Mr. Watson -- come here!

I know - strange title for this entry but it has meaning.  More later.

63 degrees, beautiful crisp day.  Nothing airborne, yet...

Well, it has been a few months and now I'm ready to not only work on the playhouse but also write a little in this journal to my daughters.  Work is actually happening so let me get you caught up.

A little more than a week ago I was contacted by one of the writers of This Old House asking if I was done with the project.  This sounds a little pretentious but it had to do with several conversations that we had back and forth after I submitted a few pictures to them and for their contest that they are having - possibly to win a new Chevy truck and some cash (to cover the taxes?).  I'm all about free stuff and was happy to put a few of my photos out there.  More recently they are putting together an issue of This Old House magazine in the summer that is most likely a compilation of material from readers (I would feel really bad if I was in the magazine but not a subscriber).  I now have a new deadline and no excuses with the fantastic Al Gore - Global Warming weather that we have been having this year and must get this little structure completed.  I spent many weekends this winter thinking that the weather might change and possibly snow but the warm, sunny weather just kept coming.

The first thing that I did after receiving the latest correspondence from This Old House was to run out to Ace Hardware and buy a fresh gallon of exterior paint.  I was a little troubled over what to buy since I have only been painting the inside of my house over the years and knew what brand, base and finish to pick for those areas.  I hired painters for the outside of the house and intentionally left those choices of paint particulars to the experts and the discipline of the magic arts.  I ended up with a middle-of-the-road paint manufactured by or for Ace and decided on a white with a hint of gray and green.  Kind of a very light sage color to allow the timbers to be the focal point and to possibly hide the playhouse among the foliage after I get the German red grape vine to cover it all up.  It took two entire days to paint the outside.

Completed the painting - a very light sage.

I really need to get my neighbors ladder back to him.

 

Looking around the house I find that my two daughters have a lot of idle time on their hands and so I decided to teach them a little about "getting off the sofa and building something."  Later I was reminded by my aunt Carolyn that the idea was related to the work of other inventors in the family but this was not on my mind at the time.  I was thinking of the few strong memories of my childhood - the smell of solder fumes, the feel of plastic model glue on my fingers, etc., and I know that my girls are missing out.  They mostly know the tap, tap, tap of the keyboard from the many computers around the house, the way to navigate through the menus of the nav systems in our two German cars and even the Tivo but nothing about the sound of playing cards flapping through the spokes of the wheels of their bicycles.

On Saturday I did a little reading and ran off to our local Radio Shack (surprised they are still around; why do you need the shack when we have China) to but a circuit board, sound generators, red lights, resisters, RJ11 ports, switches, solder and telephone cable in an attempt to teach the girls how to build an intercom system using some old phones that I have.  Several years ago I found an antique store in Santa Barbara where a guy was restoring old phones to working condition.  One phone that I bought was from 1937 and had a body made from nickel and the other from the UK from around 1920.  We used them for a few years before moving overseas and then Al Gore and the Internet became popular and we soon were deep into VOIP, which was not kind to my favorite devices.  A relatively modern phone from circa 1995 made it into the mix as well since we needed a third.  I have all of the parts that I need except for time with my daughters to heat up the solder gun and get the building going.  In the end we will have an intercom system between the playhouse and their two bedrooms with a light, call button and ringer at each station.  Hopefully.

All the pieces - even the library books at hand.

Three phones - 1937, 1920 and 1995

Even thought I don't have the attention of my girls I wanted to continue work and put together the boat rack on the far side of the playhouse.  This will be valuable when storing the four kayaks during the off season and possibly several multicolored crab floats that I got from a friend that were used to identify the owner of crab pots on the James river.

Pressure treated timbers to hold the galvanized tubes and PVC at a ten degree angle.

Jig that allows me to reproduce the angle of the hole for the tubes that will hold the boats.

Raw stock of tubing.

I was able to get the timbers cut, assembled and attached to the playhouse with large lag bolts that go into solid wood behind the sheathing.  The galvanized tubes were cut extra long at the home center because I didn't know how long I would need to make them before I fit a boat up on the rack.  I test fit the tubes and later cut them to their final dimension.

Test fit.

I read that cutting galvanized material can be dangerous to your health if done with a torch.  This appears to have been a safe way to cut the tubing.  And no...I did not catch my pants on fire.

All ready for the boats.

I almost forgot.  As you probably already know it was Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone and said those famous words "Mr. Watson -- come here!" after finally getting his telephone to work.  I must admit that we have similar drawing abilities but his penmanship is far superior.