It’s been a slow going week on the homestead, but we are moving right along! The weather has been variable — cold one day, hot the next. We are thankful that it only rained on days we were in Springfield anyway.
We are still working on our deck. We finished hanging our joists on Saturday. Both our brothers were off work, so the whole family worked together, and we made a lot of progress.
It was fun learning to attach joist hangers, though our joists were pretty warped and that made the process far from easy! We were especially thankful for our dad and brothers this week. It would have been very challenging without them.
We finished the blocking on Monday and added the rest of our “beams” to the outside of the deck. Bonnie-Jean hammered more than her share of the nails; she missed a couple times and worried she broke her thumb. It got better by the end of the week, thank goodness.
Now that we have electricity at our build site, we have been bringing our hot water pitcher for coffee. Having something hot to drink has made a big difference on the cold days! We didn’t get any pictures of it yet, but Grace is moving our fire ring closer to the build site, so we have a place to warm up when needed.
Installing the decking has been tricky, as we purchased the most affordable boards we could from Menards. Unfortunately, the boards are not consistent in their size — width and thickness. In some cases, there is as much as a quarter of an inch difference between the pieces.
Keeping everything straight and square has been a challenge! Our chalk line broke, so we have been running extra string lines until we can replace it. I got to use the saw quite a bit during this process, which I loved.
We are making slow and steady progress every day we can work on our place, which is encouraging. This next week promises to be very cold. We planned to hopefully finish the deck Saturday, but there is now snow in the forecast and decidedly chilly temperatures. With winter just around the corner, we are going to have to start planning our work with the weather in mind.
HOMESTEAD SISSIES 