The Yooper Schooner (Part 5)

Well, we are trying real hard to build this house, but it sure isn't easy!

Chapter 9 “Pressing On Into Autumn”

 

Physical labor and mental exercise makes one healthy through and through.

 

At least for passersby on the road, it appeared we were making significant progress. Delayed to begin our house due to circumstances primarily within our control but beyond our scope of aptitude and knowledge, we pressed on into autumn. We had received permission to build by the Marquette County building code enforcers in July, but that was three months ago, a seemingly long time when we had done so much but had so much more to do before we could rest. The to-do list was long and mind boggling, but topping the dilemma list was the one indicated by those green disks nailed to the trees.

After the much-delayed start, we were pushing at this point to close the house in by snowfall, and snow came early and stayed late in Marquette County. How we managed to progress this far proved some sort of a statement to our effort and a few obliging miracles to boot. Despite the working conditions, the foul weather, and long laborious hours, Karen and I remained healthy to continue on our home’s construction, our long-held dream now enveloped in a big green tarp.  

We had to pull the cumbersome tarp back, reposition it, and tie it back down whenever we put another section of wall up. The perimeter outside wall, remember, was uneven because some of it had two stories, some of it one, and then short sections were down to the concrete wall, so the tarp remained very hard to manage. We had clothesline tied through each of the tarp’s grommets and tied it wherever we could in window openings, studs, and joists. We even tied into strategically placed concrete blocks along the outside wall in an attempt to keep the tarp taut. During high winds, the tarp would billow up like a huge parachute, literally dragging the heavy concrete blocks across the ground and up the house’s side.    

  One day, the farmer moseyed over again and nicely inquired if we’d farm sit for him while his family went to the Marquette County Fair. They were staying at the fair in their travel trailer while the farmer’s kids entered sheep, steers, and other farm type animals in exhibits to show off their farming expertise.

Farm sitting proved not too difficult for us, just water and feed the few heifers, sheep, and pigs. Luckily, none of them escaped on our watch, which was becoming a common daily occurrence over there. It helped by replacing some of the broken twine that held fences and gates together with some new twine. We visited the fair one afternoon, even though we didn’t have a whole lot of leisure time with cold, snowy weather coming soon and farm sitting on top of it all. Mr. Thomas worked at the fair and coerced me into being a hog herder. This meant that during the hog judging, I and a couple other guys carried pieces of plywood to slide in between and separate the two�"hundred plus pound hogs when they got testy and wanted to fight. A fun but stinky task! Back to work on the log joists.

I distinctly remember the critical log joist phase with its abbreviated clamor and accompanying blue, oily haze. Straddling a log by clamping my legs around it and balancing, I used my old chainsaw to trim a notch in the log that would become the next loft floor joist. Raindrops often drummed across my back and head through the sagging, embracing tarp while the blue chainsaw exhaust polluted our makeshift workspace and lungs. With a broom, Karen flipped out the accumulating water from the drooping tarp hanging like bladders ready to split and spill all that water out.

Starting, stopping, and restarting the chainsaw, I continued slowly, leaning away from my work to keep sawdust out of my eyes and to hold the tarp away from the spinning saw teeth. Warily, I trimmed some more on the log’s cut notch, then a little more on the edges. I would try the fit again, trimming repeatedly until the saddle-cut was tight between the joist and the log beam. I went carefully because cutting too much meant a precious log ruined�"firewood.  We had only enough logs to finish the loft because of the buggy woodborer and bark beetles’ destructive wood eating habits. Most of the logs were scarred by the bark beetles, but not hurt enough to affect the log’s strength and integrity. Spending maybe twenty-thirty minutes on each joint, this tedious, time-consuming work evidenced the empirical part of this project�"experimental trial and error work with a backbreaking, finger-smashing, motivation-overwhelming emphasis on error. When satisfied with the log fit, my Black and Decker drill groaned as I spun hardened six-inch screws into the joint to bind the joist to the beam. .

            Well, either I counted wrong or we lost more logs than I originally thought because I didn’t have enough logs to finish all the way to the house’s rear. My brain began frying again with that problem. I worked on something else, such as the second floor wall installation that went easily over the log ends, and with that, the house grew another seven feet. That is until I came to the area where the log joists were missing. I put in two by sixes to hold the space the missing logs would have filled, this way I could finish the second story walls.

The upper walls finished up relatively quick and easy, nailed together with 12P spikes, steel nailing plates, and Douglas Fir custom-cut corners to tie-in the angled front top walls where the prow walls met the sidewalls. After securing them well all around, I double-secured them by nailing in another course of two by sixes on top of the upper plate. Some said this was a waste of lumber, but I thought of it as a beam providing extra insurance. We pressed on, but I sometimes became sidetracked by details.

The nailed together prow front corners and the vertical angles that the lumber made seemed a little perplexing and inefficient creating a space where cold air could bypass the insulation and come into the house. This detail bothered me and had to be resolved. After many tries using my trusty Sears circular saw and without sawing off a finger, I figured out how to rip-saw long, skinny triangular strips from two-bys to fill in the V-gaps made by putting those prow walls together. Before nailing them in, I caulked and stuffed the clefts with insulation.

Some observers thought I was a bit too fastidious when I caulked the joints again on the outside in my effort to make the house airtight. A local contractor stopped by just to be nosy, I guess, and went away impressed with my fastidiousness. He said my window and door openings were “textbook perfect,” and filling the cavities between the header plates with pink insulation board was a detail in energy efficiency that just wasn’t bothered with by professional contractors. I stood a little taller and straighter. 

 

A simple praising comment can do wonders to sagging motivation and a tired body.

 

            Finally, with a level two-story wall all around, we had to decide on how to put on a real roof instead of the accursed green circus tarp. I had enough of wrestling with that thing in the wind and rain. What kind of roof though was the question. Our original plan using logs or roof trusses that we entered in our plans to attain our permit? A whole trailer load of the smaller logs, five to six inch diameter and 15 feet long, went to waste beetle fodder with holes eaten clear through. We can take a hint; those logs were not meant to be our log rafters. The log rafter idea was a difficult process, yes, but that was the original plan, a simple, labor-intensive plan nevertheless. We needed to follow our new plan submitted and approved by the code guys. Yet that had to be adjusted to be feasible. We began sketching alternate trussed rooflines like crepuscular window roofs, half-pitch roofs, and so on. We picked the fast and easy way out simple, single pitch roof trusses. Everyday without a roof was nerve-wracking with winter drawing closer, and the simpler option in my mind equaled faster.

            I now come to my new adopted philosophy called Oakham’s razor, at least the way I interpret this philosophy. When bewildered by several options to resolve a problem choose the less complicated. Another derivative of Oakham’s razor that is useful when building a house is to use methodology already known and available to complete the current dilemma. Okay, use a simple roofing system and somehow incorporate what I already know. 

After a discussion with Gary, the truss manufacturer who was not that far away in Skandia, we agreed to a better option: Scissor trusses that have one pitch above on the roof side and another different pitch underneath for a vaulted ceiling. This would lend well to our open-air plan. These were energy trusses, specially built to allow the installation of fat, efficient insulation, and the elimination of eave-edge ice dams. This figured favorably into our original plans of an open appearance and airy feel. Along the way in the sales pitch, it didn’t take much to convince us to install steel corrugated roofing. This was a good option for efficient snow shedding in heavy snowfall areas like the UP. This purchase would be a huge drain on our budget, but what else was new.

            Late in October, we had a truss raising. It started as a cool, crisp, sunny day and warmed throughout the day becoming an enjoyable perfect and unusually benign autumn UP day. Those damp, freshly fallen aspen leaves smelled comforting reminding us that we were in a beautiful place, for we, in our frantic working pace, had failed to notice. Neighbors Dan and Mr. Thomas came to help; Ben was present to help in this historic event. Dan and his wife, Linda, by the way, were building a house not too far from ours. Their house would end up quite different than ours. Anyhow, the farmer was “too busy” to help. Still ruffled despite our assistance, I think. We bet that he hoped we couldn’t do this part without him�"ha!

I cut down a fresh, straight hard maple. It measured eight-inches in diameter at the stump and about twenty-five feet long. I chained it to the bucket arm on the yellow monstrosity tractor to form an instant, though archaic, crane. With a short hooked chain on the end to hook onto the truss’s center peak and a guide rope on the truss’s end so someone could keep it steady and straight, we practiced briefly to hoist and guide the long, unwieldy trusses. Now that we had a proven method of handling them, we pressed on.

I couldn’t get the tractor close to the house on the sides and back because foundation wasn’t leveled all the way around yet, so I lifted them one at a time up over the front of the wall, laid them down, and disconnected the crane. We then slid them back along the tops of the walls into place. We had to muscle them up and over because the scissor truss design made them top heavy�"they wanted to hang upside down. We had the spacing marked on the top of the walls and temporarily spiked the trusses in. We pressed on.

Almost halfway done, the noon sirens went off in Skandia and Harvey. We had just hoisted a truss up with the tractor. When I shut the tractor off, Karen yelled up to the guys that she was getting lunch together and to come down after that truss. We had the process down pat by this time and in about fifteen minutes, we had this truss nailed in and temporarily secured with a two by nailed on top to the other trusses. We climbed down to the floor. We’ve been working off the second floor, but the flooring just amounted to couple sheets of OSB that we slid along the top of the log joists as needed.

Karen had planned lunch ahead of time and laid out an array of ingredients for submarine sandwiches. She had Italian bread and several varieties of cold cuts, cheeses, vegetables, and dressing. This was better fare than we usually ate, but then again, we had volunteers working. We dug in. After a few minutes, the farmer showed up with a dwindling entourage in tour. We don’t know how he knew it was lunchtime. It hurt Karen to say it, but she invited him to have one of our submarine sandwiches. He ate like a ravenous wolf. Karen flicked her eyes and made a face toward me and then toward the farmer. He had a dribble of bright yellow mustard on his chin. I fought to keep a straight face but didn’t say a word nor did anyone else. I broke open the bag of Oreo Cookies: America’s Favorite Cookie and offered the bag to the farmer, but he turned them down saying he didn’t eat crunchy cookies. Huh? He departed mustard and all soon thereafter saying he had a lot of work to finish before sundown. We did too.

Back up to the roof, we lifted another truss. We had nailed the trusses temporarily, but now approaching halfway, we nailed them even more temporarily because the distance between the walls had changed in relative to the trusses. I found the wall had bowed out when the outside braces slipped out of true during my log joist installation. In other words, the width of the house bulged out mid-run. We let it go as we continued working. I fixed that problem later on with chain come-alongs, bars, and some serious Saturday Night Wrestling, but eventually I got the walls straight, spiked, and all the trusses additionally secured with hurricane plates. 

Interesting to note here is that Gary designs and manufactures trusses by computer. We toured his manufacturing process beforehand and found it impressive and reassuring that the trusses are true and strong. We received a computer printout that showed all the truss dimensions down to a tenth of an inch. I didn’t understand much of the schematics except that there was an extra truss, fourteen instead of our lucky thirteen. Gary explained that the last full truss is doubled for the load over the prow front before installing the final half-trusses that make up the “V” for the prow front. Works for me, and I didn’t think anything else about it.

As the day progressed, when we got to those half trusses for the prow, the very last two trusses in fact, I couldn’t figure out how they went up. No one else had experience with a prow roof either. The center edges weren’t beveled, just the usual square edges of two by fours. I decided to put them up on the top plate with the two by corners touching like I did on the walls below. In a hurry I suppose, I wanted them up and done, so we nailed them in and nail-plated them together. What a huge mistake! I didn’t figure out my blunder until later on; it was a doozy of a blunder.   

            Halloween rolled around, and a few neighbors with costumed kids came out. We had forgotten all about Halloween. Randy, the fixit man, and his wife brought their two kids. What did we have to give them? Ramen noodles, that’s all we had handy, and so we gave the kids Cup of Noodles. The kids said afterward that our treats were the best things they ever got for Halloween because their mother wouldn’t normally let them eat those unhealthy noodles. They sneered at the farmer and wife across the street who gave out cartons of milk and toothbrushes!

            That was the big fun for a spell for we, as a couple, were going nowhere. No life, no fun, our only outings were to Menards, the fitness center, and Big Boy until it burned down. The fact that we were lifeless never really occurred to us though, so we just continued working and pressing on.

Ben and I criss-crossed braced inside and outside of the trusses to prevent them from domino falling that my book and manufacturer had thoroughly warned me about. Then I added a few more braces just to be sure, and to secure my growing over-engineering reputation. The carpentry work up there proved the scariest for me on the job so far, sideling along between the trusses with so much air below my feet. The log joists were halfway down, but they would just make a fall hurt more. I got used to the height eventually�"sort of.

Soon after, the Oriented Strand Board (OSB) sheeting I ordered was delivered for the roof and walls, thicker sheets for the roof than the walls. I pondered getting some sheets up on the roof to hurry the closure process, but just getting them up there proved difficult. I tried lifting a sheet up to the top of the trusses with the forks of the tractor, but the forks wouldn’t lift nearly high enough�"about ten feet of the required seventeen. Farmer man must have been clandestinely watching us in the hedgerow. He came over to present his two cents.

 “Just carry them up,” he said, indicating the long ladder.

“Yeah sure,” I said.

 Impetuously, he grabbed one board and awkwardly loaded it on his back. While holding on to it precariously with one hand, he climbed the bouncing ladder. He speeded up about five steps showing off like Mr. Macho. He suddenly lost his balance, the sheet twisted on his back, he lost his grip, and the sheet came crashing down breaking off one corner. I cussed under my breath. He came down and lifted another one. A little more careful this time, he made it to the top. The transition to the roof proved very difficult because the truss eaves stuck out beyond the ladder. After some struggling and almost falling off the ladder this time, he pitched the sheet over onto the roof. He came down bent over, favoring his strained back.

“Not so hard,” he said. “Got chores to do.”

He limped out of the yard all hunched over. Well, if he… I decided to try it and carried a couple of the OSB sheets up myself. That sure would kill me in short order. I pulled some up with a rope, and staged some part way up with the tractor but nothing worked easily. It was slow going to wrestle them up there in the first place, and then sliding them into place without the sheets flipping and slipping down in between the trusses added another dimension of terror. Remember there isn’t anything below. After putting six on the roof, I gave up on that idea.

Looking at the sizable piles of OSB, I perceived a straightforward installation of the siding sheets. You’d think this would not be a difficult task, but all those window openings would have to be sawn for! I fell into another crestfallen state. Well, this thing had to be closed up, so I began with a full size sheet on the prow corner. The full sheets are easy to put up, and are a cinch to nail because the sixteen-inch centers were marked. As I finished this full one, my favorite philosophy hit me, just cover over everything with the sheathing! Why not? It’s simple and fast. So Karen and I went to work putting the first course of four by eight sheets on the outside wall. I would worry about cutting out the windows with the circular saw later on. Of course, I cut out for the back door, but this was the only cut out on the first course.

The second course was not so easy because they had to go up there eight feet. Using a technique that I would utilize often, I drove two nails halfway in along the upper edge of the sheet already nailed up. I leaned the ladder on the studs about twelve feet up. We then slid a sheet up under the ladder and bench-pressed it over the nails to set it into place. There it stayed all by itself. With a little wiggling into place, I nailed it up, beginning the second course. We made our way around the house in two and half days of intense lifting and hammering. With sixteen feet of sheathing up, there was a foot gap at the eaves�"good enough for now, no rain would get in. The house appeared like a big brown cardboard box with the sticky trussed roof.  

We bought a fiberglass door from Menards because we had good luck with one in Alaska, but that was a Stanley fiberglass door.  Karen stained and sealed it over in the pole barn lickity-split, and I installed it in my typical manner of near perfection over engineering with plenty of insulation and caulk.

 Back to the roof situation, I finally steeled myself to investigate and figure out the prow roof trusses. I always knew I had to install lookouts, two by fours installed perpendicular and attached to the double truss I had explained earlier. Now that I was ready to do the work, the lookouts couldn’t be two by fours, they were not wide enough. Those on the outside edges almost fit, while those toward the center were way off�"almost the size of two by sixes. I couldn’t figure out the problem until I measured the gap. Irritatingly, the distance between the prow truss and the roof tapered from the edges to the center. I called Gary and asked about this lookout problem.

“Oh, they’ll fit just fine,” he said. “You just have to bevel-cut the center vertical two by fours and slide the halves together until the correct height is reached.”

My heart sank. Solidly attached to the house, these trusses wouldn budge. I wanted to get this house closed in, and this was another glitch I didn’t need.

“But they are already nailed and reinforced,” I said.

Silence. Papers moved around on the other end of the phone.

“Okay,” he said, after a sigh. “Instead of using the two by fours for lookouts, you have to use two by sixes and trim each one accordingly.”

I swallowed hard because I had already surmised that solution; I just avoided the truth. Therefore, I pressed on with this empirical work, hanging a third on top of the prow trusses, a third on the ladder, and a third on the house while securing the lookouts with brackets. I then sliced them with a handsaw and notched them to the proper depth with one of my favorite new toolsets wood chisels, and my trusty Estwing singing hammer.

By the way, Karen bought me this expensive hammer when we were in Alaska. Made completely of steel with a crosshatched head and neoprene cushioned handle, it was a hammer force to be reckoned with. Indeed, when striking especially sturdy nails it rang, forever reminding me what a fine piece of tool steel it was.     

After excruciatingly chiseling and fitting the lookouts one by one, I returned to the roof. One by one, I wrestled more sheets up, a killer process until I figured out the easiest method of getting them up there. It was merely an extension of my wall sheathing installation method. With one sheet nailed on the eaves edge, I extended the ladder to its longest length. Putting the upper ladder tips on the roof edge, and the ladder leaned at an angle that would normally be called “unsafe,” I put a sheet on the ladder. Carefully, I slid the sheet up the ladder until it flipped over the ladder tips onto the roof. Not the safest, but surely the easiest on the aching muscles and bones.  Halfway done, Ben showed and helped with the pushing, climbing, and nailing. What a relief! We stapled on the roofing felt�"the roof was nearly waterproof! We couldn’t quite finish the angled pieces over the prow front that day, so saved them for the next. With intense measuring, noting, and scribing, we got those steep angled pieces up and nailed down the next day. This architectural feature, the prow front, really began proving a menace. The weather was steadily getting worse. Cold, but no snow had arrived this November, a record and proof of an odd year for the UP; thanks, La Nina and global warming.

 Farmer man showed up again after an extended absence.

“You know you ought to get that roof covered before snow comes,” he said.

 “No S___!” I told him. I was frustrated, tired, sore, and slightly frightened up there on the roof. I told him I considered calling a contractor.

“Naw,” he said. “Me and Fiona, his attractive niece, could get it up there in a day.”

The real reason he showed up is that he needed help putting in his corn silage. I told him I was too busy “WITH THE HOUSE” to help haul or cut silage. He backed off. Well, could I pack his silage bunker for him? I backed off, embarrassed by my own raised voice. Yes, I could pack his bunker with my tractor. He already had several loads in said concrete bunker, so I drove the yellow monstrosity over there to check it out. The silage looked very soft and unstable to drive my tractor up on top of the pile, but he reassured me it would be fine. Fine!

I powered the tractor up and in granny gear inched up the pile. Surprisingly, it was substantial enough to hold the tractor, and I made it to the apex. Slowly, I worked back and forth packing the silage down to make room for more and to keep it from spoiling I recalled the theory. As I inched toward the outer concrete wall, I suddenly found the pile softer next to the wall, and the right hand side of the tractor sunk in. I peered over the wall’s edge, eight feet down to the ground. There was no roll bar on this old tractor, which meant that if it rolled over, the phone booth cab would smash like a tin can with me inside like spam. With that visualization, my stomach twirled over, and I stopped as the tractor felt light on the left side.

 Now what? Farmer man was gone to get more silage. I had kept the loader bucket low to keep the center of gravity low, but now I flattened it out and pressed it down on the silage. The downward pressure lifted the front wheels up off the surface pushing more weight down on the rear. In turn, the left wheel sunk in a little more, bringing the tractor somewhat back towards level. I breathed again. I released some pressure on the loader and slowly backed down the pile. With the loader down and steering wheels up, I could only go straight, but I inched down and out. I sat there until farmer came back and dumped another load. I continued packing but stayed a distance from the edges. I ruminated over things needing done on the house, namely the roof.

 

Chapter 10 “First and Second Blood”

 

Imagining high contractor costs, I broke down and said okay to the farmer and his offer to do the roof steel. After all, with the four of us, it shouldn’t take too long. My motivation was waning and could feel snow in the air except he didn’t show for days, and we couldn’t find him! I predrilled the steel roof panels and got them ready; I marked the roof to put the steel panels up there straight. I finally caught up with him at his place one day in early December.

When I approached, he acted anxious as if he wanted to run off, but he had an audience with his kids and father-in-law there, so he couldn’t blow me off. I asked him sort of intensely when he might get around to help us with the roof as he had promised. Right then he dropped what he was doing and stomped over in a huff with his father-in-law in tow who had onset Alzheimer’s. 

The weather was gray and threatening when I crawled up on the roof and made my way to the peak. I hung on to my cordless screwdriver by attaching a length of baling twine to it and tying it through a belt loop. Poised at the peak, I stood ready to receive the first roofing sheet, while watching the show going on almost thirty feet below. The farmer was red-faced and fuming. My guess is that he had planned to put us off forever, but he had relatives as witnesses and therefore was forced into helping us. In a rush, he ran here and there, and he brutishly grabbed the panel Karen was carrying with his father-in-law. He slid it out of her hands, and the sharp metal sliced her fingers. She turned red and fumed at him, but I was on the roof unsure of what happened. Karen had shed the first serious blood. She held up her hands with handkerchiefs wrapped around them before putting on leather gloves.

Using baling twine, we curled the sheet metal panels into tubes, tied them, and slid them up to the roof. After checking the edge alignment, I began screwing them in place. It was cold and windy up there, and precipitation, of some kind, was threatening�"I could smell it. I had two pockets full of screws with rubber washers on them, and it takes enumerable screws to install metal roofing. These have very sharp self-tapping points and quite a few poked into my upper thigh�"very painful, but I soon overlooked the pain. One by one, the farmer and I screwed the panels in place. On another later day, I would have to go back and tighten or loosen the screws he put in because being in a huffy rush, he didn’t have the washers compressed, or they were too tight, crushing the panel. We pressed on as fast as possible. 

With three full pieces remaining and the tapered prow pieces to go, it began snowing. On a normal day, I would have appreciated the pretty light snowfall, but on that day, I cursed it. If we worked fast and furiously before, we began working frantically. The roof became slippery, and we couldn’t stand up on the roof any longer. Our feet would just slide out from under us, tractionless. Obviously frightened, farmer man got off the roof and stood on the ladder holding on to the roof’s edge. I stayed up there screwing my pocket full of screws into those final three full panels, held there from sliding by perching my toes on screw heads on the down slope below me.

The final four pieces for the front had to be cut at angles to match the prow angles. I quickly measured to ascertain the angle. I donned heavy welding leather gloves, buttoned my shirt all the way up, and put on goggles, those safety equipment items I don’t wear as often as I should. After installing a dull blade on the circular saw backwards, I began to cut not knowing exactly how bad it would be. I immediately stopped to stuff tissue in my ears. I restarted. This metal cutting proved the screechyest, shrapnel throwingest, saw bindingest, and noisiest, most treacherous job I ever performed up to this point. A crazy task, but I got it done, all cut correctly to fit despite the snow coming down harder. We winched those razor sharp-edged pieces up on the roof with doubled up baling twine.

Nevertheless, in reality, another divine intervention had ensued because the snow was nearly the latest first snow on UP record. Selfishly I thought the divine intervention could have at least held the snow off another one hour. In the now heavy wet snowfall, the felt over the OSB was slick, covered with snow, and the steel was like ice. Mister brave farmer wouldn’t take a step onto the roof.

I stuffed a climbing rope under my belt and inched up the steel covered of the roof on my belly, pulling myself up by curling my fingers around the protruding heads of the installed screws, and carefully toe stepping on others. My fingers screamed in pain from the wet cold and pinching grips on those screw heads. The entire front of my body was soaked by the time I got to the peak. One slip and there wouldn’t have been a prayer to stop my sliding body until it hit the ground. I didn’t think about that. At the peak, in the gap where the metal panels met, I tied the rope to a truss down inside and made a harness around my waist and legs. Of course, from the razor sharp roofing, I sliced my wrist that bled so bad the blood ran down the roof pitch. Second blood. Someone might have thought I decided to commit suicide up there on the roof. My blood mixed with the melting snow to make long pink streaks on the new pewter-colored eaves, and the iced blood dripped off the roof edge to the ground below. I didn’t hear any comment from the scared farmer.

Tied in my makeshift harness, I slid and bounced over to where the next panel lay held there by the farmer below. As I moved about, the rope cinched up tightly around my legs cutting off my circulation and crushing my private parts. No matter, press on. I straightened the panel into place and farmer man screwed the bottom row from his safe perch while I screwed in the rest. We finished the remaining three angle cut pieces. When I finished and came down cold and wet, the farmer didn’t have much to say when we thanked him for helping. We told him that we’d drop a check off later on. He coaxed his father-in-law to tag along, and they wandered back across the street.

Karen and I went inside to lick our wounds, dry off, and think�"to get our minds off our reluctant help and painful injuries. Now that the house’s roof was nearly covered with steel, it just felt better knowing it was waterproof. . It felt warmer, but the feeling was imagined, I’m sure. A big step completed a monumental event for sure. Inside though, the house was a dark, cavernous box. There were no windows, one door, and completely dark inside except for that long, skinny gap at the peak needing a cover and the foot wide gap along the eaves. I looked up though the roof’s gap at that narrow strip of gray cloudy sky. A sprinkling of wet snowflakes fluttered down onto my face.

I went up there again the next day in the lingering snow/rain and put in batts pf bristly vent filtering material and the ridge cap to cover that open gap�"I was cold, wet and tired, so, so weary. I think my adrenaline wore off with the roof done the day before, and I could finally realize how tired I was.

We needed a vacation, so Karen, Ben, and I took one to New York to visit our families for a belated Thanksgiving. It was nice to have us three together to relax with relatives without the ever-present house project with all its conspicuous work needing done. Now and then during the visit, my mind would return in shock to the ongoing problems like money shortages, septic, stairs, plumbing, heating and all the other work needing completion with a long cold winter still yet ahead. It was a welcome relief to let mind and body unwind and return to normalcy at least most of the time during a couple days. To meddle in our time off, the truck broke down in Lower Michigan going and broke down again in Canada coming back. Damn, what luck!

 

***

 

The morning after we returned, farmer man awoke us at 6:30 by revving his decrepit four-wheeler that lacked a muffler and had only half a seat because his cows had chewed on it.

“Hey!” he shouted. “What you doin’ in there? Kissin’ and stuff?”

I staggered out of our relatively warm polebarn room into the brisk, cool air. I forced myself to remain cordial. Karen wouldn’t talk to him any more.

“We just got back late last night,” I said.

But he didn’t hear that. “Getting’ cold. It’s going to freeze soon.” He enjoyed pointing out the obvious. “You gotta get some heat in that house before that concrete heaves up.” Did he think he was now the site boss?

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I’m already working on that,” I said, lying and covering up for not working on it or even worrying about it. Happy that he woke us up, he buzzed off into his pasture and rode around awhile.

That terse conversation led to the next irrefutable phase, the inevitable wood heating system. We went to Escanaba to the wood heat store, a welcome departure from the never-ending Menards trips. After an hour or so of perusing stove models and reading the associated brochures, we bought a large Dutch West stove made by Vermont Castings. This model incorporated a catalytic combustor in the firebox to increase its efficiency and make it cleaner burning.

I considered all the necessary black and stainless steel piping that would go way UP THERE and through the roof�"quite the distance at twenty-six feet. The floorwalkers informed me that the chimney pipe would have to exit through the roof off center even though I adamantly explained the stove was in the middle of the house, and we desired a straight chimney right through the roof peak. I didn’t want the ugly convoluted stove pipe example they showed me that went up, turned ninety-degrees, went over, and then had a another ninety degree turn before going out through the roof.

Against their well-intentioned, professional and experienced advice, I planned my straight pipe up the front-center and through the peak anyway. Besides, it had to be a better plan to have the pipe at the peak rather than halfway down the roof when the heavy snow started sliding down the roof.

We hauled the stove and pipes home on the trailer, and Ben helped me haul, push, and shove the three-hundred plus pound cast iron stove into the house using planks. I had two caster-equipped furniture moving boards to help, but the heavy stove nearly crushed them. Ben ripped his expensive North Face jacket on the sharp corner of the stovetop in the process. Now he was mad. We set the stove down right on the floor in the V of the prow. Admittedly, the stove looked exceedingly small to heat that “humongous” box of a house.

Farmer man had said weeks before he’d come over to backfill the dirt against the foundation for us before it froze. We knew that we couldn’t believe and trust him anymore and sure enough, he never showed. It froze every night now, though not heavy enough to endanger our precious concrete. I think he hoped it would freeze enough to spoil our perfect concrete walls and floor. Therefore, while I pressed on installing the stove, Karen moved many, many wheelbarrows of dirt and backfilled along the concrete wall beginning on the patio’s slope side. She used a couple planks around to wheel along and get close to the hole. What a girl!

I’ll provide a few words about the seemingly plentiful planks, which were two by ten by ten foot. Remember the log joists we installed in the loft and because of the hungry bugs, we lost a bunch of those logs. I installed all the ones that I had, but couldn’t complete the job. Remember the over-engineered logs, closer together and shorter than necessary to meet code? Well, as I mentioned, we ran out of logs, and I was convinced two-by tens were the obligatory strength necessary to replace them. In a fit of blindness, I didn’t bother to recheck the load bearing specifications. On the crux of another near breakdown, I went and bought a pile of planks.

I completed half the missing log area in the loft using the planks as joists when Mr. Thomas came over for another short visit. He asked me what I was doing because the planks hung down two inches lower than the logs, admittedly ugly and unbelievably stupid. I shrugged because I had gone berserk, acting on a nervous, p�"ed-off response to my log shortage. I didn’t know, couldn’t think of a better solution. I explained this to Mr. Thomas as civilly as possible despite the hate of myself. He told me straight up the planks looked ridiculous and something else would have to work better. Then, as usual, the muse left without giving me the answer to my self-inflicted mess. I went for a walk in the woods, and let my tears of frustration run their course.

I returned and looked at my mess. I couldn’t believe what I had done so rashly and stupidly. I picked up my sledgehammer and began bashing the planks out of place. Karen came over to see what all the noise was, and I simply told her “don’t ask.” She went back to her work without another word. I tossed the planks in a pile on the floor. Now calm, I bothered to recheck the specified floor load specifications in the code office provided schematic. Doubled two by sixes more than exceeded the load specifications, and they looked and fit so much better then the two by tens. We now placidly return to the stove installation.

Yes, darkness pervaded the huge empty house. I used a large flashlight for a while to work by, but come on! An electrical source was not that far away. I bought my first fifty-foot roll of electrical cable, a plug, a box, and a multiple receptacle. I fabricated a very long extension cord that I plugged into the pole outside and ran it into the house. Plugging in a household pole lamp that we had in our polebarn storage, and using my automotive trouble light for close work, we now had light to install the stove. The lights made very long shadows in the dark house, and my silhouette appeared a bit creepy on the tall walls and ceiling.

The stove store didn’t sell stovepipe flashing for the double-pitched ridge cap on the peak of the roof, hence their professional advice, so I fabricated my own from a large square of flashing metal. Hanging up there in the open trusses again, I nervously relived my fear of those twenty-plus feet of air below my own two feet. Propping my feet and wedging my body between the brace runs in the trusses, I soon endured massive leg and arm cramps. I worked them out, but then a stomach cramp hit! I yelled in pain, and Karen came running, wondering if I had fallen or worse. Worse?  I unwound myself from my convoluted position, came down and worked out the cramp.

Back up there in my cramped crow’s nest of sorts, I built a support frame for the stainless steel pipe and the roof and attic assembly. This fine work of construction expertise hugged the assembly securely and half-rested on the front wall and half-hung from the first truss, which happened to be that double truss I had explained earlier. We hoisted up the black pipe, all twenty-six feet worth, screwed it together, and then hoisted the heavy nine feet of special double-lined stainless steel pipe, and the final three feet more to extend out above my hand-fabricated ridge cap flashing.

We went to the Marquette County Courthouse, wrote another check for a mechanical permit, and made another inspection appointment for the stove installation. Notice that we seem to lag behind purchasing the permits well after the work actually begins. Well, you have to get a permit before they give you an inspection appointment, but not to do the work, especially if there are no other inspections going on in the meantime. A different, a very different code inspector came for this inspection, a real treat of a visit, this mechanical inspector.

With unfastened buckle galoshes and wood-buttoned nylon parka, yeah, a real Yooper, the inspector climbed all the way up to inside the roof to inspect the support frame, roof penetration, and overall pipe installation. Karen and I wondered if we’d be liable if he tripped on the ladder with those floppy boots and fell those twenty-odd feet, killing himself. We whispered and joked, wondering if we should hide the body in the swamp if he died. He didn’t fall to his death but came down and silently stared like an funeral attendee at the stove and manufacturer information for ten minutes. We wanted to die ourselves while standing around wordlessly waiting for him, but we got another reluctant approval. Some of these guys just did not trust the abilities of home owners/builders. I saw this in action several times.

 We fired up the stove and pressed on making firewood�"lots and lots of firewood. Oh, and by the way, that long, straight stovepipe drafted really well and my homemade flashing did not leak�"ever. But best of all, here is what you’ve been waiting for. Wait. Anticipate it�"I christened our house the Yooper Schooner because of the prow boat-like front and the shiny smoke stack. 

I am not a fan of insurance, but Karen convinced me that because of the stove and its inherent fire hazardous nature, we needed to call State Farm for homeowners insurance. I didn’t know if they’d insure a partially built house. Of course, they would, I’d only have to estimate the percent of completion and how much the house would be valued when completed. The agent stopped by and took some pictures. “Very tall house,” he said, gazing up from inside. Yeah, yeah we heard THAT before. I explained the finished house’s attributes, and together we came up with a completed value and a thirty percent finished state at that time. He surveyed the “solid fuel heating unit,” in other words the wood stove, and added the extra fee onto our premium. We were required to finish within three years and keep them apprised of progress so they could, of course, raise the premium accordingly. Insurance agents, blah!

With the overwhelming gratification of comprehending that we were now safeguarded by exclusive and sumptuous domicile indemnity, I over joyously returned to contentedly belabor on a myriad of other awaiting undertakings.

 

Change is the one constant remaining the same.

Reviews

[wondering]

wow, more patience and perservierance than most