Took off from Chadron State Park around 10:00 a.m. yesterday morning. It took a couple of hours for me to pack up the trailer, hook it up and then drive it over and empty all of the tanks before heading on to the highway. Took the highway out through the town of Lusk and on to I-25 headed south. There was a head wind against me the whole way and it was blowing at least 35+ mph, so the highway signs said. So it was hard to ever get the truck to go above 55 mph. Even at that though, you could pretty much watch the gas gauge and watch it ticking over toward empty faster than you can believe. Let me put it this way.... my gas mileage yesterday 'SUCKED'.
     I had a late lunch in Cheyenne and waited for about an hour as a huge rain/hail storm appeared to be mangling the area just south of the border with Wyoming. Even with the delay it was only about 6:00 p.m. when I pulled into the St Vrain State Park near Longmont. I like camping there the night before tucking Esmerelda into her storage spot, because it gives me one last chance to flush out and empty all of the black and grey water tanks on the trailer. Unfortunately, there was no room in the campground last night, even though it was still only Thursday. So that was a bit of a bummer.
    Turned the truck and trailer around and headed on back into the outskirts of Longmont where my trailer storage place is located. It only took an hour or so to get her unhooked and some stuff that lives in the back of the truck moved into the trailer for temporary storage. Also picked out some clean clothes and grabbed my basket of dirty ones, before heading on down to the south part of the Denver area. I had a quick bit to eat on the way, but it still took nearly two hours to go the distance. Lot's of road construction going on in the Denver area including two places where 4 lanes were squished down to one. Finally pulled up to my friends place, George and Marge, around 10:00 p.m. and managed to get everything unloaded and into the house.
    Really nice to be back with my friends again. They are such a nice couple and I often feel they are much like a 2nd pair of parents. Except they are also such good friends. We sat around and talked for awhile and then headed off to bed.
     Slept well last night and a good benefit of being here in the house is that my allergy cough had pretty much gone away over night. It is still there, but so much better now than it has been for several weeks. I am hoping that it will all go away the longer I am in the area.
    Interesting to me is that I slept most of today. Woke up pretty early and had breakfast with G & M, but afterwards found that my eyes just kept closing. The same thing happened after lunch and I spent several hours this afternoon snoozing away. I was a little bit better this evening in that I managed to stay awake for most of the evening, although there may have been a little bit of snoozing going on as I sat on the couch and tried to read my book. Right now though it is nearly midnight and I am once again feeling sleepy. There are a bunch of photo's following this missive. I spent a couple of days last spring working a woodshed at Rima's. The whole back side of it had collapsed and was threatening to bring down some of the roof along with it. Had to move the rest of the wood out of it and clean a bunch of litter off the floor, but finally got to where I could start putting it back together again. The following pictures show some of the construction that went on and there will be a bunch more in a day or two.
   

Fixing Rima's Woodshed #1 - May 2014 

An overall view of the woodshed from Rima's deck. At this point I have already framed up a new back wall and 'bashed' it into place with a sledge hammer. The existing wall had pretty much rotted out and the roof was sagging nearly 2 feet in the center.  

The new back wall framing. It's all made out of pressure treated lumber and hopefully won't rot out as bad as the last wall did. Had to figure out a way to frame it up so it would fit in with the existing  framing style. The original siding was clear cedar and a pretty good material in it's time. But even though resistant to rot and critter damage, it will eventually rot out and ants and termites will damage it as it gets older.

The shed is built on a hill, which isn't the greatest place to put  one. But it is what it is, so you just have to work with it. I installed some new pressure treated boards on the down hill side to strengthen the walls as well as hold the cut wood in better once it was stacked. Had to put in a couple support posts everywhere the new framing went in. Yet more holes to dig.

Looking at the east side you can see the slope of the hill and how the boards fill up the space at the bottom. I hope that pulling the dirt along the side down hill a little will help save the original siding on the east and west sides.

Had to do the same retaining wall kind of thing on the west wall also.

Looking at the exterior of the west wall.

I also dug out twenty years worth of old rotted bark and wood on the bottom of the shed floor so there would be more volume to store firewood in. I needed to put in a low retaining wall along the front of the shed also.

Once the back wall was re-framed and the roof joists were beefed up and some 'hurricane ties' were installed, it was time to actually start on the roof itself. Here I'm peeling off the old roof shingles and underlayment. You can see there's a bit of rot going on up here also, but most of it is minor. The biggest problem is that they only used 3/8" plywood on the roof even though the joists were set on 24" centers. Very under designed. Eventually I swept the existing roof sheathing and sprayed it with a fungicide/insecticide before installing new 1/2" thick OSB over the whole thing. It finally felt strong enough to even support me.

This is the existing front facia board. You can see where the carpenter ants, termites and rot have been having a field day. More stuff was sprayed on and then a new PT facia was nailed over it.

A view looking at the new OSB, Oriented Strand Board, sheathing that I nailed on.

Found a couple bundles of old shingles up in the barn. Enough anyway to put on this roof. Really don't like nailing on shingles, especially 3-tab types, but it isn't a very big roof and it's nearly flat.

Looking out on the completed shed. Next time I'll show the sheathing we put on the rear wall as well as the start of the wood we cut up and started to stack inside.

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