I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay...
Today's been ups and downs. I had some first world problems... I found a cool property, but without overexplaining, the two small homes on it are both tiny and non-traditional. Those things are fine with me of course, better than fine, fantastic! Mortgage companies and insurance companies though, they're like... nah. They're a bit more practical than I am perhaps. Insurance companies like to have the odds wildly in their favor; canvas walls and wood burning stoves don't appeal to them. It's easier to say no than yes. I can take those odds, and raise you Floyd. I'll figure out a way to be here.
In the meantime while I'm driving around inspecting places, I am always noticing piles and piles and piles of glorious wood. Some timber, beams, milled, all kinds of things. Signs for this lumber company and that lumber company. Wild exotic things I've never been able to work with before. In Tennessee I found this massive piece of glorious driftwood I've been carrying around. Perhaps I'll be able to use it.
I want to make my own stuff, like anything I don't have in my camper for my new home (if the practical types approve of my buying decision) will be stuff I make. I have a variety of saws back home I can't wait to get. I brought the reciprocating saw, you know, just in case of a burglar or evil doer. It's so much easier for me to operate than a pistol would be, and I'm only a 10th as likely to accidentally discharge it in my own general direction. Also, if you need to get rid of the body in case of burglar, you're already way ahead.
While I was in Nebraska, I'd bought an old one room schoolhouse to renovate. I realized that one of my true loves is working with wood. It makes you feel -- I don't know -- meditative, quiet, and there's a big charge when you finish a project. You can stretch even the smallest thing into hours of work over many weeks. It's challenging. It's physical. It's just really my jam.
I started with covering anything that stood still long enough in wood. The woods you get there (in an area where there is far more corn than trees) is sort of your basic stuff. Mostly pine. I also worked with some plywood because: cheap! and some lath for the same reason. I like everything about it, the stain, the smell of the stain, the cutting, the mismeasurements, the patience required.
If my dreams of owning don't work out, there's also a home in town coming available for rent. The house, though I haven't seen it, is quite large and quite cheap. They said the reason for the cheapness is because some of the house is basically unlivable and they don't want a family there. I mentioned I may be able to trade some rent for some work on the home, provided they pay for materials. If I were a dude, they'd probably run at this opportunity. I feel like she looked at me skeptically. It doesn't help when a woman says, "I love power tools!" But I do. They make you feel super powerful. A recipro saw makes me feel like Jason musta felt with a chainsaw in those movies. Ready to clear the forest of those annoying scantilly clad kids who say dumb stuff and always run back into the house. I can't watch those, because it's soooo frustrating every time they run back in. It's like... just run away! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! Everything circles back to Monty Python. Maybe it's because I figured out it's the only dvd I have with me and I occasionally get kinda bored and just want to watch the tube for a bit. And yeah, what has happened to my other movies?
Here's some pics of my wood walls and doors and such in the one room schoolhouse I redid:
I redid every surface of the place-- floors, walls, doors. I never got to the ceiling. Hopefully the guy who bought it will address the ceiling. It would be awesome if...
ALSO, in the most random aside ever, I found out years after I'd gone to Yale, because a family member did our whole genealogy chart, that one of my ancestors was buried right there on campus. He was a carpenter. He worked on the campus. He build some of that school. Wild, right? I think that's wild. He lived only 2 blocks from where I lived, right next to campus. If I had it to do over again, when that one girl bragged about how her ancestors were like the first ones on the Mayflower or whatever, I'd have said, "Yeah, but I bet they didn't build this joint. Like hands on build." I'm proud to be from a family of carpenters and engineers. Some were engineers without a formal education. My grandpa quit school at 13 to work for the railroads and make money for the family. He built wild, elaborate things for his children, things only an engineer could build, with a 6th grade education. And he wrote poems about working for the railroad, how it feels when the train is approaching the wooden platform. I'm proud of that. We didn't need to be the first ones off that boat; we built this place with our hands. My ancestors and many, many of your immigrant ancestors. We built this together.
In the meantime while I'm driving around inspecting places, I am always noticing piles and piles and piles of glorious wood. Some timber, beams, milled, all kinds of things. Signs for this lumber company and that lumber company. Wild exotic things I've never been able to work with before. In Tennessee I found this massive piece of glorious driftwood I've been carrying around. Perhaps I'll be able to use it.
I want to make my own stuff, like anything I don't have in my camper for my new home (if the practical types approve of my buying decision) will be stuff I make. I have a variety of saws back home I can't wait to get. I brought the reciprocating saw, you know, just in case of a burglar or evil doer. It's so much easier for me to operate than a pistol would be, and I'm only a 10th as likely to accidentally discharge it in my own general direction. Also, if you need to get rid of the body in case of burglar, you're already way ahead.
While I was in Nebraska, I'd bought an old one room schoolhouse to renovate. I realized that one of my true loves is working with wood. It makes you feel -- I don't know -- meditative, quiet, and there's a big charge when you finish a project. You can stretch even the smallest thing into hours of work over many weeks. It's challenging. It's physical. It's just really my jam.
I started with covering anything that stood still long enough in wood. The woods you get there (in an area where there is far more corn than trees) is sort of your basic stuff. Mostly pine. I also worked with some plywood because: cheap! and some lath for the same reason. I like everything about it, the stain, the smell of the stain, the cutting, the mismeasurements, the patience required.
If my dreams of owning don't work out, there's also a home in town coming available for rent. The house, though I haven't seen it, is quite large and quite cheap. They said the reason for the cheapness is because some of the house is basically unlivable and they don't want a family there. I mentioned I may be able to trade some rent for some work on the home, provided they pay for materials. If I were a dude, they'd probably run at this opportunity. I feel like she looked at me skeptically. It doesn't help when a woman says, "I love power tools!" But I do. They make you feel super powerful. A recipro saw makes me feel like Jason musta felt with a chainsaw in those movies. Ready to clear the forest of those annoying scantilly clad kids who say dumb stuff and always run back into the house. I can't watch those, because it's soooo frustrating every time they run back in. It's like... just run away! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! Everything circles back to Monty Python. Maybe it's because I figured out it's the only dvd I have with me and I occasionally get kinda bored and just want to watch the tube for a bit. And yeah, what has happened to my other movies?
Here's some pics of my wood walls and doors and such in the one room schoolhouse I redid:
I redid every surface of the place-- floors, walls, doors. I never got to the ceiling. Hopefully the guy who bought it will address the ceiling. It would be awesome if...
ALSO, in the most random aside ever, I found out years after I'd gone to Yale, because a family member did our whole genealogy chart, that one of my ancestors was buried right there on campus. He was a carpenter. He worked on the campus. He build some of that school. Wild, right? I think that's wild. He lived only 2 blocks from where I lived, right next to campus. If I had it to do over again, when that one girl bragged about how her ancestors were like the first ones on the Mayflower or whatever, I'd have said, "Yeah, but I bet they didn't build this joint. Like hands on build." I'm proud to be from a family of carpenters and engineers. Some were engineers without a formal education. My grandpa quit school at 13 to work for the railroads and make money for the family. He built wild, elaborate things for his children, things only an engineer could build, with a 6th grade education. And he wrote poems about working for the railroad, how it feels when the train is approaching the wooden platform. I'm proud of that. We didn't need to be the first ones off that boat; we built this place with our hands. My ancestors and many, many of your immigrant ancestors. We built this together.
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