Monday, September 15, 2014

lofty

With fall coming at us full force (it was in the 40's last night!) we've started our yearly attempts at clean up and winterization.  First on the list is always getting the yard in order, which is easier said than done.  But we're off to a good start!

Mount Trashmore, the gift that keep on giving
mostly gone!

We got someone to haul away most of the mismatched cinder blocks we've unearthed from the hill, glorious!  There's more still buried, but we'll get to those later.

I know I haven't mentioned the schoolhouse much this summer.  It's been slow going, to say the least.  While we've put up siding a few pieces at a time, there's such a fear of running out of the oak for the upper section that it makes it hard to maintain any momentum.  Not only that, each piece is incredibly time consuming - don't forget, these are nearly 150 year old oak planks with uneven edges, widths, and thicknesses, full of holes and cracks, and badly warped.  The installation process includes sanding all the edges, priming the exterior side, clamping and shimming the board in place to minimize cracking, pre-drilling, then nailing with stainless spiral shank nails.  It's been about twenty minutes per board, at least they're blissfully short lengths.



Although that's been slow, we did finish installing the loft in the building.  We chose to put it in the back third (about 15 x 10), so it will serve as a ceiling to our workshop.  It's made up of three different homes worth of tongue and groove fir porch boards.  The age of the unpainted undersides of the boards blends in perfectly with the rest of the wood of the schoolhouse, while the uppers are a mix of colors which I find charming, although no one else will ever see them.




We needed to get this section finished for the storage it provided, at the moment we're moving up all of our salvaged tin ceilings, and I think my stash of wavy glass will end up here as well.  It's a shame, I had wanted to move our old king size mattress up here and snooze away the last nice days of the year....

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