30 July 2010

Spent the morning grinding down the east-side concrete column tops. They came out “okay”, but some top'n'bond (a special masonry product that firmly adheres to cured concrete - something that regular mortar mix doesn't do) is going to be needed on a few of them before they’ll all be the same height... or close enough. After returning the grinder to Taylor, continued dry-laying the second course of between-column rocks. I’m discovering that trying to work with misshapen rocks makes the wall building task very difficult. I spend WAY too much time trying to find a rock that will fit some weird gap caused by the rock below being a far less than rectangular shape… which just means the same problem will keep recurring. The number of good rocks lying around just ain’t a lot. So do I spend my time looking / digging for good rocks or do I keep trying to fit the rocks that are available into the walls????

29 July 2010

Torrential rainstorm overnight, a start-building-the-Ark deluge, in the midst of which I realized that the main cabin door steps were still deployed and really should be retracted. Well, they’re still deployed… seems that Ms. Delores is being a bit persnickety again, even though this means she’ll have to go to the RV doctor if she doesn’t get straightened out right soon. Dawned a beautiful day, so went up to Goodro Lumber for a NIOSH-approved P-100 respirator and to Taylor Rental for a cement grinder (which is why I needed the respirator). The cement grinder is nothing but a BIG electric motor with a very tough grinding wheel on the end, weighs 16 ½ pounds, and you can see the neighbors lights dim when you pull the trigger. A real man’s machine. After a few hours use, found out I’m not the real man I hoped I was… completely knackered best described my physical state. But, as you can see from the picture, by total exhaustion time all the concrete column edges were nicely beveled and the west wall columns had smooth and reasonably level tops. Covered in cement dust from head to cell phone, had to dive in the lake to clean up enough to take a shower. Dinner at Marty and Merry’s – totally delightful, as always!!!! Saw two bats during the short trek up the hill; they’ve been pretty decimated by a lethal fungus and none have been seen hereabouts for over a year.

28 July 2010

All of the rocks in the first course were VERY solidly attached to the footer and each other (with one exception – shown at right before being 2-pound tenderized). So I guess the mortar / sand / water proportions I used yesterday must have been in the ballpark. Perry came over mid-morning with the leveling transit and we confirmed my suspicions that two of the concrete columns are about ½″ too high, but the tops of the others should be made right with only minor to moderate grinding. Worked on dry-laying the second course of between-columns rock for most of the day. Only got half the course put together, but learned some valuable lessons about how to leave the underlying course in order to more easily place the rocks in the next course. Hit the lake early, hot and frustrated, when one of the sections, that I had spent an hour getting just right, fell over when I gently covered it with burlap. I need a hug…

27 July 2010

Laid the first course of stone between all the concrete columns and parged them into position using two batches of mortar (25 pounds of mortar mix, 75 pounds of sand, and 9 pounds of water per batch – carefully weighed on our old baby scale). Will find out in the morning if I mixed the mortar properly… think it might have been a tad dry. Okay, so what the heck is "parging"?  Well that would be the process of applying a cement mixture to a surface (in this case the back of the rock walls) to join masonry together.  From the front, the between-column rock walls will look like they are dry laid.  However, by "parging" the backside of the wall, the rocks actually will be cemented together.  Used 70 stones which averaged 4″ in thickness. Doing the math (for what else is there to do of an evening at Fern Lake?), the between-columns rock walls will need approximately 1,550 stones. Finding that many stones on our property, not a problem. Finding that many stones no more than 6″ wide with two reasonably parallel flat surfaces and a good perpendicular face, that’s going to take some sleuthing... and maybe even a backhoe?!?!

26 July 2010

A perfect day in so many ways! Blue skies, temp in the low 70’s, NO flying insects! Spent the morning moving all the cement forms from down by the shed cellar hole up to temporary storage near the RV, then cleaning up the detritus that had accumulated on top of the footers. A humongous Goodro Lumber truck showed up right after lunch, bringing a pallet (45 bags x 75 pounds each = 3,375 pounds) of Type S mortar mix. Late afternoon Bob LaPorte arrived with 7,640 pounds of masonry sand, which may not be enough, given that one pound of mortar mix gets combined with three pounds of sand. Between deliveries, picked rock for an hour, then began dry-laying the first between-columns rock wall. There is a distinct line between building a stone wall quickly and building it perfectly. You’ll never guess which side of the line I fell on… The day ended with three ears of the first Kingsley sweet corn of the season (without question, the world’s BEST!!!!), a T-bone steak briefly shown to the wood fire, and some 2008 Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages. What could be more perfect than that?

25 July 2010

Spent most of the day finishing the job of stripping forms off the concrete columns. About 5% of the deck screws that held the form braces together were sheared off; the #8 2½″ screws much more prone to shear than the #9 3″ Deckmate screws. Three of the four screws were sheared in one brace where the form “blow-out” was particularly bad… very lucky we didn’t have a catastrophic failure with that form. Two hour “break” mid-afternoon to help Marty Lapidus assemble a portable basketball hoop. Later, Marty and Mary treated me to a wonderful dinner at the Shoreham Inn (an Irish pub / bed & breakfast).

24 July 2010

Worked on condo ceiling painting all day. Two lessons learned: (1) always use the same paint for cut-ins as you use for the surface to be painted: there IS a noticeable difference between “white” and “bright white” ceiling paint and (2) when George Bedard (Treetops Condominiums handyman) says that a Treetops condo ceiling needs to be sprayed vice rolled, LISTEN to him, even if two “professional” painters say differently. Seems the good folks from Corner Cutting Condo Construction kind of forgot to prime the sheetrock before applying the original popcorn ceiling paint. Thirty-plus years later and that corn will pop right off if you so much as look at it sideways. Suffice it to say that after George gets the walls painted and the wood trim around the windows refinished this coming week, I’ll be doing quite a bit more ceiling repair and repainting. …and here I thought I was going to be building a woodshed this summer. Silly me! Returned to Fern Lake after dinner for a much needed cooling-off swim.