Joanne asks me to stop by to look at the possibility of building a wooden deck onto the front of her mobile home because the old one is rotting. I tell her that I am working on a project but should be able to stop by later this evening. She says that would be perfect because she is working on getting the front of her home touched up with primer and paint.

When I arrive a little after six this evening, I find that she has been busy with the paint work. She shows me a pile of two by six wood that she would like to use and I tell her that it will work great for the deck joists, but that she will need some four by four boards for the risers, and two by fours for the rafters after which she uncovers another pile of two by fours.

When apprising the amount of lumber that she has, I decide to not have Joanne purchase four by six boards for the roof beams but will instead use doubled two by six boards.

I ask her what kind of wood does she want to use for the deck boards and she replies "The same kind as your deck." I ask her, "Do you have those yet?" and she answers no. I take some measurements and then give her a written list of material that she will need to purchase including the roofing material, metal brackets and hardware. She says she will pick up the materials and asks when I can start.

By Wednesday of this week, she has purchased the material so, I stop by a couple of times to work on the deck joists and under structure. Joann tells me that she has some old paint she would like to put on all the underside boards. So, I complete the under structure of the deck and then tell Joann that I will be back on Saturday to continue with the construction of the upper deck boards.

So, I let her get busy with the painting while I finish up the projects that I have going on at home.

When I return I find that she has been quite busy brushing paint on the deck joists and I offer to help her to finish painting the rest of the joist.

We do not paint the outside faces of the deck joists because these will be painted with the same color as the paint on her home.

After I resume the construction of the deck, I finish the lower structure, install all of the decking material and then continuing with the upper structure, building each of the two roofing sections on the ground.

I continue to work on the deck over the weekend, and when there is need to lift the two roof panels onto the roof joists, two of Joann′s sons come by to help. When I try to lift the sections up to the roof beam, they were just too heavy for me, even when I tried to use pulleys to raise them, it was just not possible.

Over the years, whenever I came to a time in any job that I was doing, where a task was too hard for me to do, I would just think about the task and try to work out a different way to accomplish it. Often, some tasks would require much thought, some even much prayer. This task at hand had vanquished me.

When Joann′s two sons, who live on the island come over, and then with three people doing the lifting and pushing, we were able to get both roof panels up onto the roof beams quite easily. I put a few of the metal bracket screws into several locations just to hold the panels from moving and then tell both of Joanne′s sons, Thanks for the help, I could never had done it without you.

When Joanne′s sons have left, I then climb up onto the step ladder and meticulously drive in the hundred or more attaching screws into the many metal brackets, which, methinks, will keep either roof panel from ever detaching from their supporting structure.

Thus far, all of the rafter beams, roof rafters, the roof slats and all of the roofing material have been installed and also all of the interior wood on the two roof panels have been painted with two coats of gray primer.

However, what remains is to install the treated two by four boards that will form the railing around the deck, which boards should provide a great amount of stability to the upper deck structure. In fact after these boards were installed, even I was impressed with how well they worked in providing a solid structure.

Joanne had some interwoven lattice material which I used to block access to the under deck areas. I had to cut several angle pieces to fit the areas around the ramp leading down to the driveway, but that was not to very hard to do. When the job came to completion, Joanne was very thankful to have such a well built and sturdy deck.