I looked at the stack of yellow pine studs I had bought with my first cash withdrawal.
“Can we frame the bedrooms out first and cut the windows later?” I asked.
“We can frame whatever you want,” Robert said, pulling his clipboard out of his leather vest. “But if the city inspector rolls by and sees new header beams without a stamped permit, he’ll shut the whole job down. He’ll red-tag the building before the week is out.”
“I don’t have time to wait for the county board to meet next month,” I said.
“Then you’re taking a twelve thousand dollar gamble on a stop-work order,” Robert said. “You want me to cut the studs for the partitions or not?”
“Cut them,” I said.
“It’s your funeral,” he said, setting his level on the sawhorse. “But I’m not putting my name on the electrical pull if we aren’t pulling a permit.”
“I’ll handle the electrical,” I said.
“With what?” Robert asked, looking around the empty shop floor. “You cleared out your savings for the lumber, didn’t you?”
I did not answer him. I picked up the circular saw and set the depth of the blade.
“If the inspector sees these frames before the drywall is taped, we are in trouble, Robert,” I said, raising my voice over the hum of the generator.
“I’m not the one who has to answer to the city,” he said, walking back to his truck to fetch the framing nailer. “Just remember I told you about the window depth before we sheetrocked.”
By two o’clock, the air in the main bay was thick with the grey dust of scoring plasterboard.
“Take the back end,” Robert shouted over the hum of the dust collector.
We lifted a twelve-foot sheet of heavy firecode drywall, our shoulders straining under the seventy-pound weight. The sheet flexed in the middle, throwing the balance toward my side as we cleared the corner of the table saw.
I shifted my grip to keep it from cracking, sliding my bare hand along the steel channel of the partition wall we had just raised.
A sharp edge of the metal stud sliced into the meat of my palm.
