September 24, 2021 by Maggie McNeill
It wasn't easy, but we finally got the longest of the steel beams up and into place. Originally, Grace just wanted me to drill a hole to receive the bolt at the end of the beam, but once I got up there I realized it would be much to difficult to place accurately without the beam itself in place. But we were apparently done with the rain for the day, so Chekhov and I laboriously wrestled it up and into position by a series of back-and-forth maneuvers until finally we were close enough for me to drill the receiving hole, then we clamped the top into its rough position. Grace now has to fabricate a bracket to strengthen the structure, and once this one is permanently installed we can move on to the other two, which should be much easier because they're both shorter and lighter. Actually, this wasn't the heaviest of the beams; the back roof header was about 10 or 15% longer. But once we got one end of that one onto the roof, most of the work was done; by contrast, once we reached the same point with this one, there was still more wrangling to get the other end to the tip-top. All in all, this should be the most difficult one, which is a good thing because I really do want to get at least one roof section done before the rains return, and I'm beginning to have some hope that we can accomplish it.
