locked out

As soon as we got to Winthrop we realized we had forgotten our truck, excavator and toolbox keys.  Thus had denied ourselves access to all our tools and most materials.  

Brandon conjured up his old hooligan spirt and started the process of breaking into our "secure" construction site. Using some shims and a library card we were able to nose the truck door open a tiny little bit. Next we stuck a piece of leftover solid ground wire into the door and wiggled it around like a blind folded Miley Cyrus twerking around in a dark room.  Finally on one random twerk, we hit the unlock button. Once inside we now had access to our boxes of fasteners, a spare excavator key and...... a lock picking set.

 

Once upon a time we had learned lock picking. A skill which was cultivated by the national park service- whom took it upon themselves to lock everything they could think of and more. Vowing to never be locked out of a piece of property on public land (again) we learned a technique we could legitimately put to use on our own construction site. 

After about a hour of singing the mission impossible theme song, Brandon holding his tongue just right, and generally looking like a dog humping a football we finally heard the last click, and the lock on the toolbox "magically" opened.  We had access to all our things and were ready to build. 

Construction thus far has been figuring out a consistent stream of steps to buy materials and put it in place (without spending too much time doing any one thing). Our current predicament revolves around the building being 24 feet high and our general dislike of ladders. Yes we bought the material, but how do we put it in place? Luckily for us, when Brandon sleeps, he dreams of ways to use his excavator in untraditional ways.  He plotted up a crazy idea to build a forklift attachment for the excavator, then  with $50 and access to the World Wide Web (aka www) we built a (wo)man-basket from an IBC tote, scrap lumber, and partially broken ratchet straps.

I am going to admit that I was skeptical.  Especially about the part of me being the one in the bucket. There's the old adage that if you reach for the moon and miss you still *Might land on a star.  After putting this thing together and stepping into the basket I was questioning what else I *Might land on if I were to miss the moon.  All I could think about was what a hefty bag of soup would look like if it were dropped from 24'.

In the end, his contraption worked quite well and was much nicer, safer, and faster than doing the work from a ladder. We successfully put up all the materials on site early and had extra time to do some  hiking in the mountains on the way home. Next week we'll try to raise the roof.