The gables are in place! I had been really eager to see them installed, so I was a bit disappointed after Dusty and I spent the first part of the morning pulling nails from boards. The boards needed a once over to make sure they were free of metal before being resurfaced in the planer. The boards were ‘de-nailed’ but still had quite a few brads hidden within. Dusty counted 126 of the little devils by the time we were through.

After break, Ty and I put on the harnesses and began placing the gables. The east side went in brilliantly – the fit was totally perfect. The west side wasn’t so great and we had to do a lot more strong-arming. It took quite a while but we eventually got them in place. The last thing we did was add a 2×12 top-plate to the northern slope of the gables. Peter and Nick were debating how to assemble the south slope and roof.

I can’t say that I’m a fan of the harnesses. Perhaps it is safer, but without a proper place to tie them they become a huge liability. Ty and I had to tie onto the same window headers we were building on top of. We were barely mobile to the point of standing on our knees while installing the nearest truss. At one point, the whole truss nearly fell off the scaffold as Ty was shifting positions. I couldn’t move to stop it and Ty, as strong as he is, was just able to catch it before it tumbled off entirely.  I expected the harnesses to provide some piece of mind, but I think they caused us both more anxiety than they were worth.

Although it’s a long way from completion, the gables fill out the shape of the cabin. It really does look like the thing that our section designed and modeled so many months ago. And although that much is pretty exciting, I can’t shake the feeling that we are working on a final, full scale model of our design; it’s a real shame that its relocation fell through.