29 July 2018

Two of my pet peeves are (1) carpenters who drive screws so deep that, as soon as the least moisture swells the wood, the screw heads just flat disappear and (2) carpenters who just grab any old screw in their pouch to put in a piece of wood instead of getting a handful of the screws being used for everything else on the project.  Do you sense a rant coming?  First thing this morning went to convert the ceiling joist trapezoid into a rectangle.  With some difficulty, removed the joist hanger (6 nails fastened into the LVL, so holding very tenaciously).  Then went to take out the two screws holding the end of the joist to the LVL.  Both driven almost to China and no matter what angle I held the impact driver bit, they just wouldn’t come out.  Grrrr…  Used my knife to pare away the fibrous overburden to discover that someone (not me) had used star-drive instead of square-drive screws on this joist.  Double grrrr!  After the joist was moved and refastened, took out my frustrations by drilling more holes to accommodate electrical wiring.  Then I decided to get artsy (big mistake!) by beveling off the ends of the two 2x12’s that will catch the top of the barn staircase.  Only problem (other than that I’m an idiot for even trying this) was that my trusty Skilsaw only cuts 2¼″ deep… and, of course, the depth of two 2x’s is 3″, so you have to cut the bevels from both sides.  Obviously, there wasn’t a snowballs chance that the four cuts (two for each bevel) would line up.  So tried to fix the resulting disaster with my jigsaw.  Made thing even worse!  Withdrawing from the field of battle with tail between my legs, after lunch used the Kubota to roughly backfill the barn foundation on the south and west sides, stealing fill back from the space aliens.  (They didn’t seem to mind…)  Then had lots of fun (sic) raking the south side smooth and level.  That done, decided the lake and sauna needed my attention more than the west side of the barn.