After dinner on Thanksgiving, we headed home to turn on the patio lights and fire up the fire pits to celebrate the finishing of the Big Build.

Once the plywood was in place, we were ready to add the metal roof. This took us a few nights and was tricky as we also had to deal with temperatures around 30 degrees and working on a slick roof. Cas came up with the idea of tying himself off to the opposite side as… Read More The Big Build is built

With rain forecasted and always the threat of snow, we pushed on, trying to get the roof in place before the weather stopped us from working. We had a few days with the forecast of snow, but luckily for us, it never materialized. Still working a few hours after work, we got the plywood in… Read More Roof is going on

Over the next few weeks, a few hours a night, we added the horizontal beams supporting the plywood and the roof. We added sixteen 20-foot beams and 36 individually cut pieces to help trim the boards. Once that was completed, we finished off the roof supports by adding the border beams around the structure.

As we neared Halloween we had everything ready to go but needed to get the trusts up and in place. So we bought a hoist that we could use to lift the then into place with ease, or so we thought. On our first attempt we built a twenty food tee pee style support to… Read More Rise up

Cas went into high gear over the weekend and completed the final two trusts, which was fantastic. With so many parts, holes, nails, and bolts, it was amazing what he was able to accomplish. But now the rain has come back and provide us with lots of needed rain but brought us to a stopping… Read More Trust two and three

With working and rain off and on all week, we were slowed in our mission but found plenty to do. When he could Cas would continue to make his cuts for the other trusts, and I continued to paint of stain the boards as needed so once we had time, we could go, go, go!… Read More Prep week

With rain in the forecast, we needed to get the trusts started. They are the mainframe that the design is built around, and each has a ton of pieces that all need to fit together for the entire structure to work. Each span has between 73 and 80 bolts at various points to secure it… Read More Trust in the trusts

After returning to work, we were limited in how much time we could spend on the project, which meant after work and on days off. So we tried to take advantage of every moment we had. As Cas continued to cut the hundreds of individual pieces, I started to paint them as fast as I… Read More Nighttime projects

With the end of our vacation approaching, we had to push to get the big steps completed before we returned to work. We were able to add both the support beams today, and as Cas secured them to the top of the posts, I started to paint them in the grey color we had selected.… Read More Supports beams go up