30 September 2010
A major storm rolled through Vermont today. Laid and parged six sections of the eighth course that were under the shed deck, so stayed relatively dry. And speaking of relatives, early afternoon, when an absolute deluge was in progress and the weather reporter on the radio was recommending people dig out their ark plans, Lynne called. “Jeesus”, she says, “kinda looks like rain.” “Heard tell that it might”, says Burt and I. Yuk, yuk!!! Good news: G. Stone got the RV brake line parts that were special ordered yesterday. Bad news: one of the parts was the wrong one. Didn’t we already go through this drill with the pickup 4WD repairs back in July???? MAYBE the right part will arrive tomorrow… Spent the night at Lynne & Perry’s again.
29 September 2010
The penultimate big day for Delores for this season. Left Fern Lake at 8:00 headed to Middlebury for propane and groceries, then supposedly back to the Leicester General Store for cheap gas. Coming down the steep hill on Fern Lake Road, noticed that the brakes were a bit soft and not as robust as usual. Continued on to Middlebury… as the brake pedal kept getting closer and closer to the floor. Not good, especially driving a 15,000 pound vehicle in traffic! Headed back south, stopped at Hannaford for a few victuals. When I started up again to continue on to Leicester, the brake warning light came on and there was NOTHING left to the brakes. MOST fortunately the G. Stone Ford dealership was less than ¼ mile away. They quickly determined that the left rear brake line had rusted through… and the right rear weren’t long for this world neither. The bad news is that Delores is so old that Ford no longer stocks parts for her. But, after some research, the mechanics found a place they could special order the brake lines. Can you see the $$$ here??? By 1:30 pm was back at Fern Lake via the dealership’s courtesy van. Laid and parged two sections of the eighth course of between-column rocks. Lynne and Perry most graciously provided a delicious dinner and place to lay my head for the night.
28 September 2010
Didn’t feel like building horizontally today (and probably don’t have enough rocks in the pile for another course, anyway), so engaged my creativity and built vertically in the center section at the back of the cellar. Took me awhile to find a square stone of the same size and color as the triangle and circle, but a little trimming with my diamond-tipped Skill saw eventually did the trick. Also used the saw to cut in half lengthwise a 2″ thick piece of slate to form the lintel on which my creative genius is displayed. That diamond-tipped blade is one of the smartest 
purchases I’ve ever made. Found that parging the rocks together after building vertically is not nearly as easy as working one course at a time. Goodro Lumber’s boom truck showed up early afternoon and took away 25 bags of mortar mix that I won’t be needing (out of the 45 that were on the pallet they delivered at the end of July). Put the remaining 14 bags on the pallet that until today was under the camp fire wood supply (necessitating unstacking, building a new platform, then restacking the firewood). Wrapped the mortar mix in four layers of plastic and battened down the hatch, confident that the bags will stay dry over the winter. Went swimming again after work; took a full five minutes to work my way into the water, which is getting just a mite nippy. But, after everything numbed up, the exercise certainly felt good. Blew a gale as a squall moved through after dinner; sounds like a machine gun with the acorns hitting the roof of the RV. So who needs sleep, anyway?
27 September 2010
Parged the seventh course. Figure I’m about ⅓ done with laying rocks between the concrete columns. Threatened rain all day… but didn’t start until just as I was finishing the cement work. Not that I would have minded raindrops falling, having the shed deck to work under. Then down t’ Merry’s & Marty’s for another wonderful repast… and most pleasant evening.
25 September 2010
Helped Perry move six pickup-loads of wood from where he had cut and split it at the lower end of his property into his “ready” supply stacks near his house. Small payback for all the time and effort he has put into the shed construction project this summer. A nice fall day, in sharp contrast to 100° in the blazing sun the last time we moved wood at his place. He and Lynne made a delicious vegetarian pizza for dinner.
24 September 2010
Finished laying and parging the sixth course. Called Tammy Walsh to arrange for her to come over next week to help me find some more good building rock – with her backhoe! Temp today climbed to 78° so went for a swim while the camp fire was turning into coals for chicken BBQ. Water temp now a brisk 67°. Entering the lake, you-know-who wasn’t very happy, but there was no danger of falling asleep while “relaxing” after a hard day’s work.
23 September 2010
Got half the sixth course laid and parged. Serious shortage of good rocks really slowing things down, especially as the top of the sixth course has to be pretty much even with the two-foot mark all the way around. (Every third course is “level” for Type A aesthetic reasons.) Marty stopped by to admire progress and offered to let me scavenge rock from the old dump on his property. Looked at what was available there and came back with one good rock. Sigh…. Mid-afternoon a seaplane was using Fern Lake for touch and go landing practice.
22 September 2010
Finished parging the fifth course and started laying rock for the sixth course. Went for a canoe after dinner. Noticed that the mice are building a nice condo in the dock shack. Guess we won’t be leaving anything chewable down there over the winter. Amazingly (and totally jinxing Delores by saying this) there have been zero signs of mice in the RV all summer.
21 September 2010
Dry laid the fifth course of between-column rocks for the eight sections not heretofore completed. Starting to run low on “good” rocks, exponentially increasing the rock-laying challenges.
20 September 2010
Virginia to Fern Lake in just under 9 hours, even with a couple of gas stops and construction delays. Canoed over to the Fern Lake island after arrival for some quiet meditation.
17 September 2010
Back to Virginia in 9½ hours; the usual 1 hour trip from Baltimore to Springfield took 1:45 even though I was onto the Baltimore – Washington Parkway by 3:30 pm, in theory ahead of the Friday afternoon rush hour traffic. Nice theory…
16 September 2010
Spent the morning loading the van with everything that won’t be needed at Fern Lake for the rest of the building season (wanna bet????), including the radial arm saw (which Marty helped wrestle into place) and all but one of the ladders. Quite a load! Spent some quality time early afternoon on the RV roof caulking myriad cracks. This, apparently, needs to be an annual maintenance item. Then picked rock for an hour before the forecast rain rolled in. Ceil Todd came over to admire the season’s progress. She’s a Town Lister (and our across the road neighbor), so hope my property tax assessment doesn’t go up! Wet anyway, decided to go for one last (?) swim, which was amazingly invigorating once the shock of entry wore off. Ulterior motive was to raise the dock steps out of the water for the winter. Boy are they HEAVY after soaking in the lake all season!!!! Retired to the RV, whose heater works just fine, thank you!
15 September 2010
Finished Breaking Dawn sometime after midnight. Of course that meant that Alverta called at 7:30 to talk about some condo issues. Hope I was at least semi-coherent. Laid and parged seven sections of the fifth course of between-column rock walls. First day in a week that it didn’t rain. High temps last few days in the mid-60’s; lake temp has plummeted to 68 degrees.
13 September 2010
Finished dry-laying the fourth course, then parged three sections. Finished Eclipse, then foolishly went over to Lynne’s to borrow her copy of Breaking Dawn…
12 September 2010
Installed the new tarp on the shed deck to protect everything underneath until the woodshed gets built next summer. Started raining again just as I finished… perfect timing! Then started laying the fourth course of between-column rocks, staying nice and dry under the waterproof covering. Got 10 of the 16 sections done… had the “eye” for fitting stone today. Lynne called mid-afternoon to invite me over to their place for another fabulous dinner. She lent me her copy of Eclipse. Stayed up ‘till the wee hours trying desperately to put it down.
11 September 2010
South Burlington condo lease signed today… finally!!!! Worked with my new tenants to repaint the living / dining room and hallway, preparatory to them moving in next week. Wait a minute, didn’t I just pay a small fortune to George Bedard to paint those rooms???? Yes, but the paint selected for those walls won’t go with their furniture (she says), so, good landlord that I am, agreed to a color change so long as they were willing to help do the work. Dinner with Alverta, then returned to Fern Lake via Lowes to purchase a 10 mil tarp for the shed deck.
10 September 2010
Took the day off from shed building activities. Instead, spent time cooking, cleaning, building an extension for the RV dinette table so that there would be room to seat five, and finishing the Dick Francis novel. Marty, Merry, Perry, and Lynne came for lasagna, fine wine, and great conversation… the Pirkkanens and the Lapiduses having a common history of living in New York City and many mutual acquaintances in the Lake Dunmore / Fern Lake environs.
9 September 2010
The third course of between-column rocks is done! A chilly, rainy day, so was nice working under cover of the shed floor… even though all the seams leak without a tarp covering the structure. Had a real bad Stephenie Meyer craving, so visited the Salisbury Free Library mid-afternoon. The library had her entire oeuvre, but the one volume I wanted was the only one checked out. Rats! Got a Dick Francis instead… It being a good day for cooking, made a simply fabulous sauce for tomorrow night’s lasagna dinner.
8 September 2010
Perry called at 7:30, catching me still slumbering away. Couldn’t have been because of too much of the Lapidus’ excellent wine… After a mug of strong coffee, helped him install some kitchen cabinets at his job site in Middlebury. Rain overnight revealed that there is a slight low spot in the shed floor over the number 2 beam, just as we suspected. Oh, well… it is what it is at this point. Discovered that the green tarp leaks like a sieve. So much for “saving” money by buying a 5 mil vice 10 mil tarp. Parged four sections of the third course of between-column rocks.
7 September 2010
Raked out and fine-tune leveled the area between the shed footers, removing three wheelbarrow-loads of ankle twister rocks. Vast improvement in appearance and walking-around / ladder placement safety. Perry arrived mid-morning. We discovered that the shed had grown overnight: west side went from 20′ ¼″ to 20′ ½″ and the east side went from 20′ even to 20′ ⅜″. Must have been the rain shower overnight?!?! The diagonals measured exactly the same, so the structure is within 1/16″ of square. Not too shabby, says the chief amateur builder. 
Even though Mr. Doubting Thomas didn’t think the joist hanger nails could ever be pulled out, Perry quickly proved me wrong… and reset the misaligned joist into its proper position. He then used his portable power planer and 6′ level to true up the joists, though it looks like the second beam in from the north is a tad lower than the others. While Perry was attending to other business over the noon hour, I made up a 1:2 mortar and sand mix to fill all the countersink cavities where the J-bolts lay, then filled-in and leveled the wane areas on the two beams that had 
been sistered together. Hope no one ever wants to get to those J-bolt nuts again, as they’ll need a jackhammer to do so. Then the fun started! Sure am glad that Perry was here to guide the laying of the Advantech, as he knew exactly how to get it right… plus all the tricks of the trade that made the job move right along. Used a whole case of PL400 plus 375 2½” Deckmate star-drive screws to fasten the flooring to the beams and joists. Doubt if a small nuclear device would budge the resulting structure. That floor ain’t a gonna squeak! Covered everything with a green tarp until we’re ready to build the actual wood shed… sometime next summer. Another delightful dinner at Marty’s and Merry’s rounded out a very productive day.
6 September 2010
Had to turn on the RV heater overnight to keep the interior warm enough for sleeping. Looks like the yellow jacket nest is finally dead… no sign of activity all day. Puttered around doing odds and ends: repaired the RV tile floor that was pulling up, sawed tongues and grooves off the Advantech that will become end sheets, installed temporary rim joists on the east and west sides, made a 3-foot step stool out of the 6-foot step ladder that was injured during the beam hoisting process, nursed my wounds, etc. Discovered that one end of one of the joists was installed 1½″ west of where it was supposed to be. Me bad!!!!
5 September 2010
Used a second can of wasp and hornet insecticide on the yellow jacket nest at crack of dawn. Hard to tell if the spraying had any effect as fall fell overnight… and the low temperatures may have discouraged flying insect activity. Zook and I cut and hung all of the 2 x 4 joists between the shed beams. Our right arms may never work again – six nails per joist hanger, two joist hangers per joist, 40 joists in all… that’s a lot of pounding into very tough red oak. When the pounding was done and congratulatory pictures taken, drove Zook up to South Burlington where we had an early dinner with Alverta before Zook caught a flight back to Virginia.
4 September 2010
Installed the 2 x 10 pressure treated rim joists on the north and south end beams, then sledge hammered those two beams into a close approximation of their correct positions… which didn’t make the yellow jackets any too happy. Then Zook and I used the van’s screw jack to raise each end of the four middle beams (so that I wouldn’t hit the concrete columns when cutting them off) and chain sawed them to a semblance of their correct length. Zook did the jacking, then wisely stood far away taking pictures while I did the cutting. By the time I finished trimming the 12th beam end, Zook pronounced me ready to carve a wooden bear. Then we sledge hammered the middle beams parallel to the end beams as best we could… which really, really didn’t make the yellow jackets happy. Perry brought over his deep socket ratchet set (mine being, inevitably, in Virginia), so that we could tighten the J-bolt nuts, guaranteeing that the beams will never come off the concrete columns, even in a Category 5 hurricane. While performing that job, I had to move a loose sheet of Advantech out of the way… and inadvertently moved it off of the beam that was holding it up. Most fortunately, Zook and Perry were not underneath when the sheet went crashing to the cellar floor. Somewhat less fortunately, I was leaning heavily on the sheet when it exited southwards. With blazingly fast reflexes I hurled myself onto another beam... landing hard enough that a gentleman really should propose marriage after such an encounter. The resulting cuts and bruises will, I’m sure, be gone within a week or two.
3 September 2010
Lots of activity around the underground yellow jacket nest this morning, so they got another dose of spray. Unfortunately the nest entrances (note the plural) are in the tangle of roots belonging to the huge white pine next to the shed excavation, so firing for effect is more than tricky. The Goodro Lumber truck showed up at 7:30 with the Advantech ¾″ tongue and grove engineered wood and construction adhesive needed to create the shed floor. Tammy came back about 8:00, just as Zook and I were finishing making some thick cribbing needed to raise the working 
end of her Kubota higher off the ground… and hopefully high enough for her to be able to set the shed beams in place. Miracle of miracles, the first four beams went up and on with minimal fuss and bother, though the hole for the J-bolt obviously was an inch too far south on the west end of the first 10″ beam. No one to blame but me for that little faux pas, as I both measured for and drilled that hole. Raising the second 10″ beam was another matter entirely. The Kubota’s main boom kept dropping with that heavy a load, so we despaired of ever getting the beam high enough to go over the J-bolt pins. To make an hour long tale of really hard travail mercifully short, we eventually prevailed… and with all fingers and toes intact. After Tammy left, I redrilled the hole that was
out of place in the first 10″ beam, creating a REALLY ugly cavity, big enough to hide a Volkswagen in, that will (mercifully) be hidden under the shed upper level flooring. Zook also redrilled several countersink holes that were either not deep or wide enough. During that process my Makita 3/8″ drill gave up the ghost (bearings making an awful bad grinding sound). On a positive note, we checked dimensions and found that the end beams are only 1/16″ out of square… more than good enough for this project. Then we tried to trim off the ends of the two end beams, first using Perry’s Milwaukee Sawsall with a new 12″ blade, then using a very dead hand saw, then using my trusty brush saw. No joy… and three strikes means bring in the relief pitcher, Mr. Jonsered. By well-earned adult beverage time, three of the four corners were cut to length, though one cut was not even close to perfect. Guess I won’t be entering the chainsaw ice sculpture carving contest this winter… Marty, Merry, and Perry arrived to admire the day’s progress… and just in time to help Zook and me keep the Fern Lake beer consumption metric at a proper level. Still lots of activity around the evil stinging insect nest all day… so emptied the Raid can into the entrance holes at dusk.
2 September 2010
Zook and I spent the majority of the day dry laying the third course of between-column rocks. Got all but two sections done. About 3:30 Tammy Walsh arrived with her Kubota loader / backhoe. She moved several bucket loads of gravel into the area between the shed footers so that we could bring the grade uniformly up to 6″ below the footer tops. Then we tried to raise one of the beams into place using her backhoe and my logging chain. Unfortunately, even at full extension with the backhoe arm, the beam was still a good foot lower than the tops of the J-bolts onto which it needed to be placed. As it was now quitting / cooling-off-in-the-lake time, we left the beam-raising mission until the morning. I climbed a step ladder next to the east-side double column while futzing around with the beam. Zap, an evil flying insect (wasp / hornet / yellow jacket?) stung my left hand, almost exactly where it was stung a few weeks back. The pain, as Bill Cosby once said, was terrific. Tammy spotted the nest entrance, not two feet from where I had spent quite awhile working this morning! Lucky I only got one sting… and then for no apparent reason other than sheer cussedness. So after a couple of Benadryl, chased down by a delicious BBQ chicken dinner, Zook and I headed out in search of some Raid Wasp and Hornet Killer by way of Lynne’s and Perry’s water spigot (we’ve gone through 6 gallons of the clear wet stuff in two days of mid-nineties temperatures). The Hannaford in Middlebury was sold out, the Rite Aide didn’t have any, but, most fortuitously, the Hannaford in Brandon had two cans. We’ll see in the morning whether I squirted the right hole tonight.
1 September 2010
Toby Rheaume brought his portable sawmill over for a couple of hours. He was able to get a 6″ beam out of the log I had set aside for a new 10″ beam, then we had to scrounge through the discard pile to find a log from which we could (just barely) get a 4″ sister beam. After Toby departed, Zook and I sistered that beam together using a whole tube of PL400 construction adhesive, then tried to bind it using 5/16″ lag bolts. Unfortunately (and is invariably the case), the long ¼″ drill bit I needed for the lag bolt pilot holes was in Virginia. Using a shorter bit and then forcing
the bolt in resulted in one sheared off bolt and some words that can’t be repeated. Guess I have to stop eating Wheaties… So after lunch, while Zook drilled countersink holes, I made a quick trip to Goodro Lumber for a ¼ x 9″ ship auger bit. Once the two beams that needed to be sistered were made up, used Perry’s new monster Rigid ½″ drill with a 1″ ship auger bit to drill the holes through which the cement column J-bolts will go. That combination pulled chunks of wood (vice sawdust) from the bore hole – now that’s a MANLY tool!!!!. Zook used the Rigid for a few minutes with a 2″ Forstner bit to drill a couple of countersink holes… until the torque of the drill caused the bit to simply shatter. Woof!!!! By the end of the day all the beams were ready for hoisting and Ice and Water Shield (donated by Perry) had been adhered to the tops of the columns (so that moisture won’t leach out of the cement into the beams… causing them to rot over time). Lake temperature still a balmy (yet MOST refreshing) 80 degrees.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)