Posts Tagged ‘building’
Ghost Leaves
On a walk through the woods with Delilah yesterday morning, my attention was grabbed by some disintegrating leaves that never fell from the tree. They looked like ghosts of leaves.
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Why did they not fall to the ground?
Especially in the face of some wind gusts that were strong enough to break loose a roof panel on our wood shed. Yesterday, there was dead calm in the morning, so I took advantage of the perfect weather to work on replacing the busted section.
Learning from experience, I added some cross supports that will better hold the overhanging side from flexing, should future winds blow from that same direction.
That simple structure, built to store split logs while they dry for a year, has provided multiple lessons from failure.
When it blew over in a storm, I figured out a way to secure it to the ground by stringing some old fence wire over the cross beams and running it through the eye of earth anchor augers in three strategic locations.
With the help of my friend, Mike Wilkus, who came to my rescue when re-assembling the shed after it had overturned, I learned how to improve the diagonal bracing to stabilize the overall structure.
It leaves me wondering what the next failure will be that might teach me yet another lesson in the great world of being an amateur builder.
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Making Room
When the weather is nasty cold outside, and hours of daylight are short, one way to deal with it is to work on indoor projects. We have a project waiting for us in our basement that is finally seeing some progress. Interestingly, that progress came as a result of the fracturing of the triangular window beside our stone chimney.
In order to raise the level of interest for a builder to travel to our home to replace the broken window, we tossed in the construction of a storage room in our basement as added incentive. It worked. The replacement window is now on order and when it comes, the builder expects to be available to work on creating a walk-in storage room with built-in shelves in the space where the entertainment center once was.
When we moved in, I did some initial demolition in that corner, taking out the shelving to open up the angled space as much as possible for temporary storage. The only parts left were studs with drywall attached to them. Cyndie masterfully stowed a roomful of stuff into the small space of that corner and then hung curtains across the front to cover the cut-out spaces once filled by a television and speakers.
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In preparation of the builder taking down the studs and putting up new walls to make a more functional storage space, I pulled off the drywall and removed all the screws from the studs. Friday night, Cyndie and I removed all the stuff that was stacked behind that wall and piled it up around the basement. It is a real optical illusion of space to see that little corner empty, but the contents now appearing to consume the entire rest of the room.
We need to rearrange things now to create a clear working space for the builder, with a path for him to bring in materials, and then we will be ready when that window shows up and our project reaches the top in his queue of work.
That done, I guess it’s time to go back outside and play in the snow! How nasty can it really be out there?
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Frustrating Lessons
I’m sorry, but I need to vent some frustration. I’ve taken on the project of building a woodshed, guided by a rudimentary plan I found on the internet, using mostly found materials, my meager collection of construction tools, and my distinct lack of experience with carpentry. One of the draws for me to undertake this effort on my own was the encouragement I read online at the site where I found the building plan, pointing out that a shed like this makes a great first attempt at constructing a building, because there are no codes to meet. Anything goes.
And what’s the worst that could happen if the shed fails? The stack of split firewood might topple over or get wet temporarily. It’s a pretty low-risk construction project.
What I am finding is, it has a high risk of causing me great frustration. Have I mentioned that I tend toward perfectionism on just this kind of task? I gotta admit, that very tendency toward perfectionism is a significant contributor to my lack of experience in doing something like building a shed out of found materials. I know in advance it is doomed from the start. Why would I choose to put myself through the exasperation?
Of course, Cyndie points out that this kind of thinking is my first problem.
I can’t argue that. I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to thinking like “the little engine that could.” It is hard to meditate on the “I think I can” mantra, when you already embody the notion that you “can’t.”
I didn’t just dive into this project willy-nilly. I hemmed and hawed over it. I trolled for friends with skills to do it for me. I let the idea of doing it myself stew for weeks, hoping time would either reveal another solution, or I’d magically become skilled by just thinking about it a lot. I thought about the materials the project would require, over and over, trying to determine the likelihood I could come up with everything I would need.
Here comes one of my first frustrations: It is only a simple woodshed. Why does my mind make it seem so complicated?
Eventually, I committed and began gathering materials. That phase took additional weeks for me to accomplish, between familiarizing myself with shopping lumber yards and making a decision on what to use.
Now, as I’ve already written about here, I have the frame up, and as you can see, the rafters in place. (Thanks are due to my friend, architect Mike Wilkus, for teaching me how to mount the rafters to a log beam… cut a “bird’s-mouth” notch in the rafter!) After the exercise of this phase, my perfectionistic traits are irritated like a raw-rubbed blister.
I know that it is in my best interest to consider things like keeping it level and square. I would love to be able to do that. As a novice, I am struggling because the only straight line I have is a piece of tightened string, and my level. The log posts and beams are imperfect. The flat rocks I picked are imperfect. The lumber I have is all warped and twisted. I rarely have been able to reference anything trustworthy.
It hardly matters to the overall structure, but it matters to me, because I notice where it is off. Drives me nuts.
I don’t like hammering nails. They go most of the way in, then stop and bend. They go all the way in, and the head breaks off. They split the wood. They somehow repel my hammer and make me leave dents in the wood, all around the nail. Just when I think I’m getting the hang of it, my hand and arm get fatigued and the nails start bending again, and the wood gets more dents in it.
I prefer screws. My screws also can split the wood. The heads strip. The screwdriver bit strips. The screw goes 90% of the way in and then seizes. Finally, the head breaks off.
Both nails and screws jump out of my hands. They fly out of the wood as I’m starting. I drop the drill-driver from the ladder. I can’t reach from where the ladder is. I don’t have scaffolding, so I am up and down that ladder an uncountable number of times. I move it back and forth, bumping the beams overhead, knocking the rafters out of place.
Can I complain about the bugs? They aren’t unique to a carpentry project, but they have been adding to my frustration in this case.
The woodshed may be a good first structure to build, but I’m thinking I should be building a boat. I found myself cursing like a sailor at the frustrations over the weekend.
Cyndie is sweet to point out, regardless my frustrations, we’ve got the majority of the project accomplished, and I have to admit, I am pleased to be getting the shed I have all along envisioned for this spot. I think it will be perfect, even if it isn’t “perfect.”
Experiential Learning
I admit it, I have never done anything like trying to build a shed on my own. I’ve wanted a wood shed since we arrived last October, but with no experience, it took me all this time to get over the hurdle of just deciding to try.
In a search for what I wanted for a wood shed, I quickly and easily came upon images of styles that appealed to me. One of the sites even had a rudimentary sketch of a plan to build a simple version for low-cost, if you scrounge materials from what is available to you.
I decided to use the old fence posts that we have from the original fencing that we had removed last fall. Other pieces slowly seemed to appear and fill out my list of needs. The key piece I wanted to have was roof material that would be translucent, like corrugated panels I have seen on other roofs of this type of structure. I was finding that to be a difficult thing to scrounge. I didn’t do a lot of aggressive searching, which left me hoping something would just magically appear out of nowhere.
When that didn’t happen, I started to research what was available for purchase from building supply retailers. The first large entity I shopped at didn’t stock anything of the type, but one friendly customer service person spent time searching their records for something that would work. He came up with an option that wasn’t quite right, and would cost 10-times what I was interested in spending.
I find it funny how quickly after that, I fell into a mode of thinking this wouldn’t be the way to go. Then I got around to visiting the next building supply retailer in the region, just in case I was giving up too soon, and to my surprise, there in front of my eyes was the exact product I envisioned, stocked on the sales floor, and at an acceptable price. My hope was restored!
That left one last crucial step. I needed to commit to the location. It was a tough decision, but in the short time since clearing the ground at that spot, I have grown very happy with that choice.
There was nothing left to stop me from getting on with the cutting and hammering. I spent the weekend toiling away, trying to figure out what the essential steps were that need consideration, and then in what order it all needed to take place. I had a dream of being able to start and finish it all in a short span of days. By Sunday night, my accomplishments were: the ground was leveled, footings were located and leveled, and the vertical posts were attached to the horizontal beams, ready to be erected.
It’s not bad progress, for a first-ever attempt, but I had higher hopes. Things take the time they take, and I want to remember to be present and appreciate the variety of interruptions that inevitably pop up, even when they delay the project.
The delays actually provide a chance for earlier lessons to sink in, and time to consult with advisers on how I might choose to proceed with the next learning opportunity.
Relative Something 