Sill plates, framing and storms!

Sunday morning rose with promises of another scorching day and some late afternoon thunderstorms. We met up with my dad at the job site around 8:30 and he got us right to work. I started hammering in a board on top of the sill plate, to act as a foundation for our framing that Pete and my dad were laying out.

One thing I learned real quick while leaning over hammering was that the sun reflects off of concrete like a mo-fo and will burn your eyes fast. I have pretty tough eyes that aren't very sensitive to light, but I was dying a few minutes in. I had to dive into my purse and pull out my good sunglasses, the Marc Jacobs that I paid $40 for at Nordstrom Rack and try very hard not to sit on or break like all my past sunglasses because these were a splurge for me. So here I am pulling out my good sunglasses on a construction job site because my eyes are watering and I can barely see.

Sassy.

A few hours of sweaty work go by later and we're about to break for lunch when I hear my name being called. Again, and it is by a female. What the? I turn around and my friend has pulled into the driveway! I start jumping up and down like a spaz because, 1: I am a spaz and was surprised and 2: this friend had a baby three days ago! Her family was headed home from the hospital, which is seriously 30 seconds from the Wee house when they saw our cars and decided to stop by. Which meant I got a little peek at the baby :) When I say I was cheesey smiling the rest of the day I mean it. Seeing her little baby at our house reminded me why we're doing all this DIY. We want a family someday (not anytime soon mom) and the Wee house is where we want to be. Full disclosure of honesty, I started crying a little bit because I was just SO happy for them. I'm a little bit of an emotional nerd.

We broke for a late lunch and checked out the weather forecast, severe thunderstorms starting between 5 and 6pm. Decide to go back to work and squeeze in a few more hours worth of work. We're both busting our rear ends working away when I look up. Um, that cloud does not look good. In fact there are lots of clouds that don't look good all around us. Crap. None of our wood is stacked or covered and it looks like a major storm is headed our way. At this point it was 3:30, so I thought I had at least an hour until the storm him.


I abandon my hammering job and start to stack the wood into 4 piles, breaking them down by size and quality. This way we won't have to grab from one big pile and check every board for straightness. We'll know that if we're grabbing a board from a pile that it is the right size and has already been checked for curves, splits, knots and bows. There are three piles on the garage foundation: Two "A" piles and a mixed B pile. All reject wood gets thrown back into the trailor to be used for scrap or returned.

As fast as I'm working the storm is sneaking up faster. Looks like the estimated time of arrival was off, because it is just about 4pm. Pete notices the clouds forming so he comes over to help, working together we might be able to cover the wood piles before the rain starts. Um, not to so lucky. We're trying to strap down the first tarp when the storm comes rolling in, the first few fat raindrops start to hit us and the sky above is dark as dusk. Lightening strikes are all around us and the thunder is sounding immediately after the flash of light.

I'm a lover of summer storms and find getting caught outside during a summer rain to be a fun time. But I do not eff around with lightening and bad winds. That crap can kill you, especially when you have a huge open space behind you and you're standing under one of the biggest trees in the area. With one lousy tarp on the wood pile we give up and run inside to escape the storm.

About thirty minutes later the worst has past. It is about 20 degrees cooler outside with a light drizzle. At this point we decided mother nature has determined our stopping point for us, finish up tarping the wood piles and pack it in for the weekend.