Busy, Tired and Fortunate

Alas, it is again time for that calendarially-arbitrary moment of self-reflection, the New Year.  For me and you, blogger and bloggee, it has been a short first year (note the low-level tone of confidence that there will be more years in the future).  In some ways, the last five months occasionally described at this URL have been hectic and abnormally crazy, with some new life interruptions that kept me from getting to the many projects that I have laid out for you.  In other ways, it is exactly representative of my life in my mid-thirties.  Starting something with great vigor only to have that vigor wane as other things grab for my attention.  All right, that may extend well into and perhaps past my twenties as well. 

We pick up the story at Thanksgiving, less than a week after my last posting.  I had just finished complaining about how my busy life was keeping me from projects, particularly the concrete counter, which needs a nice 60-degree room that can also survive a sloppy amount of cement mixing.  The weather was no longer on our side, though a propane heater in the garage would likely have done the trick for a few days, until the curing slab could be brought inside in one piece. 

Thanksgiving found us in Florida.  Through a rare serendipity of schedule, both Hilary and Hadley were on break from school (Bates College and North Yarmouth Academy, respectively) for the whole week of Thanksgiving.  This was our one chance to gather up the entire clan and head to the recently-opened Harry Potter theme park in Orlando.  That Cora missed two days of school (Carrie Ricker Elementary) would have to be okay.  I think she’ll still be promoted to fifth grade come June.  Our coordinated children-of-divorce schedules meant we would not be together for Thanksgiving for two more years, when the elder girls will be at college and Cora will likely be a crazy, unpredictable pre-teen middle-schooler. 

The concrete counter form, reinterpreted as a drop zone for random building materials during the reconstruction of the back of the house.

This was the year.  We came to grips with the cost of a trip.  We came to grips with the fact that we would come home to $3,200 worth of replacement doors and windows (the one part insurance was not going to cover).  We still got on that plane.  We braved those crowds (though we did have passes to get us in early and past most lines).  Those of us who really do not like amusement parks (don’t ask, it’s a whole other blog) actually had a great time. 

Harry Potter world was amazing, if you didn’t look too closely and you ignored the massive throngs of tourists.  The combination Hogwarts/Hogsmeade/Diagon Alley would likely have been home to 300-400 residents in the wizarding world of J.K. Rowling’s mind.  In balmy Florida, there were tens of thousands of Muggles all jostling for position, waiting in 45-minutes lines just to enter a gift shop and seriously debating whether they would wear a Gryffindor scarf or if they were just getting caught up in the moment.  The butterbeer was quite tasty!  The buildings were well done.  The castle was imposing.  The rides were great.  And in the end, they held off on the scarf.

After passing through the guards with their Probity Probes and enough security trolls to guard the Lestrange vault, we found ourselves on that ubiquitous Muggle transport device, the jet airliner, headed back to Maine.  Hilary had to study for finals.  Cora had to get to her Mom’s for the rest of Thanksgiving break.  I had work to do.  Kris drove Hilary back to Bates on Saturday, November 27th.  She returned on one of the many back-roads between Lewiston and our corner of Freeport.  The one she chose passed through rural New Gloucester.  After cresting a hill and heading into a corner, the road tightened between two pasture fences and Kris hit a deep patch of sand, left on the road after a recent bout of freezing weather.  Our intrepid Acura MDX spun out of control in the soft sand, first one way, then the other.  After a serious impact two places on the driver’s side, the car came to rest pointing backward and off the road.

Kris hit her head quite hard on the area where the seatbelt connects to the side of the car, leaving a three-inch gash in the back of her head and causing a concussion.  I’ll save you the riveting blow-by-blow (pardon the pun) of the ensuing few weeks and give you the summarized version only.  Numerous CT scans found varying degrees of bleeding on the brain, brain bruising, etc.  It all sounds awful.  It wasn’t as awful as it sounds, but none of it was fun.  The two weeks were comprised of an ER trip to one hospital, an overnight ICU monitoring (every half-hour) in another, a handful of doctor appointments and an unnecessarily-alarming trip to meet a neurosurgeon in the ER of a third hospital. In the end, it turns out that separate from the now-healing gash and the slowly improving concussion, Kris has a tiny, two-millimeter (again, tiny) aneurysm in the middle of the brain. 

Now the word aneurysm is a big word.  If you have been exposed to them, you certainly have a fearful picture of what is going on.  An aneurysm is a bulging of the wall of a blood vessel.  The site of Kris’ bulging is a T-shaped intersection of a blood vessel.  The expansion of that vessel is across the top of the T.  Two-millimeters.  That’s about one-sixteenth of an inch for the inch-and-foot people.  Those are the tiny little lines on your tape measure.  The final, and highest-ranked doctor we spoke with believes strongly that it is not much of a concern.  His hunch is that it is not growing and may even be the way the blood vessel formed naturally.  In one year, he will analyze new imagery and see if there is any growth trend.  It was going to be six months.  He was confident enough to extend it to a full year.

Kris is still coming to terms with this.  How could it not take time to be at peace with a thing inside your head that made a name for itself by expanding and bursting?  It is the vice of gluttony turned into a medical condition.  So why am I less concerned?  A couple of reasons.  First, it is tiny.  When the doctors mistakenly thought it was six millimeters, it was at the high end of the small category and the small category of aneurysms has no record of bursting.  When scaled down to 2 mm., the ratio works something like this:  6/0 = 2/x.  I like the value of that x all day long. 

Next.  Our final doctor over the course of two weeks, the final arbiter of the condition of Kris’ jumbled brain, was quite confident.  While stating that he could not predict the future (something undoubtedly ingrained in doctors by their malpractice insurance agents) he was quite satisfied that Kris chose the most harmless brain aneurysm on the market.  Some quotes:  “This is not what is going to get you.”  And my favorite:  “It is incredibly unlikely that this aneurysm will ever cause you any problems.”  I made him repeat that to Kris on the spot.  “Incredibly unlikely.”  I have turned it into a mantra.  Come on, say it with me… “incredibly unlikely…incredibly unlikely.”  Isn’t that reassuring?  Do you think the malpractice insurer lets him throw that phrase around willy-nilly?

Now why am I choosing to believe this last doctor instead of some of the ranging opinions of the others?  Is it faith?  Is it grasping at the most positive thing I heard?  No, not really.  For one thing, he had the most scans and the most opinions from which to draw a conclusion.  I trust his opinion, and inherently him, because he was super tall.  He was a bit awkward looking.  He had goofy hair.  It was clear that he wasn’t in this line of work to wear the best clothes and pick up the best chicks.  Some docs stereotypically go buy the red sports car.  Now I don’t know what auto our fair doctor drives, but the dude bought a friggin’ lighthouse.

Really?  Who buys a lighthouse?  That’s awesome.  Further research found that our fair neuro-doc ranked fourth on the list of the highest-paid doctors in the state of Maine.  However, the three above him and the one after him all serve as CEOs of hospitals.  Let’s call him the highest-paid practicing doctor in the state of Maine.  While that doesn’t guarantee that he’s good, it does mean that he makes a lot of money and if he could make more money by fussing over Kris’ little brain defect, then that would be a down payment on a second lighthouse or maybe a nice teak dory with a small Yamaha outboard to get to his new digs.  If he’s not good, then he’s probably greedy.  Either way, he’s not milking this 2 millimeters for further expensive tests and visits.

Taken all together, I think the CT scan in eleven months is going to look eerily like the one from two weeks ago.  In 23 months, that one will appear to be a photocopy of the other two.  At some point, I’ll finally see Kris feeling more at ease.  It looks like I will have her by my side for a long while to come.

This Christmas season was just strange.  Luckily, since we had all three kids for Thanksgiving, the schedule says we would have no kids for Christmas.  Everyone scattered on the wind to their respective other parents.  It made the fact that our tree (cut 40 feet from the house) went up far too close to Christmas a lot more bearable.  Weather delayed Hilary and Hadley’s return from Colorado, so we ended up having our family Christmas last night, New Year’s Eve Eve.

Normal life is creeping back in.  The first couple of weeks found me doing all the driving for the two girls still with us, getting most of the dinners, Hadley or I getting the dishes done, Hadley doing all of the laundry and me still trying to make as many track practices as I can.  (Ed. Note – I am entering my 5th year as an assistant track coach at NYA)

I’m still driving Kris a lot, but only because it saves her energy for more important things.  She is back at work, but luckily plowing through some holiday days right now.  The Acura was totaled and taken away, less than 3,000 miles shy of 200,000.  We were planning to keep it until 300,000.  Now we need a new plan.  Hadley and Hilary learned some manual transmission skills over break, so Hadley will eventually drive my little white truck here and there, when it’s not stuck in the woods hauling rocks.  That allows my love affair with our 2007 Mini Cooper to continue into the winter.  I’ve promised to go easy on the turns until the snow tires come off again in the spring.

Perhaps most importantly, I’m able to get back to work a little bit.  I got a bit behind last month.  I have the opportunity to play catch up this month with some understanding from my bosses and a new one-time project.  That means there will be little project activity to describe in this blog in the coming weeks.

I could say something pseudo-profound about the problems that arise in renovation or other projects, but that would be pretty lame.  Life happens.  I’m just glad it is all smoothing out.  Brain injuries demand a lot of patience and relaxing.  It seems a lot easier to stay off a broken leg.  Brains are tricky.  It is really difficult to sit around and do nothing that engages the brain.  We live in a non-stop, stimuli-filled world.

I’m thankful for those around us who were able to help us in the past weeks.  Kris’ parents Dian and Roland were invaluable support, as was my friend and advisor/coach to both girls at NYA, Chris Mazzurco.  My thanks also go out to Hilary and Hadley’s dad, George, or as they call him at his workplace, Dr. Gibson, MD.  His hunch that our emergency trip to the ER at Maine Med to meet the neuro surgeon was not necessarily as life-and-death as the initial phone call suggested was spot-on, and that was reassuring to all of us here in Maine.  Thank you Todd Paige for words of advice about concussion and to others for their kind words and thoughts.  We didn’t spread the news wide because we were just too busy and too tired to handle telling the story so many times.  Please forgive us for that. 

The form for the counter will eventually get cleared off.  The temperature will rise, allowing wet concrete to set properly.  The house is finished up (though not without a lot of loud banging during Kris’ immediate recuperation) and we’ll throw some paint up on the new cedar siding come spring.  There are some indoor projects to get to, but for now, I’m taking some time to enjoy and appreciate our family. 

It is the end of 2010.  We miss our loyal Acura.  We absolutely miss our great little dog, Lily.  She is still loved daily around here.  We’re glad Hilary has found a home, interesting new directions and some great people at Bates College.  We’re excited as Hadley prepares for yet another lead role in an NYA play and begins college-hunting herself.  We all wait in wonder to see what our little Cora is going to become.  Kris and I couldn’t be happier together.  Well, we could if her headaches stopped, but you know what I mean.  I’m very lucky.  I’m very happy.  I hope I can report on lots of fun stuff in 2011.  I’m hoping it is a year with some different directions.  Happy New Year, everyone. 

Oh, and my fingernail is 75% grown back now.  That was creepy.

Dave


PS – Brian, you will note that I snuck this entry in roughly six hours before the month ended, thus avoiding the penalty for a full month passing without an entry. 

Digitally Impaired

I am having the most relaxing Saturday, or any day, that I have had in many months.  It feels like a new day.  When last I reached out to you, my loyal band of followers, I was still in the honeymoon glow of my new blog.  I had piles of rocks regularly weighing down the springs of my poor little truck.  I was amassing a stockpile of ingredients to whip up a nice concrete counter.  I had white ceiling paint on my hands and new track lighting on my mind.  Most of all, I had time.

In the ensuing month and a half, that all got sucked away by the vacuum cleaner that is a busy life.  I just slogged through my busiest month of work in a few years, fighting a lack of focus and a pull toward all my projects the whole way.  Sleep became a rare commodity, set behind glass and to be used only in emergencies. 

Projects of choice took a back seat to the project of necessity.  We hired our two builders to install a skylight and check out the rotting trim board on the back of the house.  The skylight has brightened our staircase wonderfully, adding natural light to the center of our house.  Kris hit a renovation sweet spot, getting maximum effect for a minimum of effort (and investment). 

The trim board, however, seemed a plank pried off the very front of Pandora’s box, had the box actually been a box and not an ancient Greek jar made of clay.  It’s removal revealed the existence of wet, rotting, ant-infested wood that looked worse than anything we found while renovating the 150-year old Bethel farmhouse.  Those builders, who rather enjoyed these new iron nails, but still enjoyed using a wooden peg and some post-and-beam here and there, could not have imagined the odd greenish tint of pressure-treated lumber.  The contractor who, just 19 years ago, trod the earth where I now sit, certainly had such advances available to him.  While there are many wonderful design elements and fine craftsmanship in this unique house, they failed at creating a waterproof barrier on the east side of the house and they managed to install windows that leaked water directly into the walls.  We spent a couple of days peeling back the sheathing and harvesting the crumbling pieces of their failure.

We found rotten wood as high as six feet above ground level.  That qualifies as not good.

As of now, the wall is buttoned up a bit, but we are still awaiting the delivery of new windows that don’t have a drain-into-the-wall-cavity feature and a back door.  A visual inspection of other trim board around the house suggests there could be similar trouble in a couple of other places.  We haven’t yet cracked them open, but that is coming.  Cross your fingers.

This is not what you would like to see when you crack open a 19-year old house.

 
There has been some progress on the topics of interest, however.  The mold for our concrete counters is nearly complete.  In fact, I stopped only because I realized I had not taken photos as I went, for your benefit, dear reader.  Of course, I have not been back to finish the mold or to take the photos.  And now the weather has turned cold.  Pouring a counter will now involve heating the garage for a few days, until it is cured enough to move it inside. 

I also attended a very popular rock-wall building class.  It was a bit too popular for me.  There were students all crawling over each other trying their hand at fitting the perfect rock into the collaborative effort.  Twelve feet of wall becomes a very small space with six to ten people hefting stones and meditating on the shapes of voids and the material to fill them.  I watched one fellow student hem and haw for minutes before finding the perfect stone for the near corner of our wall, only to have another student remove it seconds later to try his hand at it.  After the third time someone successfully re-conquered this not-so-troublesome corner, I couldn’t watch any longer, much less insert myself into the melée.

Stone Age free-for-all.

 
In the end, I did pick up on the art of using small wedge stones to solidify those big blocks, but I didn’t quite feel like that was seven hours of knowledge imparted.

A few days later, at Secret Location #1, I would crush one of my fingers in between a rock of 100+ pounds and another that was large enough to have no intention of changing location any time soon.  It hurt so badly that I actually ran around my truck twice, yelping in pain.  Blood was trickling from underneath the fingernail and it throbbed as if it had its own heart.  The blood slowed.  The throbbing lasted an hour.  The pain lasted for days.  I was terrified the nail would come off.  I have an irrational fear of losing a fingernail.  I know it happens, but never to me and, like I said, it’s an irrational fear. 

It is now November.  It is a Saturday.  I am a few days removed from my hellish stretch of work.  I have a new plan and a new confidence for this month.  As proof, I have taken the time to fill you in on my adventures.  I even managed to sit and read a book for a couple of hours this morning.  It has been a long time since my mind was at ease enough to carelessly consume fiction for a couple of hours.  I like today.

As for the finger, it has turned all sorts of colors in the past few weeks.  It threatened to fall off, then didn’t, and now seems to be loosening up again.  Who knows?  I’ve grown tired of worrying about it.  It will be what it will be.  It has had the effect of dispelling my fear of losing a fingernail.  Now I only have my irrational fear of losing teeth as an adult.  That one still gets me, especially in my dreams. 

Talk to you soon…

Dave

Quickie

Busy day today.  I was going to sneak off to Secret Location #1 to get some rocks on Tuesday, but it was awful rainy.  My 1998 Mazda B2500 SX pickup truck is not a monster truck. It’s not an off-road machine.  It is barely two-wheel drive.  It is loyal, though.  It has been born the loads of a couple of years of renovation work.  It has hauled cords of firewood.  This summer, it has already hauled five loads of rock, at least 2½ tons by my estimate. 

They were not easy loads.  Secret Location #1 is roughly half a mile into the woods, down a path not quite wide enough for a Mazda pickup truck.  The toughest part is a slippery little hill with rocks and roots.  I'm amazed that I haven’t knocked a hole in the gas tank or lost a muffler in the first four trips. 

Today, I had to drop my Cora off at school in Litchfield.  I hate to drop hints, but Secret Location #1 is vaguely on my way home from Litchfield, so I swung in for a load this morning.  In Tuesday's rain I  knew my little truck would not have made it up there.  This morning, I pretended the ground wasn’t wet and how far did that get me?  About three-quarters of the way up the hill.  Actually, it got me that far numerous times.  I decided to back up a bit more to get a better running start, but in the backing up, I managed to slide slightly off the trail.  Trying to get back only got me even further off.

Eventually, my little Mazda was trapped against some maple saplings in the rear with no traction to move forward.  I wandered for a while, collecting some heavy rocks for additional weight.  Then I headed back to the nearest house (perhaps owned by someone I know) and procured a saw with which to free my poor truck (sorry to the someone I may know for the couple of saplings).  It worked like a charm.

In mere minutes, my little white truck was again on the path and pointed uphill.  This time, we had the benefit of a couple hundred pounds of weight in the back for additional traction and we deftly climbed that hill and continued toward the stone.

The whole episode took longer than anticipated, but it did not keep me from tackling a new project that jumped right to the top of the project list.  Technically, I haven’t even added it to the list.  To free up some valuable counter space on our less-than-valuable wooden counters, we decided to move the microwave to our wall of shelves.  The only trouble with the wall of shelves is it has no electricity anywhere near it.

Now, I’m not an electrician.  I haven’t even played one on TV, but I’ve worked closely with a couple of friendly electricians in the course of building one house and renovating another.  I can do a few things without setting myself, or a structure on fire.  Time to head to Home Depot for a circuit breaker, 50 feet of Romex wire, an outlet, outlet box, cover plate and wire staples.  Is this the most important job on the list?  No, but it seemed like it could be accomplished in an afternoon, if all went well.  Besides, I’ll do anything to keep from doing my real work.

Lucky for me, the opposite side of the wall of shelves is a closet.  And if that weren’t enough, the wall had already been opened up in the past for the installation of a radon monitoring system and the sheetrock was merely screwed back into place.  It didn’t take long to locate where my outlet needed to be, drill a couple holes in the stud and the floor to the basement and feed some wire through.

Wiring the outlet was easy enough.  After that it was time to jam my hands into the circuit breaker box.  That’s not dangerous or anything, right?  I have my trusty dog-eared Home Depot Home Improvement 1-2-3 book to walk me through the electrical surgery.  A hot wire here, a ground there, and the circuit that was previously doing nothing now powers our shelved microwave.  Traffic flow in the kitchen with the Cool Moon-colored ceiling has now improved and I get to bank a few more marital points into my account.  Woo Hoo!

Okay, maybe that wasn’t that quick, but I hope you enjoyed my day.  Maybe I’ll do some real work tomorrow.  Or there’s always that list…

dave

A Decent Rest Area on the First Big Road Headed in the General Direction of the Promised Land

Boy, it feels like the actual Promised Land to me.  This morning, as I sit wearily at my computer, I’m not sure which feels better, the clean look of the completed ceiling or the fact that I don’t have to raise my arms to paint it any longer? 

I’m beat.  At 4:40 this morning, while again laying on my back atop the refrigerator, I took my final brush strokes on the 360-ish square foot ceiling.  I spent 20 more minutes pulling down the last of the plastic and cleaning up so Kris and Hadley would see a nice, normal kitchen when they got up 60 minutes later.  I’m hungry and dying for a cup of tea, but my laptop pinned me down in a comfy chair before satisfying either of those needs.  Now they appear impossible to achieve. 

My back is sore from the flare-ups of what I have dubbed my painter’s muscle.  It is in the area of the right shoulder blade.  It would begin to announce itself after a couple of hours of painting.  It felt like the flames that sizzle out of a grill after you mash down a juicy hamburger with a spatula, which, incidentally, you should never do if you like quality grilled hamburgers.  I would get the flame sensation followed by the feeling that the muscle was tearing off of whatever bones nature first set it upon.  I can understand it when I’m raising my right arm up to paint, but it would happen when reaching down into the paint can as well.  And, as I’m largely ambidextrous, I would expect its symmetrical compatriot to feel the burn as well, but no.  When I would deftly switch to my left hand, it would be the same right-side muscle that would hurt.  Strange.

All of it came to an end just before the dreary sunrise this morning.  That said, I still have to install some lights, clean the floor a bit and probably add a second coat to some select areas.  Overall, it looks good, but not everywhere.  Or am I straying too close to obsessive again?  Kris said it probably didn’t need a second coat, but that was after thinking it may need one.  I think she may be telling a Cool Moon off-white lie after seeing how long and exhausting that the process was.  A white lie out of pity.  She’s very nice.

Now I don’t want to give you the impression that it took forever to do this project.  I had planned on five long days of work.  After last week's Monday-through-Friday effort, it wasn’t complete, but I took the whole weekend off.  Finishing before I went to bed means I was only one day over the estimate.  And yesterday was long, but I didn’t get started until after lunch and I did take time off to make dinner and hang out with Kris, watching hilarious episodes of Top Gear and some Discovery Health.  Besides, I take lots of breaks.  Others might call those breaks losses of focus.

The open wooden shelving no longer gets lost in the wooden ceiling.  This is from the kitchen looking into the dining area.  We have gone from camp to cottage, an improvement.

Hey, for all of you who follow my ramblings just for my painting tips (which is absolutely none of you), you’ll be glad to hear that I found a new little edging brush that worked great.

Now, I have to tell you, I am pretty good at cutting in the straight edges where walls meet trim and ceilings, etc.  I’ve had a lot of practice.  I love my 2½-inch angled edge brush.  It can become an extension of my arm, which is great except when I have had way too much coffee.  On those nights, I don’t make straight lines.  I despise the blue painter’s tape.  I now am now not a fan of the green frog tape either.  I don’t find they are worth my time and effort.  I can get quality results more quickly with a steady hand, some focus, the right breathing and a rag for the stray brush marks.  Too often, I’ve pulled that tape off only to find it hasn’t held back paint like it said it would.

The other day, Kris pushed me into buying the Wooster Shortcut, a little 2-inch angled brush with a flexible rubber handle that is only a few inches long.  That would be its “unique Shergrip handle,” which is apparently so unique, it cannot be spelled correctly.  It does sit comfortably in my hand the same way I would hold my full-handled edge brush.  The lack of that handle swinging around opposite of the business end came in handy in tight spots while painting grooves in the beadboard where it meets the walls and window trims.  Shortcut gets big points for being light on its feet. 

The trade-off is when it hits the long, straight lines, like a normal wall and ceiling intersection.  Without a normal handle, it cashes in stability for that maneuverability.  The Shortcut just can’t hold a straight line.  That said, it has earned its way into my arsenal.  In the coming years, we are planning to paint most of the rooms in the house to freshen them up and make the color palette our own (read Kris’, as I don’t really have a color palette, I just put it on the walls). 

For those of you wondering, the rest of the ceiling was painted with a 2-inch brush, the same width as each of the boards.  It was also small enough to get into the grooves.  I began priming with a 3-inch brush, but it was too big both on the wood and in between.  That was slow and frustrating.

My crew.  The Shortcut is in the middle.  It bumped the 3-inch edger below it from the final coat.  The 2-inch above handled paint duties while the black handle below killed itself on priming.  In the can are the failed 3-inch straight and my favorite 2 1/2-inch edger, both helped with priming.

So, what’s next?  I mentioned there are a few more things to wrap up before I cross kitchen ceiling off the master project list.  Later today, I think I’ll grab some rocks from one of my three secret locations.  I’ll discuss the sourcing of rock soon.  It is the time of month when I need to begin doing my actual work.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that as I was ambling into bed and the sun was rising on the day, it was setting on Project Week:  September.  Yes, fans, the second installment of projecty-goodness has come and gone.  Fear not, October will be here before you know it.

One light fixture returns to duty.  You can't tell from the photo, but those grooves in between the beadboard are at least 10 inches deep and really hard to get a brush into.  Really.

Between now and then, I think there will be a little more action than last month.  I am going to work on molds for the counters tomorrow morning.  And don’t forget the upcoming Dry Stone Wall clinic! 

Today is going to be filled with ibuprofen, an exhaustion-fueled lack of focus and a return to work, reading my corporate news articles on this very laptop.  And how do you think that will go? 

That’s what I was thinking, too.  Check out the priming photos in the previous post and be well.

dave

Photos From the Painting Process

Here are a few additional photos of the primer stage.  I believe it ended up as the answer for "Things That Took Forever" for $400.

The knots in our beadboard ceiling after the first coat of BIN primer.

In the new game Twister:  Extreme Edition, this is the "tongue to yellow tape" spin.  Here is the connection for all the track lighting in the ceiling.

I had to invent a new technique with my edging brush to get primer into the grooves where they meet the wall.  The strange angling, later made easier by the Shortcut brush, resulted in this cool pattern.  Hence, I have patented the "Flying V" technique and will now sit back and collect the royalties.

Looking out over a sea of primed knots.

The 3-inch straight brush just didn't get along with the BIN primer, which tended to stiffen very quickly.  Since the brush was held vertically most of the time, the BIN would get smooshed into the middle of the brush and then ooze out the bottom and start to solidify.  While I didn't want to waste time wiping the brush every few seconds, this was about as far as I could push it before it all fell off.

Deadlines

Aah, me and deadlines.  I can’t seem to fool myself when it comes to deadlines.  Last time you visited, I was going on about how I couldn’t fail now.  I had a real deadline.  My friends Chris and Dan were coming to visit on Friday night, and we we going to provide a wonderfully painted kitchen ceiling for them to socialize and eat breakfast under.

It is now Sunday night.  My Kris and I are gearing up for the season premier of “The Amazing Race.”  Dan and Chris have long since returned to Vermont.  The painting muscles in my back have had two days to recover, though my fingers are still sore.  The Giants lost.  The Patriots won.  The Red Sox…well, what does it matter?  They blew their season months ago.  And the ceiling in question?  Well…it’s half painted.

I have some really good excuses though.  Seriously, don’t leave the blog yet.  Kris brought home this nice little flu from work, which laid her up for a few days.  She was kind enough to share the coughing and sneezing symptoms with me.  We’re both getting better now.  Life gets in the way as well, driving kids here and there and attending cross-country meets (nice race this week, Hadley!).  The real killer is probably my occasional tendency toward perfection, especially when it comes to painting.

Each phase of this project took longer than planned:  the sanding, the wiping down the ceiling to get the dust off, the two coats of BIN primer on the knots, the coat of primer on the whole ceiling (especially in those 138 grooves).  The one break I did get is that the Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint really does cover in one coat, if you load up the brush with enough paint.  The kitchen is done, except that awful space above the refrigerator.  I thought I was going to die from inhaling primer fumes while I lay atop the fridge painting that nook.  I figured my girls would come home to find me dead on the fridge, angled 2½ inch edge brush in hand.  That leaves only the nook-and-cranny-free dining room space, which I’ll knock off today, after dropping Cora off at school and an overdue and much-needed couple miles of running.

The new Clear Moon-colored (think off-white) ceiling looks pretty fantastic.  There was too much wood in our kitchen.  The ceiling looks higher and no longer matches the floor.  The next step in the long-term goal of reducing the visual levels of wood is to replace the aging (and breaking) wood-block counters with concrete.  We’re getting closer on that front as well.  I have secured a 4’ x 8’ sheet of melamine upon which to build the molds.  While Tuesday brings the need for me to return to doing actual work, I do plan to begin assembling those molds in my spare time.  I am not announcing any deadlines, though.

Yes, I said, er, typed, molds, the plural.  In one of our recurring moments of serendipity and parallel thinking, Kris and I each thought of another test for our nascent concrete skills.  To the left of our stove is a 10-inch wide counter.  It is small.  It is lonely.  Disconnected.  The other, bigger counters make fun of it.  You know the story.  Well, the little bitty counter that is deeper than it is wide and can only hold the pepper grinder and balsamic vinegar just got selected to be a test counter in the kitchen.  It will likely be next summer before we have enough time, skill and the right temperatures in our primitive facilities to undertake a major project like an entire kitchen.  This second little test will be crafted in the same batch as the garage counter.  What a swell idea.

Oh, and I have a report of breaking news.  The crack news team here at “Learning to Play With Concrete and Stone” has dug up word of the Freeport Historical Society’s 2nd Annual Dry Stone Wall Building Workshop.  Oh yeah!  October 9th, from 9 to 4.  Check out this link for more info.  I’ve already sent off my fifty-five dollars.  I can’t wait.  It will be run by Chris Tanguay, of Yarmouth, owner of Maine Dry Stone.  I ran into his website a month ago and am excited to meet him and see his work firsthand.  As we get closer, the workshop will give us at the blog a chance to explore that three tons of rock in my back yard and what the hell I intend to do with it.  Maybe the crack news team will score an exclusive interview with him about his work.  Maybe he'll even take a member of the crack news team on as an apprentice or something (insert dreamy sigh here).

For now, wish me luck pushing through the last half-gallon of Clear Moon.  Thick and even.  Slap it on and spread it out.  After that, it will be time to once again test my basic electrical skills by replacing the tired old black track lighting with some new white track lighting.  If you don’t see another post from me, I’m not disrespecting my tiny audience.  I’ve just electrocuted myself.  Or my cold got a lot worse.

dave

The Day After

It’s early.  Six-thirty and I’m sipping my first cup of tea.  Our house tea is Tazo’s Awake with a splash of skim milk.  The routine is a bit off, with the kitchen completely sealed up in plastic.  We are in the living room.  The woodstove is our pantry.  The dining room table, exiled to under the painting near the back door, holds the microwave and toaster.  We’re eating dinners out or pre-prepared and I’m alone at lunch, but the morning tea and breakfast are affected by this Project Week.

I survived yesterday’s session with the sander.  By the afternoon, my fingers took over the title of most sore from my arms.  Repeated fistfuls of ibuprofen kept me functioning into the night and got me a decent night’s sleep.  By the time I grabbed a much-needed shower, the entire ceiling was sanded down with no less than 27 round pads of 120-grit sandpaper. 

After that, I put our new Ridgid shop-vac through the motions for 90 minutes cleaning the floor, windows, walls, shelves and the tops of cabinets.  The sanding took a lot more time than anticipated, but I believe I can stay on schedule, and that is a good thing, because I have acquired something that I need:  a hard deadline.

I had planned to wrap up this project on Friday, as it is the end of the work and school week, so the house will get busy again on the weekend.  But if it took longer, who would care?  We would survive, right?  This is the same exact game I sometimes play with my monthly work deadlines.  I’ll tell myself that I really would like to get it done early, so I’ll plan on starting work on a certain day and set myself up accordingly.  And then I proceed to ignore the schedule, knowing full well that it is a soft deadline.  It isn’t real. 

Well, Friday just became the real deadline.  Our friends Chris and Dan are coming in from Vermont for a place to crash while attending a wedding over the weekend.  It will likely be late Friday night when they arrive, but that gives me a reason to get moving and not coyly creep into the weekend.

So, it’s Wednesday.  I think I can get all of the coats of BIN primer done today.  I am going to paint a coat on all of the knots in the wood first.  After that will be a second coat on the knots.  Finally, the whole ceiling will get a coat of BIN.  The can says it can be painted over after only 45 minutes, but experience says it should be a little closer to two hours.  Hell, it might take me two hours just to hit all of the knots.

In theory, that gives me a chance for a light sanding Thursday morning and two coats of an as-yet-undetermined paint on Thursday and Friday.  That’s the theory. 

Time for another cup of tea before I go wipe down the ceiling with a damp cloth to get the rest of the dust out.  I’m sticking to my prediction that the hardest part of this job is now past.  Besides, without all that noise, I can now pop in an audio book.  Let’s see, there's always John Keegan's The First World War, a personal favorite.  I’ve got the Lord of the Rings sitting on my desk or I recently bought Stephen King’s Stationary Bike from half.com.  Ooh, yeah.  Stationary Bike.  That will fit well after having just watched the Vuelta Espana (Tour of Spain) bike race.  It is read by actor Ron McClarty, best known to me for playing a cop on the 80s show Spenser For Hire.  And coincidentally, my friend Joel has just found a website with episodes of Spenser.  Or maybe that’s what I need. 

Off I go.

dave

My Arms Are Killing Me

I’m not a strong man.  Never have been.  Save a few moments here and there, I’ve never really cared.  I can do a handful of push-ups when needed.  I can lift most of the rocks I’ve been slinging around for the rock wall and those I can’t I figure out some way to cheat a little. 
And because of my genetics and artful dodging of the gym, my arms are killing me right now.  I’ve convinced myself that the worst part of the “Paint the Unfinished Beadboard Wood Ceiling a Nice Off-White” project will be the sanding of the ceiling.  I am now further convinced that the sanding portion will never end.

I’ve talked myself into a break that will involve whining about it to you.  Unfortunately, that involves typing at this keyboard, which uses my arms.  The arms are looking at their options, including unionizing for better work conditions, outsourcing the job to India and outright revolt.  So, this break is for their benefit, not mine.  I’m not the wimp, they are.  Can I disavow my own limbs?

The sanding of the beadboard ceiling isn’t going quickly.  The quality is okay, but boy, pushing that little palm sander up against the ceiling is taking a toll on my wings.  But that is only half the story.

The well-sealed kitchen.

 I have had the worst luck with safety implements.  For this job, there are three things that I am interested in protecting:  my eyes, my airway and my hearing.  I started the job yesterday with the following setup:  Safety glasses for the eyes, my massive dual filter respirator thingy for the airway, and my trusty headphone style ear protection for the ol’ hearing. 

This is a tough job because, for maximum leverage using my afore-mentioned sub-par arms, I need to be pretty close to the ceiling and the palm sander, a Porter-Cable Quicksand.  The palm sander is mildly loud and I’m close to it so the hearing protection is nice, but it is not a deal-breaker.  Since the palm sander is (when I lean into it enough) churning out wood dust, the airway is quite important.  I don’t want to be inhaling it straight from the source.  It only took a few minutes of using the safety glasses to realize the importance of full protection of the eyes.  The dust was streaming right in and forming gooey brown globs.

I quickly switched to my awesome Dr. Horrible safety goggles.  The impact-resistant glass was a bit of overkill, but they seal to the face and don’t allow dust in.  Apparently, they don’t allow moisture out, either.  After a few turns on the sander, the round specs were fogging up.  Since I had to finish up for the day, I attempted to push through without eye protection and suffered dearly for it.  After a half hour, I was pulling enough crap out of my eyes I could have used it fill holes in the beadboard.  And no, contacts don’t help.  In fact, they seem to make it worse somehow.

So, today is a new day.  I brought in new options, but that meant compromises.  My starting lineup looked like this:  trusty headphone ear protection and Kris’ sweet dive goggles for the sealed-up eye protection that is vital, but I had to bag on the airway.  The nose is covered by the mask, but not the mouth.  I can’t get the respirator over the mask.  Oh well, right?  No.  It didn’t take long before I got tired of rinsing down the dust coating in my throat with coffee. 

Today's cast of characters. 

 Aha!  A bandana.  That would work, right?  It does, but I quickly return to the fogging issue of the day before.  I even try the thing where you spit in the mask and swish it around, but that doesn’t make any difference.  Eventually some of the water runs up my nose as I tilt my head backward to look through the ever-smaller unfogged portion of the window.  That’s the end of diving mask.

To add insult to injury, it is the end of trusty headphone-style ear protection as well, as the plastic piece that fits over the head snaps in half.  Sad.  Trusty headphone ear protection and I have been through a lot together.  Many cords of firewood, wanton destruction with a saws-all during renovation, planing hundreds of feet of 150-year old floorboards for a new floor, you name it.  As the noise is mild, I gave up on one-third of my protection plan altogether.

I’m currently down to safety glasses and bandana.  I can feel the slight layer of dust in both the eyes and the mouth, and I suppose in my ears now, as well.  It isn’t going well.  Maybe I’ll try to apply the spitting technique to the Dr. Horrible goggles and return to the respirator next?


I’m about half done the roughly 360 square foot ceiling, but all the tricky corners are down.  Only the open area in the dining room remains.  Please don’t let the sanding last into tomorrow.  I really want to stay on schedule and try to finish up painting on Friday.

Of course, that will require having at least one functioning arm after today, and that currently looks to be in doubt at the moment.  I suppose, since I’m at the end of this entry, it means I have to go back to work.  I could take questions from the audience.  That would buy me some time.  Anybody?  Please?

dave

Episode IV – A New Hope

It is a period of monthly work.     
Lengthy news articles, hidden      
on the Internet, have captured      
the attention of our blogger          
as he battles lethargy and             
boring formica counters.              

During the month, the evil           
Empire has unleashed its              
Ultimate weapon, the INTER-     
NET, a rag-tag collection of         
distracting, addictive information
and entertainment with enough
power to destroy the productivity
of an entire generation.

Distracted by the Empire’s
sinister websites, our blogger
tries to wend his way through
the web of digital craziness,
custodian of vague plans
to construct a concrete
counter that could save his
garage and restore
freedom to the galaxy…

All right.  So it has been a little while.  Complain if you must, but I’m pretty sure none of you were hanging on the edge of your Internet, waiting for my next keystrokes.  This is the monthly rhythm of my work.  I read and analyze media coverage of large companies, but I do so as a contractor, so I am at home more often than not.  Just because I didn’t get out of my pee-jays on a given day doesn’t mean I didn’t go to work.

This past week was my week of monthly deadlines.  The second of my two deadlines is usually the fifteenth of any month, with minor adjustments for weekends.  After that, I always feel I have earned some time off.  Sure, I could get a start on the next month of press coverage, but that strategy has just never appealed to me.

Since I have devised this wonderful list of projects, and since Project Week was so successful last month, I have decided to make Project Week a permanent part of the calendar.  For one week, there will be no work.  There will be chores done and there will be projects tackled. 

The second installment, Project Week:  September, is shaping up rather nicely.  The week of the 20th through the 24th will feature a mostly empty house.  Free of traffic, it will be much easier to empty the kitchen and dining room and tackle the daunting “Paint the Unfinished Beadboard Wood Ceiling a Nice Off-White” project.   That will involve emptying all the nice stuff, covering everything with plastic and that painter’s tape, sanding the wood a bit, priming over the knots, priming the 25’ x 15’ ceiling and then painting it, making sure to get into all the grooves.  How many can there be?  (editor’s note – there are 138 grooves)

But you aren’t here on the Internet to read about paint drying, now are you?  Time to throw you some red meat, oh fans of the concrete counters!  As you will recall from two paragraphs ago, my work cycle comes to a close on the 15th, which gives me four days of Project Week bonus time that we will be using to get that counter moving!

So, for all of you who have been patiently waiting for me to stop being so damn verbose, the first major step is (drumroll)…to make a mold.  Concrete is much like Jello.  It will take the shape of whatever container it is poured into.  Therefore, we have to build a mold, a negative version of the shape of the counter. 

The first step in making that mold is to make a template.  I have laid out strips of luan to define the shape of the counter and then glued them together.  Since the garage counter is a fairly simple rectangle, it didn’t take long, unless you started counting when I published the last blog entry. 

The strips were cut on the table saw, so I know that they are straight enough for this project.  The strips are overlaid and hot-glued together.  I have two strips glued in the interior to make solidify the template.

The resulting flimsy rectangle mirrors the angle of the wall and the has 1 ½ inch overhangs on the front and on the right side, where it butts up to a work-table.

I have to tell you dear reader, Kris and I are pretty excited to have this template complete.  It is the first real step that proves we are on our way toward making a concrete counter.  Everything thing we did today involved buying things and buying things doesn’t mean anything.  Anyone can buy stuff, but it takes true skill to glue pieces of wood into a rectangle.  We are on our way!

So the next step will be to construct a mold from our template.  I still have to track down a 4’ x 8’ sheet of melamine to serve as the base of the mold.  Melamine is a textured finish that is used on many bookshelves and some countertops.  I have decided that since the counter will serve in a workbench function, it shouldn’t be one of those glossy, sexy magazine-quality counters.  The melamine provides a bit of texture for sawdust to get caught in and for drill bits to not just roll right off the bench. 

I’ll get to the next step soon.  Tomorrow, Monday, we start sanding that ceiling.  Later in the week, as coats of primer and paint are drying, I’m going to try and work on that mold.  I do want to fill you in on the stone half of this blog.  I’ve been collecting rocks from two secret locations.  My little Mazda pickup truck has been working hard.  My rough estimation is that I have three tons of stone laid out in the backyard.  Three tons of stone isn’t nearly as impressive as I imagined.   It is as heavy as I imagined though.  Talk to you soon.

dave

Diversion - Could Be My Middle Name

I don't often fly.  I love to fly, but I just don't often have the opportunity.  I do spend a fair amount of time at airports, however.  My step-daughters Hilary and Hadley make a few trips a year back to Colorado to visit their dad, so every few months, we wander over to the Jetport for a pick-up or a drop-off. 

Every time I am there, I get the same feeling of excitement and opportunity.  Even in a relatively small airport, excuse me, International Jetport (Portland is so proud of its airport), there are people coming from and going to all sorts of places in the world, and connecting even further.  There is no horizon at an airport.  Nothing is too far.  Nothing is impossible.  There are teary goodbyes and even tearier reunions.  Relatives, lovers, parents away on business, vacationers, basketball teams (we saw the Red Claws heading off somewhere once), kids headed to Disneyland, Disney World and who knows what else?

Blue skies, limitless horizons and boundless opportunity.  I love that feeling of general excitement, but is there any single day in a person's life that better exemplifies that feeling than arriving at one's first day of college?  That was our day today.

Alas, dear reader, I must already break a promise to you.  I promised an explanation of our first concrete counter project, but life has put itself in the way, as it so often does. 

I'm still working out how often I'll be serving up episodes for you to read.  I suppose it depends on the scope of the topic.  It has been suggested by my eldest step-daughter, Hilary, that I also discuss the various projects and diversions that I get into around here.  One of the many life diversions today was packing up and taking her to freshman orientation at Bates College.  Perhaps she wants to check in here as a way to stay apprised of the goings-on around our house.

This past weekend brought another major diversion.  I spent the better part of the two days underneath the kitchen sink.  One of the two drains was clogging and not draining properly and the dishwasher didn't seem to be rinsing out soap and food bits as well as it used to.  So, under the sink I went.

It was quickly clear that the connections and the sink drain parts had reached quitting time.  Gaskets and metal connectors were all crumbling into pieces.  Because the local Ace Hardware store only had one replacement strainer, and because pieces kept breaking individually after I had already purchased everything I thought I needed, the chore stretched out over two days and eight trips to four hardware stores in three towns, including drive-bys of three closed stores.

That was merely annoying.  Annoying I can handle.  The real joy was cleaning out the traps in the three pipes (two sink drains and the dishwasher).  Has anyone had the pleasure of doing this yet?  Traps are the bend in a drain pipe, usually in the shape of an "S" or a "P", that keeps a small section of water in the pipe.  This water prevents the smell of your sewer line or septic tank from rising up through the pipes and into a house.  Quite ingenious, in fact.  According to the Wikipedia, it was Scottish watchmaker Alexander Cummings who invented the trap along with the first patented flushing toilet in 1775.  Smart guy.

Under our sink we have traps that involve a canister-like piece of plumbing.  Inside the canister is where the water rests and the food clogs.  Let's just say this.  Apparently, food that heads down the drain and hangs out in the trap digests very similarly to digestion in our own personal waste systems.  What I scraped, wiped, knocked and pulled out of those three traps was not pretty.  At one point, I felt like I was doing some manual upper GI work on a horse.  I will provide no photos of that for fear of driving away all my wonderful readers and attracting some, let's say unsavory elements of the Internet.

The thicker vertical parts are the actual traps.  After seeing the poop-like substances clogging the inside, please be kind to your plumber or handy spouse and never let food go down the sink drain again.  (Photo by Dave Gagne)

Not all of the diversions are quite so awful.  In fact, I came up with great list of projects to do around the house.  Because of my monthly deadlines for work, I usually end up with some empty time in the middle of each month.  In August, that time was turned into "Project Week."  Bliss.  All projects, all day long.  The list currently has 20 items on it, most of which I mentioned in the first post.  It even includes a secret project, which I can't tell you guys about yet, but I will.  I need something to hook you into a second season of episodes.

The point is that stuff gets in the way.  I'll keep you posted on some of these side projects as I plow through them.  The diversions are part of life, aren't they.  The concrete and the stone remain the larger goals.  As I go, I try to heed the some guidance which I have cobbled from various places.

Do the things that you have to do as well as you can.  Be sure to save time and energy for the things that excite and interest you.  An artist in Eastport we recently spoke with went as far as to advise spending your most productive hours of the day on the things you love.  Let work get the rest.

Try to stay on the task at hand, even if better tasks are waiting for you to come out and play.  This can be very hard, especially for us focusly-challenged, as diversions can now be as close as a mouse-click away. 

The majority of the time diversions need to be reigned in like wild cattle so you can finish what needs to be done.  Other times, diversions are the wonderful variety that makes this life interesting.  Knowing which path to take is sometimes luck and sometimes true wisdom.

Don't dwell too long on the decision.  Pick a path and go to it.  Good luck at Bates, Hilary.  You are a wonderful young woman with a limitless future.  We are so proud of you and love you very much.  Hopefully the house will look a little bit different by the time your semester ends, if I can stay on task.

And speaking of diversions, I have to go make dinner.

dave

“Let’s Start At the Very Beginning, A Very Good Place to Start”

Huzzah! With the posting of these very words, I do believe Learning to Play With Concrete and Stone surpasses half of the blogs ever created.  That is to say, I have penned a second installment.  I have this (self-created and completely unfounded-in-fact) suspicion that many people begin a blog and realize they have nothing to say and it dies.  It’s not only my suspicion, it’s my big fear.

But here I am, typing again.  I don’t know a lot about blogging.  There are none that I follow regularly. I bump into a few certain blogs every once in a while.  I don’t know all the customs and social mores of this blogosphere. In fact, I don’t even like the word blog.  So, I will from here on refer to Learning to Play With Concrete and Stone as my installment-based discussion and commentary on my interest in designing and creating both useful and decorative objects using various combinations of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks and certain cementitious materials.  Too bulky?

The Pantheon in Rome, completed in AD 125.  As concrete domes go, it is winner and still champion.  (Photo by Dave Gagne)

So, in the beginning, there was concrete and it was good.

I am going to start on the concrete side of things.  My desire to sink my hands into some concrete and shape it to my will has been brewing longer than my interest in stonework.  Though not really sink my hands in.  There is something in the mix that isn’t good for your skin.  Cured, rough concrete may be a great (or brutish) exfoliater, but its liquid form doesn’t help to keep skin looking young and can cause burns.

I’ll spare you the in-depth history of concrete.  Of course the Romans are famous for their early use of concrete.  The Pantheon in Rome still holds the record for largest unsupported concrete dome.  A quick glance at the Wikipedia shows ancient Egyptians were found to have used concrete in their Pyramids.  Since those primitive structures in Egypt and Rome, we’ve come a long way in improving our concrete architecture, reaching the pinnacle in 1968 with Boston’s City Hall, perhaps the ugliest building in the world.

The aforementioned Boston City Hall, completed in 1968.  (Photo by Bobak Ha'Eri from Wikipedia)

How good were the Romans?  Just to show off, they added a 27-foot opening called an oculus at the very top of the Pantheon.  Scholars point to this as an early example of architectural trash-talk.  (Photo by Dave Gagne)

So if you are going to hang around this here blog thing, I need you to know the one nit-picky little detail about the semantics of concrete and cement.  Anyone know what the difference is?  Hands please.  If you already know, then skip down to the section titled “Things You Don’t Yet Know.”  Okay, concrete and cement are not interchangeable terms.  Same ballpark, same team even, but they are different positions in the batting order.

Let’s start with cement.  No.  Let’s start with concrete.  Concrete is the end product we are here to discuss.  Concrete is the hardened, stone-like substance holding up our highway bridges, damming up the world’s rivers and giving you a basement to store all the crap that you just can’t throw away.

Concrete is made from a mix of various ingredients.  There are some rocks in there, some gravel, sand, sometimes coloring agents and perhaps even various chemicals for strength or improved workability.  The two important ingredients, however, are water and cement, or more specifically Portland cement.  Portland cement is a magical combination of goodies ground into a fine powder.  We don’t really need to know much more than that.  When it comes in contact with water, a chemical reaction called hydration begins, causing the mixture to harden and ironically become waterproof.  Concrete doesn’t actually dry.  The water is used up in the chemical reaction.

To the water and cement we add fine aggregates such as sand and course aggregates, usually gravel and small rocks but sometimes glass, shells or other decorative materials.  These aggregates give the hardening cement something to bond to, giving the resulting mixture more strength.  Metal mesh, iron rebar, tiny fibers and other materials are also used to make a concrete object stronger or more resistant to cracking.

Don't go to your big box store and call this a sack of concrete.  Actually, they may not even know the difference.  And sorry fellow Mainer's, it's named for its similarity to a stone quarried only on the Isle of Portland, in Dorset, England.  (Photo by Dave Gagne)

Admixtures.  Admixture is a funny word and frankly, I don’t like it much.  It refers to various other powders and liquids that are added to the concrete mix to give it certain superpowers, like color, frost resistance and my favorite, water-reduction.  The latter is accomplished with plasticizers, which reduce the amount of water required in the concrete mix.  It is my understanding that the less water used in the chemical reaction, the stronger the resulting concrete will be.  That said, there has to be enough water to make the mixture workable.  You have to be able to mix it thoroughly and actually pour it into place.  Plasticizers are also known as water-reducers, as they magically make the water you are using more awesome.  I believe that is a technical description of the process.  A concrete guy once tried to offer a chemistry-based explanation of it all, but I had to laugh at him for thinking you can explain magic with chemistry.  That’s just silly.

Oh boy.  I hooked some of you with the first post, but now I’m pretty sure I’ve bored everyone nearly to tears.  Actually, I believe the Interweb has abolished boredom.  If one enters the state of boredom, the Interweb is instantly ready to whisk you back to videos of skateboarding dogs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CnTeMCU8SU).  Bam!  No more boredom.

“But Dave, why concrete counters?”  Because it is cool.  Because you can make it into any shape that you can create a mold for.  Because we can do it ourselves!  And that’s why I work at home, making a little less money than you bastards hitting the cubicle everyday.  With the little less money comes a little more time (now that I kicked my MafiaWars on Facebook habit).  More time plus some handy ability and a cement mixer equals opportunities for fun!  I know it says stone at the top as well, but I’m not running out and making my own granite or marble counters.  I could add that marble pastry block you’ve always wanted or a solid wooden butcher block to a custom concrete counter though.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself though.  You can research the wonders of concrete counters on your own.  It’s a big Internet.  Start here (http://www.concreteexchange.com/why-concrete.html) and let industry pioneer Fu-Tung Cheng wow you and astound you.  Feel free to mix in enough skateboarding dogs or even a little OMG cat watching the double rainbow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2EKUjgeIvY) when it suits you.  You know, to keep from getting bored.

We got some basics out of the way today.  Let me know either by comment below or email if you have any questions beyond my cursory explanation.  In the next episode, I really will explain what our first project will be.  Sneak preview.  It’s going here:

Wouldn't a concrete counter just clean this up nicely?  (Photo by Dave Gagne)

Talk to you soon.




dave

Newsflash: Man Starts Blog to Let the World Know All About What He Is Doing!

Okay, the occasion seems a little less glamorous when you boil it down to its basics.  Two of my friends have indirectly and in different ways urged me toward this blog.  I know there must be dozens of other blogs on the Interweb by now and some of them more interesting or informative than mine.   I know I’m trying to walk that fine line between cliché and trivial.  I’ve even heard that a blog is no longer the trendy way to try and occupy other people’s time online.  All that said, I’m beginning a blog in the year 2010 for a couple of reasons:

• I like to write and sometimes the things I write are mildly entertaining.
• I have a terrible memory and so this can be like a journal that I share with anyone who is interested.
• I am embarking on separate projects in the areas of stone walls and concrete counters.  At least one friend wanted some sort of advice, instruction or play-by-play on the counter project and I know a couple others are also interested.  This seemed a good way to share that information.  I’m not sure I could Twitter my way through the construction of a concrete counter.

You are asking yourself, “Why should I read his blog about how to do these things when the Internet is full of real people who actually know what they are doing?”  Good question, dear reader!  (By the way, I am, from this point onward, making the obnoxious presumption that there is an audience for this thing.  Otherwise, the writing style gets awkward if I’m not addressing someone.)

As to your question, you are free to leave my little cyber cul-de-sac for greener suburbs.  I can take it.  I’m not hoping to score the playing-with-rock equivalent of Julie and Julia.  I’m not watching the screen, waiting for my number of followers to rise, at least not yet, as I pen the first installment.  I suppose the real test will be when I’m procrastinating my monthly work.  Watching that counter might be a nice escape.

Well, this is meant to be a little introduction to me, the blog and my intentions with stone, both natural and man-made.  So here at the end of summer, 2010, I am planning to add a small retaining wall in the back yard to set off a fire-pit area.  Roughly two feet high.  Roughly 20 feet long.  I think I may create a raised flower bed on the high side and a couple gentle steps down. 

I also want to create our first concrete counter.  The guinea pig will be the old cabinets we have in the garage.  They would love to shed the plywood top they’ve been forced to wear for the past few years.  They might need to bulk up a bit if they are going to shoulder a 2½ inch concrete slab for the rest of their days.

I use the pronoun our to refer to myself and my wonderful partner and best friend, Kris.  She and I were both looking for something more while attending the architecture program at University of Maine, Augusta where we met.  We certainly found something and we’ve been trolling for projects and renovations to do together ever since.  A few years ago we hit the popular Concrete Counters class at the wonderful Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vermont (www.yestermorrow.org).  Or is it Waitsfield?  I always forget.  Perhaps down the line, I will take some time to sing the praises of Yestermorrow.  Until then, their website and tantalizing course catalog will have to suffice for you do-it-yourselfers and eco-conscious constructors.

It has been a long, roundabout route from the class to our first attempt at concrete counters.  We spent a couple of years renovating an 1861 Greek Revival farmhouse in Bethel, which we now rent out.  Coincidentally, a few paragraphs ago, Stan from the Bethel Historical Society called to see if we would open up our 35’ x 75’ three-story attached barn for the Bethel Barn Tour this September.  We’ll see. 

Now that our Bethel project is complete and we have a long-term renter in place, and since the tightened lending laws will not allow us to acquire another house project without tons of cash, Kris and I have turned our attention to our own house in Freeport, Maine.

We’re going to paint a few rooms, the kitchen ceiling and the old claw-foot tub.  I actually like painting, but I’m not sure I’m going to start a blog about it.  We’re also looking to steal the unused space behind the fridge and turn it into a little pantry closet.  The back deck might get replaced.  It might not, but some adjacent house trim is rotting and needs to be replaced.  Oh, and I’ve got to lay about 14 square feet of tile to replace the strange six-inch high floor shelf we unceremoniously tore out a few years ago.

Then we come all the way back to the subject of this blog.  I want to build some rock walls and maybe even do some sort of carving.  I also want to make concrete counters and maybe even do some sort of sculpture or fountain work.  I’ve been gathering some info about both media and I’m looking forward to getting started. 

In my next entry, I'll be sure to explain the particulars of the two projects, catch you up to speed on where we are, what tools we have and the few things that we actually know.  Then, the fun can begin.  I have to remember that it takes much less time to read an entry than to write it, so I hope you didn't get too bored, that you made it all the way down to this paragraph and that you might even be curious about what happens next.  You never know what (or who) will get caught in the cement mixer and embedded into the workbench countertop!  Stay tuned . . . please.

Okay, I might check the number of followers every now and then, but I’ll try not to dwell.

dave