Life is a Pile of Dirty Socks

56 degrees and the first skeeters were out.

My wife has complained about my dirty socks and I try everything possible to keep the dirt from saturating the socks but nothing seems to help.  I'm not taking my shoes off and running around in the dirt but at the end of the day my socks are covered with dirt.

At least I turn them right-side-out.

I looked at the weather forecast last weekend and saw that there are storms headed our way.  Vacation time away from work was used yesterday and then again today to get some work done on the Pointed Playhouse even though I did a little work on a company project at home and also dialed into a teleconference at noon.  My goal was to try to get as much work done on the outside as possible before the rain so that I can work on the gardening when things clear up.  I put most of the tools that I stored in the playhouse back in the garage now that the construction phase has completed.

On Tuesday I removed the plywood sheets from the backs of the windows and cut some plexy glass to fit the opening.  Eight holes were drilled around the edges and then small stainless steel screws were used to attach the glass to the doors.  It looks really good but I know that it is somewhat temporary until I can set aside a couple weeks to do a complete restore of the doors.

I know...hard to tell but the plexy glass in installed on the inside of the opening.

One of the more important accomplishments was to clean up and return my neighbors ladder to him on Tuesday.  It was great to be able to use the ladder and I definitely owe Royden and nice bottle of wine.  Soon after he walked across the street to take a look at the progress and to checkout the finials.  While we were standing there I explained that I used paint remover to get rid of the white paint at the very bottom of the doors on the temporary piece of wood that I installed to cover the gap and to prevent the French Rats from coming in.  The color was not right after the paint was removed and Royden suggested that a stain could be used to get the color close to the aged wood of the doors.  It worked pretty well but another coat of stain will probably be needed.

Bottom of the doors now stained to match the aged wood.

As you can see from the above picture I have been working on the faux timbers again.  The downstairs corners are now wrapped in pressure treated 1x6 material.  Most of the day on Wednesday was spent laying out, cutting, gluing and nailing the many timber pieces to all four sides.  Some of the pieces are strait and require only a forty five degree cut to meet the adjoining timber but many others require a more complicated angle and even curves cut along the side to mimic how timbers would really appear.  At the very end of the day I installed and planted the flower hangers under the two downstairs windows along with a cedar "bed" that I made last year and now moved from the patio and planted the three remaining ivy Geraniums.

Installing the upper diagonal timbers.

Little house in the wood?

All of the timbers are installed.

A little like a jigsaw puzzle but there is a madness to the layout.  If you were a real timber where would you be?

Confusing corner of timber.

Six Geraniums in this one three foot window container.

The flower "bed" container was moved next to the chair.

Washed down the bricks and watered the plants.

Glad to be done.

This must be where Lauren will tie her horse up to the tree.

Fini!

Well, there you have it.  The construction is now done.  It is a boat rack, a playhouse for the girls and a time to remember.  I'm going to take some time off from this little house and work on the interior as time permits.  Thanks for reading along and I hope that you enjoyed this possibly feeble attempt.  Time to wash my socks.

Ready for Seeds

84 degrees and many bugs but no biters.

This weekend I spent time working on the remaining upstairs faux timbers and trim around the windows.  I'm pretty much done with my neighbor's ladder and really would like to get it back to him but my better half reminded me that I need to put screens up on the south facing windows of the girl's rooms before the weather gets too hot.  I made screens for all of the windows of the main house a couple years ago but they sit in the attic waiting for their chance to meet the mosquitoes.

As I write this entry in the blog I'm looking out the dining room window at the Pointed Playhouse and see how really different it looks and think back to last August when I was taking down the many limbs of the trees and shrubs where the structure sits today.  Then came the leveling of the foundation, cinder blocks, etc... and now I see Geraniums in the windows.  Here are a few pictures of the finial and timbers going up on the west side.

As you can see I had a blowout in finial #2 due to rot (bugs or moisture in the firewood).

Turning the third finial.

Added some tongue oil before I cut it off the lathe.

Good finial and the blown out finial.  As you can see this one is pointed, which signifies the direction of the sun as it slips beyond the west horizon.

The bottom left and right timber is actually curved.

Almost done.

I worked for about four hours on Friday at home on a project for the company and had time to get some of this done in the afternoon.  On Saturday I worked on the dormer window.  I don't know why such a small window has taken so much time but the trim around the window and the detail just above took almost the entire day.

Top detail of dormer window.

I used biscuits to hold the pressure treated wood tight around the corner.  I do this for woodworking project inside and hope that it will hold up on the exterior trim.

Possibly the last time I use the tall ladder.

The upstairs is now done and the plants are hung.

We got up late this morning on a Sunday and Lucy (our cat) decided to go "dumpster diving" in my wife's sock drawer.  I took a picture with my phone and was the first to go down and get coffee with the anticipation of working on the small seed incubator.

Lucy thinks she is a tube sock today...

The glass top that I bought for the seed box is really a storm window but fits nicely into a frame that I made from two long 2x6 pressure treated boards that I ripped down on my table saw to the correct dimension.  I used a half lap joint along with exterior grade wood glue and four galvanized screws at each corner, which will hopefully hold up in our tough Al Gore winters here in southern Virginia.

Framing in the box that will be used to germinate the seeds.

All put together, primed and waiting for a final coat of paint.

Side view that shows how the top latches to the house.

And so goes the end to another beautiful weekend.  I'm happy to be done with the upstairs and plan to finish painting the seed box some day after work this week and get the last of the faux timbers up on the downstairs to include the hanging Geraniums under the last two windows.

A good weekend.

Over the next week you can expect to see the completion of the exterior and more compost and mulch going in around the Pointed Playhouse and the planting of yellow squash, butternut squash, eggplant and hostas in the beds.

Oh, I ordered six yards of compost and ten of mulch.  Come on over!

Finials, Faux Timbers and More Photos

51 degrees and the birds are out and there is still no sign of the dreaded mosquitoes.

Yesterday and today I have been working on the exterior of the playhouse by adding faux timbers to the front second story.  These are supposed to look like actual timbers that would be used to frame the house (in olden days) and so I spent a little time researching pictures of homes built a few hundred years ago in Europe for ideas.  I tried to make it look real but these are just 3/4 inch pressure treated boards that will one day turn to gray.  It was very time consuming getting all of the angles cut just right but it was fun.

Faux timbers added to the outside of the upstairs.

The diagonal timbers are actually cut in a slight curve.

Ready to relax...

I also installed window containers for the German style ivy geraniums, which was very difficult to find at this time of year from our local nurseries.  The forth store that I went to had them and they said that they were not planning put them up for sale for another week because they were still a little small.  There are now three different types of grape vine planted around the playhouse and I have been filling in composted material for the new plants.  All of this compost was from my leaf pile that I have been accumulating over the recent years and turning over to get this result.

Baby grape vines planted on either side of the door.  New composted soil to go with the new step.

Red ivy geraniums with another small white flower in the center (can't recall the name).

I wanted to get more work done yesterday but the rain really got in the way.  Much of the day was spent in the garage designing and making the finials that are now installed under the ridge beam.  This is an old piece of dried oak that was purchased as firewood.

You must really hit the spur center into the end to get it to grip.

Rough design.

Lots of wobble at the start.  I had to cut as much waste away at the band saw but it was still unbalanced until I got it to be round.

Layout lines to guide me.

Spinning at 1600 RPM.

Finished with the turning and now ready for the tongue oil.

Ready to go up under the ridge beam.

This one is installed - one more to go on the other end.

Well, that is about all for now.  I'll try to get the upstairs on the other side done this weekend so that I can return my neighbors ladder to him (and a nice bottle of wine).

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.