Rot and Rain

What a difference a day makes.

With all the excitement Monday, the rest of the week has almost seemed mundane. Almost.

With the porch roof up on the south side, we have now turned our attention to the west side. Builder has informed me that if he can get three clear days, the porch will be done. That's a mighty big IF these days.

Wednesday was cleanup day. They moved all the salvage wood off the west side of the house, and piled all the kindling off to the side. Then they moved the shrubbery from in front of the house. It's all been with the house from the beginning, so I'm trying to save it if I can. Only time will tell.

It was a beautiful but cold day and things were going quiet nicely. I knew it was too good to last.

They started removing the old front stoop and that's where we found it. Rot. Real rot. Lots of rot. Deep rot. Everything came to a standstill as I watched little dollar signs with wings being sucked into the cold clear air. It wasn't a pretty sight. I'm not a contractor, builder, carpenter or even a whittler, but even I knew this was going to require some major overhauling. I knew there would be jacks and creaking joints involved, along with saws, drills, nails and screws. It was getting uglier by the second.

I could so have done without this. If it was as bad as we thought, they would have to go under the house, jack it up and start pulling and cutting and replacing boards. Not to mention two or three days of really hard labor for my crew.

We just decided to leave that part for the next day and finished cleaning off the west side.

Today didn't open on a promising note.

It was raining. Lots. I gotta give my crew credit though. They didn't let that stop them. They just hunched up and went to work in it.

Then the news got better. The rot was not as bad as originally feared. It could be fixed without jacking up the house. In fact, it only took about three hours to get the job done. Even though it was pouring down rain, the sun was shining in my world.

Then work really started moving. Builder was designing wiring, and the crew closed in where the door had been and framed in the window that will eventually go there. They also framed in where the new front door will go.

We're still moving forward.