11 May 2012

After all the fun and excitement yesterday, for some reason I slept for 11½ hours last night. Consequently, was just finishing the next course of shingles on the south wall when Perry showed up mid-morning to help install the woodshed doors.  With the first door, took some figuring out how to support the weight while gently maneuvering the hinges into their pockets.  A sturdy 2x4 clamped to the people-door ramp, our old kitchen step stool, and a bunch of cedar shims, did the trick.  The second door went in much easier. By noon both doors were hung, albeit with many adjustments needed before they will close properly and show a consistent reveal around the perimeter. One of those adjustments was to put a 5° back bevel on the two door edges where they meet in the middle, something that I didn’t know to do ‘cause I’ve never built center closing woodshed doors before.  Perry offered me his power planer for the job.  "I don't need no stinkin' power planer," he says to himself, "I'll just use my Skilsaw."  The northern door came out pretty good.  But to call the southern door a hack job just isn’t fair; it’s more like a totally botched hack job… from Hell.  Humble pie in hand, will be borrowing the power planer to repair the damage...  But the doors now close and, after some quality time with a wood chisel and rasp, can be latched. Remember that old saw about the silk purse and the sow’s ear?  Well sometimes when you start with junk (a previously abused 2x4 that was of poor quality to begin with), you end up with junk, i.e., homemade door stops that I’m going to rip out and throw into the burn pile, then remanufacture, on the next day the gods are smiling in my direction.  May be a decade or two… But, you know, when you’re totally filthy and starving, having once again finished work at 7:30 pm, Riunite Lambrusco tastes just fine… drunk straight out of the bottle.