Posts and Beams and Things Fixed with Pegs

It comes on a flatbed trailer and looks like confusion. Or some sort of terrible endless puzle. Thick posts and beams of precise dimensions with smoothly planed edges and complicated ends with things that stick out and things that stick in and round holes all the way through and buckets and buckets of pegs. The ends of the boards are all labeled but that still didn't help me make any sense of it. All I knew for sure was that it was beautiful! The yellow white color of the wood interrupted with knots and an occasional streaking, cut and trimmed and planed and sanded so that it was as much a pleasure to touch as to see. They handle it like fine furniture, taking it off the truck and stacking it around the site on boards to keep it off the muddy spring ground. The first two posts and the beam on top were assembled and pegged together on April 16, 2008, on the subfloor of the house, and raised by bucket truck crane into place. Paul and Jim and Ben and Phil seem like tiny men next to shese massive posts and beams, but they handle them together with experience that tells them how to use weight and counterweight and balance to their advantage and they use the crane to lift the peices of the assembly into place. It is more like a dance than construction and because it was all cut and planed and sanded back at the shop, the construction site is relatively quiet. The engine noise of the bucket truck is there when lifting is happening, but when the parts are being carried and assembled, it is quiet. We hear redwing blackbirds and cranes and crows and near the end of the day, a racket of peeping frogs in the valley to the east. It is as wonderful and as amazing as I dreamed it would be and more! I can stand in the bays between the posts and see what the views out the wall of windows will be like and I can imagine my family and friends in the house and on the water. Ah, life is good!