Construction, Coffee, and Constrictor

Just a short post today with, you guessed it, construction, coffee, and constrictor updates.

The crew have been hard at work on the roofing trusses.  The trusses have a fairly complicated design so that a large central space is left unobstructed for a nice sized loft.  

The view of the whole place from the dock.  You can see that roof of the addition is quite a bit higher than the original cabana and that roof line is almost perpendicular to the original.

Instead of a central "king post", there are 2 "queen posts" spaced eleven feet apart for a good sized open area in the loft.  The horizontal tension piece is about 8 feet from what will be the floor of the loft.  From this view, you can easily see how irregular the sides of the hexagonal floor plan are.  There is also a good view of the black-painted iron plates that we had fabricated to secure the joints in the trusses.  The plates are 5.5 inches wide and are bolted through using 1/2 inch threaded rod cut to length.

A view of the partially assembled west side gable end truss from the inside.  The trusses pre-assembled on the ground, disassembled, and then re-assembled in place. The central beam has been finished and is protected from the sun and rain by tarps.

Our friend and neighbor, Craig Pearlman, loaned us his scaffolding.  It makes this work much easier and safer.  This is the riskiest bit - securing the top of the truss with the ground 30 feet below.  That is Tiger at the top with Pascal holding the foot board in place and Derwin keeping the truss board at the right angle.

The hardest part is done and that is the stopping point for the day.

Another view of the heart-stopping view open space where Tiger was reaching up to fasten the top of the truss. A good place to stop until everyone is fresh.

Speaking of fresh - one of the things I like to have here in the heat is a nice glass of iced coffee sweetened Vietnamese-style with sweetened condensed milk.  The beautiful glass cup is one of a set my sister gave me.  They are really glasses that folks use in the middle east for hot tea.  They are perfect for iced coffee, though, just the right size.

Mmmmmm ... iced coffee.

Last night when Dennis went out to turn off the generator, he was surprised to see this tiny boa constrictor climbing up the veranda stair rail.  I was able to get a few flash photos of it before Dennis took it out to a noni bush.  The baluster the boa is leaning against is only 2 inches wide - the snake is smaller than the diameter of my little finger and is about 2.5 ft long.  Very pretty.

Last, but not least, the constrictor.