With all the preparations here for the rewiring project, I haven’t had much time to work in my shop but I did manage a couple of hours. Here’s the current progress.
Moving up – another hour and I’ll need to drill more holes.
Broke two blades on this little section.
I don’t know how much time I’ll get to work on this over the next week but I’ll get at least enough time to finish the section I am working on.
If you need me – I’ll be in the shop.
In my post, Two-Years, I listed a few things I like to do in the next two years. Thought I’d bring you up to date on my progress. So now I boldly revisit the list I presented two months ago:
Find a new energy source for my writing: Not done. Still using the old generator which is why you’re still getting second-rate posts.
Do more marquetry work: Fail. Haven’t cut one piece but I did change the blade on my marquetry knife and bought new scroll saw blades.
Sell a piece of my wood work: Actually managed this. Sold one of my crosses at a church auction. At this rate I’ll sell three pieces more before the decade is out – four if I really start to focus on this.
Discover a way to retire early: I have put some work into this, but so far moving into a cardboard box hasn’t been appealing. Although a friend at the office thinks I could afford a small steel shipping container – all I need is a place to park it. After all, he reasoned, I know how to pack one.
Improve my health: I’ve been doing a lot of weight lifting lately (boxes, furniture) and haven’t felt the need to call an ambulance. I guess that’s good.
Laugh more: I do laugh from time to time. Not often and sometimes not out loud so it’s a bit hard to measure at this point. I think I smiled twice last week.
Fly a kite: I haven’t bought one yet but did do a search on Amazon once and was overwhelmed by the choices. I did suggest to one of my co-workers that he go fly a kite, but suspect that he misinterpreted my real underlying friendly meaning. Perhaps if I hadn’t been gritting my teeth at the time…
Stomp in more puddles: Well, I wanted to, but now I’ll have to settle for metaphorical puddles as California is now facing the worst drought its seen in 150 years. The few times it has rained this year haven’t resulted in a puddle big enough for jumping in.
Actually the drought has been on my mind a bit these last few weeks. The good part of the drought is that we’ve been able to move up the dates of the work on our house. Part of the work involves removing parts of the roof – something best done in dry weather.
But the dry weather brings other problems. Much of California is semi-arid grasslands with large expanses of desert. Modern human activity is only possible because we have damned rivers, created systems of pipes, pumps and canals to move the water around. We’ve gotten very good about storing what little rain and snow we get and then moving it to the farms and cities where it is consumed to grow crops and wash our dishes.
The nearly 40 billion dollar agricultural economy in California wouldn’t be possible without irrigation. This year the federal water project has announced that farms can expect no water deliveries. The state isn’t delivering much and most farmers will have to depend on what well water there might be. This drought threatens the state with recession again as many farmers won’t be planting crops at all.
In the cities we might fare a bit better as drinking water gets a priority over farming (well most of the time). Many areas are already asking for voluntary 20 percent cut backs in water usage to conserve what water is left in our reservoirs – many of which are less than half full. In my city we have a large aquifer that feeds our wells and we can tap part of San Francisco’s water stored in Hetch Hetchy. We’ll do okay but we expect that by fall the water district will be imposing water rationing along with increased prices and general wailing and gnashing of teeth over lack of water.
This isn’t the first drought I’ve lived through but it is shaping up to be the worst. The first drought I remember was in the late 70’s and that one brought about an awareness of water usage that led to a major effort to reduce water usage. Low flow toilets, water efficient appliances and drought resistant plants are now a standard part of our lives. People hosing down their driveways or washing their cars are looked upon as evil wasters of water. Soon you’ll start to see dry lawns, dirty cars and dusty driveways.
All this water worry turns the thought of even jumping into the metaphorical puddle into a deep worry about the future. The child in me would like to pretend there are puddles everywhere that I can joyfully splash in – getting my shoes wet and water all over my brothers. Puddles where I can enjoy childlike abandon and indulge in carefree exploration.
But watching the dry heat rising from the pavement puts my adult mind in full worry mode. What happens if the rains don’t come next year?
Perhaps it’s time to go order that kite.
Till next week,
Andrew
Preparations for our upcoming house work is in full swing and has left me very little time to work in the wood shop so instead I offer this photo of what I consider my first woodworking project. I built stuff before this but that was all school projects or things that had full adult supervision. I built this typing table when I was 14. It was built from shop scraps and finished with stain and varnish. I have always been surprised how well the finish has held up over the 40 years since I built it.
Why did I build it? Well that’s a long story I’ll tell one day but the short version is that I had taken a typing class in the 8th grade and my father bought me a used manual typewriter. The height of my desk wasn’t right for typing so I measured a typing table at school I liked, went home and dug out some wood and a skill saw. A few cuts, some glue, nails and can of varnish and I had a table that I used for about twenty years as a typing table. These days it does duty as a hallway table. It’s not exactly fine furniture but it’s mine and I built it.
My typing table
My typing table in the storage unit with all the boxes I moved behind it.
If you need me – I’ll be in the shop.
When I first suggested to Heather that we needed to do a few major repairs and some remodeling to our house, she said, “Why don’t we move instead?” Now that we’re about to start the work I’m wondering about the wisdom of having talked her out of that idea.
We live in one of those, “Eichlers.” In the 50’s and 60’s this guy named Joseph Eichler built about 11,000 homes in California designed in what is often refereed to as, “Mid-century Modern,” or “California Modern.” The homes are light and airy with an artistic style that just appeals to me. Most of the time it appeals to Heather too.
Except when it needs repairs.
Eichler was an inspired man with a mission. He wanted to design stylish homes that average family could afford. His homes did that. However, one thing didn’t get built into his equation – maintainability. That went out of the window, as the needs of style, and the need to keep the cost low, drove the builder to make decisions that makes the homes a nightmare when things go wrong.
This may surprise the builders of this home but we’ve found a number of issues. The biggest being the 80 amp electrical service. Over the years there have been a number of attempts by previous owners to fix and improve the house. Some done by pros and some done by a “do it yourselfer” who should be separated from their tools. One of the many smart things they did was to have the roof coated with insulating foam which both insulates and keeps out the rain much better. The one really bad thing they did was to connect all the electrical outlets on the north half of the house to one single 15 amp breaker.
The problem with any remodel is the phase that comes up in almost every conversation when discussing what to do, “Well, if you’re going to do that you might as well…” or “It wouldn’t be that much more to do the whole thing.”
or, “Maybe we should just move.”
I started this whole thing by just saying, “The electrical service needs to be replaced.” Which then turned into – since you have a concrete slab floor you’ll have to run the wires under the foam which means you’ll have to redo the whole roof. Of course while we’re doing the roof we should install new gutters and replace the skylight. Then I was told we also have to cut open parts of the walls to pull new wires. Which led to, well why don’t we redo the kitchen at the same time since, we have to tear off the wall. Since the bathrooms don’t use much electricity I’ve been able to avoid putting them on the project list – well most days anyway.
At heart I am an optimist and steadfastly overcame all of Heather’s objections to the project and have in hand contracts from the electrician and the roofer. We have a drywaller standing by to open the walls and then repair them and we’ve identified the company who’s going to do the kitchen work.
It was all starting to look very good until Sean, our electrician, causally mentioned, “You know you’ll have to move the bookcases so I can get to the walls. I’ll need at least three feet of clearance in front of each wall.”
At this point I’d like you to take a moment to look around your house and answer this question, “How much stuff do you have against your walls?”
Turns out we have a bunch – all of which need to be moved three feet inward. Well, how hard could it be? A few boxes, a bit of heavy lifting and presto new outlets in every room.
So a couple of months ago, in our innocence, we drove to the box store and bought what we thought were a lot of boxes – around forty, plus a couple of rolls of bubble wrap and six rolls of packing tape. Heather decided to pace herself and set about the task of boxing up the house at a rate of three boxes a day. To get the boxes out of the house along with all the bookcases and other furniture we decided to rent one of those storage containers they plop on your driveway.
At the time it all made sense and seemed so easy. I scheduled some vacation time to move the boxes Heather packed into this nice storage box.
Since that faithful decision, we’ve gone back at least four times for more boxes and packing supplies. You know, when full boxes show up at a rate of three a day and get stuffed into corners and out-of-the-way places it doesn’t seem like much.
I spent half a day yesterday and couple of hours today moving the seemingly endless number of boxes – I lost track of the number of boxes at around fifty but suspect there are at least twice that many. Now I understand all the complaining Heather’s been doing about packing the boxes.
I figure that by the time I finish moving enough furniture into the storage container to give Sean room to work, I’ll have moved about half of the house and will have filled the sixteen foot container. When the work on the house is done, I’ll get to move it all back and Heather will have at least two months worth of unboxing.
Tonight I am reminded that the container is designed to be loaded on the back of a truck and moved.
“Maybe we should just move.” Well, the idea is starting to grow on me.
Till next week,
Andrew
Andrew's View of the Week 