27 July 2011

Finished installing the auxiliary storage area light fixture.  Also cleaned a few doggie tar footprints (that would be you, Shlomo!) off the RV carpet.  Then Dan came over for a day of volunteer hard labor and male bonding (Kate being at rehearsal for the play she is in at the Dorset Playhouse).  Together we got a course of rock laid and cemented together in all nine sections of the between-column walls still under construction.  After work we swam across the lake and back, which made us both really, really hungry for chicken BBQ, cooked over the wood fire, and served with all the fixings. A perfect ending to a perfect day.

26 July 2011

Between catching-up-on-the-news visits with Marty and Kate & Dan, spent most of the morning building a stand for the radial arm saw.  Then started placing rock in the sections on the east wall that need to be built up from the top of the concrete pour to the bottom of the rim joist.  Got one course dry laid in two sections before heading into Middlebury to settle my account with Lou Nop.  Worked on installing the auxiliary storage area light after returning to Fern Lake… since that was a nice dry spot to work and a major deluge was occurring.

25 July 2011

Minimal traffic delays leaving the Washington, DC area and en route meant getting to Brandon in 8½ hours (10 minutes before the bank closed), in spite of heavy rain through most of New York State.  Sun came out, briefly, while I was unloading the van… but started pouring soon after the obligatory full immersion check of the lake temperature was complete.  Oooh la la, 80 degrees of pure bliss!  Truck battery totally dead when I went to fire up Delores to extend the living room slide-out.  Fortunately the coach batteries were fully charged and the RV has that life-saving cross-connect switch.  Main cabin door stairs cycled in  and out several times of their own volition while I was running the truck engine… a strong indicator that a short in the power supply for the stairs was why the truck battery was flat.  Had the first Kingsley sweet corn of the season for dinner.

11 - 12 July 2011

Back to Virginia via a short, but delightful as always, stay with Frank & Fran in Connecticut.

10 July 2011

 

Finished the job of sealing the seam between the underground roof and the rock walls using a different and, I think, much better technique.  First I filled the void almost full with 1 part Type S cement mixed with 2 parts masonry sand, then I filled the final ½″ (very quickly!!!!) with hydraulic cement.  While that was ongoing, Chree continued spreading tar, even getting a fair bit on the walls.  Joining her frolic in the sun, we finished the walls and the underground roof by lunchtime.  Our clothes and sneakers went straight into the empty tar bucket.  Even after lots of mineral spirits, a swim, and a hot, soapy shower, we still left tar stains on everything we touched. Worked in the afternoon moving the sauna stove and other equipment into the shed and straightening up the work site.  After dinner, picked up Lynne & Perry at their place, then went to a concert of west African music at the Middlebury Festival on the Green.  We returned to Fern Lake before the concert was over…

9 July 2011

Up to Taylor Rental first thing in the morning to liberate their monster grinder, the one that ‘bout killed me last summer when I was “fixing” the concrete column heights.  Over the last year the grinder hadn’t lost any weight (15½ pounds) or power (lights throughout the county dimmed every time I pulled the trigger).  Even though the grinding wheel said “concrete”, it did a number on the steel rebar lifting bails in no time flat.  Then I used the grinder to smooth various concrete surfaces that needed attention.  By the end of the morning I was pretty well whipped… but everything needing grinding (and some things that didn’t) was ground. While I was beating myself and everything in sight to death with the grinder, Chree finished disassembling concrete forms.  Applied epoxy to the now-flat ends of the lifting bails to seal them against rust and water intrusion. Started applying hydraulic cement to the too-wide seam between the concrete roof and the rock walls.  When they say in the directions that the mix sets in three minutes they don’t mean three minutes and thirty seconds!  Tried mixing 1 part Type S cement to 2 parts masonry sand to ½ part hydraulic cement to get a (hopefully) somewhat water-resistant mix that had a working life of 10 minutes or so.  Got about half that job done by the time I’d had enough fun for the day. 

8 July 2011

The day of the Big Lift!  Kevin, the crane operator from Nop’s Metalworks, arrived at 6:45 a.m. to inspect the shed underground roof and lifting situation.  He asked that the 26″ diameter stump from the red oak that Toby Rheaume took down last fall be cut down to ground level.  Now cutting a 26″ diameter stump with a 16″ chainsaw bar is an iffy proposition at the best of times… at least for me.  Plus, the wood close to the ground in a tree stump is particularly tough.  Had to stop twice to resharpen the chain.  After the second stop, the saw refused to start.  And then it refused to start some more.  In extremis, called Perry, catching him just as he was leaving his house, and asked that he bring his chainsaw over when he came to observe the Big Lift.  That meant, of course, that as soon as I hung up the phone my saw started and ran just fine.  By 8:30 all was ready and Alverta, Marty, and Perry were on hand to witness events.  At 10:15 Kevin returned with a gigantic mobile crane… emphasis on the gigantic part.  The delay in his return was caused by the less than Indy car speeds at which the crane travels down the road.  Rigging the crane (which was parked right on top of the now-flat red oak stump) took about 45 minutes.  Then it was time for me to make a serious mistake.  Chree and I mixed up 60 pounds of loose mortar and placed it in a 1″ high ribbon around the walls on which the roof would sit.  I figured the mortar would be squeezed nearly flat by the 6 ton roof and would provide both an absolutely perfect bearing surface for the roof and seal the joint between roof and walls. Wrong!!!!  The mortar only squeezed to ½″ thickness, so instead of the roof resting on 10″ thick walls, it is resting on a 2″ wide bed of mortar.  (Note to file: next time use a thin layer of Top ‘n Bond spread full width on the walls.)  On a positive note, in only 15 minutes (start to finish) the roof was hoisted and fit into position on the walls just as planned… and no rocks fell out the bottom.  Then we discovered that pouring the 7 inch slump concrete on 6 mil polyethylene was maybe not such a good idea… the mix that seeped through the rock matrix took on the high-gloss patina of polyethylene.  That is not the rough hewn “look” that was desired.  However, a few hours with a cold chisel, rock hammer, and a crick in my neck should correct that not-so-little booboo...  or maybe Taylor Rental has a needle gun.  After the crane left to lumber back to East Middlebury, Alverta provided lunch, then we went canoeing and took the dogs swimming.  Once Alverta headed back to South Burlington, I used Perry’s Sawsall to roughly remove the lifting bails from the concrete roof.  Tried to grind them flat with my 18v DeWalt drill with a metal grinding wheel, but that dog just weren’t goin' to hunt.  So I tackled the job of removing the wood insert that created a void in the roof where a light fixture will be installed.  Some of that wood came out pretty easily once the securing screws were removed and a proper sized wrecking bar was put to use.  But, and don’t try this at home, some of the wood had to be sawed before it could be pried, which meant holding a Skilsaw upside down over my head, then executing a plunge cut and rip with my eyes closed because of the rain of sawdust. Oh, what fun!  Undoubtedly OSHA agents will be here soon to arrest my sorry butt.  After the sawing was done, had to dive in the lake with my eyes open just to rinse the big pieces out and off.  Approaching the RV after my swim, and very short on minutes to get ready for dinner at the Pirkkanen’s, I discovered that Bob LaPorte had just arrived to discuss backfilling the shed cellar hole and building the car turnaround area retaining wall. A beer later (the universal lubricant for Vermont business discussions), Chree and I arrived 45 minutes late for dinner and without the promised wine.  Dinner was already on a tight timeline because we were going to the Salisbury Congregational Church afterwards to hear the Point Counter Point (a summer camp on Lake Dunmore for aspiring string musicians) faculty demonstrating their virtuosity… which was pretty awesome (and some of you know how little I enjoy classical music).  Dinner was delicious, as always, and featured the first honey and gold corn of the season, imported all the way from… (wait for it) Virginia!