Flashback: Initial Yard Clean-Up and the Progress on the Shop So Far.

Since the process of cleaning up the yard and building the shop began before I decided this blog affair was a good idea, I'm going to reach into my archives (a notebook) and give a brief summary of what work has been done so far.

May 2009: The part of the yard cleanup I found most memorable (besides finding some random interesting objects) was moving large rocks from the backyard (where the previous owners had a pond) to the front, because we had no better place to put them. We used an old wooden wagon that Dad had found on the property. Surprisingly it held up under quite a lot of weight. It was a difficult and rather annoying task, but it had to be done because those rocks were in the way of where we want to put the new house.

June 2009:

8th-12th: The main focus for that week was compacting the gravel where the concrete pad was to go, and beginning to construct wooden forms for the pad. I was not too involved, though I did get to try my hand at the gravel compacters once or twice. Those are heavy machines (of course the 350 [or so] pounder that Dad originally rented apparently wasn't up to the task, so he ended up getting a 1000-pounder).

13th-14th: These two days were dedicated to laying rebar (for those who don't know what I'm talking about, rebar is short for reinforcing bar, and is basically long, thin bars of reinforced steel) on the garage pad. One of my main jobs were gluing holders for rebar onto bases that I had cut with the chop saw. I actually had to do it twice, with two different kinds of glue, because it didn't work the first time. Another fun thing I did was cut a bunch of rebar to size using the reciprocating saw. The vibrations actually caused me to lose feeling in about 1/4 of my left thumb for a few days.

15th: This is the day when I was finally presented with my own key for the Shack. Incidentally, the brand of lock is "Defiant", which is how I felt about moving in. The other Shack memory that day happened at 10:45 PM. Whilst the family was sitting in our living room [still living in the non-Shack at the time], Dad suddenly noticed it was looking like rain, so he stood up and said, "Jonas, come help me lay a 30 x 50 foot tarp over the garage pad!" To this day, I am still not sure where he managed to acquire such a large tarp. Anyway, we drove over to the Shack and pulled out this massive beast of a tarp. It took a long time just to unfold it, then it was rather tricky trying to spread this thing evenly over the garage pad, which at the time was some land forms, a bunch of rebar and an intricate system of red tubing which will eventually become in-floor heating. Eventually the task was complete, and we got home around 11:15. As it was a school night, I of course went straight to bed.

16th: On this day came the repetitive task of clipping the ties that held the aforementioned red tubing to the rebar. There were around 1400 of them, and they all had to be clipped as short as possible, and on that night because the concrete was to be poured at 7:30 the next morning*.

So we worked for about an hour and a half clipping these ties. The tool I was using wasn't exactly friendly. Each clip was a painful experience as it rubbed both my hands raw. The next day my left hand was pretty much covered in blisters. My right hand was okay, with the occasional layer of skin missing. It also seemed that my back would never be the same from bending down so much. A month and a half later, my back is all right, as are my hands. Funny thing. Oh by the way, we also had to put the tarp back over the garage pad when we were done. Bonus.

*The concrete was not actually poured until two days later. Silly contractors. The day the concrete was poured I went with Mom and Raya to join them in scratching our initials into the pad, but it had already hardened a fair bit. What terrible vandals we are.

Due to exams needing to be written, packing needing to get done, etcetera I did not work much more in the month of June.

July 2009:

5th-6th: Upon our return from a trip to Colorado, the concrete had firmly solidified its position in the world, and it was time to strip away the forms. That was mostly what dad had me doing those couple of days. It was rather fun, because basically what I had to do was hack at stuff with a sledgehammer and a crowbar, and then use a cordless drill to take screws out of stuff. It was also rather difficult though, because lots of the screws holding the forms in place didn't want to cooperate. Other than stripping forms, one other useful thing I did in those couple days was organize all the lumber in the yard. That in itself was quite a task. The single funniest memory I can recall happened during a coffee break on the morning of the 6th. Dad and I were sitting in the Shack living room when he noticed there was a cat sitting around in the front yard. I said, "Want me to scare it off?" and he said, "Sure." So I went out to the back, and grabbed a cordless drill, intending to surprise this complacent cat with a little noise. Somewhat unfortunately, just as I was approaching the front yard looking rather menacing with this cordless drill, and clearly eyeing the cat, a woman just happened to walk by the yard on the sidewalk, and was looking at me. I did my best to act natural, and look as though I did not intend on totally drilling that cat right there (which is probably how I looked, though it wasn't actually my intention). She gave me what may be the weirdest look I've ever gotten, and anyone who knows me knows that's saying something.

7th: The frame for the first wall of the shop went up that day, July the 7th. It was a very significant milestone. My main duty was cutting studs with the chop saw (actually, it might technically be a sliding compound mitre saw...but oh well). I felt like I was in a spectator sport, in the middle of a huge concrete pad (that had no walls yet), kneeling by this saw, measuring and cutting wood as efficiently as I could. Sometimes people actually do slow down as they drive by in the back alley, or even stop and just gawk for a couple seconds. It feels a little awkward sometimes.

8th: Did a lot more framing, with both Dad and Raya. This was, I believe, the first time she joined the crew. I mostly did cutting, as I had gotten very good at it the day before. Generally over those couple days I grew to enjoy framing, because it's the point in the process where you can really begin to see what the finished structure is going to look like.

The Winnipeg Folk Festival essentially dominated our lives from the 9th through the 12th. Work recommenced the next week.

13th: One word: trusses. All we did that day was put up roof trusses. It took 4 1/2 hours for myself, Dad and Raya to get 18 of them up, and there were still 2 more to go (which had to be saved for a later day). As more and more trusses got put up, it became trickier and trickier to get the next one in, due to the ever-decreasing space.

15th: The rain subsided long enough to get the last two trusses up. It was a rather difficult affair to negotiate them into a very tight space. In the end it got done though, with no injuries! My nickname even became "Safety Boy" for a brief period of time. This is because for awhile my job was to steady the truss from the ground using a 12-foot 2 x 4 with another piece of wood screwed onto the end to form a bit of a claw. Used properly, it made sure that the truss would not fall over while Dad and Raya lined it up and secured it.

That ended the work on my part (and Raya's) for July, because we were leaving for a previously mentioned service trip to Louisiana. After we got back, the moving process dominated (see the previous blog entry). Today is August 2nd, and it's going to be back to work on the shop now. The next step is putting shingles on the roof.