Out of Plumb

It has been a long time since I have posted anything and given the response I have been receiving I thought I had better write. I kid you not, literally hundreds of one person mentioned in passing that it has been a while since I updated so here I am. It is not that I haven’t been working; it’s just that I haven’t been working on the house. You see we are at a financial crossroad. Until we get some financing we can’t afford to cross the road. An investment we made has been very slow in maturing and as a result we sit here wishing we had something to do, like the bathroom. Oh that would be fun. I know you might be thinking but hey what about that store thing? Last time I figured out my wages it was something like .75 an hour. They asked me if I would be claiming the store as income on my tax return, um no. So I have spent much of my time scrounging extra cash to do the dang bathroom that has been torn up now for months. Bought a car with a blown head gasket, tightened the leaking lower radiator hose and praise the lord the blown head gasket went away. That was a fair buy and I thought the profit would get us our bathroom. It didn’t, but it did fill the propane tank so I am not bitter in the slightest. With nothing else to do and our investment unlikely to pay out until spring I am back to building furniture. I started with this wire mesh door, faux antique country cupboard thing that all the ladies around here seem to beat each other to death for. It’s an ok example of the genre, I mean where else can you do a crappy job with crappy wood and say its intentional. Since the wood was free scrap salvaged from the Great Falls job I had nothing into it, and figured my wages at like $15 an hour. That’s more than I make an hour teaching so I was fine. The flaw in my plan was the wife who claimed the damn thing the moment see saw it. Fine whatever, just put it someplace I don’t have to look at it everyday. I was just going to turn out another but I was out of dry lumber. I have a large quantity cut from those logs pictured on the trailer a while back but it is still very green. I did that once, built a cabinet out of green lumber. I thought that the cracks that formed as it dried would add to its ‘rustic charm’. Ha! I ended up cutting it apart when it split so big can of soup would fall out, well that might be a little much.... So no lumber no crappy cupboards. It was pointed out that I could go and buy lumber but that defeats the purpose of owning a sawmill doesn’t it? The only wood I have on hand and dry came from my late uncle’s place and since it is special I only use it on nice stuff that will not be painted. So I made this:



The disk is some really old brass thing with Egyptian hieroglyphs hammered into it. I dug it out of a scrap brass bin at a salvage yard. It kind of dominates the table and out paces the neat wood but what are you going to do? Trouble is I like it, I don’t know why but I do. It is one of only a handful of things that I have made here that I truly like. To be more specific it is the other thing that I have made that I personally truly like. Alas it seems I am to part with this one as I parted with the other. I need to ask enough to salve my poor tattered soul, what do you think its worth. Just post it in the comments but don’t tell the IRS.






PS: We are not in the market for charity so family please don’t offer or ask. We own a house and a half, at least 3 cars that run at any one time, a 5th wheel camper and lots of power tools. Oh boohoo poor us we can’t fancy up our bathroom what ever are we going to do? We are fine, really. Serious I will curse your children, I mean it, I swear a lot.

Spent the entire week off working on house stuff, just not MY house stuff. Traveled to Great Falls to help a friend under a deadline. The main task was to side the place but we found plenty of other things to do. The second day there Great Falls did what Great Falls does this time of year, got cold and windy oh and it snowed. Shoveling drifts to side a house, are we studs or what? Long days and a phenomenal amount of bad language later the house was sided.


Drifting inside the house.


Cleaning off the just poured garage floor. We had to cover it then with insulated blankets so it could harden with out freezing.


Front of the house before we got around to siding it.


Our temporary helper "Gator"



Siding a house at 10:00PM with air guns, think the neighbors loved us?


Done