This is a metal owl sculpture that came from my grandparents house.  It’s Casey’s from way back when, we did a raffle type thing for all of their grandchildren when we were younger, to divy up all the cool stuff they had.  Funny thing though is my grandparents accidentally gave this away to their neighbors.  My dad asked them if they had it because it seemed like the only place it could have disappeared to, and he had a letter from my grandparents that was signed from years ago saying that it was supposed to be given to Casey.  So right now its at our house as you can see, and next time Casey comes up, he will be surprised by it.  It’s pretty awesome, I’m jealous!

So on the right are the two 2″x4″‘s that we screwed together on top of the jack on top of a piece of wood on the ground.  On the left is the beam that we fixed.  I should have thought to take a before picture so you could see how far we needed to move it.  Originally the bottom of the beam had fallen off the pier (concrete column) that it was sitting on.  So we jacked up the beam (the horizontal piece thats above both of these) and the support basically fell out from under the beam.  Then we put the bottom of the post on top of the column and filled back in around it with stones.  Then we started jacking up the beam more and I got on the ladder you see on the left and started hitting the post with the sledge hammer.  The bottom stayed in the same place because it was already on the pier, but we had to move the top about 18″ and it usually took me a few hits to move it an inch.  And then my dad would jack up a little higher and I would hit it again.  Every time there were some scary cracks and creaks.  I was very afraid we would break the beam, that would have been a big problem.  But luckily we didn’t and now everyone can be happy!  The End~