An addendum to Wednesday and Matt’s work.
Matthew has worked with levels before, therefore I didn’t take the time to explain how the bubble must rest with each edge touching an outside line.When I climbed up on his plank to check his progress, I could see that a board or two had a bit of a downward slope. As he watched me scrutinizing his work, he said, the siding is “nearly perfect.” I responded, there is “nearly perfect,’ and there is “perfect.” This has to “perfect.” We adjusted those that weren’t and I climbed down to resume cutting.
Matthew nailed another row of boards, these to the right of the bay window.
When I stood back to look at his work, he jumped up, placed the level under each board and exclaimed, “magnificent,” “awesome,” unbelievable.”

Friday, I drove to Hubbarston to help Mark Queijo fix his leaky roof. The chimney was streaked with water stains, and there was a tidy pile of saw dust on the floor that spoke of opportunistic carpenter ants, but I assumed the problem would be isolated and easily repaired. I was wrong. We worked all day, cut out over a hundred feet of roof sheathing and rigid insulation beneath it, and I’ll have to return another day to help put it all back together.
But that is not why I’m writing this. As soon as I climbed into my truck Thursday morning, it began to rain. Which meant, we again had to work, stooped, under blue tarps.