets where water flows but can't be cleaned easily. Thankfully, we realized we still had a week left to return the pool. So we decided to, once again, haul our pool back to Lowe's. I'm thankful we got the use of it over the summer, but it was a lot of work and hassle. Next year, we plan to do something different. We will not be purchasing another Intex pool.
I took a trip to Springfield on Thursday with my folks. We order many of our building supplies and have them delivered, but we had a stack of Menards rebates we needed to spend in-store. So, we went to Lowe's with some returns, then to Menards. We picked out our front and back bunkhouse doors (which was weirdly exciting), as well as an extension ladder. We also had a couple online orders to pick up -- including one for some scaffolding. As I was standing in line to pick up our three orders, I realized one of the orders had actually been sent to the other Springfield Menards location. We were on a time crunch since my dad had a dentist appointment that afternoon, but we picked up our Walmart grocery order and zipped across town to pick up our final order from the other Menards. We made it to the dentist with no time to spare.
Bonnie-Jean and Grace had spent the day whitewashing, along with our sister-in-law Erin. Levi had been busy finishing the framing of the half walls and completing some of the sheathing. We hit the ground running with those same projects the next morning. Grace and Erin painted while I cut sheathing. Dad and Levi finished putting up the top plates, then worked on putting up the sheathing I had cut. Levi put together the new scaffolding, and they used the new extension ladder to reach some of the higher areas we needed to sheath. It felt like a real construction crew, with so much happening at once.
That feeling of comradery was the theme this week. It has taken us five months, but I feel like we are finally hitting our stride as far as a work/camp routine. I don't think we have ever accomplished so much, and next week promises to be even better. Both of our brothers have time off, so we hope to make great strides on the roof. Since none of us has done a roof quite like this before, we will see how the progress goes. We are doing our best to relax and enjoy the process, learning as we go and allowing God to lead us.
