The first of the structural steel arrived at the house site today on the back of a flat bed truck.  The bed of the truck is not nearly as long as the steel. 

So the steel is haning off the end of the truck by about 10 feet.

Below, in our neighbor's driveway, the crane waits for the steel to be brought down to it.

However, the truck driver refuses to drive the truck down onto the driveway because the driveway is at a large enough angle that he thinks that if he backs the truck down the drive, the steel I-beams will slide off the back of the truck, and if he drives forward down the drive, the steel beams will slide throuh the cab of the truck!  At the same time, the crane cannot come up to the steel because of the power lines that run across the top of the drive.  We seem to be at an unfortunate impass, but eventually, the team convinces the truck driver to attempt to back the truck down the drive. 

And it works!  Now we would be ready to unload the steel, but unfortunately, the crane is broken.  So they have to trade out cranes. 

While waiting for the new crane, Peter convinced the guy working the CAT across the street to come down to our side of the street and unload the steel for us. 

And he has no problem lifting the steel beams off the back of the truck and onto the ground.

After the CAT operator finished unloading the steel, the new crane arrived.

You may notice that this particular crane looks a bit bigger than the last one.  In comparing the two cranes, Peter came to the conclusion that the first crane operator saw the steel beams and where they are going to be placed and decided that the crane did not have the reach to place the steel so he said it was "broken".  Anyway, now we have a big old crane with a big old hook and it can easily pick up the steel beams and place them in their proper locations.

Once the crane gets the steel beam close to the correct position, Russ and Jeff work to guide the beam onto the base and bolt it down.

And the finish product...

At the end of the day, the first two pairs of steel I-beams are erected!

As you can tell by today's entry, we are very excited about the structural steel!  But this is only the beginning....