Free isn't always good.

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Birthdays came in July, but we didnt ahve money for birthdays, time for birthdays, or even a place to set a cake. Our 21st wedding anniversary was only a few days later and we had to skip that too. Progress had slowed some because of the weather. It jsut would not stop raining.
I remember framing when I was younger. Bad weather was something I looked forward too. It meant either you got the day off, or we would at least work slow.With rain (and even a late snow in May) I hated the weather. I wanted sunny and 70 every day of the month. Like it or not, we had to work in the rain if we were going to get done before the goal of October first.

As long as there was no lightening, we worked no matter what the weather

We tried everything to keep the floor dry, but without a roof it wasn't happening. 

The rain seemed to let up mostly in the evening and over night. The shop would flood when it rained, so there wasn't any place to get a break from the water. Might as well be out working in the middle of the night. There were so many nights (weekday or weekend) that we pulled all nighters on the floor. It wasn't as hot, the rain would let up, and we had lights all over the floor on 20' 2x4's. Going to work and school the next morning sucked but we did it!

We swept the water off the floor and down into the basement. we ruined so many chalk lines using them on a wet floor.

Start of the cathedral ceiling in the dining room. 

At this stage we have the outer walls up, the inner walls up on the second floor, we need to sheet the outside walls with sheathing, set all the ceiling joists, build the 3rd/loft floor and get the roof on. We were running out of steam, and the ceiling joists were slowing us down some. We needed some help, but there wasn't any. A friend of my wife's (Jasmine) had talked about having some volunteers come out and give a hand. We scheduled a Saturday (August 10th) and I would ensure I had all the material I needed on hand and some written instructions for groups to follow. Michelle had cut all the floor joists for the dormer on the 3rd floor, and the master bedroom. We laid out everything in 'kits' everything a group needed was there. I had several cases of nails, and we were set to go. My biggest job for that day was putting the sheathing on the walls. When the morning of August 10th rolled around we were ready. These were supposed to be experienced framers I was told, so they could work without much assistance. What exactly their experience was, I did not know.

After a brief thanks to everyone, safety speech, and a hand out of safety glasses I was ready to get to work. I fielded a ton of questions that day. They weren't as experienced as I had thought they were. I heard a lot of complaints about the design of the house. Fortunately for them and me, no one knew who was there to help and who's house it was. When someone complained to me about the layout of the house I just said, 'ok'. They had mistaken me for someone volunteering, not knowing it was my house and my kids that built it.. Brad bailed on laying sub floor because no one would listen to a 13 year old. Parts of it turned out okay, parts of it had some severe structural problems.  Brad and I spent 4 days cutting away nails, relaying sub-floor and rebuilding walls.

You can see the 2 new walls added that day in the upper left. We took them down because there was only one nail in the studs and they would spin around inside the wall.

To everyone that put in a good effort and really tried (even if you didn't know what you were doing) we thank you, and the help was much appreciated. Free isn't always a good thing, no matter what form it takes.