Roofing Continues When Possible

The weather has not been cooperation much in the last few weeks. It's either raining or too windy to move large sheets of steel that act like sails that fly away. In fact a few days ago we had a storm that not only knocked the power out at home for 21 hours and 11 minutes but lifted one of our 21 foot sheets of steel off the stack and knocked it around enough to make it unusable so now we will have to buy another. Since then we have placed 2 x 4s on the stacks to hopefully prevent this from happening again.

But within the last few weeks since my house update post on August 31st, we have managed to put up a few sheets of steel on the bedroom wing. We even managed 2 of them yesterday though there was a bit more wind then we were comfortable with.

First Hal had to install the valley flashing between the gables. This is the south side that runs over the bedroom wind and front porch. There is a matching one on the north side.

 After the flashing he had to cut the steel at the appropriate angel and length for each side. Again this is the south side over the bedroom and porch. We still haven't done the other side of the bedroom wing. This we refer to as the steel from hell as it just was not fun to do at all for various reasons, most of them because we had never done this before so there was a steep learning curve.

This is Hal installing steel on the main roof of the north valley. This went very smoothly.

This is how the roof looks as of yesterday afternoon. The only angled pieces left to cut are the ones on the bedroom wing on the north side (see above photo). Hal thinks even with the winds forecast of 10-20 mph we might be able to do these pieces because they are smaller and therefore more controllable. We shall see.

Closeup of Hal securing yesterday's steel.

More Kaylee and Ziggy Photos

Here are a few photos from the past week.

Kaylee loves Duckworth, Luna's toy she got last Christmas and the last toy she carried around (she loved to carry stuffed toys around) the day before I had to let her go. I am so glad Duckworth got adopted. Kaylee sleeps with him every night, too.

Since Ziggy became extremely unhappy being left alone when I took Kaylee to the build with me (she cannot be trusted to stay home alone uncrated yet.) I started taking him, too. When I am not helping Hal I try to pay attention to them and take them on short walks. They still get very bored.

 After a swimming retrieve at Bliss Lake yesterday, relaxing in the shallows.

We're done now, mom, we can go home.

Kaylee Learns to Swim!!

Kaylee and Ziggy have become friends. I'm not saying that she sometimes drives him a little nuts. She is only 13 weeks old and he is closing in on 8 years and is a bit grumpy at times, but for the most part they are getting along great. Lots of wrestling, chasing around, a little tug of war, and yesterday she watched Ziggy swim in the pond. I can only imagine what went through her head was that Ziggy was a magical friend.

Yesterday afternoon my friend Tom took Ziggy, Kaylee, me and his dog Joe to Bliss Lake which turned out to be only 10.5 miles or so from my house though I've never been in the 18 years I've lived here. It was in the deep woods, down seasonal sandy roads and was a lovely place with no one around. The whole idea was to teach Kaylee to swim.

Joe is an English cocker spaniel and he LOVES to retrieve and he LOVES the water. In fact he loves them best together and just charged into the lake over and over. The idea was for him to encourage Kaylee, I think he intimidated her more, instead she splashed around in the shallow parts and waited till he charged back out then jumped on his head.. We kept throwing the stick though and eventually she went out far enough to suddenly find herself off the bottom then panicked and turned around and came back. She was adorable.

Today Ziggy, Kaylee and I went back alone. I figured without Joe's distraction and with me actually wading into the water I might have better luck. I was right. I also brought a floating dog toy with a squeaker she had never seen before. Causing it to squeak got her interest, I tossed it, waded in and here is Kaylee's second attempt at swimming.

After this I just kept tossing and she kept retrieving. At one point Ziggy swam rather far out and she followed, then she seemed to realize where she was and abruptly turned about and headed back to shore.

And one last fairly far toss as I saw she could do it.

If the temperatures weren't dropping back from the 80s into the 60s we could go swimming again. OF course, I do have to also work on the house. Ah well.