Crazy Monkey Ranch

We left on Friday afternoon, and had the shed about 75% done. The four walls are up, the door is on and hinged, and the rafters are mostly up, except for the end 2, which are built, but not installed.

The shed, as we left it on Friday afternoon

Not bad for 3 days’ work, eh?

Ok, so it’s 8:30 at night now, and we have 2 1/2 walls up. I’ll show you the progress photos now, so you can see the platform we put up last night (with the light of the halogen lamps we bought at Home Depot), and the 2 walls we put up today, as reference.

The platform we built in the dark last night, by daylight

We went into Pueblo early this morning to get the second round of stuff — siding and lumber and hardware for the door. And pancakes and coffee. I almost forgot pancakes and coffee! They’re what got me through the morning’s work, namely, this:

2 walls complete and braced

We went back into Pueblo around 2:30 to get the last supplies that we needed — some more lumber, the rest of the siding, felt paper, and the shingles to cover the roof. When we got back, we put together the front wall — well, I mostly put together the front wall, Ben was cutting the lumber for the rafters and the 4th wall — and now Ben’s working on putting the straps on it and getting it ready for siding.

The Element isn’t a bad shelter. It’s better than the tent, definitely, as the wind doesn’t rustle the car’s body, or come up under the rainfly and into the tent. The seats lay relatively flat — flat enough to make a decent bed for 2 people. And you get the added bonus of watching the stars through the moon roof. With my head on the headrest of the back seat (laid flat), my legs come to the seat part of the front seat, which means we can stow things in the footwell and on the seat while sleeping. And we did.

I’ve hammered my fingers a couple of times, and gotten really frustrated with some nails, but Benny always comes to my rescue, either pulling out or hammering in the errant nail, and comforting me after I hit my thumb (really hard) by telling me “That’s the wrong kind of nail.” My right arm is getting a workout with all the hammering going on. I’ll be glad the next time we build something, as Ben’s promised that we’ll have a pneumatic nailer next time. But I have my hammer, and my nailbag, and I try not to complain too much (except for the bad words after I smash a finger with the hammer). I’m enjoying building this shed, although it’s hard work.

So today, we made holes and filled them in. We spent the morning digging post holes for the posts tying the shed to the ground, then went to Pueblo to buy lumber. We went to Foxworth Galbraith as well as Home Depot, and bought some lights as well as the tools we needed.

The site for the shed, with holes dug

We got back to the property around 3 pm, and started working in earnest. We worked until 8:30 or so, and we were pleased with the progress. We built the whole floor of the shed, from the posts, to the joists, to the floor.

Well my generator came quickly, earlier than I expected, and we sold quite a few winders last week, so now we have the power, the money, and copiously the free time, so we have driven down to the ranch to start building our storage shed. I am hoping that we can build most of the shed in the next two days and be back up to the springs by Friday afternoon.  If not we will just have to come back down to our property again to finish it.  Oh for sooth…

The shed will be a stick built structure on a wooden pier foundation.  It will be 10′x12′ with 7′ tall walls.  We brought down some excess OSB I had in the garage which will be used to sheath the roof.  All the other material will have to be purchased in Pueblo in the morning. It will be fun building something solid and tangible on our own land.  Something I couldn’t even really do on our property in Falcon.

The location of the shed will be just to the left of this picture:

Tonight we are trying something a little different.  Since the Element has fold “flat” seats, and is designed to be slept in, we figured we would try that out, for the first time in over 5 years.  It was relatively easy to set up, once we figured out where to stow everything. All the tools we threw out on the ground, where they will be used anyway.  I figure the Element will be warmer and less scary in the wind than the tent. Plus, this way we don’t have to pitch and take down the tent every time we leave to go to town for supplies.  Hopefully it will be as comfortable as sleeping on the ground.