Hammer Time....

Before the day started......

At the end of the day.......

First there were three workers and by the end of the day two more showed up. Brought to the job site by their hired Mennonite driver, the Amish crew got right to work this morning and framed up most of the lower level.

We have a problem, however. Not with their work but with the drawings once again. The door openings are NOT what we requested. There are 4 door openings that may have to be re-done tomorrow by Tom Lenig our builder (the Amish are taking one day off for family reasons). This is just another detail about the local lumber yard and errors on their drawings. 

The Amish neglected to frame the exterior door opening exiting the lower level mechanical room. Good thing we are catching this now. How many more of these issues will we find?

We've been asking for a full set of drawings for weeks now. They have to be printed at one of their other locations in Promise City. That's been the excuse for not getting them so far. Shame on me for not insisting on a final review meeting with a full set of plans drawn to scale with both the builder and the lumber yard before we started. There's been no way for us to know the actual door opening sizes by viewing the pdf files we were emailed weeks ago. Our original plan called for only 36 inch interior doors. The drawings specify mostly 32 inch doors and one 28 inch door. Not good.

The Amish crew leader brought his 8 year old son James along for the day. His wife was out of town visiting family so James was left with dad. In fact, they'll not be working tomorrow since they'll travel to Jesup, IA to be with grandparents for some unknown reason. None of my business.

We got a kick out of talking with James. He helped his father and the crew as he could throughout the day. Fetching tools, fetching water jugs, tightening the nuts on the bolts for the sill plate. James wanted to know if he could bring his fishing pole next time. The Amish work under different rules than other contractors. I'm not sure what any state or local authority can say about his participation with his dad's crew.

Nevertheless, here are some pics of today's action.

James is supervising on the left in this pic.

The little dude was right in the action.

As a footnote to this day......

I guess I'll have to start driving my pickup more often. With the advent of the Gator, the truck has been parked in front of the trailer in the driveway for many days now. When I went outside this afternoon, I noticed a wren with a mouthful of grass fly into the right tailpipe of the pickup. The darn thing was building a nest in the tailpipe!!! Come to find out that both tailpipes were crammed full of twigs and crud. Now, I'm a bird lover but that little wren heard me say some bad words this afternoon. 

There is a nest full of Eastern Phoebe chicks under the deck here on our rental home. Here's a pic from yesterday of them. They are close to being able to leave the nest.

There are 5 babies crammed into a messy nest on top of an exterior lamp.

This guy is dreaming of the day when he can get out!