Not Netting

So, for the last year or so, every time I went to turn the compost, I would get caught in the bird netting we have strung over the chicken yard. It's sucked, and now it doesn't suck so much, because this evening we finally finished off one third of the new permanent roofing.

But first, we had one of our epic days. We started the day right, by meeting our buddies the Neumanskys at a house they were looking at. In about an hour, Noel found dry rot, water damage, a sagging beam, cat pee, badly done electrical work, and a drainage issue. I was critical of the location (a bit too busy a neighborhood) and the closeness of the neighbors, plus I felt the basement was a bit too small for good workshop space, and the potential for adding a bathroom was not very easily workable. We had a good talk about what they were looking for and how they could use a house like that. Then we all went out for dim sum. Yum!

After lolling around a while recovering from stuffing ourselves at East Ocean, we went next door to help a neighbor move two trees. I pruned the heck out of the trees (a pair of lemons) while Noel dug an enormous hole around the first tree. We managed to get one tree out and potted up in a couple of hours (ulterior motive: we were getting a tree). The second one we will do tomorrow. I also pulled about fifteen gallons of lemons off the two trees. When we're done we're going to have one massive pile of branches, and it may be time to rent the chipper again.

Only after another rest period did we even start working on the roof of the chicken yard. All week we'd been putting it off, with work crises and other social engagements getting in the way. But it was time to get it done.

The framing went very quickly. We got the last three boards in place in short order.

Roof framing finished

Then we had a brief pause while we figured out how we wanted to attach the hardware cloth over the framing. We ended up using roofing nails, which have nice wide flanges on them to hold the stuff in place.

(Don't you love how this photo highlights the unlicensed U-Haul dealership the liquor store owners have started up behind our house? It beats the heck out of the homeless guy who was living there, but there's a certain suck to looking out and seeing a row of logo trucks over the back fence.)

Fastening up the hardware cloth