For those of you keeping tabs on my cabin building progress, or lack there of, I’m happy to report that it has a roof on it now. Well it did when we left but that was two weeks ago so it may just be a pile of warped lumber, bent nails, and stripped screws by now, which wouldn’t be much of a surprise since that’s what we started with.

Just to catch you up to speed me and a good friend of mine, Paul Richter, were granted permission about five years ago from our lovely wives, for reasons unknown to us at the time, to buy 22 acres in the Bull Mountains of Montana. The Bull Mountains are located about 30 miles north of Billings and we’ve been attempting to build a log cabin up there for a few years now.

An authentic, we pealed the logs and hacked them up with a chain saw, log cabin. It’s been a mostly enjoyable project, with intermittent bouts of, “Why am I doing this?” sprinkled about.

Paul and myself found out a few things about ourselves and each other during our roof raising expedition. No not that Paul enjoys wearing women’s shoes and singing Barbara Streisand hit’s while doing carpentry work. That I already knew, what I didn’t know was that he’s a terrible carpenter, and he can’t carry a tune in a rusty nail bucket.

I knew I had a few gaps in my carpentry repertoire and I was counting on him to fill those gaps. As it turns out we have the same gaps, not as many as our roof, but close. After the first full days work on the roof we were sitting back admiring, or sulking, over our craftsmanship when I said, “That doesn’t look like a full days work.” To which Paul replied, “Yeah, looks like about two hours of work.”

Two hours for someone that didn’t spend high school shop class building spice racks and shoddy shelves. Two hours for someone that realizes that jerryrigging one screw up will only lead to more advanced jerryrigging on a bigger screw up caused by the first jerryrigging. Jerryrigging is a viscous cycle in the construction of roof by two educated idiots.

My wife tried to comfort our battered, splintered, and bent nail ego’s by telling us that it looked great and we were doing a fine job. However, I was suspicious of her sincerity after her and the kids burst into laughter shortly after she said it. It wasn’t so much the laughing it was the finger pointing that really hurt.

The Environmental Protection Agency wanting to use our cabin as a poster boy to stop logging didn’t do much for our confidence either. Jesus was a carpenter, but if he had a hand in this cabin his Father would have sent a natural disaster to rid it from the earth.

When our lack of carpentry skills became more and more apparent Paul and myself just kept muttering to one another, “It’s just a cabin.” That phrase became our mantra whenever something wasn’t level or square. Yes we said it a lot. Half way through the roof building project the level and square were banished for insubordination.

We established early on that nobody with any carpentry skills or anybody that has ever been near something built by a carpenter is allowed within 300 feet of our cabin unless they sign a waiver stating that they will not point, laugh, snicker, raise eyebrows, or make any mention of the words level and/or square. You are not allowed to view the cabin during daylight hours or under the light of any moon greater than a crescent.

If you do solemnly swear to the above limitation you will be granted permission to view and use the cabin. There’s a lot of lumber in that roof, heavy lumber, topped of with steel roofing, steel with sharp jagged edges.

If you need anything I’ll be sleeping outside in my tent.