Okay, so it wasn’t exactly on fire but I was in a hole and it was well over 40 degrees with humidity. That hole is the crawl space below my front porch deck which, of course, needed to be stripped out and, of course needed to be almost entirely rebuilt. It was my window of opportunity to clean out the joints and repoint the stone before we started the rebuild and, although it was hot as Hades, I jumped at the chance. I assumed my well-rehearsed Hobbit position and had a go. I would normally have had a real mason do the work but it was one of those “Oh look, more work to be done” moments, we had to move forward, I only had Alex for a couple of days, and I knew I couldn’t get someone on such short notice. So I spent the first forty-five minutes in my personal crabby place then eased into the zen of the whole deal. It turned out quite well if I do say so myself.
Alex and Husband jacked up the main post that supports the upper and lower decks and roof in order to level the upper deck. This task had been in the virtual job jar for six months so I was relieved to see it successfully completed. Its correct alignment makes all the difference to the aesthetics of the front of the house.
We stripped the upper deck down to bare bones and rebuilt the rim joists, sistered the floor joists, added ample blocking and really tightened everything up. Because of the extraordinary heat and the usual array of ‘surprises’ one finds with old structures, we didn’t make the progress we thought we would. While it’s great to plan a job out start to finish, the reality with Old Gal is you never really know what you’re going to find until you find it.
Alex is off to another job but it will be onward/upward for me next week. It’s coming, I tell myself, slowly but surely.