My Hand Is So Cramped I Can Barely Type

...and my lower back revolts every time I attempt to move.

Why?

Dave and I have been working on our porch. The contractors finally came out to replace the roof and frame it, so now we have the pleasurable task of trying to complete it before it's 30 degrees outside.

I was royally pissed at the contractor - they came out to do an estimate in June sometime, then we didn't hear from them for three weeks. We finally got the estimate in the mail, sent in the down payment (half the total amount!), then didn't hear from them for another 2 weeks. We finally called and they said they'd be out in about two weeks. Two weeks later, our check was cashed, and we didn't hear a peep for another four weeks! That down payment wasn't exactly chump change, and I'm a bit miffed that it was sitting in their bank account for all that time, instead of ours. We finally called them again, and apparently there was some confusion, "I thought my wife called you and she thought I called you..." blah blah blah... shut the fuck up and get your asses out here!

They finished the job in two days, leaving us to scramble to hang screen doors, enclose it, stain/weatherproof it, put in screening, and do the finishing pieces before it gets too cold. Hell, it's already October, and we've still got a shitload to do yet... there's only so many weekends left until the snow is going to start falling! I mean, we could have paid extra to have them do all that, but after spending a buttload of money on paving the driveway and redoing the office this year, we figured we'd do it ourselves.

Putting up the plywood around the porch was an adventure. We needed 9 pieces, and probably pawed through about 40 pieces at Home Depot looking for ones that weren't cracked, split, or crummy. "Pawed" is probably not the right word for looking through 4x8' pieces of heavy plywood, "heaved" is probably better. My arms were screaming after that excursion. The real fun set in when we realized the corner post on the porch was not square, which in turn was causing the plywood to cant at dangerous angles when put up to the framing. We ended up having to cut them on angles to actually make it square, and it was done with no little argument - "you said two inches!", "No, I said one-and-a-half inches! Listen for once!", "Dammit, now this piece is shit!" That was not a fun day.

It took us two days to hang the screen doors - all in all, it wasn't too difficult a job. The major thing was making sure they were level and there weren't unsightly gaps. The real pain started when Dave said I should start staining the plywood while he was cutting pieces for the top trim. I was willing - staining isn't too bad, it wasn't smelly stain, and I'd get a immediate, visual sense of accomplishment.

Yea.

I started staining at around 10:30 in the morning. I finished up at around 7 that night. One coat. No breaks to eat, only the occasional break to smoke, drink some iced tea, or take Cragar to pee. And dummy me, I was following the sun. Or rather, the sun was following me. If I would have been smarter about it, I could have spent most of the day in the shade just by starting on the other side of the porch, but I didn't even think about it. Consequently, I had the sun beating on my back the entire day. So I was standing up to stain the tops, sitting down to stain the bottom, and cocking my head allwhichways to make sure I covered all the edges. By the end of the day my hand was cramped into a sort of claw, and it hurt like hell just to straighten it out. I think my lower back is still in spasm from sitting hunched over to get the bottom of the plywood. I can't even crack my back.

And all I can think is that I need to put another coat on yet. It's going to rain the next couple of days, so I'm probably looking at next weekend to do it. Oh joy. It'll be just the right amount of time for my joints to loosen up so I can put them back in misery. Gotta love do-it-yourself projects.

I think though, when it's done, we'll be happy with the work we did, and we'll have a nice screened-in porch to enjoy. Just in time for winter.