There were showers forecasted for Saturday afternoon, so we took some time to cover up to protect our now roof-less house. We built some temporary trusses to give some slope to the 2 40′ x 30′ green tarps we were using.
One of the tarps had some holes cut in it to go around the existing vent pipes. We worked to tape up the holes with Gorilla tape. At the end of the afternoon, it looked pretty good.
December was a busy month for us. Toby had her Christmas show (The Living Christmas Tree) and so after work I had the kids for the nights that she was gone. She really enjoyed performing for many enthusiastic audiences. As for the project, we continued to remove the existing roof and layout floor joists. We had a couple of step-throughs (through the ceiling drywall) as we worked up in the former attic. Toby had a comically bad hour one afternoon. (This being 3 weeks later I can write about it.) We were removing a large section of roof and the corner dropped down on the drywall. Unfortunately, Toby was helping Lucy on the toilet right below where the drywall came down. About one square foot of drywall, in 3 or 4 pieces came raining down around Toby and Lucy. The scariest part was the attic insulation. We have blown-in insulation in the attic, and when the ceiling broke, the insulation just poured down on the girls. Toby screamed and when I came down she was crying. She sobbed and sobbed. I spoke comforting words as I have been trained to do. After a while, she recovered enough to help me cover the ceiling with a piece of plywood. The floor was covered with 4 inches of insultation and as Toby moved to hold up the plywood, she stepped on a nail sticking up from the drywall that had fallen. Toby hopped on one foot, crying again, trying to see the damage done by the nail. I lowered the plywood and moved to place it on the floor so I could help Toby. As I swung the plywood down to the floor, I hit Toby in the head with the corner of the wood.
When we were having pre-breakfast bed cuddles (mostly to keep warm these days), I told Max that when we go to Oregon for Christmas, we’ll go sledding. BUT we will leave sister Lucy with her Gran, because I know she’ll get fussy in the cold very quickly. He said with tears, “I don’t want to go if she doesn’t go!!” (amazing when the care for her comes out – but I’m sure he’ll change his mind about the sledding. 🙂 In the kitchen during breakfast Max said, “When you and Dad are close to heaven, then Baby and I will have babies!” I said, “Yes, you will marry someone and Lucy will marry someone and you will have your own babies.” He said, “But I want to marry Lucy!” I said, “Buddy, you can’t marry your sister. Dad and I aren’t brother and sister. We have different moms and dads, remember?” He seemed very confused by this. Last month we watched the wonderful animated movie about Moses “Prince of Egypt.” Max REALLY liked it so we picked up from the library – “Joseph – King of Dreams.” It’s also by Dreamworks, with similiar animation and songs. He is liking this one very much as well – and said yesterday with glee, “I can’t WAIT to see more movies about the Bible!” He’s been having some trouble with the presents under the Christmas tree. One of them rattles, just like a box of Legos would. This is VERY hard for him, and daily he tells me that he is sad, or frustrated, etc to have to wait. We’ve prayed together often about this, to ask God to help him be patient, and to focus on other things. This morning he was having a hard moment again. Then he said, “But sometimes I decide to change my mind, and think about the Bible and not the present box.” Amen!
Sarah: Women of Genesis by Orson Scott Card
1.5 stars / I like historical fiction. I like the idea of embellishing on known facts to create a fuller story. But I like my historical fiction to add to the story, not change it. Some of the issues I had with the plot points were addressed by the author in the afterword, but some were not. THe afterword was also revealing in that the author states that some of the information on Abraham’s early life came from ‘The Pearl of Great Price’ a sacred Mormon text. One thing that really irritated me is that in this novel Abraham was of priestly lineage from Noah through his father Terah. But Terah is clearly identified in the book of Joshua as an idolator. Anyway, this book was written from Sarah’s point of view and thus contained lots of mushy introspection and emotional exploration. I found myself wanting to fast-forward in more than a couple of spots. When I told Toby about this, she lit up and said that she would like to listen. Chicks. Format : Electronic download from LAPL played at fast speed (but not fast enough).
Brotherhood of War 08: The Aviators (Brotherhood of War) by W. E. B. Griffin
3 stars / Only a couple of books left in ‘The Brotherhood of War’ series. This is book 8, and I intentionally skipped book 7 because I read on Amazon that the series originally ended with book 7 (“The Generals”) and that 8, 9, 10 were written as prequels in the time between book 6 and 7. I don’t know what happened, but some of the characters had been promoted and stuff. It was a little confusing. This book was probably my least favorite so far because the author didn’t focus on the main characters of the series. Format : Tape from Ventura County Library. Current Listening : The Merchant of Death (Pendragon Series #1) by D.J. MacHale Current Reading : Nightlife: A Novel by Thomas Perry
What a weekend. We fully broke into the roof this past weekend, removing about 1/4 of the total roof.
We did a run to the Santa Barbara dump with 3200 pounds of roofing debris (truck load and trailer load).
The attic insulation is the ‘blown in’ insulation that is basically shredded paper stuff. It is very messy to work around and made a mess inside the house in the couple of places where we (ok, I) stepped through the drywall.
At the end of the weekend, we had about 20 feet of floor joists in place treads on the stairs. So now we don’t have stairs to nowhere we have stairs to the outside.
NOTES: We found out this weekend that our overall length of new construction is 5 feet longer than what is drawn on the plans. This includes the 3 feet of existing house that we discovered a couple of weeks ago. The existing house is 3 feet longer than the measurements shown in the plans. So this week, my job (one of my jobs) is to measure out all the posts that are attached to the foundation and get an accurate set of plans. Toby and I spent about an hour stretching tape on Sunday. It always seems like no matter how much thought we put into some things, it always seems like we didn’t do it right. In particular I am thinking about how our lumber is stacked. We spent some time trying to arrange the lumber with the soonest-to-be-used lumber on the top of the piles but we have had to dig quite often. 95% of our 2x12s are at the bottom of the lumber pile. However, God in his mercy gave us about a dozen and a half 2x12s that were easily accessible this past weekend, so Greg didn’t have to wait for lumber. But now it is time to dig down to the rest of the 2x12s.