how to recycle a tiny house, day four

After taking the weekend off, the carpentry crew was back at eight this morning, slamming it into gear with their incredibly loud music and their hammers and full on get-it-done work ethic. I’ve been staring through the window in awe at their industry.

They’d been here about 45 minutes when it looked like this.

It’s just amazing to watch a building appear where there was nothing. Essentially, a recycled house is a pre-fab house—my cousin Noah fabricated it in its old spot. The fact that it is so small means four guys can handle a whole wall section and the whole thing is going up like a magic trick. Watch….

After getting the outer three walls up, they started on the tricker (because of the height) front fall, muscling it into position.

You can see the outer two guys are hauling ass on ropes while the two inside guys do their Incredible Hulk faces as they push that thing up. Then the rope guys held it while the ladder guys scurried around fixing it into place. I think I held my breath the whole time. It probably best that I’m not a carpenter or I would keep passing out from lack of oxygen.

Next came the lower front wall panel.

You see the guy on the ladder? Ladders to me are things to try to make absolutely stable—they are NOT TO MOVE while I am on them. But these dudes think of ladders more like…stilts. Or maybe surf boards. They just stick’em there, scurry up, and it’s rocking back and forth as the lean here or there, stretched way the hell out—one guy even kind of walked his ladder down the wall, while he was standing on it. It’s a carpentry circus out there.

Paul, who used to be into rock climbing, scoffs at ladders. He tends to just crawl up the walls, balancing the ball of one foot on some invisible ledge on the wall, swinging a leg up and over the roof edge, hammering out on some precipice like he’s a spider monkey. A spider monkey with a hammer. I, on the other hand, am good at standing here with my coffee and watching out the window. That’s my part in all this. Oh, and I take pictures. They’ve all been really good natured about my picture taking. But I suspect they think I’m a fruitcake.

Back to the action. The roof.

This guy, Monty, is up twenty feet in the air, his feet balanced on those little rafters, hammering away, like its nothing.

I was impressed, anyway.

Here’s what it looked like from the back after about three hours.

Four hours in…

And it’s time for lunch.

I snuck this picture through the yurt window—they just looked so cute, sitting in a row like that, admiring their progress. And they should. They’ve been busting their humps out there, drinking their red bull and blasting their country music. Yurt walls let sound pass right through, which can be cool at night, listening to the owls outside—but that country music is as loud in the yurt as it is out there for the guys to hear over the pounding of their hammers, and I’m realizing I’ve never really listened to country music. Most of the songs start with something like, “Sometimes I hate my job,” or, “My brother just got out of prison,” but then by the end they seem to be about gratitude, like, “my ticker keeps on ticking,’ or, “I’ve got a cold bear on a friday night.” Appreciating the small things in life. I can get behind that, I reckon.

Half the day’s work is done. Tune in for the afternoon’s update!

Click here to go to day four, the afternoon. Click here to go back to day three.