What an amazing freaking weekend. My mind is a raging torrent, rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of "What just effin happened".
DAY1
Gerrard was the first to arrive and he quickly became the go to guy on the electric man lift.
(A little side note here. Sunbelt had the equipment I rented on site, on time. Unfortunately both man lifts had seen better days and had quirks that needed to be navigated in order to make them work) .
Gerrard figured all the quirks on the electric lift and made it do what he wanted.
A short time later, Shorty, Toolfool, and Shorty's friend Ed showed up. Shorty was the only one wearing flip flops and immediately advised us all that WE were wearing inappropriate footwear for the project at hand.
Craig arrived after Shorty and crew and we all went to work. By the end of the day, the big pile of red iron that was on the ground was now in the air. No one got hurt and the only damage done was to a girt bracket by me not paying attention while running the skid steer.
At the end of the day we realized that we had 3 purlins bolted up in the wrong position, it was getting dark and we called it a day.
DAY2
Craig arrives at 8:30 and we correct the mis-bolted purlins from Saturday.
I finished cutting off the tabs from the rafters that I put in the wrong place and welded them on to the rafters where they should have been if I had been paying closer attention to the prints.
Craig was instaling all the cable braces and splicing the eye bolts on to the ends of the cables. Once that was done we adjusted the cable braces to bring all the columns plumb. Then we started to adjust the cable braces in the overhead to bring the building into square. This was a nightmare. every time we measured a diagonal we were off by several inches. After many ups and downs on the lifts, Craig and I realized we were not taking the measurement from the same place on each corner. Once we figured that out and re-measured the diagonals, we were 1/4" off over 40' and called it good. Craig saddled up and headed for home. I started putting in the base angle for screwing the tin to the foundation when the rain started. I called it quits at 5:30 and hit the rain locker for a much needed shower.
Tomorrow is my day off from work so I'll give it another good shot and see if I can get some tin on the building.
I can't begin to express my thanks to the Florida crew. My wife Laura said "Those guys are effin awesome"