Too Cold to Work

When it's 8 degrees out and wildly windy, there are better things to do than work on the little building.  So a little pond hockey was in order.  Most of the ponds and lakes in the area are not frozen, but this one is.  The water depth is only about three feet and it's at around 2300 feet in elevation so it freezes early.  We shoveled for about thirty minutes and then played hockey for a few hours.  The photo is the departing shot at the end of the afternoon with Cascade Mountain in the background.

What was interesting about the day, beyond the normal beauty of playing hockey in such a setting, was the behavior of the ice, which had a great deal of flexibility to it.  It would compress one to two inches if two skaters were next to each other.  We ultimately attributed this to the conditions under the ice and under the water.  It is called "Mud Pond," and our assumption is that the mass of organic matter on the bottom was compressing, allowing the ice some space to move.

Interesting.

Buttoned Up!

It was my brother's birthday yesterday, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.  I actually remember the day in 1953.  I was four years old.  My father was teaching in Exeter, a prep school in NH, and we lived in an apartment in a building called Merril Hall.  I'm the youngest of four and my brother would have been turning eight.  I was standing in the kitchen and had one of those little spring loaded guns with the suction cups that stick so effectively to the smooth surface of a refrigerator when whetted correctly with saliva.  It was one of those moments in life when things change monumentally, and I knew it somehow at the time.  While I remember watching the assassination on TV, and I remember the iconic images from the funeral and other events, I most clearly remember the shift in perspective that happened towards the spring loaded gun, which was summarily removed from my hand and discarded with alacrity.

But I digress.  On my brother's birthday, and on the fiftieth anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, I went down to Keene in the midst of a very subtle rainfall and worked on the final siding of the little barn.  It is rumored that we are to get 4-6 inches of snow this weekend, so I felt even further motivated to get the building buttoned up.  And while there is nothing really new to convey on the process of building, there is on the emerging and complete sense of gratification that is starting to occur.  It's been a long process.  I think it's been three years since the idea first germinated with the tree blowing down, and I have about two full weeks of work in the building, spread out over a full year.  In reflecting back as well, the whole building seems like a gift.  The tree fell down on someone else's property and was freely given away.  Random people generously helped with the labor to get the tree in the lake.  The roofing lumber came from an old barn that got damaged by a flood during Irene.  It was sitting by the side of the road as I was driving by with my truck.  The windows were found at the dump.  The granite for the foundation was listed as free on craigslist less than a mile from my house.  The rough cut two by fours were from a renovation that was being done where I work. And lastly, the expensive part of the building, the siding and trim, emerged on craigslist for a 100 dollars.  The interesting thing on much of this was the timing of all of these things.  They seemed to fall in order as needed.  

The siding is now done.  The second gable end went smoothly.  It was highlighted by a recharging break.  I went to visit a friend of mine who is renovating a gorgeous barn.  He has power there, so I headed up and recharged my batteries for my saw, and hung out on some saw horses and visited and got the tour of his project which is exquisite.  It's a different scale at 33 feet by 20 something, but it's equally organic in process.  The recharge allowed me to get back and make the final forty cuts or so on the gable.  

I also had the opportunity, given the incoming snow, to re-stack much of the remaining wood from the train station.  This allowed for some needed consolidation and cleanliness, but it was a good two hours of work.  

The next step is to finish up the exterior trim.  This includes the ledger board around the building, the corner boards, and final window and door trim.  I also have to build a sliding mechanism for the main door, something that I assume will be fun.

As a side note, I got the first pond hockey of the year in on November 21.  Late afternoon from a friend. Two inches of ice on a shallow pond, and a whole lot of fun.  This is pretty early ice for around here.  No one went through, but the danger adds to the quality of the experience.

Leaving in the dark.  The stump on the wall ends up looking like a crawling lizard at times.

First Gable End complete

Finally got down again today to finish off one of the gable ends. It was 10 degrees when I started and then warmed to a balmy 35 or so by the afternoon. So going up and down a ladder was a good thing at 8:30 AM.  It's been a really nice slow process.  Lots of cuts.  The window trim is old siding from the train station. I'll end up painting it in place in the future.  I'm using it for the vertical trim on the corners as well and for a splash plate at the bottom of the building.  So far I'm happy with the way it's emerging.  I'm excited to take some pictures in good light.  I always seem to wait until the sun is going down at the end of the day to pull the camera out.  Maybe tomorrow.

At the end of the day, I finally cleaned up all the cut and discarded wood.  The siding created an outlandish amount of scrap.  Went home and burned the whole lot in a nice evening blaze outside in the field.  

Over the last week, I got all of the wood moved from the old train station source.  I've sided 95% of the building, and I still have stacks and stacks of wood remaining.  I believe I've used 40% of the total.  Seems like 100 dollars well spent.  At this point, I have about 410 dollars into the building.  To the best of my knowledge, that should be the total.  It's especially good given the fact that I have about 600 square feet of clear douglas fir left over for flooring in the house, and about 1000 square feet of tongue and groove left over to finish the interior of the barn.  

Given the value of the remaining flooring, this may well be a cash positive barn.  I spent 410 bucks on it and have 1200 dollars of material left over.  I think Henry David Thoreau may have overspent on Walden.  

Veteran's Day Siding

Every time I visit the little building I feel good.  And the progress continues.  This morning (Veterans Day), I went down and set up some sawhorses to finish one side.  I only have a few hours of battery life on the saw, so I've been working in short increments, but today I started to get the feel of what the building will look like. I worked up to the rafter tails on one side and got started on the door end of the building.  A little chain saw work was needed to clean up one of the main posts, but the rest went quite smoothly.  Now I'm getting the itch to finish it.  I may go after it this week, and try and get a full eight hours in, and just use a hand saw, or see if I can bum some power.  Regardless, it's getting close.

It's also interesting working with wood that was handled by carpenters 123 years ago.  Their writing is on the rough side.  Measurements like 56 4/5 are marked out in pencil in long looping handwriting.  I'm trying to keep as many of those visible on the outside of the building, but occasionally I'll have to discard one or two because of cracked wood or a section of rot or mold.  It's sort of cool to have some connection to the past like that.

I also am including a water color painting of the original train station that the wood came from.  I think I'll have to go to the local library to find a photo of the station, but the person I bought the wood from had this painting.

Siding is Starting

As early November arrives with occasional snow, it's time to side the building.  The materials have been found, and I started it yesterday.  It's an interesting process.  I'm putting the rough and unpainted side out. My assumption is that the paint contains lead, so I will box it in, and do both the interior and exterior in this same wood. Some of the wood is pine, and some is douglas fir, so the various textures are pretty.  I think I'm going to finish it with raw linseed oil to try and bring out the grain.


The bottom six inches will be pressure treated, and I wrapped tar paper around the first 36 inches of the building.  I have enough wood to also do the inside.  When all is done, it should emerge as a cute little structure.

The resin in the pine is still pungent.  Interesting.  It was milled 123 years ago and still smells fresh.

Sisyphus and the wood pile

So the never ending wood pile just keeps getting better.  I keep driving truck loads of wood away, and the deeper I get into this, the better it seems to get.  Looks like the remaining wood is oak, must be 1200 square feet of it.  Certain things make me happy.

200 AMP Service

There is creativity, and there is reality. The fun part is constructing a building out of predominantly free things and innovating and eye balling and watching something grow.  Then there's electricity, and the true cost of state of the art materials, safety, and doing a job according to specs.  Specs I previously knew nothing about.

  I met with a great guy from NYSEG (New York State Electic and Gas?).  We walked the property and selected a spot for the meter. All of the news related to this was awesome. I could use an existing pole. The location of the meter was only 20 feet from the pole, etc.  I envisioned having to rent a back-hoe or having to pay a grand to have a pole installed; none of that proved true, and so I left our meeting with a NYSEG project number an a booklet full of sketches and requirements for installing a 200 AMP Combo box.  You can stop reading now if you're not interested in this stuff, but what is interesting is the learning curve and the discovery that you can do things yourself.  An estimate for doing this work hovers around 1400 dollars.  Instead, I went to work.  The first step was building the mounting unit.  5 feet in the ground.  5 feet above.  That's a shovel, a level, some salvaged pressure treated for free, and what ended up being about six hours of digging, not including the twenty foot trench.  Then I went to Cascade Electric in Lake Placid, NY, and the owner led me through what I needed and put a list together.  This is when it hurt. I walk away with 580 added to my credit card.  The rest was relatively simple.  Learn how to wire it on youtube, pound a few 8 ft grounding rods into the ground following specs, and assume it will twice as long as someone with experience. I also was not afraid to ask questions and the owner of Cascade Electric was patient and helpful.   It took me about two days, but everything went smoothly and as far as electric service entrances go, the thing looks pretty cute.  I'm also thrilled that I can't see it from my future house site.  It astounds me to see a million dollar home in Lake Placid with an electric panel sitting in the midst of $40,000 of landscaping.  Nothing says welcome to my McLodge like the warmth of a grey electric meter.

Regardless, I now have to get it inspected and then have the power hooked up.  That will give me a outside box with power.  I'll have to dig a 100 foot trench later to bring power into my future basement.

The posts

The completed mount

Laying out the conduit

End of Day One

Wood, Craigslist, and Train Stations

My quest for siding has taken a new twist.  As the building evolves, I'm developing the irrational need to infuse it with character.  And that seems to be evolving into materials with stories.  This continues.  I've been trolling Craigslist for siding and came across a post that included the image to the right. The cost was 100 dollars.  It turns out this really nice person was cleaning out a small barn in order to put a house on the market, but I arrived too late. There was a woman there who seemed to be involved in great camp renovation who had already offered him 300 dollars to assure the sale.  I hunted around and with great disappointment, and asked the owner to give me a call if there was anything left over.  Two days later, I got the call.  She bailed. He offered it to me for the original price.

 His storage barn was moved to its current site in the last 1950's.  It was an outbuilding for the original Lake Clear train station constructed circa 1891.  The wood inside?  It was reclaimed from the main station that was torn down at the same time. The picture does little justice to the volume of wood. It is stacked 20 feet long.  The bulk of it (perhaps 1500 square feet) is clear douglas fir, pulled from the floor of the building, but there is also wainscoting, trim wood, siding etc.  It will take 6-8 pickup loads to move it.  I am stacking and stickering the wood in my barn. The fir will be set aside for flooring in our new house when it is built.  I'm thrilled by a few things here.  One is that the flooring in my future house was milled in the 1890's. Two is that the flooring in my new house cost 100 dollars. Three, the various pieces of siding and wainscoting will give me the opportunity to get back to the process of siding my little beast of a building before the snow flies.

Lastly, the nicest thing about the whole process was meeting yet another friendly, interesting person. I'm heading over this weekend to pick up more wood, and to help the gentleman and his wife move some heavier things out of the upstairs of a garage.  People are amazing.

The train station, I believe, is in the top of this image.  I imagine the fir trees of this era were quite impressive. 

This is roughly one and a half truck loads. The longer pieces are stored in the rafters.  I haven't made a dent in the original pile at this point.  

Free Wood and other design considerations

At this point, the little beast is coming together.  I managed to find enough rough cut 2 x 4's and a few 2 X 10's to finish off the framing.  The windows were found at a local dump, and so construction moves on.  I got creative in the framing, using most of the 2 X 4's flat.  This allowed for the framing to fit inside the corner posts and angle bracing.  I'm happy how it's turning out.  Without power, I'm hand cutting and using a battery operated saw to make the cuts.  There is nothing better than the slowness of building this way.  The new framing took the building from overbuilt and unmovable to positively granite like.  Nothing moves at all, anywhere.

Free wood creates some design realities as well.  I had to calculate how to utilize the resource. My solution was to eyeball the amount of wood and have at it.  When I was done I had about ten feet of 2 X 4 left over.  Trust the eyeball I guess.

This end in the top photo will have a high door to load things if needed onto the second floor from the outside.  There will be a single sliding door at the business end of the building.  Now I just need to build a few doors and find some siding.

As to the total cash outlay, hinges added an extra ten bucks, so I'm hovering around $310.

Roof Diving for the slow: all for 300 bucks

At a certain point, age and experience are supposed to provide some benefits. Not so here.  I came back on a beautiful spring day to finish off the shingles, forgetting that I had tacked the roofing brackets in with one inch roofing nails. So I got the ladder out, headed up on the roof with my trusty hammer and bundle of shingles and started to work.  The bracket slipped out after about five minutes and I pulled a slow motion leap from slightly lower than twelve feet.  I landed it, rolled over on the grass, and did not feel my 54 years of age until the morning, which was not good.  Regardless, the shingling went on the next day with much more care.

At this point I have roughly 300 dollars into the building.  That's three squares of shingles and some drip edge.  The rest has been hand cut or salvaged.  The granite that forms the footings was found on craigslist for free.  Someone had torn out a fireplace and needed the cut stone gone.