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