Family and friends to the rescue! My mother in law, Teresa, brother in law, Jamon and friend, Herman came out to lend a hand the other day. The first work party for the studio happened at just the right time-I was pretty discouraged because of all the rain we have been having. (Good for the garden, bad for the studio.) Nothing sweeps discouragement away like having willing, able helpers show up! We had as our goal to get the rafters and ridge well under way. Unfortunately, this required cutting the wood at precise angles. All the framing to this point has been straight forward square cuts. This was much harder. The tricky part was cutting a notch in the rafters to rest on the top of the walls. This is what spreads the weight of the roof on down to the walls and it is quaintly called the “bird’s mouth”. Figuring out the bird’s mouth took a lot of this: 

Also took some swearing and foot stomping but, in the end we figured it out. Teresa and Strider working on getting the ridge secure and level:

Teresa, Jamon and Herman also were kind enough to dive into the pile of salvaged 2 x 6 x 8’s and pull nails, while Strider and I were figuring, swearing and stomping. (Who would want to be around us then anyway, they were probably glad to have another project to work on…) All in all a productive day; we got the ridge and several rafters up before it was time for cold beer and a few water balloons.