Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Babble, you say. Babel, I say.
Last Summer I had a long (10 foot) and wide (18 inches) piece of Ipe delivered. Breaking down the pallet yielded seven 10 foot 2×4’s. In the backyard there’s a patch that’s wild with vines: grape, bittersweet, Boston Ivy, and woody nightshade. I’ve long enjoyed watching vines compete. I thought perhaps to make a trellis.
Proceeding with little planning (that’s the norm) the ten footers were angled and braced. Some extension was crafted in the typical reach for greatness.
I dwelt a little on what should cap them, some great statue perhaps or a spooky Illuminati symbol, or worse. Ultimately I deemed these too message laden, but a wind sculpture, aye, might just be the ticket. Etsy.
A little wrangling and to the top it was affixed.
It still needs to be set standing more straight but the main task is accomplished. Whereas John Lennon favored the watching of wheels there are so many, and watching the wheels that choose which wheels to watch is so meta. I behold in peace the whirling and do not lament that I may or may not witness the fall of the tower.
Video soon to follow or a link to the website that will watch continuously and archive the footage in perpetuity.
It was when the walls began to melt that I had a sinking feeling. Clear eyed I’d go back each morning. Is this really happening?
Homasote and pin hole pipe leaks are incompatible bedfellows. Homasote is such a lowly thing as it is and pin hole leaks are insidious. Depicted below are the first stages of tear down, showing no less than four layers of wallpaper, said homasote, and that which is underneath. The homasote had acted as a sponge, carrying the moisture several feet from the corner and fostering a vigorous growth of black mold.
sd
That corner contained a wide drain pipe, hot and cold feed going up, an several wire conduits.
Witness that wet green. And yes, the ceiling too. After finding the leak(s) my friendly neighborhood plumber replaced the failed copper with pex.
No less than seven rodent skeletons (it’s a very old house) were found in removing the old sheathing. One perhaps was a now extinct dire rodent.
I had help with the new walls and ceiling, a mirror cabinet and nice cherry casing for the pipe run. I was prepared to celebrate. I even trimmed the window, the door, and the baseboards in cherry all by myself.
Not so fast, Rabbit. In the course of temporarily moving the toilet and sink to allow the work to be done it was discovered that both of these had slow leaks, leaks that had to some extent rotted the floor boards adjacent. Without fear of wind or vertigo I undertook to replace the floor using the ample stocks of cherry wood in the barn.
Of course removing the floor meant once again taking out the toilet and sink. Showing subfloor after removal.
Cherry for the floor milled accordingly.
Cut to fit and again prepared to celebrate – but
the old subfloor, not rotted but tired, very tired. Screwing through the cherry to hold the boards down, the screws would not bite but rather spun, endlessly if so twirled. Vexation in heaps. Decided to replace subfloor as well, with two fit cut sheets of plywood, 1/2 + 3/8 thick to emulate the thickness of what was being replaced.
But observe, on the left of the toilet drain where the old subfloor had to be cut, that if a new floor were placed there, there’d be no support. Maybe a new floor joist in the wanting spot? At this point it was largely a journey of amazement anyway.
just to the right of the blue pex above note the notch I carved to support said new joist.
said new joist, of lvl.
and sparing you the minor challenges, this time arriving at success. Here it is fully tarted out, with a new sink no less.
Learnings? Not to underestimate, of course. Underestimation is the hallmark of the optimist. I have often too bright a regard for what is possible and too little a realistic sense of what it will take to actualize.
Eight years ago or so I completed my first chair, a custom design Adirondack chair from some very nice mostly oak dumpster wood and various scraps. It used my preferred methods – no screws, dowel and glue joinery only.
sd
There turned out to be a big however, however. Thankfully it was I who experienced the failure of the chair. It had been serving outside for several years and sitting in it one evening, I guess the weather had wrought rot to where the front legs adjoin the seat joists, kr,kr, kerplomp! Not far to fall and nought really but the indignity of failure as the injury. Learning, ah yes learning, that’s how to look at it. I’d discovered yet another thing that didn’t work. Good at that!
I did not want the story to end that way. The pieces quietly taunted me in the barn. Eventually against the grain I went – “Screw this” I said to myself. And so indeed I did. Everywhere a dowel had been, or nearabouts, I placed instead screws.
Sanded it down again, painted the default blue/purple
and while all may not be right with the world, at least this crinkly corner is corrected.
I’d call this an example of patience and perseverance. Of course larger questions always hover, as to whether what is it that is worth being patient and persevering about. Such questions edge toward being imponderable, though avoiding them is at ones own peril. I follow the feeling of the thing, as if things had feelings. I can ponder now in chair replete with lessons.
Referencing back to ‘October Organizations‘, specifically the piles of wood on the right, there are positive functional adjustments.
This may look devil-may-care, but far from it really. Pieces requiring proper stacking are stacked (ok, that was hasty), the pile itself can be circumnavigated, and the long table top aspect is at the right height to double as a temporary workbench.
Here it is layered in protective scrap 2 x 8’s. It served nicely to harvest boards from the wiggly cherry standing in the background.
A few years ago the floor in the pantry of my 200+ year old house fell in. The old paint had strong sense of having served admirably, and the wood was surprisingly viable. Couldn’t toss it.
Cleaning the barn this past month I decided to do something with the old boards I’d saved. How much utility will be garnered, that’s quite unclear. The process however, and the naive delight of just making something(s), those make it all worth it.
Began with clean up of the barn. A great pile of wood, long at the center of the barn, was sorted. Cinder blocks were allocated, 2 x 8’s were cut. A place in the basement was made and they were set atop the 2 x 8’s that in turn were set atop the cinder blocks, all in reverse order of course. This activity, un-pictured, caused the usual reaction by the local wooden Buddha community.
and how could it not be so, will such a magnitude of space liberated in which to exercise freedom?
Now what to do with such freedom? Heavens, there really are no limits except time and strength and blood and vision, boundless really. I guess then to reach heavenward, at least colloquially, a good first step.
There was a ten foot long wooden pallet that had arrived earlier in the summer. It spoke of not being garbage, of wanting to be involved in a higher enterprise. So be it, my ready answer, a trellis thou shalt become –
Probably sixteen more slats before fit for deployment. There is a small plateau on the southwest side of the yard, the grapevine plateau, all of 18′ x 10′ that seethes with grapevines, also bittersweet, Boston ivy, woody nightshade, a great richness of vines. The trellis will be set there to host a great dance of coexistence.
Hurricane Lee this year proved pretty much a nothing-burger, at least to the coast of Maine. As it arrived there was some promise of drama, some stirring in the sky. This is just a color post, no commentary.
To be happy as a delicate glass bubble you must earnestly hope that the world around you offers proper support.
You may recall a few years ago the construction of a (naive) orb support from an old hand-hewn beam. A proud thing but not deep on design to resist the rage and power of rot. Rot gripped viciously from below, the scraps shown here –
Orb support, some might say that this is what folks do, protect their delicate orbs so carefully, indeed, I felt compelled as well. I had some pressure treated wood lying about. After chopping off the rotted base I affixed it.
The prospect of a better world can be enticing, of course. Rather than a cross a windmill, not for any symbolic reason, simply to avoid any further hacking into the central column.
By this endeavor an interval has been purchased. Absent some graver and more particular calamity the support should last for, hmm, my bet is a decade, I could lose that bet. We never really know the weather.
And what is this? I was visiting my child in Estonia this past April. They had to work on several of the days and so I scanned about for seeds, shells, rocks, the usual things I gather. I noticed that there was an ancient (not rock-time scale) tree, the Tamme-Lauri oak, some 800 years old, about 2 hours inland from where I was staying in Parnu. To it I drove, very relaxed countryside, and when I arrived there was no one the there, just a field and what you might call an Ent.
Those are storks on the lesser posts.
Very wondrous. How could one not want to gather acorns? I walked around the tree in a reverent and studious manner, searching the ground for same. Nada. April is not the best month to gather acorns. Daunted I was not, however. I queried my inner Druid as to how to proceed. “Eat one of the fallen leaves” came back. Of course. Crisp and crunchy it was. Again I walked around it, more reverently and studiously. A dozen unbroken and unblemished!
As I exited this vision trance a stray man had arrived to behold the tree. His examination was most cursory, he came up, looked at it thoughtfully for a minute or two, and set himself to walk off. Being unable to speak Estonian at all I raised my hand and signaled to him. It seemed such a correct human interaction to wordlessly give him one acorn.
It’s relatively flat country out there, not much rock, some glacial granite. I used a fallen branch of the tree to dig out a small watermelon sized piece of red granite. Also, amazingly, looking around at the few other rocks in the field I found an area where there were empty snail shells. The trifecta of rock, shell, seed.
Back in America I have an indoor garden where I nurture plants that have caught my interest. Acorns planted and –
utterly joyful. Actually there are two that sprouted. Mid-coast Maine is not so climatically different than Estonia but getting an 800 year lease, I have no idea how to do that. All in all this was a signature positive experience. I have trepidation about getting it outside and protecting it for the rest of my lifetime. Such is the nature of caring and trying I guess.
