[footfootfoot]

Dudes, it is awesome now and in a "jesus light" kind of way. (think cheesy sunbeams piercing the clouds)

Anyway I have this notebook with many of the tiny calculations for the house project written on it. Specifically, square footages of siding needed and the lengths of the various parts and quantities of each part.
Ordinarily I'd just have a big pile of material with about 20% over and pull from that as needed.

The siding became a trickier issue last year. When I started the project a few years back my salesman at the lumber yard talked me into cedar which at the time was .51/lf vs pine which was .46/lf. A no brainer really. the thing with wood siding is that it must be sanded before painting or staining since the mill glaze prevents proper adhesion of the paint or stain. It is easier to sand and stain a plank prior to installing it. In the past, I bought my usual +20% sanded and stained it all and tried to minimize waste, but also knew I had three more sides to do so extra could be used there.

Then the cedar mills went on strike and you couldn't get the stuff for love or money, suddenly it went form .51/lf to .87/lf to 1.46/lf. My lumber connection managed to score a pile for me at around .90 something, but I needed to buy more to finish and I knew it wasn't really ever going to go back down. So I spent several hours making exacting calculations for material, made a close inventory of what I had in stock with the idea that I would sand and stain exactly what I needed since I am able to return unused material to the yard. (my yard rewls. until this past month they never charged a delivery fee. Now it is 10 bucks if your order is under 250.)

So I went out today to sand and stain everything for the remainder of the building since we only have a few weeks at most before it is too cold to stain (oil based needs ~40-50 degrees minimum to cure) It has been perfect weather for working outside too. So I go to get my little book and it is gone. I spent about an hour turning everything over and then again. Still no book. The thought of going over all the measurements and taking another inventory of material was really out of the question. I don't have the time right now and it would mean I'd do other things with the warm weather and the siding would wait another season. We're already at one year for the tar paper and it looks shitty to me.

So I figured if it would take me five hours to re create the book I would be willing to spend two looking for it. So I spent two hours cleaning and organizing and looking to no avail. Well some avail; I did clean and organize some stuff.

I went into the addition tonight to get a dust mask and there is no electricity in there yet, so I turned a light on in an adjacent room and opened the door so a shaft of light spilled into the room, illuminating just enough to navigate. I found the masks and as I was walking out I looked at the shaft of light and it was perfectly spilling across my missing notebook which was tucked in the side of a cardboard box in such a way that I would not have seen it unless I was emptying the box of its contents.

So from seriously bummed to totally stoked in one flash of light.

Thanks for all your good wishes. May you all be as stoked and as amped as I am right now. (and may most of your heroes appear on stamps) [/powerful bee]