The Tale of Wags

2011-07-03T06:55:00.003-04:00

I have such an awful drive to work these days.

View on Western Ridge Road, Palermo, ME

Getting the Corinthian ready to roll.

One of this trailer's tires was so flat that the tire bead came off the rim, so it wouldn't take any air. I learned a useful trick to fix this in the field. I drove the functioning tire and wheel up on a little ramp so I could wrap a ratchet strap all the way around the tire. Then I cranked it down, forcing the bead against the rim. With a little help my from Black and Decker Electromate power station I was able to fill the tire up and pop the ratchet strap off. This was the biggest tire on which I've ever tried this trick. I hope it will work on a full size car tire some day.

I have a boat for sale or trade:

Off to the family barbecue in Mass.

2011-06-18T10:28:00.004-04:00

After leaving Pittsburgh, we dashed over to Milwaukee, via Grays Lake, IL. We had a nice visit with my brother Dan and his wife Carrie and Alex, Ben, Josh and Zoe.

Later we ended up staying with my other brother Tim.

Doing mental math at midnight in the Riverwest neighborhood in Milwaukee with brother Tim. We were trying to get an idea of how big a 10,000 gallon tank would be.

While in Milwaukee, I worked with for my brother Bart's Company, Outdoor Living Solutions, mowing grass for two days.

On Friday night we drove up to Abrams, WI to stay with my Uncle Al and Aunt Jan. They have three big dogs, one of them is a huge black Newfoundland mix named 'RED'. It was so nice to get out of the city. The next day we went to see my Grandma Stranz. Despite being in great pain and discomfort, she was so happy to see us. And we were happy to see her.

On Sunday, we took a drive with Uncle Ken and Cousin Allison up to the family land in Popple River, WI about two hours north of Abrams. It used to be a working Christmas Tree farm, but now they farm Wood Ticks there, and they were having a great year for them. Ken brought a couple of pistols and Allison and I got to shoot pistols for the first time at some bowling pins.

We snapped a photo in front of a tree they call "the Judge". Probably named after my Great grandfather, Judge Allan M. Stranz I.

After one last visit with Grandma to say goodbye for now and put our picture on her wall of pictures, we stopped back in Abrams to say goodbye to Al, Jan, Meaghan and her boyfriend (and I can't for the life of me remember his name. Someone help me!).

Sunday night, we headed down to Uncle John and Aunt Lois's place in Plymouth, WI. Plymouth is quintessential small-town America. Sometimes we have to camp in back yards because I am allergic to dogs and cats. You can see from the picture that we had a pretty wild time. If you have fox problem, I have a solution apparently.

In my right hand is muzzle-loading pistol that belonged to my Grandpa Stranz, and those foxes around my neck have been dead for longer than I have been alive.

So, we're at Memorial Day, and we drive down to Milwaukee to visit with friends for an hour before driving to Illinois again for a family cookout. That night we stay in Milwaukee with friends, Matt and Melissa, who have a nice house near Bayshore Mall. Here you can see Matt and I sitting on some of our Cathance River Stools.

More on the trip in the next post.

A working vacation....

2011-05-25T13:37:00.002-04:00

Well, I got everything in Maine put to bed for a few weeks and we hit the road on Monday, driving about 850 miles to Pittsburgh where we enjoyed the hospitality of my cousin. She just managed the construction of a good sized industrial plant near DC, so we discussed industrial processes until the wee hours of the morning. After five hours of sleep, we rose to an early breakfast at the Dor-Stop Diner, which claimed home cooked goodness, but only offered non-dairy creamer for the coffee and neglected to give me any butter for my French Toast. A diner is a diner though.

We blasted across Ohio and Indiana making good time, even through Ohio's abundant construction. I would vote for any provision that would raise their speed limit to 80mph. As for Chicago traffic, I cannot say enough about how much 'open road' tolling has improved the drive around the city. We made it from Gary, Indiana to Gurnee, IL in less than two hours, and with an EZ-Pass you don't even have to slow down on I-294.

We spent a pleasant evening visiting with my brother's family near Gurnee. By 10pm we made it the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee where we are staying with another one of my brothers. I'll post some pictures from the drive soon.

In order to keep the bills satisfied, I'm spending this trip working for friends and relative's businesses like Outdoor Living Solutions in Milwaukee and possibly BrownSmith Restoration in Minneapolis. I'm also trying to drum up some sales for the Cathance River Stools that Paul Baines and I build in Maine.

In a week.

2011-05-15T14:21:00.010-04:00

Sometimes it feels like you don't get anything done in a week, and other times, it all falls into place and you get a lot done. This week Paul and I finished assembling and sanding all 60 stools and 40 chairs for a new restaurant opening up in Freeport, ME. Our part is done now; all that's left is for them to go to the finish guy to get a few coats of lacquer. Then we deliver the product. What a relief to be done with them. May God be praised for sustaining us through it. We've been hard at it six days-a-week for over two months.

Finished Cathance River Low-Back Barstools waiting for delivery.

I took my first Saturday off in months to get a few things done around the house. I started with coffee, bacon and pancakes. We finally got the last of our stuff out of the attic of our old apartment, and we're finally settling in at our new place. Many thanks to our friend Ivan the Mechanic for getting me a new muffler on the Honda in a about 45 minutes flat.

I guess I need a muffler. My car was starting to sound like the Fast and the Furious.

And right after dinner yesterday, I got the dryer all hooked up and working. We've never had our own washer and dryer, so this is a big deal. (And I got to buy a 4" hole saw out of the deal.)

Not bad for $140 on Craigslist.

An army of Cathance River Side Chairs awaits our command ( or the finish guy )

More good news: KT's job has assured funding through the end of September, so there's now time for the state legislature to make up their minds about whether or not they will fund early-childhood home-visiting programs throughout the state

Sanding the curved backs of the barstools with a 5" random orbit sander and 120 grit.

With a few things around here to wrap up in the next week or two, I'm hoping to make a trip out to the midwest to visit with family and friends who I haven't seen in a while, that I might not see for a while if I don't make the trip soon.

Finish sanding the last side chair with 180 grit paper. The culmination of 8 weeks of work.

I'm also pretty excited about my new drill and driver combo. Paul is always harassing me for using his impact driver, so I had to do something about it. We had a Home Depot gift card and did exactly what they want you to do: spend twice as much money as your gift card. So when I saw this combo for just over $200 I couldn't pass it up.

I needed something to drive that 4" hole saw, as if the other three drills I own weren't going to work...

Ch-ch-ch-changes......

2011-04-23T21:16:00.004-04:00

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time

Bowie didn't know how right he was. Or maybe he did. At least in the chorus.

We are going through out own set of changes. We're moving to a new place on short notice this week in order to position ourselves better for our next move, which hopefully will be to a home I build with my own hands at The Land of Goshen on the Egypt Road.

KT still hasn't heard about whether she'll have a job at the end of June.
I sold the motorcycle.

I'm selling the boat and the big truck.

And I've been basically retraining for a related but largely new career in fine woodworking and furniture making. Carpentry is still a backup source of income, but not a place I want to be stuck forever (life's length still seems like forever when you're only 27). I'm just old enough to wish I had done a number of things differently, but still young enough to do a a number of things differently.

Today is a good day to start.

Here's to the new morning tomorrow. I hope its about more than peeps and bunnies and spring.

Happy Easter.

April Fool

2011-04-01T18:30:00.003-04:00

8 to 10 inches of heavy wet snow and I have to go plow it. Looks like I'm the April Fool. Things were just starting to turn around into some kind of spring mudseason, complete with deep ruts and KT said she saw a black fly the other day. Black fly? In March? It must be the result of climate change or the nuclear reactor in Japan. Either way we're in for it, so everybody stock up on guns and gold and iodine and extra sun-tan lotion for good measure (for the extra UV rays due to the hole in the ozone layer). But now we've got a new layer of white stuff.

I like to think the weather reminds us of how little we actually control. We can create monstrous disasters with radiation and oil spills and what not, but the earth just continues on, always healing itself as its creator intended. At some point, that healing process may just put an end to us as the planet gets too hot or too cold or too much radiation or whatever. In the end, though, the earth certainly doesn't need us. Whatever one may believe about our origins, I am convinced we live here on this planet due to the bountiful grace of our Creator, and I will gladly accept whatever comes from the Creator's hand. Even if that means being the April Fool.

By popular demand.

2011-02-13T20:00:00.003-05:00

By popular demand, I have taken some photos of the mangled and maligned right rear of the truck.

Fortunately I mashed the other tail light not too long ago, so I had the innards to zip tie onto the damage and get a temporary light on there.

I just can't seem to keep from putting holes in mah jeans and dents in mah truck....

(sounds like a terrible country song about a string of bad relationships....maybe I should move to Nashville.)

In other news, it looks like spring might be just around three or four more corners. I'm doing some more work in collaboration with Paul Baines Fine Woodworking. You can see a new barstool prototype on his Facebook that we are doing for a restaurant in Freeport, ME not far from L.L. Bean's.

And, I got the Honda Civic (henceforth to be called the Swamp-mobile or SM due to its ambient odor) running again after doing emergency surgery one evening last week. All she needed was a distributor transplant. She's scheduled for an elective O2 sensor-ectomy and transplant this spring but that can wait until excess funds are available. For now though, SM will convey me to work while the Dodge can stay home and think about why it should avoid stationary objects in the future.

Thats the news from the Country Estate.

Never enough.

2011-02-05T21:51:00.003-05:00

How much snow is enough?

There is never enough snow......

Winter cannot last forever, however.

20 years ago, someone decided to put the corner of a building right where I would be trying to back up at 5:43AM on Thursday morning. This temporal intersection resulted in a physical collision of wood, metal and plastic. Coffee went everywhere. I think I only swore once, out loud. By the end of the day, I already had the insurance claim and an estimate to fix the damage. $5600.

The only problem is that I can't afford to have my truck in the shop for a week if its going to keep snowing every two days.

So, it comforts me that winter cannot last forever.

That is all.

A Particular Affliction

2011-01-23T17:06:00.006-05:00

A particular affliction of some vehicle owners (myself included) is STS (stuck truck syndrome). From what I understand, it runs in families, so if I have it, my brother is also at risk whether he has manifested symptoms yet or not. In our case, my brother manifested symptoms around the same time I did, though he was in snow, and I was in mud at the time.

Above and below we see the typical symptoms of STS manifested: The four-wheel drive equipped truck, bottomed out on something unyielding and in this case, the front end buried in four feet of snow.

The afflicted truck owner, surveying the 'stuck-ness' of the rear differential on the ice and snow.

Maybe if I attach the hook here I can put another dent in my bumper....

The real culprit in this episode of STS is the desire to help someone out by pushing the snow a little bit farther back than the regular plow guy could. Things just go down hill from there until the 'friend with big truck' is called and offered a six-pack of the beer of his choice to come administer the cure. It is important for the afflicted truck owner to keep their cool and remember that you will get unstuck, someday. It may not be today. When we did finally get her out, we missed the edge of the house by mere inches.

Said 'friend with big truck' did not wish to be identified lest the world find out how good natured and helpful he really is.

After getting the truck unstuck, I got to chill out and play some bass for the first time in three years with my friend Julian.

We need a drummer.

And lastly, the main things I look forward to after snow plowing are the delectable treats one of my customers bakes for me in lieu of payment.
Two pies and a coffee cake will keep my sweet tooth satisfied until the next snow storm

And that's the news from the Country Estate. Bundle up, its gonna be a cold one tonight!

Home Economics-Lesson 1: Lunch for the Working Man

2011-01-09T21:27:00.002-05:00

As many people are tightening up the budgetary belt (as we are), I thought I'd share some of the ways we make the dollars go a bit farther.

As a working man, lunch is a very important meal for me, but also potentially expensive. I used to eat a cold cut sandwich and a bit of Stonyfield's organic cream on top vanilla yogurt. Because times are lean, I've cut back on the processed foods. I am blessed with a wife who is talented and chooses to be helpful. Here is KT parceling out my week's lunch into five separate containers. Some weeks its pasta with meat sauce, others its spicy beans and rice. This week, chili over the top of linguine.

I do my part (usually) by washing the dishes. For some reason, I find washing dishes easier when I have a good mustache going.

First, the linguine in all the containers, then, a hearty helping of veggie chili on top. Funny, when money is tight, our diet turns more vegetarian. Every morning, then, I put one of these containers in my lunch box, along with a couple of carrots from our Winter CSA and maybe some piping hot squash soup in my thermos and I'm eating tasty and healthy lunch for about $2 per day instead of $5-6. All this frugality is work, but if you've got time and not money, then its worth it.

Vegetarian, except for the cute little baby chickens we eat every morning! Actually, since I dispatched our last rooster a while back, all our fresh eggs have been unfertilized. This two dozen eggs represents a little less than three days of regular production for our eleven hens. On the whole, owning your own chickens isn't really cheaper than buying eggs in the store. But when you consider the fun factor of searching for wayward hens in the blowing winter wind at night and disposing of rabid raccoons that shack up in the chicken house, then I would say owning your own hens is well worth it.

custom.

2011-01-05T19:04:00.005-05:00

One of the reasons restoration and period remodeling is sooooo expensive is that every single piece of trim, molding, casing, etc is customized in some fashion because you just can't get this or that molding profile from your local lumberyard. So you get whatever is close to what you need then you turn your tablesaw or router table or even your handplane into the appropriate tool to mill up the profile that matches the rest of the house. In this case, the window and door casing in the rest of the house has a molding on its outside edge with bead on the inside edge and we need to match it.....make sense?

So I set up this conglomeration of clamps and festival of featherboards (actually there's only two) to hold the stock in the right spot as I run it over one third of a triple bead cutter on this here old makita table saw in the basement of the house we're working on.

A little closer up. Fence on the right with a featherboard holding the stock down and setting the location of the bead. Featherboard on the left holding the stock against the fence. You can see the cutter head of the 'blade' on the saw. I'm only using the right third of the cutter.

A top view maybe gives a little more clarity. Or maybe not.

The finished molding with the extra bead added on the right. When its finished and installed, it will be indistinguishable from the original.

Bamboo and Mahogany

2011-01-02T21:05:00.004-05:00

So a friend Paul and I were messing around last spring with using unfinished bamboo flooring for various furniture pieces and here's a table we put together. It was a collaborative design with me doing most of the actual woodworking. The top is 'solid' bamboo flooring glued up like a regular table top with the 'frame' being made of mahogany (sipo) mitered and biscuit joined at the corners. A typical wood panel would destroy the mitered corners with seasonal movement, so this was a bit of an experiment. The bamboo has nearly zero seasonal expansion and contraction. We recently started using the table as a computer desk in the living room, next to a fir bookshelf that I made a few years ago from timber cut-offs and rips (and unfortunately stained a dark shade).

I love two things: 1. the bamboo flooring is wicked hard, so no worries about writing on paper on the bare surface and 2. the fact that we still use my teddy bear lamp from when I was a kid. I'm saving it for our own kids some day, until then it will be in the living room. Below, a closeup of the leg-apron detail.

In front of the table, a maple 18" Cathance River Stool. A birthday gift for KT from its maker.

I was a little skeptical about the colors matching well, but after a coat of wipe-on poly they seemed to go together well enough.

Work continues on the remodel project as well. Here is a counter-top (remember the glued up panels from a week or two ago?) installed (yet unfinished) on one of the built in units. A window-seat of the same material will be installed in the foreground this week.

The counter top meets up perfectly with the window sills and then continues into another counter top at the same level.

I had to perform surgery on the other counter top because one of the quarter-sawn planks decided to check for half its length. A little West-System epoxy, a heat gun and some clamps solves the problem. What epoxy has joined together, man nor nature cannot separate.

In other news, we're back from all the Christmas/New Year's traveling. The house is somewhat back in order after my bachelor week. The snow is melting again. The days are getting longer, just a little.

May you all find contentment and peace this 2011.

well considered gifts and merry Christmas

2010-12-25T12:49:00.003-05:00

A well considered gift for the man who needs to pound things of various sizes.

And at this weight (16lb), I have an excuse to buy another slightly smaller one (maybe a 10lb-er) for 'light duty' applications.

Every little bit of tools brings us closer to building our own timber-framed house. This particular hammer will, no doubt, persuade many a stubborn timber joint to come together nicely. It may drive the wedges to split reluctant logs as well.

The reason I ended up with a gift like this is due to the Amazon Wish List which leaves no excuse for those who are stumped on what to get someone. Never again will someone have to get another Bass Pro Fisher 4, thanks, but no thanks....

God rest ye merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born upon this day.

To save us all from Satan's pow'r
When we were gone astray,
O tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy.

Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night!

more and more

2010-12-20T19:41:00.002-05:00

Well the job continues, working with more and more interesting and beautiful pieces of that Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine.

Above you can see the rough framing and cabinet carcasses for the cabinetry, window seats and counter-tops.

Stock for the bookshelf sides glued up, scraped, planed, sanded, jointed and rabbeted....some of them are book-matched sort of. The wood came from the same timber.

Bookshelf vertical divider stock glued up.

Counter tops and window seat stock in the rough, waiting for finish cutting and installation.

I have to miss all the fun tomorrow while I go take Maine's residential building code exam.....

glue-ups

2010-12-13T18:08:00.004-05:00

Raised panel stock glued-up and ready.

Counter top stock glued-up.

I had to call everybody I knew to get enough pipe and bar clamps to glue all those panels and counter tops. The counter tops are made of 6 or 7 quarter-sawn longleaf pine 5/4 stock, planed, jointed, biscuited and glued. There is one more counter top to glue up. its 24" wide and 12' 6" long. That may be a two man job.

Heart Pine.

2010-12-02T18:31:00.003-05:00

Heart Pine or < 3 Pine as the kids would type these days, means more than just that I like it. It means the heavy dense wood of the Longleaf Southern Yellow Pine that we are using for floor at our current remodel job.

Here are some pics:

From the one side

By the fireplace. Any guesses on how much a piece of slate like that costs?

And from the other side:

That is indeed radiant floor tubing right underneath the floorboards in a specially designed sub-floor called "warm board." It is 1 and 1/8" thick, basically two sheets of CDX plywood with the channels routed into it and then a layer of aluminum stamped over the top of the sheet. It goes down just like regular sub-flooring.

And tomorrow, more building code testing. This time on Residential and Commercial Ventilation.

Adios

---w---

A wet one.

2010-12-01T18:27:00.002-05:00

Well, well, I think we're in for a wet one. A wet night tonight and a wet winter. Something tells me that this winter may be more wet than snowy....who knows?

In any case, we'll be here, holdin' down the fort. I've been working on a remodel close to home for the last eight weeks or so. We're putting down a floor of reclaimed boards from old timbers. You'd think it would be cheaper because its reclaimed, but actually its about twice as much. $14 per square foot and 550 square feet. You do the math. Unfinished flooring still needs to be sanded and oiled. Its nice looking stuff though. I'll try to get a picture tomorrow.

On January 1, 2011, a partner and I will be launching a new business doing independent building inspection and code compliance consulting. In the last year, the State of Maine adopted the 2009 International Building Code as the new Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code, so there will be a need for both more municipal inspectors and Third Party inspectors. That's where we think there is a market for our services. We're busy now getting all our ducks in a row (have you ever tried getting actual ducks in a row? I have, and its difficult....) as far as certification, insurance, incorporation and what not goes, but we'll be ready come January. Check back as things develop.

In other news, KT just bought me 3.8 pounds of swedish fish. She is such a good wife!

---w---

Just when you thought it was safe....

2010-09-13T20:37:00.003-04:00

Just when you thought it was safe to leave your tools on the job site, the job gets delayed and you're stuck trying to work with your key tools locked in a trailer 36.6 miles away. Apparently I will never learn this lesson.....so frustrating.

Anyway. Last week I got to frame some new walls in an 1842 brick colonial in Dresden. All these old houses tell quite a story. Its mostly a story of neglect and mismanagement. This particular house had seen years and years of neglect culminating in a roof leak that led to a big insurance claim which provided the funds for a three room remodel where most of the water damage had taken place. This is the living room or parlor framed with new wall on the exterior, new ceiling joists supplementing the existing ones, and 1/2" of plywood strapping on the interior walls. I used the plywood strapping instead of framing new interior walls in order to simplify the trim detail around the existing doors.

Here we have a timber-frame and SIP addition to a home in Harpswell. My friend Andrew cut this frame over the last few weeks and we raised it in two days last week. Today we finished boarding the roof, and hopefully tomorrow or the next day we'll start install the the Structural Insulated Panel enclosure.

This area will become a study/office area. Its not really wide enough to be much else.

This area is going to be the new great room, I think.

The far portion of this will be the entry/mudroom.

Next week I start on a new project with Dyer Ridge Builders that may last into December......

Keeping busy

2010-09-01T21:02:00.002-04:00

What use is being unemployed if you can't hang out, watch daytime TV and eat cheetos? I can't seem to catch a break with this 'unemployment'. We were back at it for a couple of days to put up this 24x36 high-posted cape. It took about a day to ferry the whole thing down there to Bristol, then another day with a crane to put 'er up. This morning we finished screwing down the purlins and put a couple of big tarps on the roof. We're short on tarp tatters, so we thought we'd put it up there ahead of some 60 mph winds (Hurricane Earl) and that would work nicely. Besides, I don't really get enough of being 27 feet up over a concrete slab.

After a quick lunch in my sweltering apartment, I thought, I haven't sweat enough today, so I'll go over the shed and work some more. I put in a little work bench. 38 and a quarter high, 30 inches deep and a little under 12 feet long. It should do nicely for some little projects for customers and our house project.

12 x 16 feet can feel quite small if there's too much stuff in it, but with some clear floor space, it feels just big enough. I'll have to stay organized.

Still not sweating enough, I decided to use the lumber loft for lumber, and I moved a couple of piles of pine boarding and some 2x8x 16' and 20' framing lumber up there to keep it out of the rain and out of sight.

We're watching the Hurricane tracks for Earl and hoping it doesn't get too wild here. Right now we're just in the 40 mph wind zone. If the seas are going to get too rowdy, we'll pull the sailboat ahead of it. Wouldn't want 'er to get swamped!

Progress!

2010-09-01T20:20:00.002-04:00

Well, I got the roof on and a temporary door until I can build the sliding doors. Those roof overhangs look proportionally too big, but hey, its a shed and I gotta keep some wood dry.

Next, I re-glazed some old windows and screwed them in with some hinges so I can get a little airflow in the main level.

Finally, I got some hasps and locks on there so I can leave tools there without it being really easy for them to find new owners.

Roofing in Metal

2010-09-01T19:58:00.003-04:00

So I have this prejudice against asphalt/fiberglass roofing. It goes like this: you can only use it as roofing once before you have to throw it away (by 'away' I mean 'into someone else's backyard', someone who can't afford to keep you from putting it there). Yes I know, some asphalt roofing gets recycled, but its a costly, messy process. Anyway, asphalt roofing is a mess no matter how you slice it, and its not even cheaper than metal. Metal has the advantage of being completely recyclable, it will outlast me, and when its finally not doing the job, my children can bring it to a scrap yard and get paid for it.

For my approximately 480 sq. ft. shed roof, I priced metal and asphalt side by side, and metal came out cheaper by almost 20%. The key with metal roofing is that you don't have to sheath the roof in plywood or boarding. You can simply strap it with 1x3's and screw it down. So, I ordered a bunch of 'burnished slate' colored metal roofing and went for it.

They even cut to length for me so I didn't have to buy more metal than I was going to use. (They won't do that for you at Home Depot or Lowes....)

This is a 'wear-gloves' job.

Predrilling all the sheets on the ground (and having square and plumb roof framing!) is the key to success, just make sure you drill the holes in the right spots.

More to come....

News from the Country Estate 8-24-2010

2010-08-24T07:52:00.003-04:00

Is it really almost the end of August? What happened to the time? December--soon it will be December and everything will be covered with snow and the plow will be hanging ready on the nose of the Dodge....But until then, there's still time to enjoy what has been a perfect summer (for weather).

Saturday and Sunday, KT was out of town, seeing her sister off to college (Univ of Minnesota), so I decided it was time to take my first solo daysail out in Casco Bay. I had plenty of wind, and got to practice a lot of things. There seems to be chaos on board when you're single-handing--you only have two hands and one free knee to manage, sheets and halyards, and of course the tiller. So it went ok, not the prettiest bunch of tacks and jibes, but I found my way back to the mooring field after 3 and a half hours. After practicing sailing up to lobster buoys several times, I sailed successfully up to the mooring, stalling the boat into the wind right on top of it. Then with a debonair and casual manner, I strolled up to the foredeck, with all the rigging flapping in the wind, and seized the pin-buoy and the mooring pennant. I felt pretty smug after that....

After church on Sunday, I had the time to go up to Cushing to the Historical Society which was holding a small art exhibition in their barn. My friend, David Cadbury, was showing some of his recent work. He uses Microsoft Paint as his medium and creates pixilated images of coastline and other subjects. I had to stand back 20 feet to get the real effect. Neat stuff.

Over the last few weeks, I had the time to build a custom bed frame for some seasonal resident clients of mine.
The corners are of a reused 8x8 Douglas Fir timber. The rails are simply spruce 2x6's mortised into the corners and pegged with red oak. The slats are white pine. The whole thing is sanded and finished in beeswax and citrus oil.

The client will be using a latex foam mattress on the bed, and so they requested that the surface be made up of slats so the mattress can breathe. We'll see how they find it to sleep upon. I am offering to build similar pieces for $800-1000 depending on the materials and dimensions.

Progress on the shed continues, with the back gable all studded out and one of the four gable overhangs framed. Today I'm going to frame the loft door in the front gable and then build the rest of the overhangs. Rake and eave trim will go up next, then the metal roofing on thursday. Hopefully I'll have the doors and windows going by early next week. Then a paint job.

KT is back safe from her travels, and I am glad to have her home.

Thats the news from the Country Estate for this week.

w

Late summer limbo

2010-08-20T20:18:00.004-04:00

Well, well, another late summer limbo. I just got cut loose from my regular job because there's no work right now. Maybe a new project will come in the next couple weeks, but until then its limbo time for the bank account. How low will it go? In the mean time, we'll just eat the bounty that God gives us--this years blackberry harvest has been a bumper crop.

Then there's always the church potluck fellowship meal. We made a not-so-spicy chili.

Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves in the basement of Sheepscot Valley Community Church. Next time we have a potluck, we'll have it outside if the weather's nice.

Then, of course, there's always work to be done over at the Land of Goshen. I've had a shed platform framed up for several months now, but the time has come to frame the rest of it. Here's a progress shot from yesterday. Walls are framed and boarded now, all the rafters are up, and now I'm framing the gables and gable overhangs. I've got a whole bunch of corrugated metal roofing coming on Tuesday to get the roof on. Hopefully I'll get it all finished by the end of next week. Then I gotta figure out how to pay my lumberyard bill! Maybe I'll sell that 12" sliding chop saw you see there!!

Oh the places....

2010-07-30T12:18:00.004-04:00

Another day at the office. This time, the office is in Berlin, Maryland, just west of Ocean City. Raising a 24x48' high-posted cape with a 10x24' kitchen addition.

Lifting the first bent (in this case Bent 5) off of the assembly area in the grass. We assembled on the grass to avoid messing around with the plumbing stubs sticking out of the slab.

Bent 4 coming to meet bent 5. Bent five is temporarily supported by two diagonal kickers to the mudsill and two come-a-longs to my truck, out of frame on the left.

John, master crane operator.

Bents 4 and 5 up and connected with lower connectors hung with their braces by come-a-longs from above. Bents 3, 2, and 1 assembled on the ground.

Bents 2,3,4, and 5 raised, connected and joisted. End of day 1.

Last bent (bent 1) raised and connected.

Flying in a daisy chain of purlins.

Shed Rafters and collars hung from main rafters, waiting for shed wall section.

All done. Homeowner (right) and I nailing on the traditional evergreen sprig on the gable.

Completed frame. Trailer packed. End of Day 2. Next stop: Ocean City beach.

Post/Girt/Connector Joinery

Queen Post, Collar, Rafter joinery seen thru the stair opening.

The Strip, Ocean City, MD: 8 miles of high-rises, t-shirt shops, bars and traffic.

George Washington Bridge. New York City.

After two days of work and two days of driving, I'm quite happy to be home in Maine where things aren't quite so crazy and the weather is perfect.

Launch!!

2010-07-25T13:38:00.004-04:00

Launch day is always an adventure, even with a little boat like this Bristol 19/Corinthian Sloop. Even on a relatively simple boat like this one you've got to make sure she's seaworthy and you have all the gear to make sailing safe and enjoyable.

Applying a copper-based bottom paint. You definitely don't want to breathe these fumes much!

All hooked up, strapped down and ready to go.

Making ready in the Make Ready area of the Mere Point boat ramp.

Stepping the mast. Not a big deal on a little boat like this. There's a bit more 'heave-ho!' involved on our Rhodes as the mast is more than twice as heavy.

Making fast the forestay.

Launching, just before letting the trailer down the ramp on a long rope.

Out in the midst of Casco Bay by early afternoon. Had a nice little sail out from Mere Point, around Goose Island and back.

Paul, scrubbin the deck, only later to have to pull up the mooring ball and all its barnacle mess up on the foredeck. What a mess it was! Sometimes the mooring pendant or painter gets all wrapped around the chain when a boat isn't hooked on for a while.

So now the boat is in and we can all go sailing whenever. So come on out to visit and lets go for a float.

News from the Country Estate July 11, 2010

2010-07-11T20:40:00.004-04:00

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

Psalm 19:1-4

For the last two days we have had rain during the day, only to have the clouds break right around sunset. Yesterday we had a beautiful sunset on the west side and a full double rainbow on the east. Today's sunset was no less spectacular!

Its a hard life when your sunsets look like this.

Wags, profiled by the sunset.

Clouds, reflected in driveway puddle.

Early 1960's cedar lap-strake Old Town runabout.

Its been a hot few days here at the Country Estate. Temps and humidity in the 90's is about as bad as it ever gets round these parts. Unfortunately, I was in New Jersey all week putting up a horse barn, so I had the distinct pleasure of working in 105 degree heat and full sun for four days. I'd like to say it was bearable with plenty of water and sunscreen, but the pounding headaches really made it hard to work much more than 8 hours. We even started at 6am to beat the heat, but by 3pm we were pretty much all like frayed rope. In any case, the money was good and the frame went together with few hiccups and no joinery mistakes.

For a little fun, I put all three ducks in a big plastic tub to see how they'd like it. They had a good time splashing around until they couldn't figure out how to get out, then I had to use a little persuasion.

The one broody hen finally got up from the chicken house and roamed around the yard again. We were starting to think she had an egg obstruction or something, but I seen her scratching for food this afternoon. Lately they've all stopped laying due to the heat or the ducks encroaching on their space, I don't know which. I hope we can get them laying again soon, or else we'll have to buy eggs for the first time in well over a year.

Coming up we've got more summer, a couple weeks of work, then I go down to Maryland to put up another frame. This time it's a high posted cape with a lean-to shed on one side. We're still progressing on design for our home. Its a slow process, but we finally feel like we're getting somewhere.

Lastly, the motorcycle is in pieces still. :(

the first of the season

2010-05-30T08:34:00.002-04:00

With the first backed up line of cars in Wiscasset, we know that the tourist season is here. Despite some of the anti- tourist sentiment (bumper stickers like: "if its called tourist season, why can't we shoot 'em" and "I'm NOT on YOUR vacation" for the locals), people round here know that its money from Mass, Connecticut, NY and elsewhere that makes the Maine monkey dance. Without tourist dollars ( and in that, its mainly the second home folks ), Maine's economy would resemble upstate NY-not much going on other than casinos and logging.

The weather this Memorial day weekend has not disappointed so far. Except for the farmers among us, who would prefer maybe 1 or 2 days of rain per week.

I've spent the last 3 weeks building furniture with my buddy Paul at his shop, working on the Bluebird (our 26' Rhodes Meridian/Seafarer), and enjoying the nice weather. Starting tomorrow, I'm back cutting timbers for a big horse barn going to New Jersey for a couple of months.

I just bought a 3o year old or so, Delta Unisaw table saw. Powered by a 5HP single-phase 220v motor, it will be all the table saw I will ever need. It was collecting dust in an old mill building in Biddeford and I offered a few hundred bucks and got it. Now, where to put the thing when I go pick it up?

Better, but not....

2010-04-25T08:13:00.002-04:00

Better

but not yet best. Might not ever be, or at least not for a long time.

But the stomach has finally settled and I will go back to work tomorrow.

Scavenged material resulting in 17 2x4x8's (x $2.50 each =$42.50) and 4 2x6x8's (x $3.00 each = $12.00 more). So about $54.50 in lumber for the 12x16 shed going up on the land. I just changed the design from a 5/12 shed roof to a 12/12 gable roof, thus increasing the cost by about 40% but increasing the useable space by almost 100%. Now I will be able to store 16' lumber in the loft, a big plus when you're trying to build a house. The down side is that the increased floor space makes over 200 sq feet of floor, and a building permit is necessary; $50 and a four page form.

and

The black flies have arrived. KT wants a screen porch on the new house. They are as bad as I remember.

Ick.

2010-04-22T17:15:00.002-04:00

Ick.

Sick.

Losing days of work.

Worst part is I know from whom I received this 24 hour flu and they even warned me.

What goes down must come back up.

Trying to maintain hydration .......

Back

2010-04-17T19:05:00.002-04:00

So, we're back from Florida and just worked all week.

Woke up this morning to half an inch of snow. It was gone by noon. Spring has reasserted herself.

These Maine roads will wreck a suspension...just put $1300 into the Mercedes and $1300 into the Dodge. The Benz got new front struts, strut mounts and ignition wires ($250 for the set!!) and the Dodge got new front U-joints, new ball joints and an oil change. Next time buy a beater and get triple A.

Lost the camera cord, otherwise we'd post recent pics.

No movement on housebuilding due to lack of funds........but we've got steady work for the moment.

Just keep looking ahead and putting one foot in front of the other.

FLA

2010-04-06T15:58:00.002-04:00

Sometimes you just have to obey your father when he tells you to get on a plane and fly non-stop to Florida and stay there for a week.

A welcome diversion from Maine's seemingly never-ending mudseason, we're in Orlando taking in the theme parks with part of the Midwestern Wagner clan. Along with lots of chillin out, we've already been to SeaWorld to see all the shows and what not. They even have two neat rollercoasters there.

On tap for the rest of the week: Epcot, Anna Maria Island, watching nieces be cute, and maybe Coco Beach.

We'll be back in the Maine woods this weekend, hopefully bringing beach weather with us.

---w---

Still

2010-03-27T08:32:00.002-04:00

Still. We're still here, but hardly still.

Here is what is going on:

-Working again for Connolly and Co. Timberframe Homes and Barns. After two weeks almost finished with a 24x48 story and a half in Hemlock, going to Maryland. The other side of the shop is cutting an octagonal cabana in Western Red Cedar, so we end up wearing dust masks all day because the inflammatory effects of the cedar dust. Looks like there's at least 8 more weeks of work at Connolly's, maybe more. My friends over at Sustainable Structures have landed a new home contract over in Jefferson, and I might jump on that when the work at Connolly's runs out, as I think it will.

-Mudseason is in full swing, almost all the roads are posted "Heavy Loads Limited". Its hard to move anything heavy any where. Otherwise, we'd probably have clearing begin on our land.

-We've been pursuing a particular house design from Timberworks Design in South Burlington, VT. You can see its basic layout here. It is a 24x24 dutch saltbox. We're going to flip the whole thing around and add a day-light basement to get some more out of the small floor plan. We are still hoping to build this year, although it may be better to wait until next year.

That's about it folks,

w

news from the country estate 2-17-09

2010-02-17T15:24:00.002-05:00

Greetings from the 'didn't get any snow this time either' country estate,

Other than the reliably pleasant mid winter weather, we've got a few other news items:

-work has been slower than slow, but thats February in Maine.

-housebuilding or more like housebuilding planning has begun in earnest. Septic system design is underway, estimates are being made, financing pursued

-I traded some work for a 6.5 kW generator recently.

-I've been prototyping some new furniture with my friend Paul over at Paul Baines Fine Woodworking. I'll post pictures just as soon as we've got something to show for it. Think about Bamboo though.

-We were down in Boston doing some preliminary marketing work for the above mentioned PBFW's line of Cathance River Stools. We're trying to get them some exposure, so I can work more building furniture as well as houses. Boston is a bit of a culture shock after being on the country estate for a while

-And, that's about it, now go over and read my other blog about Porch Restorations.

---w---

Not this East Coast

2010-02-10T21:25:00.003-05:00

I would certainly love to post all sorts of pictures of the blizzards that have been pounding us here on the East Coast, but wait, oh yeah, all the blizzards went way south of here. We haven't gotten any new snow in weeks. Just day after day of clear skies and 25 degrees. I don't know how much more of this I can take!

Can we get some snow here in Maine? Come, on ! They don't even deserve it in D.C., at least around here we appreciate a good blizzard. I might even say we enjoy it.

How am I supposed to go snowshoeing if we don't get a little more accumulation?

Dear Mid-Atlantic and Mid-Western states,
Please deliver any excess or unwanted snow to Coastal Maine via air-mail.

Warmest Winter Regards,

Maine.

PS. please feel free to keep the acid rain and mercury from your soot-spewing coal-fired power plants. we don't need any more ;)

Guillotine Tree

2010-02-03T21:32:00.003-05:00

I saw this goofy tree scene this afternoon while traipsing round the woods on the Wagner Estate. Off with its head!

The guillotine tree.

Earlier in the day, I was turning reclaimed lumber into window and door trim, like this:

You can read about the rest of that story here.

Other than that, Winter drags on, slowly here in Maine.

Oot and a boot.

2010-01-31T08:40:00.004-05:00

Winter is a great time to be out and about in Maine. There are no crowds, no traffic and no tourists from 'away'. I think the low temperatures and precipitation keep them away. But we find plenty of interesting things to do, vocationally and otherwise. I just created a new blog for my carpentry endeavors, you can see it here: http://woodandwagner.blogspot.com.

Here is part of a timberframe I recently had a hand in raising. All that snow presents some serious challenges to the project. If the trailer at right looks a little high that's because it is. The site was so tight that the crane truck drove in with that trailer and to get out had to pick the trailer up off the ground and spin it. Conditions were so icy that the crane and trailer got stuck on the way out with all of us behind it. There we sat for over an hour, idling, while a sand truck came to put down some traction.

These bunch from our snowshoeing jaunt yesterday at the Land of Goshen:

Wags, winter forest head shot. (Photo by KT)

KT, winter forest head shot. When the temperature is in the teens or lower, she opts for the artificial beard.

Birch among Pines.

If KT received a revelation from heaven while snowshoeing, I imagine this is what it might look like.

There is a fungus among us. In this case on a big dead pine trunk. (photo by KT)

The aforementioned fungusy dead pine trunk. (photo by KT)

Wavy ice on the streaming stream. (photo by KT)

Last weekend I got to go snowshoeing on Saturday with our friend Rob from Milwaukee. Then on Sunday, we got up in the wee hours and drove up to Sugarloaf Mtn to experience what many say is the best downhill ski experience in the East. I can say it was the best I've ever skied. I'll post pictures from that soon.

Gettin a fresh one.

2010-01-18T18:05:00.002-05:00

Got a fresh 6-8 inches of snow at the country estate today, and I got through a whole plowing run without getting stuck (a real accomplishment). Just take it easy and watch where you're going, especially when backing up.

Snow depth in the fields and forest is up around two feet now. Makes tramping through the woods a real work out

A timberframe raising this week, some skiing and snowshoeing over the weekend and back into attics and basements on Monday...

January Thaw!

2010-01-15T20:12:00.003-05:00

A true January thaw. A statistical anomaly they say.

In truth, the quicksilver reached up over 40 degrees today and will be nearly so tomorrow....not a moment too soon as we had a -9F morning yesterday.

Next week, back to winter as usual, snow more than likely.

A quiet day at the lake.

2010-01-07T16:46:00.003-05:00

A quiet day at Damariscotta Lake.

Not sure if the ice is safe yet.

On the topic of ice:

That about sums it up.

Meanwhile back at the Ranch

2010-01-06T09:46:00.003-05:00

Greetings from Northern New England, the part of the country that is supposedly in the 'deep freeze'. I just can't understand the hype surrounding the weather these days. What were you expecting in the middle of Winter at 45 degrees north latitude? Beach weather? Its like Winter is back to the old days of walking to school ten miles up hill both ways. Put on a scarf and quit yer whining!

But seriously, the sensationalism of weather reporting reflects two facets of modern life: everything has to be extreme to attract advertisers AND everyone cares about the weather so much because hardly anyone spends any significant amount of time outside. That said, I was outside yesterday at the Land of Goshen (also know as the Wagner Estate)

We've had a bit of new snow recently, about a foot over the weekend. Its time to get out the snowshoes, because without them you're up past your knees in snow.

Looking northwest along Ben Brook

Now looking south along Ben Brook.

Southeast into the woods.

Wags, the younger.

Back north towards the Egypt Road.

As promised, here is a quick numerical run down of all things vehicular:

2004 Dodge Ram 2500 SLT (weighing in around 6800lbs with me an my tools)
Since June 2009 acquisition:

9703 miles driven

$8319.33 All in cost of operation (I know! a $3500 down payment really adds to upfront cost)

$0.60/mile of payments + down payment

$0.86/mile All-in cost (Fuel, Ins, payments, maintenance)
or
$40.58 per day of ownership whether I drive it or not.

12.34 mpg overall ( about 8mpg when plowing )

$786.51 total fuel cost
or
$0.215 per mile

Service performed: 1 oil change in the driveway in six months and its due for one now.

Conclusions: a 3/4 ton truck gets terrible fuel economy no matter how you slice it. I knew that going into it. The overall cost of operation will decrease as the miles driven increases versus the payments + downpayment, but maintenance will likely increase as the truck takes on more miles (its in the shop right now....). Looking back, maybe I should have bought a $5000 used truck and had no payments, but maybe would have had more maintenance issues, like getting stranded. Its all about trade-offs with vehicles, there really is no-winning, just throwing more money into an ever widening, never-satiated black hole......I digress.

Better news ahead:

2001 Mercedes-Benz E-320 4matic wagon:
Since June 2008 acquisition:

36,645 total miles

$14,574.29 All-in cost of operation

$0.40/mile all in cost
or
$25.22 per day of ownership

$0.12/mile fuel
$0.28/mile other costs (payments, maint, insurance)

$4721.60 total fuel cost

at

24.66 mpg overall (not bad for a 4000lb vehicle with 123000 miles on it)

Service Performed since acquisition: left tie rod replaced, front ball joints replaced, alignment performed, front and rear brakes (pads and rotors) replaced, spark plugs replaced, tires replaced (new tires constantly leak due to corrosion from road salt/calcium chloride), several marker and headlight bulbs replaced, wiper blades replaced (front still doesn't work very well), exterior temp sensor non-functional and non-essential, four full-synthetic oil changes, and it needs the electronic throttle looked at soon.

Conclusions: the car gets expected fuel economy, rides pretty much like a luxury car should (like a tank!). Parts and repairs are relatively expensive, but compared to the miles we put on are pretty reasonable. Overall cost of operation is less than the federal mileage rate ($0.55/mile) and less than half of the Dodge. Payments are low ($221/month compared with Dodge @ $350/month). BUT, the rugged driving conditions are starting to take their toll. In Maine, its always a race against the rust.

I got a little spooked by the rust and leaky tires just after Christmas and went to a couple car dealerships to see what I could get into for a similar payment. The answer is: not much. The only thing we really liked was the 2009 Dodge Nitro and its payments would have been $430 month! Other vehicles we test drove:

2008 Ford Escape: plasticky garbage
2008 Chrysler Pacifica: rides like minivan, drives like a minivan, why not get a minivan for $5000 less? Also I expected more out of a 4.0liter engine. Lame.
2007 Subaru Legacy sedan: ok, but too small and plasticky

And I've got a 2005 Dodge Intrepid loaner vehicle from the dealership and it is a piece of junk, but its a loaner......

After all that, we really decided that the Benz 'is what it is' and that is better than 90% of the other cars out there.

In other news, my work schedule has slowed considerably. A regular mid-winter slump. A run down to work on Cape Cod is not out of the question as early as next week....

a new coat

2009-12-29T20:52:00.002-05:00

A new coat of snow that is. The rain turned to ice and then snow and this morning nice white layer over everything. I snapped a few shots while I stepped out briefly this morning.

Northish.

Southish.

Tonite, winds gusting to 40mph, lows around zero. Stay tuned, they're predicting a New Year's storm of 'historical significance'. Someone on the radio said something about 48 inches of snow in the mountains. We're talking about the right state here, Maine, not northern California, right? No I heard them right. I just hope we can make it Boston and back for New Year's Eve.

Next post, the Vehicular year in Review, a must read for the numerically inclined.

The Occasional Moose

2009-12-20T08:19:00.003-05:00

Sometimes you're driving down a lonely dirt road in central Maine in the Winter and you spy a moose. Even more rare is that you're going slow enough and happen to have the camera in the truck, so you take a few terrible photos of said moose. This happened to me last week.

This was a particularly young gangly moose (not unlike myself) just hangin around looking for things too eat. My truck scared it just enough to make it amble away with a moose-like gait. The other guys I'm working with said they saw the moose again a few days later in the same area.

We're getting a small respite from the bitter cold of last week. For a few days it was right around zero during the day and very windy. Not good days to be working outside, but outside we worked anyway. I've learned an important lesson, that if the torso stays warm so do the hands and feet.

Three more days of work, then Christmas weekend, four days of glorious celebrating, sleeping and eating.

Another thing.

2009-12-12T07:50:00.002-05:00

Another thing is that I love Fedex tracking. Love it. When I buy a tool online I can see exactly where it is and when it will get here.........perfect for the obsessive online tool purchaser.

The different thing I get to do today is demolish moldy sheetrock and install new. 20 inches of Blown-in fiberglass insulation = FUN for days of itching.

One thing.

2009-12-08T20:49:00.003-05:00

One thing that I like about my vocation (house carpenter), is that I do something different just about every day, or at least every week.

Today I hung new wooden gutters with wrought iron brackets on a 150+ year old house. Yesterday I stripped old clapboards and did some roof framing. Tomorrow I'll watch the snow fall (5-8 inches followed by 1/4 inch of rain), plow some of it, and give an estimate on removing a leaky skylight. Always something different to do; always something new to learn.

We're headed toward the blue-print drafting stage of the house planning. More decisions to make.

And, tomorrow is my birthday.....I've passed all the childhood milestones into the obscurity of 'adulthood'.

First Snow

2009-12-06T21:44:00.006-05:00

Well its not technically the first snow for us here on the Country Estate, but its the first snow to stick. Amidst all the busy-ness I had time to take stroll in the woods on the land on the Egypt Road this afternoon after church:

View looking Southish along Egypt Road towards Ben Brook

A spot near the northwest corner of the property.

a stream about 300' in from the road near the northeasterly property line

Wags, himself walking amongst the trees.

Largish rocks.

Can you see the photographer's shadow?

Well, I've been all alone here at the Country Estate (boo hoo :( whilst KT is in Dallas for a conference relating to home visiting and parenting education. It was a consolation to know that it was cold there too. No sunny warm vacation for her!

Closed!

2009-11-25T17:43:00.002-05:00

Ah yes, the perfect convergence of cash, attorneys, real estate agents, signatures and paperwork. A property closing. My dad has closed on a 27-28 acre parcel right here in Alna Maine. On the banks of Ben Brook and the Streaming Stream. As its steward, I am now soliciting the greater public for names for the new estate. What is an estate without a name?

What would Churchill have been without Chartwell? Bilbo Baggins without Bag-End? Elrond without Rivendell? Andrew Jackson without the Hermitage? Jefferson without Monticello? Washington without Mount Vernon?

and Wagner without .........?

The land has undulating terrain with exposed granite in some spots. Trees include Eastern White Pine, Eastern Hemlock, White Oak, Red Oak, Silver Maple, Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Apple, Cherry, Birch and many others. There are several small and medium streams and a big babbling brook. We'll be building in the Spring a 24x36 two story colonial and later on, a good size barn.

looking good

2009-11-21T16:52:00.003-05:00

Here are few shots of the job looking good:

Stain-glass window in custom casing. I went to the trouble of getting brass screws to install it, so they could take it out to clean it, and they asked me to counter sink them and fill the holes with putty!

Long skinny bedroom with vaulted V-match ceiling, pine trim, and goofy track lighting and sconces.

We created this loft for them over the closet and the hallway.

-Boarded two sides of a timberframe today. I like to keep my connection to timberframing alive, even if I'm doing mostly restoration and remodeling these days.

-We'll be headed down to Connecticut for the Thanksgiving weekend. Hopefully my dad and I will close on the land by Wednesday and we can get serious about house planning/clearing/building.

-The weather continues to be perfect New England Autumn style.

News from the Country Estate November 13, 2009

2009-11-13T18:29:00.003-05:00

Hihowahya,

-the days are still warmish (low 50's) but the nights are almost all in freezing territory.

-the aforementioned land which my father had made an offer on is now under contract. I am acting as his eyes and ears here in maine. checking on things like soil conditions and driveway permits. Closing will occur before thanksgiving. Yes, we are excited.

-I finally got the snow plow out of storage, only to have no snowplowing accounts lined up. I've got a couple of leads, but no signed contracts.

-A slightly used Stihl 066 chainsaw with a 24" bar (and a 36") is now in my possession-in anticipation of having to clear land for our house.

-I have been doing carpentry work for a company called Sustainable Structures for the last month and a half. We're just wrapping up a remodeling job on Westport Island, a few pics from the job:

Living room with vintage* maple flooring, insulation and drywall.

*this maple flooring was milled from hundred year old logs pulled up from the bottom of Moosehead Lake. I hear they used to do this in Wisconsin, but banned it because it stirred up too many toxins which had settled to the bottom of the lakes.

This Anderson 400 series 36" circular window will house a custom-mounted stained glass window which the home-owners provided.

This bedroom used to have a dropped ceiling below the transom window at right. We raised the ceiling and installed pine V-match to follow the roof pitch and created a loft space above the closet and hallway. We also added dense-pack cellulose and foamboard insulation as well as new trim, flooring, windows and drywall.

Today we laid the vintage* birch flooring in the bedroom. The birch seemed to be of much higher quality than the maple. It will really "pop" after it is sanded and oiled.

-We'll wrap this job up by Wednesday next week and jump onto another project on Thursday.

Dad

2009-10-28T19:30:00.002-04:00

Well, Dad Wagner finally made it out to Maine to see what kind of shack we live in and was politely surprised to find out that we live the good life (with 9'6" ceilings).

We ate and drank, talked, played cribbage, went for drives, looked at land, went to church, read books and what not. I think he had a nice time.

For me, it was probably the best time I've ever spent with my dad. Honest.

I think a special thing happens if and when you can finally see your father as a regular person just trying to play the hand that life has dealt him (same as all of us). Another special thing happens when your father looks at the life you've built and says he's proud of you.

Thanks Dad.

In other news, the aforementioned Dad put in an offer on 27 acres of nicely wooded land here in Alna. He may be visiting more often!

Running Round

2009-10-23T08:05:00.003-04:00

Here on the country estate, we often have to take a whole day to run around. Thats today.

It looks like a beautiful fall day out there, but the day will be full of going to and fro.

The truck is full of construction debris from a remodel job that I spent all day hanging sheetrock on yesterday. It'll be mudded and taped by Wednesday, then we'll install the Tongue and Groove V-match ceiling in the bed room and the hardwood floors. Then trim and then Finished! On to the next one.

We keep losing chickens to coyotes or foxes or maybe hawks. We let them free-range the yard, because who can keep them penned up? But that is how the local predators get them. We don't have a yard dog and the cats won't tangle with a coyote or a fox. But one by one they're getting picked off. We'll have to get another batch of hatchlings. Speaking of chickens, getting chicken feed and bedding is on the list for today.

We're still a long way from being ready for snow to fly (Although, it snowed the other night, the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen.) The snow plow is still buried in the shed, and I've still got piles of lumber and other debris to cleanup before then.

And the house needs cleaning before my dad's arrival tonight.

News from the Country Estate 10/18/09

2009-10-18T19:00:00.002-04:00

Greetings from the Country Estate!

A cold rain falls outside, soaking everything. Its a good night to be inside in a warm dry house.

Autumn is in full swing here in Maine at the Country Estate. We've been spending a good bit of time walking among the leaves painted by the Great Artist. Our search for land on which to start our own country estate has yielded two front runners both around 25 acres, one in Alna and one in Dresden. So we've been following orange survey ribbons marking boundaries and looking at trees quite a bit.

On the work front, I've been subcontracting for a growing company called Sustainable Structures while I plan my next long term move in my building and woodworking career. So many aspects to it and such a short life to master all of them!

I've decided that I want to raise some oxen. An Ox is simply a steer (a neutered bull bovine) which has attained the age of four years and, presumably, is trained to work. Oxen require a lot of work to care for them, but can work in situations a tractor couldn't dream of (yes, tractors do dream. they even have psychoanalysts to interpret their dreams). Some of the land we've looked at presents challenges as to how best to harvest timber, and a team of oxen would meet some of those challenges. Don't get me wrong, I still want a tractor. KT says I will NEED a tractor, but Oxen will help too.

Milk Crisis

2009-10-11T09:40:00.004-04:00

Coming from Wisconsin, milk has always been part of my life in one way or another. Whether I'm having a four-serving bowl of Cheerios with a quart of milk in it, or a quart of vanilla yogurt, there has always got to be a large quantity of bovine lactose based food in the house.

A friend recently pointed out to me that the roots of milk consumption among the lower classes go back to the days of medieval feudalism in which the lord of the manor owned the meat of the livestock, but the peasants could take the milk. In those days, milk was the primary source of proteins and fats for those who could not afford to eat meat. That legacy lives on as we continue to pour skim on our wheaties every morning and add half and half to our French Roast.

This article refers to a so-called milk crisis of boom and bust cycles that hurt both customer and farmer. Just a few years ago, I would be sent to the Super America station with a five dollar bill to get TWO gallons of milk (1 skim, 1 2% if you were wondering). Our household drank those two gallons in about a day and a half, and subsequently would run to get more. By the time I moved to Maine the days of cheap milk were over, and we had gained a taste for Organic whole milk (especially the widely available Organic Valley milk, approx. $4 per half gallon), the price of milk had risen to over $3/gallon and higher. After drinking organic whole milk in glass bottles from somewhat local farms, we've found our own solution to the milk crisis: buying farm direct, raw/unpasteurized, fresh, whole, non-homogenized milk right from the bulk tank @ $4/gallon. Its pretty much the best milk you've ever tasted. The farm is located not 10 minutes from here on a corner in the road named after the excretion of the bovine (a picture of the sign is here)

Come to visit and we'll pour you a tall glass of this pristine bovine secretion!

2009-10-06T06:29:00.003-04:00

Up with the Sun, 41 degrees fahrenheit.

Everyone needs a little holstein steer mooing at them when they come in the drive way.

And chickens to lay fresh eggs (that black rooster attacked me not two minutes after this photo. I was ready for him though, as I had a stick. Gotta show him whose boss.)

Recent porch restoration job. New Framing, post feet, decking and a couple steps.

The time comes every year to pull the boat out of the water. The back end of my truck is almost in the water, while there is a trailer underneath that boat strung out on 3o some feet of chain.

If you look close on the left, you'll see my friend Paul in a little dinghy leaning under the boat adjusting the jack-stands that stabilize the boat on the trailer.

After a couple hours we had her on the hard and the mast dropped (no easy task, but this time pretty painless) and all the rigging tied up and ready to roll. I dragged her to my house first because I had to go to work.

Today a new job starts on Westport Island.

In the soup.

2009-09-27T19:56:00.002-04:00

We're in the soup tonight. After a bunch of great fall days, we're getting up to 1 1/4" of rain all at once. A dreary day in general in the Midcoast, but for us a very typical Sunday:

up at 7ish (which is sleeping-in for us)
cereal and milk
drive 40 miles while looking at 4 different properties for sale like this one
get coffees and a sticky bun at North Cottage Coffee
we've been to this church twice and will probably continue going
have lunch at the Big Top Deli in Brunswick
KT decides not to play soccer game (raining, tired etc)
Drive home
Sit in chairs
Decide to make soup from whatever vegetables and what not are in the kitchen
(Potato, turnip, fennel, carrot, green onion, garlic creamy-style soup)
eat soup.
Search for more properties, finding 30 more to look at.
walk all over house and laundry room trying to find wireless internet signal.
Shower
Blog
In bed by 8:15pm

A day in the life.

Went to the Common Ground Country Fair. It was a hoot, but we are all peopled out.

ok gtg

News from the Country Estate 9/18/2009

2009-09-18T20:04:00.002-04:00

Working, dawn till dusk, six days a week as much as I can. Winter's comin' who knows what it will bring?

The chickens have been laying eggs out in the yard somewhere's. Bad chickens, Bad.

I scraped ice off my truck window yesterday morning.

That's it.

Laborious Day

2009-09-05T22:21:00.001-04:00

A happy labor day weekend to you all.

I'll be celebrating by working most of the weekend.

Especially monday, laborious day.

Mist

2009-09-03T07:43:00.001-04:00

A mist rises over the field to the north over freshly cut hay. The birds sing. And I can faintly hear the chickens clucking.

News from the Country Estate August 31

2009-08-31T14:38:00.006-04:00

Greetings

Instead of flying, next time I'll just ship myself home in a big box. Now that would be a fun package to open on the porch!

Despite the so-called economic crisis, we've been keeping busy. Here are some pictures from a shed now dubbed the "studio". Note the custom plexi-glass gable windows.

I had the pleasure of trimming out a room for our friends over at Tandem Glass Studio and Gallery.
And the hens are finally laying eggs in earnest. A size comparison from biggest to average size egg.
I went out to find ELEVEN eggs in the coop this morning. I couldn't even hold them all, I had to put three in my pocket.

Well, we've got about 10 days of nice weather ahead, so if you need us, we'll be outside.

w

Flying while bearded.

2009-08-31T10:24:00.006-04:00

A little belated grousing about flying and the attendant security rig-a-ma-role.

So I'm flying home from Milwaukee, with a couple of smallish oil lamps with no oil in them, just glass, in my carry on baggage. Of course I get my bag searched at the security check, I was expecting that....

Then I'm waiting to board the flight, still looking a little sleepy eyed (6:40am flight), and this TSA minion keeps eyeing me up, then, right when I stand up to join the boarding line, he comes over and asks to search my bag again. Since he has the power to summarily detain me with meaningless questions and make me miss my flight, I assent. I tell him this is the second time I've had my bag gone through. He gives me some speech about if I've had the propaganda, I mean, training that he's had I would understand the tactics of OUR enemies. All the while, he's not even searching my bag. He barely even opens it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been profiled. Currently I wear a beard, some would call it an Amish style beard, that is no mustache, about three quarters of an inch long. Other than that, I'm wearing a plaid shirt and a hat that looks like a John Deere hat (it actually says John Moose and has a jumping moose). Other than the beard, I basically look like a farmer on holiday......

blah blah blah. people wonder why I don't like to fly. The total loss of the rights of personal privacy and free speech. And the right to wear a beard.

That is all.

W

Heartland

2009-08-21T21:20:00.002-04:00

Greetings,

I find myself in the land of corn and beans and big trucks and flat land. I'm in the Land of Lincoln with my kin, some of them anyway. Seeing pictures I haven't seen or have forgotten, hearing old stories for the first time. Its good to be here.

A long day of travel brought me hence. Despite my continuing grudge against flying ( mostly due to the ridiculousness of the security measures and the ever present TSA (Thousands Standing Around)), my last two jaunts out to Milwaukee have been nothing but pleasant. Part of it is due to my willingness to splurge on creature comforts like the New York Times, hot coffee, hot breakfast, and a shoe-shine I think, but in both cases the flights have been genuinely pleasant and easy experiences. I still prefer to drive out in the Mercedes if I have the time, but who has the time? I've been crazy busy with work for the last six weeks or so! What recession?

Also, the feeling of still being on the boat is gone.

w

After two days.

2009-08-19T21:42:00.002-04:00

After two days and sixty miles of sailing, I am getting seasick sitting here on land. Everytime I close my eyes, the room starts swaying back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth......

A friend and I cruised on up to Butter Island for lunch then down to Carver Cove on Vinalhaven to meet some friends at their cabin. A beautiful clear night spent rocking back and forth in the cove. Tasty breakfast and then a jaunt out to Isle au Haut and back to Carver Cove to drop off a passenger. A tight squeeze motoring through the Fox Island Thorofare and a gale coming out into Penobscot Bay. 3 to 5' seas. A calm ride back into Rockland Harbor. Home.

A day back home and off to Milwaukee.

W

News from the Country Estate July 26

2009-07-26T18:58:00.003-04:00

Greetings from the Country Estate:

Summer made a cameo appearance this week with temps in the 80's and high humidity. The gloomy skies of clouds, fog, and rain more typical of this year's summer returned however, with today barely reaching 70 degrees and intermittent rain showers. On Friday we received more than an inch of rain in five hours during a 'nor'easter'. KT and I did some rainy day shopping and saw the latest Harry Potter movie for a matinee price. An ok film. Just ok.

During a break in the rain last week I was finally able to install some relatively hard to find shock absorbers on my sailboat trailer. They are actually snowmobile shocks, but they're just the right size for minimizing radial oscillation due to cornering. They were about $20/a piece and non-returnable, so I was pretty glad when they did the trick.

After strapping the boat down, I was ready to bring the vessel home. The drive was relatively uneventful and boat, truck and driver arrived in good spirits.

Now in storage under a tarp next to another in progress boat project, she waits for some more time and money to tackle a few projects before she is seaworthy once more.

The end is in sight for the building project that never seems to end. Here we see the 34'x51' timber frame home after two days of raising work. There are only about 8 lifts left, just four dormer assemblies, four rafters and a dormer truss on the far side of the building. The second floor has 19 feet of headroom at the peak of the roof. That's a great height if you are going to house the raptor exhibit at the zoo....We'll build whatever they want.

A hen left a peace offering of a single egg on our deck after both roosters spent the afternoon digging up my tomato patch and fouling our deck. I immediately fried the peace offering to over-easy and partook of it with salt and pepper.

Probably the freshest egg I have ever eaten.

Inspired by my fresh egg experience, I went out to the garden and harvested a bunch of lettuce, some scallions, and a turnip for a mid-afternoon feast. I chopped and fried the turnip and scallions, adding two fresh eggs to make a country scramble.

I regret not planting four times as much in the garden, but who knew the weather would be this wet?

I spent the afternoon studying poultry slaughter techniques in preparation for the next time the roosters decide that its a good idea to hang out and crow by our window at five in the morning or dig up the tomatoes again.

Tomorrow its off to work again thankfully and hopefully all week.

On, Finally.

2009-07-12T08:45:00.003-04:00

The day finally came to get my boat off its keel-blocking and stands and onto the bright blue boat trailer. With lots of help from my friend Paul (the boat's previous owner), especially with the welding part, the trailer sits ready to receive the load. A fixed-keel sailboat trailer has to do two things: support the weight of the boat on the keel (the pressure-treated keel-rest in the middle) and keep the boat from tipping over while standing and driving (the steel tubes braced in two directions; the tubes are from old staging sections. We're always recycling). On the steel tubes will go big threaded screws with a plywood pad on them. When I have the time I'm going to paint the support stands.

The trick is to get a tippy boat on to a trailer without tipping it over.

First, you have to jack the boat up so it is at roughly the same height as the trailer, then pull the trailer as close and as straight up to the boat as possibly. Next, more jacking, and lifting by the boat stands, pulling the trailer back etc. When the keel is resting partially on the trailer, its time to put the truck in neutral, rig up some beefy come-a-longs and actually drag the trailer under the boat. This is possibly until most of the boat's weight actually rests on the trailer, then the come-a-longs actually drag the boat onto the trailer.

With some sweat, patience, and proverbial and actual elbow grease, a 19.5 ' 3000 lb boat can be safely deposited on a custom trailer. Bought retail, a custom trailer like this would cost in excess of $3500. Not including time for labor, I have roughly$500 into this one. Including labor, its probably more like $1500, still a pretty good value

It almost looks like its sitting too far back, but the center of weight is almost exactly between the two axles, right where it should be. Its actually sitting a little heavy on the front. And from the front.

Despite appearances, she's not quite ready to take a dip. First, the trailer needs some kind of stabilizing shock absorbers to counter the oscillating bounciness of the coil springs (its a 1960's era chassis). Second, I have a new hitch coupling. Third, as you can see there is no tongue jack. Fourth, like in the previous post about sailboat launching, It needs a little wheel on the tongue to let it down into the water far enough for floating. All that is just for the trailer to be safe and functional. The to do list on the boat is a mile long, but not all of it is necessary for a few day-sails.

This afternoon we're going sailing again on Paul's boat. We'll probably just bop around Rockland, Rockport, Camden area.

News from the Country Estate July 7

2009-07-07T21:14:00.002-04:00

greetings,

Forgive my clumvsy typeing as I had the geatr fortune of satisfyiung my curiosity about how stapling my finger to a roof feels...it only throbs most of the time.

It rains again, no surprise.

The shed project progresses nicely:

Wall and roof framing in progress. The big openings are for yet to be determined door/windows.

Door and windows bought, roof sheathed.

Tarpapering the roof.

Windows purchased 1/2 price at the Building Materials Exchange.

Gable overhang.

What my sailboat will look like when its done. This is a Bristol 19/Corinthian

KT takes a photo at the end of the dock at Owl's Head as we prepare to head out sailing on Sunday. We sailed with our friend Paul to Islesboro and back. It was a gorgeous day.

Before that we spent a few days down on Cape Cod celebrating KT's aunt's wedding. The weather was mostly great. Then we headed up to Boston to watch the fireworks from a roof top.....

well the rain continues.....

A break!

2009-07-01T22:45:00.002-04:00

A break in the steady rain allows a crew of Maine carpenters to sheath, insulate, and hang drywall on a 24x36 carriage house in just two days. With modern materials like structural insulated panels and a crane, a crew of four can do all that and more in just a few days. A house can be built and weather-tight in less than one week.

That's what we do. Now, if only the 'economy' would pick up we'd be able to do one every other week.

In other news, I drive to Cape Cod tomorrow to meet up with KT and attend her aunt's wedding. I might stick around for a week or so if I can find some work around those parts.

News from the Country Estate June 29

2009-06-29T13:35:00.007-04:00

Greetings,

With the continued wet weather came speculation that we can expect more of this wet weather pattern as a result of climate change (man-made or otherwise). It certainly puts a damper on outdoor on-site work like the photo below.

A carriage-house style garage timber frame.

We raised that frame on June 16 and got a few days of passable weather in order to board the roof with tongue and groove last week, but since then we've had little respite from low-pressure systems that stall out in the gulf of Maine and send wave after wave of precipitation. In addition a heavy fog and cloud bank has covered the coast for the last month or so. Just a few miles inland, we have seen the sun a few times, but more often than not we have been spending out days inside, playing cribbage and making cookies.

On a slightly less moist day, I was able to frame the deck for a shed-addition for some friends of ours who reside seasonally near/on Damariscotta Lake. Unfortunately time and weather has not allowed any more progress.

8x12 floor for a new section of a shed.

I did find one day with passable-enough weather to help a friend launch his 26' Rhodes Meridian sailboat in Rockland. Before launching we narrowly avoided making the boat a lawn ornament on River Road in Bowdoinham. When I pulled over to make an adjustment the 6-8000lbs of combined weight proved to much for the saturated soil of the shoulder and as I pulled away, the wheels dug themselves 18 inches into the ground, right up the trailer axles. After some tense tippy moments, we were able to pull the boat and trailer out of harm's way and on through to Rockland. In the parking lot of the Snow Marine Park, we painted the hull and prepared to step the 32' aluminum mast by hand. This required KT's brother Shane on the ground with a 16' 2x4 pushing the mast up, me on the stern holding the mast over my head and the boat's owner at the pivot point making sure the pin fastened and the wiring went where it was supposed to go. After the pin went in, I simply walked the mast forward and up (no easy task !). It was such an exertion that my knees were shaking after I got it up. But as you can see in the photo, up it went. We finished wiring and taping the turnbuckles and went off the launch ramp.

In order to float a boat that draws six feet off a trailer, you have to get the trailer pretty far into the water. You can see in the photo above that there is a small wheel attached under the tongue of the trailer. We unhitch the trailer from my truck and lower it onto the small wheel and:

...attach a chain and pull the truck away to take up the slack, at this point we pull the blocks that hold the trailer from rolling down the ramp and slowly lower the trailer into the water. We had lost two hours and the tide had gone down considerably, so we had to use 40 feet of chain rather than the 20 feet we expected. This allowed us to put the trailer way down on the ramp and well under water while keeping the salt water away from my truck's rear end.

The empty trailer of Success!

Now to get my sailboat ready to be in the water....

Maybe we'll get it in by August, but not if this rain keeps up...

Meanwhile

2009-06-22T15:38:00.002-04:00

Meanwhile, back at the Country Estate ol' Wags bides his time while Mud Season: Part 3 is well underway. The week's work has been scuttled due to weather that was not and will not be clement. Rain showers and kiln-dried t-n-g roof boarding are not good friends.

confession

2009-06-21T21:35:00.002-04:00

I have a confession to make. I've been seeing another woman this weekend. Fortunately, KT doesn't mind because she's only about a foot tall and fifteen pounds and very furry. We had the privilege to 'dog-sit' a two year old terrier-mix-mutt named Lola. She went everywhere I went, in the truck, to work, around the yard ( it could have been that steak in my pocket, I always knew how to woo the ladies ). My usual dog allergies did not prove to be a big factor this time, although if she stayed a lot longer I bet I would get sick.

Now miss Lola is going home to Alaska and I'm off to Thompson Lake again after last weeks false start. We raised the carriage house timber frame, but the panels will not arrive until tomorrow morning. The decidedly wet weather forecast is throwing a wrench in the whole process too. We'll see what the morning brings.

---w---

News from the Country Estate June 14

2009-06-14T15:18:00.006-04:00

Greetings from the well-soaked Country Estate!

-The week or so of nice weather (nice for us humans) broke last week with rain, rain and more rain. It rains now in fact. This is all good news for the garden up to a point. The peas, pumpkins, kohlrabi and turnips are doing well, everything else ranges from so-so to dead. If we were subsistence farmers, we'd be worried, but as it is, we say, well you've got to start somewhere. Here is a a recent self-portrait of the eastern branch of the Wagner clan/Maine-branch of the Ruff-Wagner clan. Some of you's have not seen KT's hair short or my face be-goateed. The goat is a recent occurrence for me, but KT's easily-maintained-do is at least four months old. She might add that she is not making any statement other than that of living a simple life expressed through the hair-follicles. As it is, I think she's quite presentable with or without hair :) (Thanks to In-Law Amy for the Bean plaid shirt, it fits great!)

In other news, two weeks or so of stress for me comes to an end as I start work on a new project tomorrow and money flows in again. Not a moment too soon too as big blue trucks don't pay for themselves literally. Its not until they start carting around tools and materials that they begin to make sense. With that in mind I forced the rack I built for the Chevy onto the Italian Stallion (now that Chrysler is owned by Fiat that name seems fitting). Oddly enough the bed of the new truck is two inches wider in the front that the Chevy. Installing the now dry and brittle hemlock posts was not without its challenges. The bed on the new truck is also three inches longer than the Chevy requiring new side planks at a full 8 feet. The result:

I will be putting the whole rig through its paces tomorrow morning. I'll be loaded to the gills with ladders, tools, planks, saw horses and the like for the job on Thompson Lake. We've got two timber frames to raise, one hand cut in Hemlock and one machine cut by South County Post and Beam of West Kingston, RI in Douglas Fir. This will be our first time raising a machine cut frame. It will also be my first time in this particular part of Maine:

Ver mapa más grande

In addition to raising the timberframes we'll be enclosing the buildings with structural insulated panels from Winter Panel in Brattleboro, VT. All that raising and enclosing means a lot of time working with a crane and working on the roofs--exactly the kind of work I had in mind for myself when I was five!

KT sends her greetings to all y'all in the blogosphere and interweb

That's the way it looks from here.

News from the Country Estate June 10, 2009

2009-06-10T10:24:00.009-04:00

Greetings,

-Back in Maine, the way life should be, waiting out a rainy week, dodging Black Flies, mosquitos and ticks.

-The garden soldiers on despite a concerted attack of the local slug contingent:

Collateral damage, a mostly eaten butternut squash.

-I've pretty much given up on the butternut squash. Its a little late to be planting more. There are a few water melons hanging on, as the slugs don't seem to like them as much.

Tomatoes in the bed next to the deck.

The right half is our garden, the left is our landlords'.

Peas Left, Turnips Right.

Lettuce/Onions/Kohlrabi Left, Sweet Basil Right.

Open sown corn and beans. Only the beans are coming up.

A hill of pumpkins.

Spring chickens. John Barleycorn, the lieutenant rooster is on the left.

The Commodore, the dominant rooster, front and center.

-In other news, the transportation infrastructure has changed, as I have traded the 2005 Chevy for a 2004 Dodge 2500 with only 22,500 miles and everything on it. It came with a 8.5 foot Fisher V-plow.

Snazzy. And supremely useful.

Plow and newly painted boat trailer

-I also recently traded some labor for a lightly used but in working order job-box for my voluminous amounts of tools. Now I can lock them securely in box weighing close to 500lbs. My theory for preventing theft is to make it supremely inconvenient to steal my stuff. You can never make something completely secure because if someone wants something bad enough, they'll find a way to get it. But if it is sufficiently inconvenient to take something, it will keep something 99% secure. The other thing is to keep the other subcontractors on your site happy, because if they're mad at you, they're more likely to take it out on your tools.

-The rain and wetness continues.

---W---

Planting.

2009-05-26T10:12:00.002-04:00

A day of planting and transplanting ensues. Winter's last gasp of 30 degrees last night can't stop the garden now. Plans have been hatched, seedlings germinated. It all gets committed to the ground today to see what this clay soil can produce with the help of several yards of horse manure. And afterwards, a regression, a going home. I will negate all of my carbon-footprint shrinking efforts all at once and wing my way across the states for a visit to black fertile soils of the Midwest. Whilst KT is on an island, I will be landlocked among the lengthened vowels of my closest of kin. We will probably enjoy beer-boiled bratwurst as we cheer the Brewers (if they are playing).

---w---

News from the Country Estate - May 23

2009-05-23T15:49:00.002-04:00

Greetings,

-Naps have been taken in healthy quantity today.

-The garden will be tilled and planted this weekend come hell or high water.

-The boat trailer will be painted as well.

-KT is going a retreat on Isle au Haut. I am flying to Milwaukee on Wednesday and staying until the next monday.

--that is all--

-w-

News from the Country Estate, May 17

2009-05-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

Greetings,

I mentioned an impromptu trip to New Hampshire with a tractor in tow. It was this tractor, dwarfing my puny Chevy 1500. I was a little nervous, but I was assured that an F150 with a smaller engine had made the trip. We estimated that the tractor and trailer weighed double what my truck weighs, probably topping 10,000 lbs.

She made it ok. It was a little slow going and a little bouncy with the hydraulic brakes traveling a few inches before engaging, especially around the Gorham/Standish area. When we disconnected the rig it was like a great weight had been lifted from our shoulders.

I've still got a nasty cough hanging on.

It rains, and rains.

up to

2009-05-15T14:34:00.009-04:00

Hokay, so, here are some of the things I've been up to this week:

Finishing up window and door trim at Tandem Glass Studio and Gallery

Sweeping up hand plane shavings. Some of us do it the old fashioned way. (Mainly, I didn't have the power planer with me.

A hand plane shaving so thin that its translucent.

With two small ratchet straps I was able to pick up my snow plow with the tractor.

And drive very slowly and carefully around the back of the carport.

Getting the snow plow into a spot for storage turned out to be a lot less work than I expected.

As I mentioned in the last post, I spent Monday through Thursday out on Swan's Island raising a timberframe for Connolly and Co. I caught a cold on the first day, so I didn't enjoy myself as much I might have otherwise, but it was a very successful raising overall. Swan's Island is located about 8 miles from Mt. Desert island, the home of Acadia National Park. It is accessible only by private boat and the State of Maine Ferry. Here are a few photos of the chaos:

Bent 5 of the barn frame going up.

Bent is now vertical as we walk it over to its proper place.

Bent 4 up and braced off. See the shed dormer taking shape.

Setting purlins in bay 4.

Flying a dormer/post/ridge assembly into place in bay 3. I am at the peak on the left.

Bringing the ridge/rafter peak joint together for a perfect fit.

Raising bent 2.

Flying the last set of purlins complete with the traditional sprig on the last piece.

The crew.

J.R. of J. R. Williams Crane Service. The man behind the levers.

The finished frame.

Close up of shed dormer.

The 4000 sq. ft. log home we stayed in Monday through Thursday.

The Great Room in the log home.

View from the deck at the log home. There is a light house in the distance.

Waiting for the ferry back to Mt Desert Island and home.

Ferry rides are still exciting to me.

Ye olde sailboat in its current condition, in storage that is.

View from the stern under the tarp.

And from the bow.

Looking pretty awkward with its fellow boats out of water.

I've got my work cut out for me this weekend. I pressure washed the boat trailer in preparation for Rustoleum's Rust Reformer primer and a new coat of blue paint. I've got to hook up the lights and bolt down the pressure treated longitudinal rails and the keel rest. I've scribed a template for the hull cradle, but I still have to cut the actual plywood. The stern jacks are still an issue. I don't feel like spending $250-300 on new equipment. This afternoon I'm making an impromptu trip to North Conway, NH towing like 10,000 lbs of equipment.

Next week, more work, more gardening, more boat stuff and hopefully a bit of climbing.

---w---

Back

2009-05-15T08:08:00.002-04:00

Back from the island with a bad cold.

I'll post pictures of the frame soon.

---w---

Country Estate News May 9

2009-05-09T09:52:00.003-04:00

greetings!

Yesterday we loaded an 18 wheeler with timbers for next week's job on Swan's Island. We leave at 5 am ish from our shop, to catch the 9 o'clock ferry out of Bass Harbor. The barn is a five bent, two-dormered barn in Douglas Fir. I'm told the island has no public services and that we're staying in a 4000 sq. ft. log home while we work. I've never been out to that island. KT is going on some kind of island retreat for work in a few weeks on Isle au Haut.

Here is a silhouette of the sailboat. It is a Bristol Corinthian/19. 19'6.5" Bow to Stern. 6'6" beam. Drawing 2'9" and displacing 2800lbs. Designed by Carl Alberg, there were 712 produced between 1966 and 1980. She is rigged as a sloop. The trailer design has pretty much coalesced to involve a bow stop/winch assembly, a 1.5" thick plywood hull cradle in the front, a keel-rest of steel and carpet in the middle and two jack stands int he back. Now for the assembly.

In other news, everything is green green green. The seedlings are getting bigger and the garden is nearly ready to plant. We just have to do some spreading of horse manure and rototilling. The black flies are out, but not in full force yet. We had a very pleasant fire out back last night under clear skies and a full moon. It was so bright you could almost read by it.

That is all.

---w---

Country estate news May 3

2009-05-03T17:39:00.004-04:00

Greetings,

The news from the Country Estate:

H1N1 Flu (aka swine) has not had much effect on us here, but sleepy upside-down chicken syndrome seems to be endemic. Here I tend to a victim of this not thoroughly understood malady that affects pea-brained inverted poultry:

Composting has begun in earnest with a newly constructed compost pile thing. In the background sits the maple syrup stove and the future site of the suga-shack. We've got big plans!

Soil preparation for the garden:

Seedlings, now a week old.

I mentioned a sailboat in the last post. Said boat needs a trailer. Since I don't have $3500 for a custom trailer and I'm arrogant enough to think I can build my own, I recently brought home another rusting piece of metal. This time, the largest rusting piece of metal I have ever owned. A 1970's era Holsclaw dual axle trailer which will be the sailboat's chariot. It needs some work as you can see. I have removed all the old rollers and a few other superfluous components in my attempt to use the chassis to haul a 19.5 foot keel-hulled boat. I plan to attach 4 or 5 jack-stands to support the hull and weld a 6 foot piece of C-channel down the middle as a keel guide.

Lots and lots of rusty bolts. Some succumb to the impact wrench, while others succumb to the grinder.

That is all for now.

Hours

2009-04-28T18:30:00.002-04:00

To whom it may concern,

I've got work lined up for at least two months, which is more than most these days.

I've traded some labor for a sailboat.

It was 80 degrees today.

That is all.

Finally.

2009-04-25T08:11:00.000-04:00

I got a raise yesterday.

That is all.

---W---

Boing

2009-04-23T19:52:00.004-04:00

Well Hello there spring chicken! The cute little chicks of 8 weeks ago are looking more and more hen-ish every day. They're out in the coop now and if its warm enough we let them venture out into the chicken yard.

I've been pretty busy working. I'm back to timberframing. we're working on a four-bent two story frame in Douglas Fir. We just started laying out posts and connectors today. For the last three days we had been working on a barn restoration in the North Whitefield. My truck was all loaded up with staging and tools from that job in the picture below.

In the background you can see a set of braces for another frame that I helped cut recently, as well as the my motorcycle and a Fisher Minute-mount plow that I bought a few weeks back. As you can see, the grass is greening up nicely with the April showers. What you can't see is that the driveway is still a mud-pit as we enter Mud-Season Part II: Return of the Ruts. To top it off, the truck needs new tires, so the mud really gets slick. I'm thinking of lifting the truck 3 inches or so and getting a set of more aggressive tires so I don't get stuck as often.

We still haven't gotten the garden in. Maybe we'll get some peas planted this weekend. Its supposed to be 74 degrees on Saturday. I managed to kill all my seedlings by splitting them up and then forgetting to water them because I was busy working. I think I'll try again though, putting fewer seeds in each peat-pot and watering them more often.

I said ooh, aah fhwgds.....

-w--

Planting

2009-04-04T12:29:00.002-04:00

Greetings,

Since the yard is a big mud pit and the tractor won't start (without a jump) and I was gettin' antsy about gardening, I went out and bought a bunch of seeds to start (and some more to plant when the ground dries out). So here is how much gardening adventure begins with a bunch of seeds, eight-packs and some potting soil. So far I've got lettuce, onions, kohlrabi, turnips, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil and chives/garlic started. By the time they need to be transplanted, the ground should be a little closer for cultivation. I've got big plans!

(Help! my hand is caught in the jaws of a potting soil monster!)

Some of the veggies I plan to grow.

A little update on vehicle performance to please the numerically and automotively inclined. After 10 months of ownership and 21500 miles (its at 107500 now), the Benz continues to carry us wherever we wish to go with little complaint. Winter took its toll on the fuel economy and body with the car now averaging 23.35 mpg and having developed some small rust spots around the wheel wells and the drivers side door threshold. At that mileage rate (with fuel costs averaging 2.929 from 91/93) the car costs about $.125 per mile for fuel, $.113 per mile for repairs etc, and $.152 per mile for payments on the loan. All of that adds up to exactly $.39 per mile for the all in cost of running the vehicle, which seems low but its due for a tuneup (Benz's need periodic infusions of cash to keep them happy, so ~$500-1000) and for insurance at the end of this month. Those will certainly bring the cost per mile closer to the IRS deduction rate of 55 cents per mile. But the numbers don't lie, a working-class couple with no children can afford a newish Mercedes if its bought used/pre-broken-in.

The truck, oh the truck, how I wish I would have bought a bigger one! After 6 months and 6274 miles of driving, the truck has averaged 14.47 mpg and (at an average fuel cost of $1.968 for 87) $.131 per mile for fuel. Repairs and maintenance have been minimal at $.06 per mile, while loan payments come to $.39 per mile! which brings the truck's all in cost to about $.59 per mile which will be even higher soon as I plan to put a lift kit on it, new tires, and a plow (and pay new insurance...). In the final analysis, the truck is (per mile) way more expensive than the Mercedes, but it is a necessary tool for my carpentry business, otherwise I'd probably drive a little honda or something (I ran the numbers on adding a 35 mpg or so honda civic to the fleet and even saving $4/day on fuel it doesn't even come close to making financial sense).

Anyway, I find it incredibly interesting to see where all the money goes.

----W----

All loaded up.

2009-04-03T13:02:00.006-04:00

Greetings from the Country Estate,

Its been a busy week here, with most of the snow melting, lots of mud, and work, work, work on this and that. I'm trying to figure out how and where to do a garden, knowing that it probably won't yield very much this year. We'll see what happens. Knowledge of how to grow your own food is essential country dweller knowledge, so I better get started.

In other news, I feel great knowing that my ownership of GM vehicle is backed by the most powerful government on the planet. Now I know who to call when it breaks down.

We've made a half-hearted attempt at boiling our own maple syrup this year. Like the gardening, I think next year will be better....

I've been busy trying to get my own economic stimulus package going. Lately, an opportunity to work in a furniture/cabinet shop has opened up, so I've been sanding stool seats and legs a bit this week ( see the stools here or below). Coming up I'll be lending a hand to our glass-blowing friends over at Tandem Studio and Gallery who are in the middle of a gallery remodel at their studio in Dresden, ME. If you're in the market for hand-made glass anything, give them a holler!

Hand-blown tumblers.

These hand-made stools are available directly from craftsman Paul Baines at his website.

The truck all loaded up with brace stock.

Its not that often that I have a good reason to stand on top of the truck, so I take all the chances I can get.

All loaded up.

Three week old chickens, examining the wider world of the laundry room. Occasionally one gets pushed out and lands on the floor looking incredibly bewildered.

More chickens exploring the chicken condo.

I've added a roosting board in the middle since many of them are beginning to roost on various things in the condo. They still all sleep in a pile near the heat lamp though.

That's the news from the Country Estate. Until next time, like Garrison Keillor says, Be well, Do good work, and Keep in touch.

----w----

new chicken house

2009-03-26T16:12:00.002-04:00

This is the new chickens' house. They needed a new place to keep them safe from the three Maine 'coon cats. We think they like it, as they've made themselves at home like chickens do. Some of them have already learned how to roost, but they still sleep on their bellies wherever they get tired of walking. They'll probably be too big for it soon though. That's ok because soon we'll get some meat birds in there!

Stunning

2009-03-23T21:01:00.003-04:00

Greetings,

A few empirical statistics on this site.

And people are still surprised that we have no television....

KT just got a book called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander (no his name is not a joke...), 1978.

I just got two books. A little architectural history, the classic Big House, Little House, Backhouse, Barn by Thomas C. Hubka. A study of the connected farm buildings of New England.

I also got Starting and Running Your Own Small Farm Business by Sarah Beth Aubrey.

Back to the land. Need I say more?

----W----

Mudseason and Chickens!

2009-03-16T10:27:00.003-04:00

With lots of snow and rain comes mudseason in March:

The area behind the car port.

The Driveway a few days ago. It is worse now.

With the arrival of mudseason comes this years chicks. There are 26 in the kiddie pool. All different kinds. Theoretically I own 1/3 of them, although I have no idea what to do with them or how to take care of them just yet.

The breezeway is already starting to smell like chickens.....

We successfully completed our taxes yesterday, something I consider a major milestone of adult responsibility. If it were just a couple W-2's and a refund, no problem, but we had something like 6 W-2's, 3 1099's, 3 1098E's, a schedule C, and a section 179 from several different states. Despite owing the government a considerable amount, I was happy to see that our overall tax burden is pretty small, much less than it would be if were 'successful' in economic terms.

That's how it looks from the Country Estate.

---w---

Back in the saddle

2009-03-06T13:20:00.004-05:00

Greetings...

This week found me back in Maine, toiling with timbers. A friend/co-worker and I get to cut the timberframe joinery for a carriage house to be raised this summer. To cut costs we're doing all work outside, so we're relatively dependent on good weather.

On the left are 18 timbers that I have been working on. They will become 17 joists and 1 connector. At this point, they are planed close to the correct dimension and I am about to rough cut the joinery, in this case a soffit tenon. On the right are 4 rafters that Andy is working on as well as 4 finished rafters and 4 finished girts. The temperature first thing in the morning was 3 degrees above zero (Fahrenheit).

Closer up to see all the planer shavings

Near the end of the day, the joinery is complete with chamfering and holes for the 3/8" spikes that will hold the joists in the girts.

Hopefully there will be more work where this came from.

----w----