Beach house #23 – Finally, the beam
Oops! I totally forgot about the other side of the beam – you know the one I posted about all the way at the beginning of August?
Well, my mom sanded the heck out of it for me right before they left and went back to California. She left it looking beautiful.
As soon as they left, I set up some ladders, held my breath, crossed my fingers, and hoisted that beam up there single-handed:
It was my dad’s idea to make a T-brace that I could gradually cinch up the post with clamps. It worked beautifully.
Once up, I had to use a board to clamp its face parallel to the other face (on the vertical axis). I got it all perfectly aligned, even though by myself it took about two hours. Up and down, up and down the ladder to check that the crack between the beams was as imperceptible as it could be.
Then I realized I’d never nailed it and I had to take it all down and start over. Ugh!
See, we had only glued and clamped it. My mom’s sanding job was so good, so perfect, that I had forgotten it wasn’t finished at all! Luckily I still had custody of my friend’s nail gun for a day, so I shot that sucker full of 2.5″ brads, mixed up some putty, filled those holes, sanded everything again, and wedged it back up there again.
Up and down, up and down, up and down the ladder for every miniscule adjustment. Man, these things are so much easier with two people.
But… ta-da!
It still needs its little end caps to make it look like a solid beam. And of course it has to be stained and sealed just like the rest of the porch, and caps placed around the tops of the posts to hide the gaps where it fits around them. But I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out!
