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Last week was gonna be the week My Brother and me were gonna put the deck up.

But The County and Mrs. Weakneed Engineer and Mr. Dickhead Inspector and everybody else that makes building a house a nightmarish breaucratic clusterfuck had other ideas.

Get this.

The County requires a nailing inspection before we cover the exterior. I’m not sure why, I’m kinda baffled by what The County thinks we might be using to hold this house together, but hey. You do as you’re told.

So we had the first one. For an hour and and half Mr. Dickhead Inspector stared at nails, making notes. Phabulous Phil kept looking at me, winking, going WTF? is with this guy?

So he had issues. You gotta realize- every time Mr. Dickhead Inspector can flunk me he can force me to cough up $50 for a re-inspect. Tiny money but gnat-like annoying.

So we fixed those issues and called for the re-inspect. And Mr. Dickhead Inspector found new issues. Gosh go figure. Some of the issues were things that he said had to be engineered before he could sign off on them. Do these guys drink together and dream up this shit or what?

Soooo. Instead of hitting Mr. Dickhead Inspector in the head with a hammer until my arm got tired and burying him in the bay, I called in Mrs. Weakneed Engineer. She’s a he but maybe only barely.

Short aside- Engineers are the folks with the knowledge, the know-how, the collegiate training to calculate all the shit that needs calculating to build stuff like bridges and skyscrapers and maybe, just maybe, a tiny 1600 sq. ft. house.

And so Mrs. Weakneed Engineer thought way long and way hard and came up with the engineering solutions necessary for us to satisfy Mr. Dickhead Inspector’s and The County’s overbearing wants.

And we did them. To the letter.

But before we could even call for the $50 re-inspect Mr. Dickhead Inspector called me to say he had problems with what Mrs. Weakneed Engineer was proposing. It just goes round and round, right?

Loooooonnnnngg story short? Mrs. Weakneed Engineer folded immediately and Phabulous Phil and I had to spend the weekend getting other opinions and forcing Mrs. Weakneed Engineer to come out to the site so that he, um she, could get a first hand look and honestly? she, I mean he, agreed with us and told us he’d (she’d?) re-do the engineering letter to The County and Mr. Dickhead Inspector.

So loooooooonnnnnnngggggg story shorter? My Brother and me managed to get up three (as in 3) girders for the deck. They are the pale fleshy white things hanging horizontal on the pilings in the picture.

It’s FUN building a house.

9 days after they rolled onto the property we’re framed. Phabulous Phil says we’re not dried in until we’re black (30# felt on the roof and walls) but I’m feelin’ pretty damn topped out and I’m hopin’ Phil’s gonna be flying his flag off the roof tomorrow.

It’s so goddamned amazing I’m fucking beside myself.

I mean, who says you can’t draw up your stupid dream on page after page of stupid graph paper? Huh? And who SAYS you can’t wear down county gov’mint ’til they finally acquiesce? Hmmmm? WHO SAYS???? HUH!  AND WHO-THE-FUCKALL-SAYS-YOU-CAN’T-MAKE-IT-HAPPEN????????

HUH!! ‘CAUSE YOU CAN!!!!

And who says you can’t throw yourself down in the muddy mess that will one day be a driveway and just revel and wallow and roll around in it and stare up at the bright blue sky and bright white scudding clouds and smell the fresh new lumber and squeeze your eyes shut and think-

It’s a house, baby.

I have to be careful here.

I don’t want to get all gay about Phil ’cause one of his kids might find this and read it to him and then he’d seriously kick my ass.

But ya know what? He’s flippin’ amazing.

I’m not sure if his son Nick and the boys work as hard as they do because they love and admire Phil and strive mightily to please him or if they’re terrified of an unhappy Phil.

Maybe some of both of it.

Whatever it is- Jesus monster they work their fucking lungs out.

A week ago Phil and Sideshow and Johnny and Crockett and Nick showed up and started framing our little hacienda.

Phil strode onto the scene of our lonely pile driven tapestry, settled on the motorcycle that is his company, started shit up and grabbing a handful of throttle, dumped the clutch and burned rubber, pushing his crew relentlessly.

Day after day he drove them mercilessly. And yet they didn’t seem to mind. Nick and the boys sprinted lumber and spat nails and made my poorly drawn feeble ass dream an amazing reality.

And they did it refreshingly happily. Day after grueling day.

I don’t know how Phil does it, but I want to bottle it and patent it.

I wanna say I love the Phabulous Phil but I don’t wanna get my ass kicked.

Serious.

Framing a house is cool. BIG chunks are done daily and the changes are amazing.

This is the kitchen. Miss Carol hasn’t seen it nor the view yet.

Last weekend when the house was just a banded plywood floor on top of pilings Miss Carol slowly inched her way up the ladder and peered tortoise-like over the top and swore she saw something maybe approximating a view and was happily satisfied enough to scurry back down the ladder to safety.

I’m thinkin’ that this weekend I’ll get her to come all the way up and check it out. Maybe I’ll follow her up the ladder with my face in her butt and my arms around her thighs and when we get close to the top I’ll just push her up and over.

I’m pretty sure she’ll appreciate it.

Have you ever met someone who just totally enjoys his life? Whose day to day ever enviable enjoyment is so completely and overwhelmingly infectious that you just know his crew would probably cheerfully kill for him?

Meet Phil of Phil Pfeufer Construction.

Phil’s the guy whose gonna turn my amateurishly first-grader looking grid-paper penciled floor plan into something that might just maybe resemble a house.

And he does it all with such an easy laid-back-we’ll-get-it-done-whatever-it-takes confidence that makes building a house fun.

I mean check this out. We started the morning with our home looking like this-

Phil and I went over a coupla things and then I had to go to work. Phil was hoping to get everything laid out and maybe get the girders up.

I was all like, girders is good.

When I got back I was flippin’ amazed. Not only did they have the girders up, they had most of the floor joists in and were banding.

But what was really cool was watching Phil and Nick (his son) and Sideshow and Johnny and Crockett work. All of ’em have been together for so long that they all know what everyone else is doing, their choreographed moves syncopated by blaring music and carefully orchestrated by Phil cheerfully yelling.

And ya know what? Honestly? I needed this. After all of the permitting process and then the first contractor guy spreading fill and then disappearing and then the pile-driver guy bitching and moaning about having to drive 8×8’s (but doing a HELLUVA GREAT job) I was, quite frankly, not into it anymore.

I was, like, why’d I start this?

But.

But, then there’re days like today.

Thanks Phil, I’d have your children dude but we’re both too old.