24 September 2020

 Put the final four snow guards on the woodshed roof above the entry door.  With that installation the Triangle Square Circle construction marathon is

D∙O∙N∙E!!!!

 Construction began:17 July 2008, so total duration has been 4,453 days (12 years, 2 months, 8 days).  Seems like only yesterday…

Square footage built:     Woodshed                                     663

                                        Walkway                                   1,260

                                        Sauna (incl/ deck)                        320

                                         Sauna woodshed                           19

                                         House                                       3,854

                                        Waterfront deck & dock              288

                                         Barn                                            934

                                                                        Total       7,338 ft²

 Linear feet of stone walls built: 1,103

Cost of chiropractor for back realignment: $0.00

Delivery tickets from Goodro’s Lumber: 519 totaling $151,645.10  (and that’s with a 10% discount for prompt payment).  No wonder they’re always smiling when I show up to shop.

Number of people who worked on construction: 126 of whom 18 were volunteered (former????) friends and family.

Goose Creek Builders labor hours: 4,146 ½ .

My labor hours: countless!

 Total construction cost: you don’t want to know!  Suffice it to say that we only ran 10.4% over my original budget, and that’s with the house coming in $4,453 under budget.  But we have a really, really nice barn!

Value of having a beautiful home and property on Fern Lake: priceless.

Value of having a wife who likes her new house: beyond priceless!

 

THE END

23 September 2020

 With help from Jordan Ahrnquist (accomplished actor and next door neighbor Kate Middleton’s boyfriend) installed the upper courses of snow guards on the east and south sides of the house roof.  Those snow guards were attached to the standing seams 12′ 4″ and 14′ 4″ above the drip edge in a staggered pattern. All went well until the ladder that I had laid on the roof to provide firm footing slipped off its lower-end brace.  Fortunately I had just tightened the set screws on a snow guard so had something solid to grab onto as I started slipping down the roof.  Jordan quickly to the rescue!  Hearts restarted, we soon finished that job. Jordan left shortly before noon, whereupon I continued by putting the lower (24″ and 48″ above the drip edge) two courses on the east and south sides of the house and the east side of the barn.  That was a lot of ladder climbing, which I certainly am not used to!

22 September 2020

 Early afternoon Dino and I retrieved the powder coated snow guards from Durasol Awnings.  Look great!  Getting the 142 snow guard set screws back into their holes was a significant challenge as there was usually just a little bit of powder coating on the first couple of threads, making it way too easy to cross thread the screws.  And, as the set screws are stainless steel and the snow guard housing is aluminum, the housing lost that battle every time.   

21 September 2020

 Picked up Delores at Central Vermont Truck Repair (CVTR) in Rutland and returned her to Fern Lake by way of Green Mountain Garage in Brandon.  Delores has been down at CVTR since early this month to have her engine oil pan replaced.  Unfortunately (as is always the case with Delores), the new oil pan arrived at the shop damaged and could not be repaired, so CVTR is again scouring the Internet looking for one that will fit a circa 1996 Ford V-8 engine.  Any and all leads appreciated!  The stop at Green Mountain Garage was for her annual state inspection (passed with flying colors!), new windshield wipers, and a marker light cover that came up missing sometime in the past year.  Pikey came by late afternoon with the test powder coated snow guard… which also came through the process with flying colors.  He took away the other 70 for processing tomorrow.

19 September 2020

 Spent a couple of happy hours spreading hay / straw mulch on Dino the north lawn.

18 September 2020

 Tammy dropped off two bales of The Original Mainely Mulch, a proprietary blend of hay and straw imported from Lucerne Farms in… yes, Maine!  Who’d a thunk it?!?!  She also presented her bill, which was about $1,000 less than I was expecting.  BIG smile!  Pikey came by to take away one of the snow guards for a test powder coating.  Seems I should have ordered them without the primer, as said primer has been known to blister when put though a 392°F oven as part of the powder coating process.  Paint blistering = bad juju!

17 September 2020

 Tammy having been gone to Virginia and back the last five days to visit Fran Viko’s newborn great granddaughter (Fran is Tammy’s longtime partner), Tammy and Roy came back to work here shortly after 9.  By noon we (again with much help (sic) from Dino) had finished rebuilding the stone wall on the north side of the house and removed multiple bucket loads of extra rocks from the lawn.  How did we end up with so many extra rocks, you wonder?  Well, so do I!  After lunch we put the very last of the A-stone in the trenches alongside the new / rebuilt walls, covered that with filter fabric cut 2′ wide, spread Bob’s topsoil overtop, raked everything smooth, then cast 5 pounds of Paris Farmer’s Union sun & shade grass seed hither and yon.  An hour after Tammy and Roy departed, Pikey Many (you’ll remember him from the Woodshed and Barn roofing sagas) came by.  He now works for Durasol Systems, an awning manufacturer in Middlebury, who just happen to have the only powder coating facility in Vermont.  Pikey brought me a sample of a Red Oxide colored powder coated metal, which he thought would best match the Colonial Red standing seam roofs an all the Triangle Square Circle buildings.  Why would I need such a thing, you again wonder?  Well that’s because a half hour after Pikey left, UPS showed up with the 71 Berger SG-1 EBK snow guards I ordered last week.  Those snow guards were primed with black epoxy at the factory (which used to offer Colonial Red powder coating as an option, but, alas, no more).  As originally desired, snow slides off the 6:12 pitch standing seam metal roofs just fine.  The problem is that those avalanches severely compress when they hit the driveways / front & side walkways, to the point that sometimes the big, commercial-duty snow blower on the Kubota can barely remove the piles.  Since the roof structure on the house and barn were enormously over-engineered, the time has come to keep the snow on the roof rather than let it come plummeting down where people regularly walk / drive.

11 September 2020

 Nate showed up at 9 with another load of A-stone, needed to fill the trench Tammy dug yesterday.  Tammy and Roy arrived just before 9:30 to start the rebuilding of the wall along the north side of our property.  We got 36 feet done before Miller time.  For the most part, we just took off the top layer or two of rocks and then built up from the remaining base.  However, in one spot the base was not set quite right and we had to pull everything out of the way and start again from ground level.  It’s a good thing Tammy is so skilled a backhoe operator, as those base rocks (that Jim set so easily with his monster excavator) weren’t small!  However, let’s also say that it’s a good thing that (1) there are a lot of trees between that wall and Marty & Merry’s house (to stop rolling rocks from ending up in their bedroom) and (2) I am quite experienced with snagging errant rocks with a logging chain.

10 September 2020

 Tammy and Roy got here shortly after 9, having done two smaller jobs before arriving.  We continued building the wall at the northwest corner of the lawn, getting that segment finished by early afternoon.  In acknowledgement of my advancing years, Tammy and Roy put a couple of steps on the woods side of the wall so I can easily go from the 17^th Frisbee golf tee onto the fairway without having to scramble up the wall.  Much to Chree’s chagrin (though let’s remember that I mow the lawn, not her), I fired up Mr. Jonsered and cut off (below ground level) the two stumps on the lawn side of the new wall that were left from dead hemlock trees that died and were taken down a couple of years ago. At noon Bob LaPorte brought us 5 cubic yards of topsoil.  To finish off the day, Tammy dug a 67 feet long trench along the lawn side of the stone wall that borders the north side of our property. That wall also defines the fairway for Frisbee golf hole #10.  The base of that wall is pretty solid ‘cause Jim Ploof built it with his excavator.  However, over the years I added a top course of rocks that have never been right.  Also, most of the water from the lower end of the driveway debouches onto the lawn above that wall and then causes constant erosion along the wall as it drains into the woods.  Time to fix!!!!

9 September 2020

 After many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many delays, Tammy Walsh (owner of Green Mountain Landscaping and stone wall builder extraordinaire) and Roy Kinsley (one of her well-muscled employees) got here at 9:30 to continue the stone wall building projects that we had hoped to have finished last November.  First on the agenda was to extend the stone wall on the west (back yard) side of the house another 27 feet to the north, then around the northwest corner of the lawn for another 21 feet.  We got about half that wall built before quitting time, with much “help” from Dino, our very rambunctious 2½ year old reverse brindle Tennessee treeing hound, who joined our family in February by way of the local animal rescue shelter.  Dino’s contribution was to bring us every single stick from the woods adjoining the wall where we were working.  You’ll note in the photos that the tractor / backhoe that Tammy is operating looks suspiciously like mine.  That’s ‘cause it is, hers being at the doctor presently undergoing major surgery after an accident last week (the reason for one of the many, many…). While the wall building was ongoing, Roy took an hour to put Type S (stands for Strong) cement into the many places on the patio where the polymeric sand (that holds all the pavers in place) had washed out of the paver joints.  Those included most of the joints that Tammy and Geryll Robinson had repaired almost exactly a year ago.  Obviously, polymeric sand does not hold up when subjected to a concentrated deluge, such a often exits under the roof valley and rain diverters. Nate Clert (Tammy’s nephew and longtime employee) brought us a load of A-stone at noon.  Putting that crushed stone inside the wall where building rocks don’t quite touch and behind the lawn-side of the wall provides for water drainage, obviating any hydraulic pressure on the wall.