The Shack: A Year in Review: Part 3

Yes, the "year in review" entires are coming a little more rapid-fire now. As I mentioned before, I feel as though I should finish reviewing the year before the year is finished. That said, let's get to it!

I alluded to this yesterday... the Shack is not the only building on this property that has its stories to tell. Just a few paces north of yonder Shack, extending close to the threshold of the back alley, one will find what we have affectionately dubbed "the shop". This shop has become the new office of the one and only "Village Casketmaker", also known as Dad. The current function of the shop, however, is not nearly as interesting (from my point of view) as the long and laborious process it was to create this shop in the first place. I'll start from the very beginning.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...

All right, that's a little too far back. Incidentally, that was Genesis 1:1. [Sidenote: My apologies to any atheists reading - for you the story is told more like "in the beginning, there was nothing, and then it exploded"]

But I digress. For the shop-creation story, I will go back to June of 2009 (which is a good number of millions of years later). It was in this month of June that the construction of the shop began. The first thing that needed to be done was to prepare a place for concrete to be poured, which would make - wait for it - a garage pad! Of course, doing this with Dad was a long and meticulous process. The first step was flattening out a good space with a rented gravel compactor. That was not one of the more fine-detailed tasks. The best you could do was try to keep the 1000-pound monster going relatively in a straight line. After that came the more precision-intensive tasks. The most memorable of these, for me, was cutting and laying endless amounts of rebar in a very specific grid pattern (confused as to what rebar is? Check our earlier entries of this blog, or click here). Cutting the stuff was quite fun - I had to use a reciprocating saw with a very sharp blade to cut these bars of reinforced steel. For a couple days after one particular shift I couldn't feel about a quarter of my left thumb from the vibrations.

Another thing I had to do was glue endless amounts of little holders for the rebar to little plastic bases. Obviously, this being done for Dad, it had to be done "just so". It took me a good half hour or 45 minutes (at least) the first time, and as if that wasn't enough, I had to do the whole thing over again with hot glue the next day because the first type of glue hadn't worked out. Oh well!

After the rebar had all been laid, Dad made an intricate system of red tubing that would later become his in-floor heating. I wasn't heavily involved in this until one fateful evening. This tubing, you see, was affixed to the rebar with hundreds of little plastic ties. Wait, it gets better. Every single one of these hundreds of ties had to be clipped using shears in preparation for the pouring of the concrete. After doing that, the only part of my body that hurt more than my back was my hands, which were both basically covered in blisters.

Once all this business was over, Dad hired some people to pour the concrete - people that didn't show up as scheduled at least twice, and finally got the job done two or three days later than we had first expected. Now that that was done, the fun parts began! Well, not quite. The forms (basically miniature wooden walls that made sure the concrete went where it was supposed to) had to be stripped, so Dad put me to work with a crowbar, sledgehammer, and drill. It was a very good outlet for any applicable frustrations.

After that, we started the framing. This was probably my favourite part of the process, because it's when you can really see the thing start to take shape. My job was mostly to cut the studs with the sliding compound miter saw, which will likely end up being a great life skill. Slowly but surely, walls were taking shape, and before we knew it, we were ready for a roof! Well, roof trusses anyway. This was another adventure in deliveries/people showing up on time... once again, they were late. In spite of this, a diligent team of three (myself, Dad and Raya) got those trusses where they needed to go in less than 2 days!

Eventually everything else fell into place. Bare studs/trusses became a plywood shell. This would've been around the time that we moved in, because I can remember the plywood roof being covered in tarps in an effort to stop rain from getting in (and getting all our stored stuff wet!). Soon thereafter Mom and Dad chose appropriate shingles, and we set to work giving the shop a more legitimate roof. Is it sad if I get those "warm, fuzzy feelings" reminiscing about beautiful, warm summer days spent laying shingles up on that roof? Oh well, I can't deny the truth. I do remember those days fairly fondly, probably because the weather was so nice, and we get a decent view from the top of the shop (I'm looking forward to the new [tall] house!). Anyway, the plywood shell avec legitimate roof soon became shell with roof and many holes in the studs with wires running through them (aka electrical!). After that would come insulation, drywall, and finally... siding!

If you can believe it, the siding-delivery guys were late too. We seem to have a terrible track record with this kind of stuff. Such is life. Despite this, we managed to get the siding on before the snow set in, thanks almost entirely to the unseasonably warm November we experienced this year. This is essentially how the shop stands now. Dad looks forward to the day when it will no longer be filled with all our stuff, because then he will finally have full reign over his 680 square foot paradise. That is, until we park the car in there.

Looking back, it seems like it took a whole lot of work to build this edifice. Looking forward, it will probably feel like nothing compared to the new house... oh joy! At least the new house will create plenty of work for me, and thus I will be able to pay my debts to my parents, who are sending me to France over spring break 2010. Only a couple hundred hours worth of work and I'm thinking we'll be even. This is gonna be fun!

Come back soon for part 4 of my 5-part series, where I will look back on some general highlights of Shack life so far. Part 5 will hopefully come around New Year's, and feature a photographic retrospective on the Shack. Stay tuned!