TUSCUMBIA-Act 2? Before you go back looking for Act 1, there isn’t one, but I’ll 
give a recap though from bits and pieces of old posts. My old screen porch was showing its age and replacing the screen and woodwork was in the back of my mine. The contractor who built the house made the back steps too steep, so they weren’t usable with my bad knees. I’d rather walk around to the garage instead of trying to climb up Mount Everest as I have come to call them. A few weeks back, that thought came to the front as my hooligans ripped up the screens trying to break into the house during a severe storm. Last year someone chased them around an old home site and location of a meth lab, and when they couldn’t run over them shot them with a shotgun. Since then they have been terrified of storms. Usually I’ll give them a melatonin to calm them just before a storm hits, but I was at work when the first storm hit and lost the screen in my new screen door and a window and a sliding screen door over the French doors. They want to be near Momma when storms come. I nailed a piece of plywood over the screen door and somehow during the next storm, they tore the screen up off on either side of the screen door and climbed in. I still haven’t figured out how that feat was done. The destruction was pictured in my last post. I had wanted to glass the porch in when I built but it wasn’t in the budget. I decided to check the cost of re-screening versus putting in windows and building a deck in front to move the hot tub out to make more room. So after comparing costs and the amount of use I would gain by creating a garden room, it was a no brainer.
The deck is up, the window openings are framed up and the windows are ordered. Cement board was installed over 
the flooring waiting for me to lay the tile. Now each box of ten tiles weighs around 50 pounds, or so it seems. We calculated that it would take around 21 boxes and three bags of mortar to do the room. Now to get the 21 boxes of tile and three bags of mortar up seven steps to the top of the deck and into the garden room area. I told myself one you get the truck unloaded you can eat lunch. I’m standing there counting steps and thinking about bad knees going up seven steps with a fifty-pound load twenty four times on a bad knee when Mom comes over and says something about using the loader.
I get the John Deere out and pull it up to the back of the truck and load nine boxes of tile and the three bags of mortar in it. I drove around to the backside of the deck thinking I was going to lift it above the rails. Nine times fifty and three times fifty lifted up as high as the loader would go, brought visions of toppling over into the deck. Bad idea I told myself, so back around the barn over a plant stand back around the barn to the steps. Only there’s the septic tank to worry about breaking the lid and caving in. I was able to get one side of the tractor off to the side of the tank and got as close to the steps as possible and lifted the load up to a height to avoid bending over when I lifted out the boxes out of the loader, across the deck and into the garden room area. With the gate open to the deck, the Hooligans used the opportunity to explore forbidden territory. First load, piece of cake, now for the second load and I can have lunch.
Twelve boxes of tile remained in the truck. The first six were lifted into the loader, the seventh took a little more 
effort and so on with the rest until the twelfth box really took some doing, but finally was in the loader. Back to the steps to unload twelve fifty pound boxes of tile. The top row of four boxes were slid off of the loader and carried across the deck and stacked in the garden room area. Rest a spell and think about lunch in a little bit, after all it’s almost 14:00 hours and that bowl of cream of wheat is a distant memory. Back to unloading and finally there’s only three left in the loader, piece of cake and you can have lunch. Rest a spell and tackle box number three. By this time my knees and back are asking what, why? Down to two boxes, back and knees are revolting, stomach says come on, piece of cake guys and you can have lunch. I tried to slide box two out of the loader and it’s been super glued to the tractor. Finally after a little tugging and talking to it, I’m carrying that hundred pound box across the deck and into the garden room. One box left, come on now everyone work together and we can do this, only this box weighs a hundred and fifty pounds. Oh neat goldfinches and cardinals are at the feeder, get camera and take a few pictures 
and back to stare at the box.
Finally the last box is hoisted into the garden room. I’m looking around at all the boxes so proud of myself until I realized that I had stacked a couple of towers up in the middle of the room where needed to mark the diagonal to start tiling.
