A week of Saturdays.

In the self-employed construction world, we often say its feast or famine.  When its feast, you could work 14 hours per day every day, just wanting a day off.  When its famine, its hard to know what to do with yourself after week after week of nothing.

Rarely, you might get an unexpected reprieve in the middle of the feast.  This week, a management and weather delay of an out of state job presents me with what amounts to a week of Saturdays.  Days that are not entirely free from work, but are open for the taking.

Here in the country, we often say that there is ALWAYS something to do.  So here are a few things we do if we have a week of Saturdays in the middle of the busy times:

-Burn the Econoline-Van-Sized brush pile on a rainy day/night.  (check)
-Fix the generator that's been broken for a year (check)
-Clean up the:
                   -shop
                   -house (check)
                   -van
                   -office
                   -shed

-Coffee and:
                 -pancakes (check)
                 -eggs (check)
                 -bacons (check)
                 -toast (check)
                 -pastries (check)
                 -cream (check)
                 -biscotti (check)

-Study for Massachusetts Construction Supervisors License Exam
-Design a timber frame shed
-Design a timber frame Sugar Shack
-Sleep(more)
-27 more things that I'll think of.

Back to the regular days of the week on Monday.

News from the Country Estate

Hihowahya,

Since the post in the summer time, we have moved again (in November), to another small apartment on the same road as our land on which we intend to build our house. Since the summer, many things have changed and many have stayed the same.

We're still trying to scratch a living from the coast of Maine like nearly everyone else around here. I am still trying to make money by putting pieces of wood together with nails and glue, but around here you do whatever you can to make it through the winter. I have recently considered getting a 'real' job, and I have even sent out a few resumes, but there still aren't a lot of jobs out there for folks without specific training (i.e. nurses, machinists etc.)

Last month, I spent a couple days splitting wood (with a hydraulic woodsplitter a Split-Fire 2260, which I highly recommend for its dual-action), and I sold one of our cars (the 96 Honda Civic with 250k miles). It sold in about an hour after I put it on the Craigslist. Somehow we found a way to pay off the Benz-omatic Wagon and now we're debt-free except for our student loans. (Don't even get me started on the American travesty of saddling the next generation with mountains of student loans getting useless degrees.....).

The Astro work van I bought in the fall is performing admirably, getting almost exactly 17.6 mpg on every tank, which is a spectacular improvement over the 10-12 I was getting with my Dodge Ram pickup. I may yet build a center console out of birch plywood, but for now, I like it the way it is. My only complaint is that the back doors leak a bit when it rains and I can't find anything wrong with the weatherstripping.... Maybe it will be a dry summer.

We've been doing a few things on our land. We finally cleaned up some of the debris from the trees that I brought down before Hurricane Irene and piled it into a big pile. I'm still deciding whether to burn the pile or rent a big chipper for a day. Thoughts?

The next step over there is to scrape enough cash together to put in a nice gravel driveway. I'm getting an estimate on it on Wednesday.

Since we got rid of one car payment, we thought it would be a good idea to take on another one, in the form of a shop/storage space down back here at the estate. Soon I'll be setting up my first shop. I am pretty excited actually to have a space to set up all the bigger tools all at once. And have a work bench......the possibilities are endless, as are the ways to spend time and money on them.

Once the shed is empty of tools and other stuff, we'll be outfitting it as rustic guest house for the summer and fall, so we'll finally have guest accommodations. We'll have to figure something out for facilities over there, but I think it will be great.

So with all that news, I'll leave you to whatever dreary or fair March weather awaits you.

-w-

Does anyone even blog anymore?

Hello all. I stopped in at my own blog today and looked at "my blog list" and realized that, save one blog, no one had updated their blog in about a year. That prompted me to ask myself, "Does anyone even blog anymore?" I know that some folks do, but having left my own blog alone for more than six months leads me to ask a deeper question, "Why do I (or does anyone else) blog?"

For the last six year or so, I must admit blogging has been a largely self-aggrandizing activity. Look at me! Look at the cool stuff I am doing. Look my great life. Isn't it so interesting? I have not written here with much intent other than that. There is some vague notion in my mind that I have written to keep family and friends updated with our (mine and KT's) life as we are many miles from most of you, but even that has been largely a one-way-street (apart from a few comments...which I always appreciate). Even that role of this blog has been largely taken over by the Facebook, leaving those luddite or suspicious 'non-facebookers' out of the loop.

The only type of post that I have really enjoyed are my periodic 'News from the Country Estate' updates that include Maine country living news, family tidbits, vehicles, weather and overall musings of the urban-born turned rural dweller trying to scratch out a living in a down economy.

So for now, I think I will continue with posts along that vein, and maybe someday, start an entirely new blog on that topic.

And, I will clean up my blog list to include blogs that are actually updated and that I actually read.

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.

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....

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.

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......

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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---