One year ago today: December 6, 2016, early house leveling.
Five years ago today: December 6, 2012, the curves of my scooter.
Nine years ago today: December 6, 2008, the west coast swing.
Random years ago today: December 6, 2013, there, that’s a pilot biscuit.
Patience, dear readers. I know how anxious you are for news about the new porch. I was out there past dark evening last. The work allowed me size up what’s in store, because I surely don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve read around six books on the topic. None of them address exactly the challenges I’ve got here. Most of the books show a nice flat and dustless worksite with no mosquitoes or odd deposits of cat shit. I seem to have guessed the right approach is to build a solid deck no matter what. No skimping on the foundation and the rest of the project is stick-framing. Say, there’s a snap of Agt. R delivering lumber to the front yard.
What I’ve seen is doors that open outward from a small well in the porch, with the steps inside the structure. At first it seems a security risk to have hinges on the outside, but naw. After all, there is a solid core door on the main building and in any case, what burglar with bother breaking open door on a porch that is merely screened in? Another thing I won’t hold back on is hurricane strapping. Everything new gets a generous application of metal ties. Logic: the house has already outlasted others in the area and my planned additions add strength as well as being windbreaks on the two exposed sides.
And if worst comes to it, I’ll just set the whole door back into the porch until it does fit. The area it would take away would only be walkway anyhow, leaving the two porch wings full size. I’ve got the whole picture in my brain, which has really not let me down all that often as a few I could name. Also, I’m going to proceed with the new electric at the same time, which will slow things down. The reason is when Agt. R was under the building dry-fitting some piping, an exposed hot wire gave him a shock. I turned off the breaker and crawled in there for my own look. If I had been a few inches either way making the temporary repair one day earlier, I’d have been the one zapped and I would have been working alone. Literally, it was a hot bare wire hanging below a joist.
[Author’s note: I may be in luck in that the rule for unsupported overhangs does not apply to joists that are ‘hung’ between fixed end foundations. In that case, the span can be up to twelve feet for a 2x6” roof or floor joist. That means I won’t have to dig in a second row of piers. But I will wisely put extra blocks under the door and wherever the mud sill settled on the old building.
Once again, I am surprised by how simple many of the solutions are in this renovation business. The biggest challenges so far have been from not planning ahead to the next step. Like today, I have to rip out the flooring insulation that is already in place and move one strand of wiring. However, with my total inexperience, which I am laying bare here for the whole world to laugh if they want, I excuse myself because I most often have no clue what the next step is. You figured that out already, did ya?]
I went out. The local club had only the regular women. If it’s take it or leave it, buddy, leave it. At least two of the women reminded me of my sister. A few years younger than me, she was virtually my twin. We were both empty-handed, five-foot-something, blonde, blue-eyed, and fresh off the farm. Eight months later she was married to a Swedish doctor on his yacht off Corfu. On that day, I considered myself most lucky to get a $3.95 per hour job at a Montana lumber mill. It’s a man’s world.
Mandy Moore
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
There’s some cooler weather this weekend, giving me a chance to work outside in comfort. It was okay this morning, I put in five hours. Again, sweating in the dirt as I lined up additional concrete piers. It always takes more time than planned, plus I decided to make the corners an extra block deeper. The base block is now a good ten inches underground, exceeding the standard of the house foundation. This work is exactly what it looks like here. Dig, measure, sweat, dig, measure, sweat, then hand-fit the block. Then, dig, measure, sweat some more. Bushnell adultery radio didn’t help playing that “Mack the Knife” rubbish all morning.
The hillbilly neighbor was over looking for work. My yard does look a lot like a construction site. I’ve decided to extend the idea of three blocks deep to every second pier, which should add around four hours to the project. I’m rapidly gaining experience with this type of footing and I don’t care for the work. Strange how this was one of the first jobs I ever had, cribbing basements. Yes folks, the guy with the highest school marks that ever came out of my home town, a record that still stands today, was reduced to manual labor by the circumstances of my raising. The sad news is the lady guitar player never contacted me back.
I can’t really hire anybody for what I’m doing, which is digging in the dirt. It’s a pet project and it’s pretty unskilled. Shown here, I’m working the tamper at the bottom of a pit three cement blocks deep. At this rate, I’ll have the front of the new porch ready for joists by tomorrow, but the south end of the house (the kitchen) is not leveled yet. My system of bolting on joists seems to work very well, except each joist pretty much has to be custom matched, a tedious process.
Take the evening off, I say. Go out for a brew. We construction workers like our suds after a hard day. The real progress takes place in the cool of the mornings. You might surmise there is a corresponding pleasant stretch before sunset but you’d be forgetting about the mosquitoes. I sometimes work past dark, like today just now. A few squirts of Deep Woods and I’m fine but I would not expect others to endure the insects. As they said before Darwin, if God created all life, why did he make so damn many bugs?
ADDENDUM
I think Bradford is not going to make it. The dude sincerely wants to play guitar in a band but he’s been so indoctrinated that other musicians are merely servants that he can’t learn anything new. I know the real reason I keep giving these Florida types chance after chance is because it has proven impossible to find a good guitar player who doesn’t think he’s a god. I was raised around people like that and can’t be expected to tolerate them without good reason. Bradford, well, he has struggled to play some standard guitar tunes for years and of course he wants to play those. He doesn’t follow the logic associated with joining an existing band or even another musician.
What? You want to give it a whirl? It’s straightforward. An existing player is already going to have his own song list. He’s not only learned it, he’s got stage mileage. That’s an overwhelming combination. Before he takes on a partner, he wants confirmation the newcomer has talent and drive, an incentive that does not exist the other way around. Why should the man already out there invest any time at all learning more material until he knows the wannabe can hack what’s already working?
Myself, I’ve both made this mistake and also willfully learned other people’s material many times in my career. Look at the five-piece, I learned 61 of their tunes in nine weeks and got a standing ovation at our first gig. Did they appreciate it? No, because they had their fixed notion that “bass is easy”. They did not even appear capable of recognizing what had happened. But I knew they at least discussed it because of the way they doctored the videos. That got my goat. Only that drummer would have stubbornly gone through all the footage to pull that fast one.
But more often I was promised that once I picked up the existing material, the band would learn some of mine. It was always a lie. It’s never happened yet. The Hippie claims he learned “Cocaine Blues” from me, but I’d never heard of the song until he mentioned it in 2002. Even so, it’s absurd that he would even try around me to equate a two-chord song to a learning experience. I now know for sure the reason most guitarists won’t learn new material is because they don’t want anyone to know how bad they are at it. Remember Bill trying to play “Venus”? Academy-trained Bill? After a month, we finally had to drop the song.
Furthermore, I’m aware of the lure of playing one’s own music instead of practicing. It’s the nature of music. When I’m on piano, I don’t play any boogie-woogie or blues because I idolize Mozart. But I don’t let that detract me from taking on new tunes. This week alone, I’ve put in close to four hours on Lambert’s ‘Mama’s Broken Heart’ and still miss several of the passages. I could credibly fake any song in ten minutes and often do this with new stuff before deciding it’s a keeper. Amazingly, that half-assed version is actually what most guitarists imagine is always going on. By my standards, that is not even playing bass.
Let’s see, 8:46PM. Let me grab the bass and dig deeper into that very tune. The studio guitarist plays some lower notes in a few spots that I’ll take over as I gain more understanding of what they were thinking. Normally these low notes clash. In that situation, I play what the audience thinks they hear. It’s Karaoke night over on the highway, but I’ll pass.
Last Laugh
(When you read it.)
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
