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My (Multi)Winter Project [1]

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Date: 2023-03-26

This is fine..

It’s been a while since I posted anything, so I thought I’d talk here a bit about what I’ve been up to lately, which ain’t really a whole lot. For the most part, I’ve been working on getting tongue and groove knotty pine planking up on the walls of the garage/shop.

I sort of started on this project last winter, but ran out of wood. In April, I found some more from a nearby sawmill, picked it up, and brought it home. We unloaded it, and there it sat on the garage floor all summer and fall, taking up valuable real estate and gathering dust. Mister Procrastination, that’s me.

Well, another winter has passed and I can honestly say that I’m finally making some progress. Slow, but progress none the less. Witness the state of things a month or so ago:

Not sure if that geranium will make it to summer. But hey, it’s still green, you never know.. And yes, that IS a cowboy riding a horse over on my bench. It’s a nice solid bronze copy of a classic Frederick Remington sculpture that we’ve had for a while. It’s a good quality piece, but it just doesn’t fit in with our home decor, such as it is. So it now adorns the garage, where rather more relaxed standards apply.

My approach has been to nail up a section after clearing out all the crap that’s in the way and then wipe on the stain. It takes four to five coats to get the color matched right. Then I move more junk around and repeat. It’s fun! Or so I tell myself. Progress has been, um, sporadic — I’ll do nothing for a week, maybe two weeks, and then go to town on it for a few days. Then another week of inaction. Nothing resembling a sense of urgency here.

The woodpile. That stuff in the cardboard box at middle left is part of last year’s weed harvest, or what’s left of it after I made bubble hash from it. It’s basically mulch, now. The hash was sublime, though..

So by now, I figure I’ve got about two thirds to three quarters of the walls covered. Will I finish by summer? We’ll see. My relationship with ladders isn’t getting any better and the same is true with hammers and nails — If I’m not aligned just so, my depth perception goes off and I bend nails. “Bang, bang, bang, shit!” Straighten nail, then repeat. Then repeat again. I’d have been an abject failure as a professional carpenter, no doubt about it. Then there’s measuring a cut an inch short, re-measuring a new board, and proceeding to cut it an inch short again. At that point, I know it’s time to quit for a while.

Ladders.. The garage has a 10 foot ceiling so it requires climbing three steps up a stepladder to hammer in the topmost nails. When I was 36, no big deal. 30 years later, it’s a bigger deal — These brittle old bones are no match for a concrete floor. I take it slow.

My poor car… Oh well, that’s what shop vacs and leaf blowers are for, and it’s only sawdust. BTW, I got that 1990’s Craftsman saw from the side of the road for $100, and the seller delivered it. The new blade was $35. Still a bargain altogether, I’d say.

I do have some incentive to wrap this up — The garage has been a disaster area for far too long and there’s not too much point in trying to really clean it up while this work is going on. So, onward..

As of Friday, 3/24. Next comes the staining. Oh joy..

When I have it all nailed up and stained, I want to paint the upper border boards at the ceiling the same dark brown as the window and door trim. Then I’ll put up some molding to cover the uneven gaps between the pine planking and the ceiling border. Did I mention that I’m coming to dislike ladders? Hmm.. Maybe if I give the right person the right amount of money, that last part can happen while I’m watching TV and drinking a beer. I kind of like that scenario..

Once I’m done with the side I’m working on, I’ll have to clear out all the stuff over on the opposite wall here and repeat. Meanwhile, my shop suffers the consequences. There’s a beer somewhere over there. It’s like trying to find Waldo..

Hey, we saw the northern lights here on Thursday night! There was a major solar coronal mass ejection event this week, and it really lit things up. It seemed to surprise even the people who study this sort of thing. We knew nothing about it until the Book of Faces told us to go outside and look up. These were taken from our yard at about 11:00 PM.

Michigan, 3/23/23, latitude ~ 44.3 deg N. Looking north/northeast. Just awesome. Look at that green and purple curtain!

I’ve never seen them this vivid before, and I grew up in Michigan’s far northern reaches. Full disclosure: The photos are brighter and show more contrast than what we saw directly with our eyes, but not by all that much. Phones have really good cameras these days..

Looking north/northwest. Wow.

Keep it safe, everyone!

-ER

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/26/2160092/-My-Multi-Winter-Project

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