I built my first solo wall yesterday morning.

I’ve built walls before with someone, but this is the first one I’ve built with a window in it and also the first one I’ve designed and built entirely on my own. I am a little in awe (okay, it’s more like Hero-Worship, really) of The Amazing Pam Dorey at the GrumpyGoat Gallery, who can build anything that Cara can dream up (note: Cara has the most incredible imagination of anyone anywhere and the impetus to follow through on ideas. It’s quite terrifying.). My wall is small when compared to the studio she’s building, but a girl has to start somewhere.

Background:

John and I are working on a shed for the backyard. We have thus far not engaged in many major construction endeavours together, but we needed a shed and we enjoy the mutual exchange of savoury language that goes with project-work. So the shed is underway.

A major constraint on our time is daylight; John gets off work at 5pm, gets home by 5:30 and it is dark by 7:30. Two hours is not a lot of time in an evening and that two hours includes getting a kid’s homework done, eating, throwing items that dogs bring back and then throwing them again, family reading time and, lately, shed building. So it’s not a lot of time in which to work, really. Combine that with a recent bout of trans-family illness and the week has been slipping (or should that be dripping?) by under our noses.

I decided to get one of the end walls done yesterday. There’s a hurricane coming Sunday and we must have all four walls up, connected and well and truly secured before the potentially 120k/h winds hit on Sunday/Monday. So yesterday I built a wall. Tonight we pop it up and tomorrow, Flying Spaghetti Monster-willing, we get the final wall up, whack them all together, cap them and add a few cross-braces for good measure. Should be do-able!