Rest between labors

I'm biding my time here at the Aerie watching football and enjoying Terry's cooking before I have to head back to the Bolt Hole for a week or so. The travel trailer gets inspected Wednesday morning and immediately afterward I'll haul it north to put back into the barn.

Once at the Bolt Hole, I still have a porch to rebuild. Mark and a friend he hired (sorry, forgot his name) were going to do the work but "complications" arose...as usual. I swear, the motto of the Bolt Hole should be, "Expect the unexpected."

On 2 September, Mark went over to do some concrete work and level off the top of the "foundation" that rimmed the porch's south and west side. As he installed a jack post to support the porch roof, the entire southwest corner of the "foundation" rolled and collapsed. Yeah, nothing but loose stones with a mortar surface. He spent the rest of the day with a rented jack hammer breaking the remainder of the damn thing up.

Demolished porch "foundation"

The next day, when his buddy showed up, they moved rocks and prepared to set posts into the ground and see if they could attach a ledgerboard to the side of the cabin upon which a deck could be hung. That's the last I heard from him so I'm hoping everything went okay.

Compare the above photo with this one showing the "concrete" foundation of the west side of the porch. Alleged concrete foundation of porch

It's this corner that rolled on Mark as he was putting up a support post. Looks at least semi-solid, no? Like beauty, however, it's just skin deep.

Anyway, worst case scenario right now is that I will have to build the entire porch by myself after the guys have finished the prep work. Best case (for me) is that Mark still hasn't found a full time masonry job and I'll have help. (He's been turning down one day gigs as they would mess up his unemployment while providing no secure income and the one project they want him for has developed some serious problems that make mine look minuscule. It's repair to a spillway tunnel up north but as demolition progresses the damn thing is squirting water even though it's above reservoir water levels. Who says interior work can't get "rained out"?) Either way, that porch WILL get rebuilt before I leave to return to the Aerie on the 18th or 19th of September.