31 August 2010

Zook and I moved the beams and tree that need to be resawn / sawn to where Toby Rheaume will set up his sawmill tomorrow. Have I mentioned just how heavy those suckers are???? Two trips into Middlebury to have my chainsaw low speed idle adjusted (free of charge!) at Taylor Rental and to help Perry a wee bit with a kitchen renovation engagement he is finishing up. Then Zook and I finished parging between-column rocks previously laid. That done, watched in amazement as Zook grabbed no more than a half-dozen rocks and made four of them fit beautifully into one section. He has the “eye” for rock wall building.

30 August 2010

From Springfield to Fern Lake with Gene Zukosky (Kristen’s father – and known to all, far and wide, as “Zook”). Pleasant nine-hour, three-stop, trip. Barbeque / canoe / swim after settling into camp.

20 - 23 August 2010

Back to Springfield via Old Saybrook. Lengthy stopover in CT occasioned by Fran’s unexpected hospitalization and subsequent abdominal surgery.

19 August 2010

Fun with rocks in the morning. Chree dry-laid three sections of the third course of the between-column rock walls (her first, quite nice effort, shown here), while I repaired a section that had not bonded properly, laid a missing section of the second course, and parged things together. After lunch we took my malfunctioning brand new chainsaw back to the Jonsered dealer who fixed the problem in 10 seconds flat… which made me feel like a complete, total, quintessential, unadulterated idiot. How many chainsaws have I owned in the last 40 years???? Great solace being told that many before me have come in with the same “problem”… and left similarly embarrassed by the solution. Feeling a bout of Type A disease coming on, completely emptied Delores’ tool storage compartment, cleaned a year’s worth of dirt and associated debris out of that space, put up a bunch of pegboard hooks, and restowed the compartment in an organized and shipshape fashion. I feel SO much better!!!! After a quick swim, went over to Lynne & Perry’s for a wonderful, right-out-of-the-garden dinner.
Note to file: Chree did not put on her bee-keepers hat even once all week… that’s how few flying insects there were.

18 August 2010

Laid awake much of the night thinking about beams with too much wane. Bummer! After breakfast, confirmed my fears – three of the six beams do, indeed, have so much wane that the joist hangers will not attach properly. So one of the 10″ beams will have to be resawed into an 8″, one of the 8″ will have to be resawed into a 6″, the 8″ with the hole in it will have to be resawed into a 2″ (thus solving the errant hole problem) and sistered to the 6″, and a large oak top in the house-site pile will have to be sawed into a new 10″ beam. Good news for Toby, bad news for my checkbook. Chree and I took the measurements for where the holes will have to be drilled in each beam. Then she gathered and washed a bucket of small stones (for making concrete) while I hand-dug (literally) the hole for the driveway sign. After retrieving said sign from the Pittsford Kubota dealer and an old plastic pickle barrel that Perry was donating to the cause, Chree learned how to make a batch of concrete so that we could set the sign in place, concreted into the barrel. So now our driveway officially exists! No doubt 1750 Lake Dunmore Road, also known as Triangle Square Circle, will soon be a prominent Google Maps landmark. Hot dogs and marshmallows over the wood fire to celebrate.

17 August 2010

Another gorgeous August day. In Vermont they only have three seasons, and one of them is August. Spent the morning using top’n’bond to level the tops of the shed columns while Chree used a wood chisel to remove bark and cambium remaining on the beams where the log wasn’t quite as big as it needed to be for the size beam being sawn. Spent the afternoon finishing the bark removal process while Chree ran errands in Brandon. Also drilled the first hole in what was supposed to be the north end beam, then realized that that beam will not work in that position because of too much wane (places where the bark and cambium had to be removed after the beam was cut). Fingers crossed that the hole is in the right place for placing that beam in one of the other positions. (Can you hear the hollow laughter in the background, Mr. Murphy????) Also realized that I really, really, really need a backhoe (or a skyhook) for hoisting / moving the beams, as they are far too heavy to be horsed around by hand. Beautiful canoe around the lake after dinner.

16 August 2010

Rained most of the night, then a few brief showers in the morning, clearing off into a beautiful day. Toby Rheaume arrived shortly after 7 o’clock with his Woodmiser LT 70 portable sawmill. But before starting on sawing the shed beams, we returned to the house site for a large hemlock that had been overlooked during Saturday’s felling operations. A half hour later that tree, too, was in the skid pile destined for a commercial sawmill. Toby then pawed through the log pile set aside last summer out of which I hoped we would find the six beams needed for the shed. Assured that we had sufficient red oak raw material, Toby and the sawmill went to work. The first two beams he cut are 9 ½″ x 10″ x 12 feet long; straining with all my might I can lift one end an inch or two off the ground. The other four beams are only 9 ½″ x 8″ x 12 feet; those I can lift one end maybe a foot off the ground. Getting these critters to the tops of the concrete columns, 7 feet 8″ in the air, is going to be a challenge. Unless, that is, my fairy godmother suddenly delivers the backhoe I so desperately crave. At his suggestion, Toby also sawed a large maple log into 1″ boards. Depending on how well they come through the drying process, those might become the built-in computer table, cabinets, and shelves in the Study when we build the house. They’ve been cut to a length (10 feet 4″) that will fit inside the van so that they can be taken to Virginia for air drying in our basement. After Toby was gone, Chree and I drove down to the Kubota dealer in Pittsford, who also makes street and driveway signs, and put in an order.