Progress!

12/12/14



Back to the schoolhouse. It's been months. It feels like a drought. The money dried up and my passion for the project went dormant. But Elizabeth is tenacious. She found a way. With a couple thousand dollars in materials to be delivered today, we will spend the weekend working. It's great to be excited about it again.

And this time we're bringing Brie, our new foster dog. She is probably a pit bull-boxer mix. She has a thyroid problem which caused her to balloon to 95 pounds at one point. She's down below 70 pounds now, but she's still a beast--a cuddly, friendly, curious, sociable, lapdog beast. She is a sweetheart and I can't wait for her to get to play at the schoolhouse.




Brie the foster dog. 12/12/14




Exterminator.

We have the incredibly well named powderpost beetles. They burrow holes in your wood and leave little piles of fine sawdust powder laying about. Probably they were brought in with the firewood in the basement, but they've been here for a while.




Powderpost beetles leave little piles of very fine sawdust. 12/13/14




I called the exterminator yesterday. He told me not to worry about it. Treatment is $150 and you have to do it every couple of years, but the little buggers rarely do much real damage. We have to wait till they become active again in the spring.

One more adventure.




7:30pm



The Home Depot materials were supposed to be delivered after 2:00 today. We had planned on leaving Minneapolis last night, but we just couldn't get it together. No surprise there. Elizabeth had everything stacked and ready by the door (more or less), but she was up till 3:00am worrying about this weekend so she didn't get out of bed till 11:00. Turns out we needed to stop and buy a camping toilet (we have a bathroom now!) and get groceries along the way and since we didn't leave till almost noon and its a two hour drive and so on and so on...we didn't get to the schoolhouse until after 3:00.

It takes half a day to get on the road. It just does.




Elizabeth, 96 sheets of drywall, and half a day to get it inside. 12/12/14




I'm convinced that most of construction is just hauling stuff around. Elizabeth had 96 sheets of Sheetrock delivered to the schoolhouse and it still took us four hours to haul it inside. Supposedly this is 5,000 pounds. We are badasses. (Note: this is nothing compared to the 12,500 pounds of sod we moved around three times in two days!)




When fog freezes. 12/12/14




The basement wood stove is useless. I tried to get it going and filled the basement with smoke. The first floor stove does not do enough in real winter weather. A couple of hours of raging fire and I can still see my breath.

On the other hand, it looks like my parents, besides constructing a frame to keep the broken door closed, also took the time to move and organize a bunch of wood for the stove. They harvested a bag of bark from the logs and sorted it all by size. They cleaned out a bunch of ash from the stove. Getting the heat turned on was a snap. Thanks, mom and dad!



Brie the skin-dog staying as close to the fire as possible. 12/12/14




You know, Elizabeth and I think of ourselves as a fairly modern couple. I'm a desk jockey. Elizabeth builds decks and Sheetrocks walls. But there's just no denying that Elizabeth is the cook. I'm happy enough to prepare food for us to eat but nobody would mistake my efforts for cooking. The food I prepare is a solution to a problem. I want to alleviate hunger with healthy, cheap, fast food. In that order. I probably average .75 frozen organic burritos per day. I buy 'em by the case.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, prepares meals worthy of titles like "dinner" or "lunch." And she likes doing it. She's wonderful. She brought a tablecloth and placemats. She brought our toaster oven from home. She rigged up a "sink" of sorts so that you can wash your hands and have the water collected in a basin. There's a drying rack!

I would never even think of these things.

She makes the bed. Quite literally. She assembles elaborate layers of padding and sheets and blankets pillows. It's luxurious. If not for her I'd be in a sleeping bag laid over a thin pad. I'd sleep until I was rested enough to mind the hard floor.

And I'm in charge of the fire. We never discussed this, but I have never actually seen her put a stick of wood into the stove.

I am in charge of the dishes though. Breaking the gender barriers there.




Thick fog at 41 and Maple. 12/13/14




It's still hard to relax under the weight of this project. Of course it's supposed to be a romantic adventure with my bride to be and a collaborative project with my family and a way to challenge myself. If the whole thing falls apart, we'll collect the insurance and move on.

But I can't help this constant buzz of stress about the break-in or the fire that happened in the basement or the concerns of the structural engineer or the musty smell in the basement or the powderpost beetles that might eat their way through the floor. There is a relief every time we come over the last hill and find the schoolhouse still standing and none of the windows broken and the door intact, but there's also the realization that the stress continues. It's like two steps forward and one step back when what I should really be thinking about is just being out for a walk.

I struggle to keep looking forward, clapping my hands together, and asking, "What's next?"




Just across the road. 12/13/14




10:30pm



There is nowhere on the first floor where I can still see my breath. It is finally warm.




Banded Wooly Bear caterpillar (Isabella Tiger Moth) doing its thing in 40+ degree December weather 12/13/14




12/13/14
(How often does that happen?)



There's something deeply satisfying about making a fire. It is building and destroying at the same time. You are creating heat and light which, in the cold, is only a step down from food.

I woke up at 5am and laid in bed for a while. I got up finally and went outside to pee. The fog is thick. Then I came inside to inspect the stove. The steel was still warm to the touch, but no longer dangerous. A few embers glowed in the ash.



 
Rebuilding the fire at 5am. 12/13/14


A few balls of newspaper and a healthy layer of tree bark and it all kicked back to life. An hour after waking and a handful of trail mix later I am sitting watching the flames eat the logs and powderpost beetles. Content.




12:00pm



Gotta give some respect to the flies (of which there are thousands). We've blackened six fly paper strips with perhaps 200 flies each with only a slight decline in their population.

When we arrive at the schoolhouse in the winter all of the flies appear to have frozen to death. The stillness of the schoolhouse in winter is wonderful. But as the wood stove works it's magic, the flies return to life. Slowly at first there is a buzz now and again. A fly stuck to the tape "awakens" and works to free itself. The flies are sluggish.




Full in two hours. 12/13/14




But as the temperature increases so does their activity. Before long the windows are crawling with insects and the constant hum of wings is punctuated with occasional frenzied taps as one attempts madly to fly through the glass he has just been walking on.




12/14/14



I think it's safe to say that this has been a one match weekend. At 9am this morning there was only the faintest heat coming from the ashes in the stove, but again I was able to coax the fire back to life.




Putting up the first sheet of drywall. 12/14/14




We made some real progress this weekend. Elizabeth installed maybe 20% of the vapor barrier (thin plastic sheeting) and she and I were able to put up a few sheets of drywall. The difference in how the space feels is amazing. It feels like real progress.





NEXT POST: The Craigslist Trap

Hwy 61 in town. See you next year! 12/14/14