That’s it. I give up.

Or, should I say, WE give up. My daughters and I.

After much fighting, the supports for the car port thingy were put together, slid through the channels in the cover, then dragged over to where it would be set up. What we needed to do next was get the whole thing upright, supported by the lengths of rebar I got to pound into the ground.

Well, here’s how it looks now.

That’s right. It’s all disassembled again.

I have no idea how this thing was put together originally. Clearly, it had been used. From the tool marks on the support pieces, it was also obvious others had struggled with it, too.

It simply would not go up.

This was how it was when I left it, yesterday.

The girls raised the first supports at the end by the tree, which took some doing as one side piece kept spinning, so instead of an arch shape, they were fighting with an S shape. Eventually, they had it so I could pound the rebar into the ground and they set the supports on them.

Of course, there was still the weight of all the other sections pulling on it, so even with the stakes supporting it, that first arch had to be held up. While they did that, I started to raise the next set of supports until they could reach out and hold it, too. They still could not let go of the first support, though.

Then one of the side supports fell off.

After pushing the cover up and over, we were able to get it back together again, but not completely. Plus, the pieces started spinning to the point that the top arch piece ended up upside down. There was just no way to get it back in position again. Particularly since the top arch piece was holding the cover, and the cover had the weight of several other support pieces hanging off of it.

There was simply no way it was going to work. Without any kind of horizontal supports, with the pieces constantly twisting and spinning, plus the weight of the cover, nothing would stay where it was supposed to. It’s not like we could put the supports up first, since they were designed to run through the channels in the cover. Maybe if we had two more people, we could have done it, but not with just the three of us.

Well, we’re just going to have to try and get things painted without any sort of shelter. We do have the market tent, but it’s broken on one side, so moving it would not be a good idea. We’re supposed to have rain in a few days, though when and how much changes depending on which app I’m looking at. If all goes well, we should be able to get at least a couple of coats done before it gets rained on.

I suppose we should take down that dead spruce, first. The only direction for it to fall without getting hung up on other trees is over the bench. The bench should be strong enough to hand it, though, since it’s built onto a tree stump in the middle, plus it has supports on each end. There are enough branches to keep the full weight of the tree from hitting the bench, too.

We’ll see how that works out!

As for the car port thingy…

I give up!

The Re-Farmer