They don't call it Labor Day for nothing!

We spend the majority of the long weekend playing home improvement expert on our back porch. For those of you who have never seen the rear entrance to our home, it seems to have been built from the scraps of the original 1930s home construction by a hobo who had one too many pulls off the family's jug of bathtub gin - and maybe the help of one or two of his boxcar friends. Then I think coke dealers moved in during the late '70s and layered carpet over the cracked linoleum and peed on it, but not before painting the walls the color of rotten hot dogs. So we had the pleasure of ripping up the flooring, tearing down the side walls, and seeing what was above the 7' high false ceiling.

What we found above the ceiling made us wonder why the roof had not already caved in from snow load. Behold....















ummm...wtf guys? Since when do we support a roof like this? No center beam or truss members to be found. Solution? Fill in w/ new 2x4s and a 4x4 center beam. Warning: installation of center beam may have involved the use of a hydraulic jack to remedy the obvious sag in roof line.















So now we're about halfway done with the ceiling installation:















Thanks to Joe's new toy:





















Yup, after years of begging, I finally broke down and bought him a pneumatic tool set: complete with finish nailer, brad nailer, and compressor (with handy carrying case and free fasteners!).

We're done working for the weekend, and are off to a friend's house for volleyball and margaritas. Oh, and Olive would say hi if it wasn't her turn for chipmunk hole watch duty.