We begin our roof pour as we engage a couple of hired hands and The Wife gets a new vehicle to drive (pictured here). We immediately run into trouble as I get the forklift stuck up to the axles on a rain-soaked patch of ground and it has to be pulled out by a neighbor's tractor. Oh well, at least the cement truck is 2 hours late (meaning we're paying a couple of hired guys to drink beer in the meanwhile). It can only get better, right?
Eventually, we've managed to pour two and a half tons of cement on the roof using wheelbarrows and me on my knees with a trowel when one of my helpers runs a loaded wheelbarrow off the runway and across a joist which has a big knot running through it. The combination of weight from the already-laid wet cement, the knot in the wood and the weight of me, a helper and a loaded wheelbarrow overhead and nearby produces a creaking sound, a sudden sag in the roof and then...
...the roof gives way under us. Due to the tied-together wire "cattle panels" which form the decking, our drop is slow enough to avoid substantial injury to everything except my ego. I order everyone clear, even though that means letting the ferrocement set up as it is. The rest of the roofing we've just poured remains intact. After making sure everyone is okay, I scramble up to the roof to assess the damage.
Of immediate concern, we still have a bunch of cement in a mixing truck that is running out of shelf life. The difference between success and failure in DIY often comes down to how you adapt to disaster. I pull out a leftover cattle panel, lay it across a bad spot in the driveway and have the mixer dump the rest of the cement on top of it (and into the canyon-sized ruts left from the fork lift being stuck - remember that?). A member of project management signals approval as we make the best of a bad situation.
Bloodied but unbowed, my usual posture, I pose with my new best friends, Mr. Wire Cutter and Mr. Sledgehammer. Our Mission: We've got to plot a way to clean up the mess, get a big load of cured cement off a fragile roof, jack the joists back up to proper height, replace the broken joists and do it with just my own labor inside a week's time. Those who know me well will realize by now that I've already got this figured out and well underway...
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