Roughing it with roofing...

Okay, so this weekend's task is to get the roof on. (Raise the roof?)

We have the rafters, and the lathing.

A straw bale house needs a GOOD ROOF.

And I am not sure how to do this. Now I could be clever and call someone (like a builder) or I could spend hours reading up on it. But mostly I'm just fretting about it.

One of the most exciting and even intimidating aspects of this project is having to figure out how to do things. Years ago I worked in the horse industry - training horses. I'd been working with horses for years prior to this, but I found myself in the position of being a professional - which up to that point had been something of a life long dream. And for a while I really loved it.

Until I realized 2 things. (1) There is not a single "right way" to do things, regardless of what anyone proclaims, but there are a lot of very WRONG ways to do things - that seemed to run rampant. And (2) Horse people are crazy and most horse owners are generally idiots. (myself included, at times, I'm sure) My problem was that I loved the horses but found a lot of the people, especially absentee owners unbearable. They got into horses for the status, but didn't want to dedicate the money, time, or effort to really care for horses. So we lowly stable folks would put in hours and days and weeks taking care of their beasts and training them, only to have some yahoo come out on the weekend and abuse the poor beast to the point of back tracking on the work we'd done. And then they'd be snotty about how we were getting paid to train their animals, but they were not seeing results. I was young at the time. I think I would handle it very differently now.

Anyway, building this structure is feeling very similar to that whole experience. Except it's an office, there is no single authority on how to do it, and I am increasingly aware of all the things I could do wrong...

But despite my overt lack of confidence, I'm sure we'll figure it out.

That, in itself, is it's own reward, isn't it?