Building's a Mystery

Who needs sleep?

Wowzers. As I write this, on Monday evening, I am barely functioning. What an incredibly productive weekend.
Not to mention super fun! It's just that I think I could have used a little more sleep....Oh, well. I can sleep at Pennsic.

Saturday.
Saturday started out only moderately busy, but it seemed to pick up speed as the evening approached. It reached its apex when Norm and I loaded the old pavilion into his truck, and headed to P-Burg to deliver it to its new home.

The best thing about the pavilion's new home is that it is being adopted by some good friends of ours. So, what better excuse to get together for dinner than a pavilion delivery? Norm and I had a blast hanging out with our friends, who live in an old linen mill on what I believe is the Musconetcong River near where it joins up with the Delaware. Their house is gorgeous, all stone and wood beams, and chock full of interesting objects - everything from antiques to props that they made for the last Halloween party.

There was chips, salsa and Margaritas, as well as very good conversation. So good, that by the time I thought to check the time, it was 11:30 at night.  ACK!

We live about 1 1/2 hours from them, so getting home took us until 1AM. By the time the dogs were walked (They were very good, they waited for us!), the bunnies were fed, and the ablutions performed, it was pushing 2. Just before I lay me down to sleep, I see that there's a message on my phone.

It's Lars, our builder. He has had problems with the roof. Can we come over tomorrow and lend a hand?

Of course we will! (Mind you, I didn't call him back to tell this at 2 AM. I waited until sunup.)

Sunday.
6:30 AM and both Norm and I are up with the boids. Norm because he promised to help somebody move some furniture and me because I always get up to walk the puppies at that time. But, since we had stuff to do and I'd had about 4 hours sleep, I decided to not go back to bed but to simply drink a ton of coffee and hope for the best.
At 10 AM Norm and I are on the road to the builder's house. A beautiful day and a beautiful drive. Lars lives in New York State, up on a mountain. We drove through Warwick and SugarLoaf, both artsy fun towns that Norm and I love to go to. Warwick has nice little outdoor cafes and music on the green. SugarLoaf has artsy jewelry places.

But I digress.
Somewhere about 12:30-ish, we get to Lars' house. We find Lars already hard at work. With Weird Al Yankovic singing us a serenade on the boom box, Norm and I jump in.
Or rather, Norm jumps in and I try to make myself at least slightly useful.

This is what the vardo looked like when we got there.

Norm measuring the porch in order to plan a set of steps.

Norm and Lars slay another board. Take THAT!

Looking through the front door at the bed platform, window (above) and exterior cargo hatch door.

After much pounding and wrestling, all of the rafters are set in their notches.

Wrestling plywood into a curve. Goopy glue and screws followed. "Now STAY DOWN!"

The back bay window. Isn't the tongue and groove board nice? When we stain it it will be 'Sweeeeet' (according to Lars.)

Norm's better half. And a pumpkin.

Norm, being a maintenance guy, grabbed a jigsaw and started notching out rafters and suchlike to prep them for Lars' installation. I have no such skills. Not that I can't learn them, but yesterday wasn't a good opportunity to hand Jenn a saw and let her screw up a piece of wood. We simply don't have the budget.

So, I ended up doing other stuff like picking out the right size screws from a plastic Jack O'  Lantern full of random hardware, running errands, and handing up screwguns. Which made me feel a little less useless. The rest of the time I spent trying not to get in the way. I think I excelled in that area.

We worked until the sun went down (ALL the way down) at 9PM-abouts. Then, the long haul home. We made it before midnight (Yay!), walked the puppies, showered, and crashed.

I should note that the puppies, while beautifully behaved while we were gone, went out of their way to make me feel guilty last night and also this morning when I had to go to work. "You mean you're leaving us all alone AGAIN?????"

Cute puppies will conquer you with their guilt-rays! Bad hoomin!

It's looking like it's going to take another week at least to complete the vardo enough for use at Pennsic. It won't be done-done in any case; we're picking our battles at this point. But it will be done enough to use at War.
I was hoping to have more of the fine details completed, but I'm not going to get myself in a twist over it. As long as we have a roof over our heads and a comfy bed, the rest is icing. The big job that Norm and I will have to complete once we get the vardo in our driveway is staining and sealing. Everything else is details.

Lars is also going to do some more tweaking once it gets to our house, so we'll see how far we can get.