Nan Run Free: Off-Street Parking

Nope, it's not the Bunkhouse. Not yet! First Mason tested his skills on a carport.

Mason loves a big project, and he had been thinking about this one all winter.

First, some background: Every time we drive into town, Mason is compulsively driven to pick off all the pine needles and forest debris that have collected on the car. It's as if he's a vampire and the pine needles are the sunflower seeds. (He also can't walk past my sneakers on the back porch without untying them for me. Yes, the man has issues, but sometimes, they work out in my favor.)

Mason knows he has issues, but he also knows he is sick of picking off pine needles. Then there's the matter of the occasional leaky sunroof on the Jeep. And the hail storms, did I mention those? And I should also mention his new (1988) pickup.

Anyway, he spent all winter dreaming of a carport, and this spring he pulled the trigger.

This was a big project. Multiple kinds of saws were needed. There were electrical wires to run. And most importantly, the big project involved "a first" -- the first time Mason has got to do something. In this case, it was building roof trusses.

But as you can see from the photo above, once you build the 20-foot trusses, then comes the tricky part: How to get them up -- and upright -- atop the 8-foot-tall frame of the new carport. All I can say is MacGyver's got nothing on Mason. Of course, MacGyver didn't have Sidekick Nan, who expended every ounce of aging shoulder muscle to help get those trusses up and in place.

The carport is nearly done now. It's even got lights that we can flip on from the house (I've caught Mason turning them off and on at night, after he thought I'd gone to bed.) But I don't have a photo for you just yet. The final trim pieces aren't up. Soon, though.

But, if you're reading this, you've been very patient for a blog update. So I can at least deliver a few photos of other things.