My lodge is cluttered.  There's are shelves of paint, jugs of oil, boxes of hardware, and an impossible tangle of tools behind the back door that I've given up on organizing.  Building a shed has been long on my list of things to do, and I finally made it happen.  Or, at least I started.  I'd spend two weekends in town--one for a social event and the other due (in part) to the severe southeasterly storm that was meant to kick up Stephen's Passage into seven foot seas (someone reported 8-10' seas on Sunday).  Having finished opening up the homestead on the previous trip, I was anxious to make some real progress.  Sometime during the week before we headed down, I sat on the couch one evening and sketched out a blue print of the shed, figuring out all the measurements (including around and below the windows) for the highest wall.  My intent was to build one full 8' side wall across from an identical wall about a foot shorter, creating a natural slope to the roof.  The two side walls and the back wall were to have windows and the front wall a door.  I made a run to Home Depot after work one day and picked up four pressure treated 2x4s for the bottom plus 16 regular stud cut 2x4s.  That wasn't nearly enough to build the whole shed, but I was relying on using the remaining 2x4s donated from the old Fish and Game murrelet camp at Pt. Amner to finish the job.  I didn't have an inventory in town, but I believed I had ample lumber left.

But to build a shed I needed power tools.  I'd already been out to pick up the engine once, only to find out that it had started leaking fuel in the night, and was grateful to hear that I didn't need a new carburetor after all.  They'd (not surprisingly) found some gunk in the fuel tank and installed a fuel filter and now the engine was running beautifully.  So I loaded it and the lumber onto the Ronquil on Thursday, so the boat was fueled and ready for an after work departure on Friday.  Dru joined us around 5:00 and he and Chris observed me turn cranky in a way I'm not proud of after I dropped my new camera strap between the boards on the dock and spent some minutes giving confusing orders and annoying everyone while I scooted and cajoled it out again.  I was not about to lose the strap to my brand new camera!  By that time, Cailey had found entertainment down one of the floats and decided the smells she was exploring was a better idea than coming when I called.  Frustrated and unwilling to yell down the dock (or go after her), we pulled away and headed out, calling Cailey over to the outside of the dock when we saw her running up the ramp in a panic.  I don't think it taught her a lesson, but it made me feel better.  We loaded her up and took off for Snettisham at about 5:20 under relatively mild seas; unfortunately, we hit a little chop or possibly a wake toward the end of the channel and heard the perfect sound of shattering glass.  It took my mind several seconds to figure out that the broken glass was from the window, which was admittedly not well supported in the bow.  No worries, I said--the shed is meant to have three windows and I have four more in the garage at home.  This one was meant only to make sure I had the dimensions right while building the walls.  The weather picked up as we crossed Taku Inlet until we hit steady unpleasant seas that stuck with us most of the way down the coast.  We passed a whale in Gastineau Channel and another at Point Arden.  That evening I made bison spaghetti and, exhausted after the long ride south, we all retired relatively early, but not before getting a fantastic look at an eared grebe diving at the water's edge--the best look I've ever had at this spectacular bird (one that occasionally shows up there in the spring).

The next morning Cailey and I got up at 8:00, grabbed a bite of breakfast, and started working.  First I uncovered all the lumber I'd put aside the year before for the shed and carried it over to the porch, sorting it by size on a couple of sawhorses.  I needed to see what lengths I had so I knew what options there were for the height of the lower three walls.  It turns out there were plenty of full 8' and stud cut boards, so I needn't have worried.  I picked out the best long ones, set aside some rather rotten pieces, and selected some for cutting.  The rest of the morning I spent under an overcast sky measuring and cutting lumber for all four walls.  I decided to make the other side wall about a foot lower than the high wall, and the other two walls would be the same and I spent some time working through the figures again.  The little generator gave me a scare--it acted much as it had acted when I managed to start it through pouring gas down the spark plug area.  It would start right up, then immediately die.  I started it about half a dozen times, wondering if there was some fuel shutoff valve I didn't know about.  I finally tried something new.  I knew that the generator dies if I don't turn off the choke as soon as it catches.  I figured it was getting fuel to begin with (when the choke was on), or it wouldn't start at all, and that maybe it was having trouble maintaining flow after the choke was off.  So I turned off the choke, as usual, but then kicked it back on for a moment, which after a couple of tries was enough to get the gas flowing and allow the generator to stay on.  It was a good moment!

By the time I was done thinking, measuring, and cutting, it was lunch time.  The three of us ate quesadillas and drank beers and relaxed a bit before Chris and I headed back outside for the more fun (and exhausting) part.  The first wall--the tall one--took about an hour to build.  I'd forgotten to cut the headers for the windows and the small pieces that went above them, so we had to do that to finish.  Otherwise, it went pretty well, Chris laying the boards out and holding them in place while I nailed them in.  Once we had the first wall complete I wanted to make sure the window would fit, so Chris and Dru held it up and helped me hold the window in.  It did fit in the opening, but puzzled us all by its strange shape (the bottom of the window is two heights, neither of which is level).  Hopefully that will work out when we install them!  While we worked, Cailey charmed and annoyed us all by pulling out one alder firewood log from under the porch after another and tossing them around the deck.

The next wall took a little less time and, in three and a half hours, we had four full walls completed.  My arms and hands were very shaky and weak!  While we worked, birds kept us constant company.  A few hummers came by to the newly-filled feeders, but the real action was down in the berry bushes with the bright yellow Wilson's warblers.  A large olive bird was feeding in the air downriver and landed on the tip of a spruce branch, allowing me to get a stellar look while it sat and made quick feeding forays.  Another like it flew up and made a noise while opening its mouth at the other--aggressively or begging I don't know!  A third similar bird was nearby.  Their white breasts, lack of eye rings, and large size allowed me to identify them easily later as olive-sided flycatchers, a new bird for me.  We were exhausted by the time we finished the four walls and called it a day.  That night Dru made delicious halibut tacos and we played Scattergories until we couldn't see anymore.

Cailey off Mayflower Island	Getting the lumber ready	The tools left on the beach last fall
Dru and Chris	Debbie and a wall	Cailey and her alder chunk
Cailey's alder chaos	Window wall	Door wall

In the morning I was anxious to make some more progress on the shed, which at that point was leaning against the porch and the lodge as four separate walls.  We'd selected its spot the day before down in the clearing under the trees to the right just before the start of the boardwalk, right next to the stack of firewood rounds.  It was nice and clear there, but a little wet and not quite level.  Dru and I spent an hour digging holes and trenches and building up dirt on the lower end in an attempt to create four level corners.  At my mother's suggestion, I'd brought down four sturdy patio bricks to help with this task.  Eventually we used rocks to raise the lower two corners rather than dig too deep in the front.  We had the corners within an inch of level and in the right neighborhood of square when we decided to take a break and go for a COASST walk.  The tide was still pretty low, but rising, and we couldn't wait much longer.  The walk was pleasant, though lacking in dead birds.  We did see a juvenile eagle drying its wings on the point, though.  I fueled the boat (sitting on the sand) on the way back while Dru watched an eagle that had just swum to shore with a fish.  Then we headed farther down the beach and I showed him Garnet Rock.

Back at the lodge I put into effect the plan I'd come up with on the walk for leveling the bricks, which I executed in short order.  The three of us carried over the shorter side wall and left Dru there to hold it while Chris and I carried over the back wall.  I tacked them together and we repeated the process for the other two walls.  We made sure they were all more or less plumb before I finished nailing them in.  Before we knew it we had a free-standing, level, plumb, and square shed!  It was a thing of beauty.  I did have to adjust the foundation stones a little, which I realized later was because I'd put them an inch closer together than I'd realized.  The dimensions of the shed are actually 8'x8'7" (because each free-standing wall is 8' wide and the front and back walls sit within the side walls).  But, for some reason I thinking 8'6" in my head.  Anyway, it all worked out!

Juvenile bald eagle on the point	Foundation	Cutting some branches
Chris and Dru holding up the walls	Inside the shed	Kayking with Cailey out to the boat

But, I wasn't quite ready to be done.  I'd found some 10' and longer 2x4s among the lumber left from the ADF&G camp, so I had Chris pick out the best seven candidates, decided what length I wanted the rafters to be, and cut them.  Then we broke for lunch again before I climbed up on top of the new shed and toe-nailed the rafters in place.  This was at times a very awkward process, as two spruce branches swept over the top of the shed and I was not always in an advantageous or comfortable position to measure, mark, or nail while straddling the wall.  But for some reason, I felt I could be content with progress if only I got the rafters on, and I so I persevered, Chris helping out by keeping me supplied with nails and everything I dropped on the ground.  Dru helped tidy up the lodge and the porch while we worked on the shed.

At last the rafters were all in place, which had the added benefit of helping hold the whole thing together while we were gone.  I finished packing up and closing down, then went to pick up the kayak which, thankfully, had survived the high tides and not floated off from its precarious position haphazardly tied to log at the edge of the current bushes (I'd left it there in my haste to depart during a falling tide on the previous trip).  The loop around the log had pulled loose and I lost two scupper plugs, but thankfully the kayak itself was there!  And, despite the fact that Chris and Dru were outside, Cailey started climbing into the kayak as soon as I turned it over, even though we were some distance from the water.  I drug it down and we climbed on and Chris got a few photos of us on the way out.  It took Cailey a little longer to leap into the Ronquil this time, but she did it just as successfully.  I picked up the boys and the gear and we headed out at 2:50 for a perfectly pleasant ride back--the first really nice ride I've had with the wind (which was gentle) at the stern.  Two whales blew toward Doty Cove and we passed several large flocks of common murres in Taku Inlet.