Chance of Showers

Each morning, we start the day with percolated coffee, listening to the local FM station with a happy selection of pop music and weather every 10 minutes. “Chance of showers” it says. Time to get the cabin ready to roof.

With the roofers coming a week early to install the metal roof, the final item on the ‘to do’ list is to transfer all the framing lumber to the second floor.

With a good part of the afternoon ahead of us, we enjoyed a bike ride, ice cream and yummy dinner. As we retire for the night, we hear rumbling in the distance. “Chance of showers”, we remember. We cover all the saws, get the tools from the second floor and under cover.

At 1:30am, we hear a crash in the distance, along with the sounds of steady rain. J takes the flashlight to the house, expecting to see a bear or deer crashing around the first floor, knocking over windows. Luckily, all is intact, but an inch of water in the crawl space and everything wet. After going back to bed, thinking the worst was over, we both wake up at 6:30 with continuous rain flooding our new construction.

With barely a sip of coffee to fuel us, we go into save mode, gathering up soaked screw boxes, random tools and getting them into the dry shed. We assess our option, and get crucial lumber into the empty trailer. We look at the tarps we took off the original foundation and decide we have enough to cover the trusses. For today’s fun activity, we decide to go up in a metal basket above the roof, on wet trusses with a wet vinyl tarps, and get the cabin dried in.

With that excitement over, we wait for the changing of the guard, as most of us go home to jobs and responsibilities and J staying put with a little help from his friends. Stay tuned…