Vacation Day 4-Tuesday

You all knew it was coming … a few days back I wrote about designing a turkey shelter, yesterday I geeked out and created a ton of images around the construction, and that only leaves one thing to do: build it! Let’s do it!

The day prior I dropped a note to the Puget Sound Goat Rescue director, Barbara, asking if I could park adjacent to the area I would be working in: I planned to build the shed off my tailgate. She noted it was forecast to rain so she said she’d clear space in her barn for me to work in. I pooh-poohed the idea as I didn’t want to be a bother but she saved me a lot of misery, as it gave me a dry place to cut a timber and reference my drawing. But let’s be clear: I worked 5-hours in the rain with only a few respites. Five hours. Non-stop rain. It was pretty miserable.

But spirits were high, she was incredibly grateful, and Suzy was at my constant beck and call for assistance or moral support.

We started by assessing the height and noted it was just too tall. Eight feet was excessive and looking at other structures on the property suggested 6’ in the front and 4’ in the back were the right heights. Easy enough and nothing else needed changing. Or so I thought. It turns out that the addition of the plywood sides wasn’t considered in the design and so I had to modify the roof just a bit, but that was simple enough: pull two screws, adjust the spacing, and then sink them back in.

Another less-than-perfect issue was a bit harder to fix on the fly: the roofing panels were shorter than what I’d planned around. My drawing used a template model for the corrugated roofing and they measure approximately 8’8” long by 31’’ wide; in reality the panels we had to work with were 8’ long by 26” wide. This left us with zero overhang in front and back, and the sides just barely adequate. But still not adequate enough. Suzy and I will be picking up another panel and I’ll work on a retrofit that we can attach the next time we are there.

But, the work went quickly in a large part due to my pre-planning but also because I had ready help. A volunteer named James doing cleanup at the Rescue was ready with hands when I needed them, Suzy was a HUGE help hauling the roofing structure through mud and under tree limbs to the shed area, and an intern at the Rescue, Kaela, made an extra trip to the lumber store to pick up some 2x4s that didn’t make it to the job site. A big thanks for those unsung heroes who helped this come together. I will note with a bit of pride the Barbara commented a couple times how quickly it was built. I was gratified.

This one took longer than I would have thought to build. The extra hauling to and from the barn was part, the fact that I made so many trips I turned the ground muddy in and around the pasture we were working in was another (slick mud is a tricky surface to work on!), and the rain all slowed things up. But, honestly, I was working without much rest or standing around the whole time so it’s probably just my speed that took up the time.

Well, that’s what I did yesterday. I had planned to go to the gym afterwards but I’d bonked my head a few times while building the shelter hard enough to tweak my neck and I was pretty whooped. The rain had also taken its toll, weighing down my clothes, chilling my hands, and generally draining my spirit. So, I got home, took a shower, and took a little nap.

It was glorious.

As always, thanks for dropping in and sharing my spare time. We’ll be back tomorrow!