My Albatross, Part 3

Uh oh.

 

Marty Robbins: When the Work's All Done This Fall

My Albatross, Part 2

After raising and stabilizing inside the roof, and all of that pretty much took a week to complete, we moved outside. First came the stripping of both wood and asphalt shingles, the latter at least 50 years old, the former even older.

 

 

Then the endless pounding of leftover nails.

 

To strengthen and support the old roof Wayne decided to lay 2x4 'sleepers' on end, on top of the old rafters. The nice thing about Wayne's plan is that the sleepers will extend past the old, basically nonexistent, eaves and the house will now have proper eaves which will provide not only more shade but also some definition to an otherwise rectangular design.

 

An Idaho morning and the once and future sun room, minus the washer and dryer:

 

As mentioned, nothing is straight or true so we had to do some serious finagling with the sleepers to insure that the plywood would align and seams would fall on the sleepers for nailing. From there, felt paper, fascia, soffit, and, finally, shingles will be laid in pretty much the same way as any other roof.

A little helper (thanks for the photo, Bob!):

 

Slow work and long days that last into the night:

 

My Albatross, Part 1

It's the event of the season. It's a new roof and by the looks of things not a minute too soon. My first thoughts were, "Those shingles look bad, better replace them by the winter." Soon after the first shingle was stripped I decided, "God-a-mighty, this is a disaster."

Fleetwood Mac: Albatross

The first and so far best step was to hire Wayne to run things. He runs the saws at a local recycled timber shop but he's also an ex ranch foreman, an oil field welder, a cowboy, a farmer, and all-around genius. He's a perfectionist and is dedicated to quality work. None of what follows would have happened without him and he is owed a lot more than the money we will pay him.

The supplies arrived, part of the roof was stripped, and we were on our way.

 

 

The roof is a damn mess. There isn't a true corner or straight line on it and it rolls and waves like the ocean. The first issue has been severe sagging. To solve this, Wayne devised a way to jack the old rafters up from inside the attic. The only things holding up the roof were old 1x6 supports shot in at suspect angles and various locations. Many of these were cracked and some weren't even connected to any support, just kind of hanging there. Frankly, it's a wonder the whole thing hasn't collapsed. We hauled two giant laminated beams up through a hole we cut in the roof, ran a line, then went across the beam jacking up every rafter that sagged.

 

 

There is a false ceiling in the house. The original ceiling is made of lathe and plaster.  It, too, was sagging severely--which probably prompted putting up a new ceiling from within to hide it.  To stop the sagging we put a third beam across the top of the ceiling rafters, then sucked it up a bit with a jack and nailed new blocks to the old rafters. It didn't raise the old ceiling as much as it will prohibit it from sinking any more.

 

To be continued.

 

Swing for Life

09 November 2012

First night in the new/old house. The roof is still under construction. There is no insulation. The wood floors are dry and full of splinters. The electricians left several holes in the lathe and plaster walls. The new wood stove is outside waiting to be installed. It's 29 degrees outside and the high tomorrow is supposed to be 34 where I will work on the roof.

I'm sitting on a dusty 50-year-old chair sipping génépy, eating a bowl of stove top popcorn (first meal!), and listening to Yo La Tengo. In total, it couldn't be much better.

Yo La Tengo: Swing for Life

 

Pickin' Up the Pieces

Once the junipers were dead and gone it was time to enter the house. Unoccupied for three years and fairly neglected for at least a couple decades, the first chore was to undo what 60-plus years of living had done. This included wading through and sifting, sorting, dumping, recycling, repairing, and organizing everything from furniture to clothing to books, kitchenware, appliances, food, plants, hardware, and much, much more. Some things were sent straight to the dumpster, some were piled together for relatives to claim, some hauled to charity, some were claimed for ourselves.

Poco: Pickin' Up the Pieces

A classic American pantry.

 

A classic Mormon pantry: bleach bottles filled with water and a five-gallon bucket of (now) crystallized honey in case of a nuclear disaster or the Judgment Day, whichever comes first.

 

Those who experienced the Great Depression learned not to waste. You never know when three cubic meters of grocery bags might come in handy. Interestingly, the grocery bags were stuffed in the 50-pound flour bin while the flour, maybe 20 pounds, was relegated to a smaller drawer in the pantry.

 

An International Harvester deep freezer, no longer running but stuck inside of a pantry when new cabinets were placed in front of any exit space.

 

But you gotta make lemonade out of lemons so the new job of the International Harvester will be to store wine at a respectable 60 degrees and 65 percent humidity.

 

Eveready cell batteries for a telephone line found in the cellar.

 

Joys of Jell-O, an undated recipe book published by the General Foods Corporation, and glazed ceramic pots.

 

A C. Kurtzman & Co. upright piano circa 1915 (?) and sheet music for Marty Robbins' "A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation)" and Bob Wills' "San Antonio Rose".

 

Task #1

I hate ornamental junipers.

 

Some asshole made a killing in the '50s and '60s selling these hideous creatures that populate the suburban and rural streets of America. I must harbor some posttraumatic stress--like maybe I lost my favorite stuffed animal in one or the neighborhood bully forced me to seek refuge in one as he belted me with a barrage of dirt clods--because every time I see them I want to kill them. And kill them I did. Before I even considered working inside the house I knew the shrubs must die. How could I think about painting or cleaning or repairing the house when those filthy monsters lurked outside nearly every window?

 

Thanks to the good folks at the Priest Lake Idaho Department of Lands I honed my skills with a chainsaw. Still, it wasn't easy. Like cutting into a spider web of death amid a dog-haired forest of doom I ran the chainsaw for three straight days before seeing light on the other side. Decades of dust, insects, decayed leaves, gasoline, and bar oil filled the air and coated my clothes, hair, and skin.  Inch by inch and gnarled, mutated, twisted branch by branch, I hacked that crap out of my life and stacked the remains in award winning funeral pyres to be burned at a later date when the sky is gray and looming and full of moisture.

 

 

 

And now I can breathe easier and at least recognize the house as a house and not some sort of cursed, child and small animal devouring horror home.

 

 

The awesome beauty of a good stump grind and new plants in waiting. Now then, where were we?

 

This House Is Not a Motel

 

This is the house of my future. It is an old house and it needs serious attention, some of which I will give myself, some of which I won't have the patience or skill and so the attention will come from other sources. It is an old house and it sits on a beautiful lot and that beautiful lot might be the first and foremost reason to give the house the attention it needs.

The house stands as a threshold between the Great Rift Desert of Idaho (now protected as the Craters of the Moon National Monument) and the foothills of the Pioneer Mountains, a marginal space best suited to coyotes, sagebrush, broken hay derricks, and long sleepy afternoons. It's quiet here. Slow.

This is an attempt to document the progress of the house and some of its surrounding property. The house is attached to another 65 other acres of hay fields and in time those fields might be my future, too. But now is not the time.

The title of this documentation project is named after a song from 1967 by a band named Love. The song has nothing to do with renovating an old home in south central Idaho. It's a scary song and it's also beautiful, and faced with the frightening but inspiring prospects ahead of me it sounds about perfect. The title also offers two opposing ideas, that of permanence and transience. A house is not a motel. After ten years and eight houses I look forward to the task of building a house.

Love: A House Is Not a Motel