Into Every Life a Little Rain Must Fall

This title seemed appropriate both literally and figuratively this week. I could not get this line out of my head as I lay in bed listening to the rain pound the top of our rig. It made me wonder…. I know that is a famous line or quote from somewhere but from where? When I Googled it, two responses come up.

The poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "The Rainy Day" is probably the most well known but the song by Queen "Rain Must Fall " also contains the same line.

Regardless, it was raining and that's not the end of the world right? Well, when you combine rain with freezing temps, high winds AND you have 80 feet of 16' walls getting pounded by said rain and winds it is very stressful. All I could picture in my head was ice accumulating on the wall making it top heavy and toppling like a stack of Lincoln Logs. At 3:00am I could not stand it anymore, grabbed a flashlight and went outside to check it out. They were still standing. They had a thin layer of ice on them but not as bad as I imagined. I shook the walls and they did not move. I guess the extra bracing in anticipation of the storm was a good idea. Whew!

The area was forecasted to get anywhere from 3-24"s of snow depending on where in the hills you lived, for us it was 3-8"s. But by the end of the storm we got less than an inch. Areas just north of us got over 20"s! The bad news is that we froze up. We figured that would happen, anytime the temps hit the low teens we tend to freeze up. We had no water for 2 days before it warmed up and thawed out again.

We lost three days this week due to weather, 4 if you count the day we had to re-plumb a wall that we had troubling squaring and wasted a day playing with it. We are now double bracing both out and diagonally as well as sheeting the walls right away so another one does not get away from us. As a result I had to amend the progress blueprint I posted last week as I had anticipated getting a couple more sections done last week before our week two was complete.

Week 1 is yellow, week 2 green, week 3 blue, week 4 (so far) is red 

Our figurative rain happened on Monday. It was a big day, we were putting up our last sidewall! Barb cut all the lumber while I put it together. We had been looking forward to this day for a long time. Even longer with the weather delays. After getting it all put together we hooked it up to the boom on the skidsteer and raised it into place. Room is a lot tighter since all the other walls were up. We got one end in place while Barb was guiding the other end in place. I was setting that end down one more inch when all of a sudden the opposite end let loose and the other end let loose and the entire wall crashed to the ground! Luckily it fell opposite of me and Barb was positioned at the end so it missed her completely.

We stood there and stared at the wall asking ourselves "WTH just happened?" Several studs and the top plates shattered into pieces upon impact but the rest of the wall was intact. No pictures, we were in panic/repair mode. Rather than piece it back together we decided to tear the entire thing apart and rebuild it. An hour later we were raising it again and got it into place.

East side walls up! (That section that is not sheeted is what fell)

West side walls up!

After bracing it we called it a day, went inside, pulled out the bottle of tequila and toasted to our success or luck, whatever you want to call it.

Bottoms up!

 Regardless, we are thrilled with our progress after three weeks. We have all the sidewalls up, and the garage end wall so far in week 4. Speaking of the garage end wall, at 29' wide and 16' tall it was our  biggest build and raise so far.

 When we originally had the house drawn up we had a 10'x8' garage door for vehicles and a 14'x14' door for the 5th wheel. Yesterday we decided to change them to two 12'x14' doors so we could fit both the 5th wheel and camper (when we get the camper) in the garage.

Those are some big doors!

We try to get out with the dogs when we are done for the day, somedays we are just too tired but they sure enjoy it when we do! Daisy walks the road while Dakota runs through the grass looking for the ball we throw for her.

Our deer friends continue to visit us everyday, the original 3 mule deer show up every morning as soon as they hear us out there working. Then we have another group  of 10 that show up every other day. Two of them still have their antlers as of the April 14th!

When we saw him a couple days later the antlers were gone

One evening after working we drove over to Kevin's place to pick up a few things. I did not bring the camera since it was a quick trip. What do we run into? A herd of elk! We took one picture with the phone which did not turn out too bad.....

A couple of these elk still had their antlers too

You may have noticed a new addition to our sidebar. If not, it is the picture of Mount Rushmore and provides a link to blog posts detailing some of our favorite Black Hills experiences. We will be adding to this section throughout the year as  we continue to get out on adventures in the area. Since we are going to be spending so much time here this year we want to get out and have some fun continuing to explore the area and provide a quick link of our adventures for anyone planning on visiting the area. 

Last but not least for those of you coming to visit us this year we had some rock and gravel delivered for the driveway so the worst of the ruts are taken care of! 

Its been a long 10 days but we are continuing to plug away, Kevin and Cheryl arrive on the 26th and we hope to get some trusses up. Lots of work to be done so we are ready for that!