10 May 2012

Started work at crack of dawn, having lain awake most of the night thinking about all the things that had to be done before the doors would be ready to hang and having promised Perry (who is VERY busy at the moment) that hanging the doors would take no more than one hour of his time.  Perry showed up at 8:00 to inspect my east wall staging proposal; together we noodled out how to incorporate an additional set of scaffolding to make the staging safer and more user friendly. Perry then left for his own jobsite, indicating that he would be back to return scaffolding and hang the doors about noonish.  While disassembling the scaffolding, stepped in a large (and, I might add, very slippery) offering left by a black lab who lives down the street and who stops by every few days to inspect the premises… among other activities, apparently.  Could things get any worse?  Why, yes, Martha, they could!  Was feverishly putting up the trim around the doorway and mismeasured the northern vertical by one inch. Caught that mistake just before running the saw blade through the wood.  Whew!  Then made the exact same mistake with the southern vertical, didn’t double check the measurement (oh, foolish me), and cut a very expensive 8 foot piece of 5/4 x 4 #1 pine exactly one inch too short.  The atmosphere of the entire county turned blue a moment later and it will be weeks before those particular posterior bruises fade!  Fortunately I had another piece of the same wood, ostensibly for the trim around the other woodshed door.  Had just finished routing out the door jamb hinge pockets (the first time) at noon, so technically the doors could have been hung if Perry had arrived at that point.  As he wasn’t yet present, installed the aluminum door threshold, having first tried to cut it two inches too long… but caught that error before putting saw to metal.  Now 1 o’clock and no Perry, so took a break for a long overdue lunch.  Returned to the woodshed and realized that I hadn’t allowed for the thickness of the hinge leaves in calculating the depth to rout the door and door jamb hinge pockets.  As the hinges were already attached securely to the doors, corrected that little faux pas by routing the door jamb hinge pockets ⅛″ deeper.  Rushed the job (convinced that Perry would arrive momentarily), so those hinge pockets ain’t real pretty.  Now everything really was ready to hang the doors, so decided to fabricate a wooden device to quickly and precisely align the cedar shingles as they are put onto the wall.  Perry says that's how the pros do it.  Got that rig built and was just about to try it out when Perry finally arrived, not having had the greatest of days himself.  By the time we got back from returning Bob Ross’ scaffolding to his place on Lake Dunmore, Perry had to rush off to another commitment.  Tried out the new shingle alignment rig.  Worked horribly!  So started to put up another course on the south wall using my tried and true string line method, when once again it started to rain and I decided I’d had enough fun for the day.