Hurry up and ...

On Saturday, July 11, a work crew showed up at the construction site ready to hoist some beams into the air to support the roof/awning over the entry way to the new building.

Among the first things accomplished was the moving of one roughly 27-foot long by 15-inch high by 6-inch thick beam from the parking lot to the entry way. With six guys lifting, it was only extremely heavy.

Steve M. figured out a rather complex set of cuts that needed to be made in the first beam. Then, he made the cuts, which were necessary to fit the beam onto steel brackets that would be fastened to the wall of the building. Bram worked to assure that the brackets would be fastened solidly to the wall.

Meanwhile, not wanting to distract these two from their complex work, Earl took several loads of construction debris to the dump or recycling, and Larry, Dave McC., Bill and I found other ways to make ourselves useful. It is unlikely that we asked Steve M. the equivalent of "Are we there yet?" more than once every 15 minutes. We moved dirt piles and re-stacked several loads of lumber that had been removed from parts of the old building.

Warren was busy preparing the restroom floors for installation of tile.

After lunch, provided by Mary Ann, the second beam was moved into place on the entry way concrete before some people had to leave.

Mid-afternoon, as Steve was explaining to Bram the correct way to cut the second beam to fit on the wall bracket, it became clear that was not how the first beam had actually been cut. Steve walked quite a ways off for a while, so none of was sure how he really felt about this, but when he came back he cut off the end of the beam he had been working on and started over. Luckily, the beams were longer than they needed to be.

Working together, Steve and Bram completed the various cuts on the two beams by early evening.



The crew was recalled for work Sunday afternoon.