The Amazing Team Mario

On our last trip, JC told us that he had commitments for the next two Saturdays. Gerald and I were trying to get our final inspection passed before Dec. 1, so that had us concerned.

When we talked about what to do about that, we remembered Mario. Mario had been a foreman on our framing crew. We had also hired him and an assistant to do some of the siding. He was fast and he was good.

He always liked to work two days, and he came with an assistant, which meant a bit more money. But we felt it was worth it. So Gerald called and it turned out that he was available. He showed up at about 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, with his son Robert. The first thing they did was to install our fireplace mantle.

That done, Gerald went to work on building and installing a box to hold our TV.

Our original plan was to face the fireplace with slate. But for a number of reasons, we decided to do slate only below the mantle and to use some of the wain-edge siding we had left over above it.

Gerald installed the first few courses.

And Mario took over to install the high parts.