They All Said It Couldn't Be Done . . .

Take that concrete roof. Yer no match for me and ma' Hilti.

Johnny, Star and I finished installing the footings yesterday and they all got dried in by the guys from Nations roofing. There was still plenty of trouble with all the steel in the planks, but we got them in and they were ready to go this morning.

Johnny and Star with the last footing.

Star, Mixing the Grout.

Johnny, sealin' her in.

Star sliding the grout under the footing. I'm so glad we got two good days without rain so we could get these done.

Girders for the steel pavilion.

Today was the big steel day - and damn if didn't we slam it to it. We got all the big girders in and perfect and we even had a enough time to get the first column set! We had some troubles, as always, so it was a little stressful, but in. These beams are each about a thousand pounds, and from day one these are the ones that have been keeping me up at night stressing about, so its a little surreal to see them actually done. I don't think anybody really thought we would be able to get these in - but we proved them all wrong, and it feels great.

The south girder - bolted to the footing.

We also would have gotten at least three columns in today - but we got slammed with some crazy storms and there was a LOT of lightning all around us, so we had to stop at like 4 today. Sucks. But tomorrow is another day, and if were lucky we'll get some dry weather and get a bunch of the columns in and X-bracing.

Johnny, tightening down the north girder. This one cantilevers about 9 feet to the east. Yikes.

Star assembling the X-Bracing. Never seen anybody get so excited about lateral bracing - but, to each their own I guess. ;)

Jon, Star, Shulzie and Johnny, Setting the first column! Yeah steel workers!!!!

So we got one column up, and tomorrow we should get at least 6 more, the X-Bracing and maybe even some of the low-roof steel up. We have to crane a big load up tomorrow too, and if you can believe the weather, its gonna rain all day.- so we'll see what we can actually get done. But we need to move fast right now cus' there is so little time left that we really can't let the weather slow us down. We'll do our best. I promise.