Clear skies today so we started hauling down the rest of the lumber needed to make the beams and doing the measuring. Well, that was just darned special because we found out that almost half of the 8-footers aren't quite 8 feet -- grrrrrrr. You sorta expect to get at least 96" in an 8 foot board, not 95 1/4" or 93 7/8"!! And most of them aren't even close to square on the end -- more cuts for us. So we ended up having to make about eight trips to the pile (instead of two) to find boards that were actually 8 foot or longer -- which resulted in blowing the boots on the ATV drive shafts, so we have to be super-careful now because we still have to get into the village and back one more time if and when the truck's brake lines ever come in. And we still need 8 more to make the last beam :( At least we can still use the not-quite-8' boards for the rafters, or I'd be royally pissed off!!
We did manage to get two of the 16-footers down, so we can at least square up the first floor frame in order to get the jacks bolted in and the beam set properly. Assuming, of course, that we can actually get the beam laminated correctly since it also appears that most of our wood is varying widths and depths too! Everything is just, oh, 1/4 to 3/8" different. Seriously, whoever was working the mill that day must have had way too much Nyquil!! Good thing I didn't start assembly-line cutting like I normally do and decided to wait until everything was down there... looks like we're going to have to measure each unit individually against the final height/width/length we want it. The best we can do is get things lined up flush and level where it counts and attempt to hide or fiddle the goofs. *** SIGH***
And, to top it all off, the bucket that we had all the tubes of construction adhesive in filled up with rain when the tarp shelter gave way... so all those cardboard tubes are soggy now. Hopefully they'll dry out enough to use in the caulk gun and all of it isn't wasted ($$$$$).
Oh yeah, and for a special treat... Ripley punctured and chewed through the last bottle of antifreeze (don't worry, it's the "safe kind" in case she did ingest some) so when the ATV started overheating hauling lumber, we could only put water in... that will need to be fixed before too long!! Freakin' dog chews anything and everything made of wood, rock or plastic -- you can't hide stuff from her either because she's as tall as I am. One of the reasons that the tarp shelter gave way was because she'd eaten the heads off 2 stakes and pulled out 2 more (still can't find them, she's probably eaten them!).
On a postive note, we finally unpacked and inventoried all the Strong Ties that we got from the awesome folks at ConnectorsOnly.com and they're all there and in good condition! Mark K. -- you guys ROCK!! Since we had some design changes between when I ordered and now, we've got some extras; but you never know when you're going to build something that needs a connector or two LOL!
Oh well, at least we're a few more steps closer...