Category: House

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Hoard a Cord

Or two!

…which is the most aggravating unit of measure. A cord of stacked firewood, which measures 4’x4’x8′, does not conveniently fit within any structure made of lumber, whose standard dimensions come in 4′ or 8′. Because the internal dimensions necessitate the outer frame to be longer, otherwise the wood cannot be overlapped in order to attach screws. What I needed was 4′,4″ and 8′,6″ boards, but they’re not sold in those lengths. So I had to buy 10′ versions, which was more expensive and generated a lot of waste.

But dammit, I would not be deterred. The accumulating piles of wood from my trees, due to easement reclamation, fungal disease, hurricanes, and general pruning, has left me with quite the back-logs (ha!). I wanted to finally process it all, and I wanted to stack firewood in exacting measurements, as well as be sure that future firewood providers were being truthful. So 10′ boards it would have to be, cut down to give me those exacting lengths.

Taking a cue from my previously-built tomato trellis, which is still firmly standing 5 years later, I opted for 4x4s, stuck 2 feet deep. That’s the maximum depth I can get post diggers down to, and historically that’s been sufficient to stay below the frost line. I doubt that with the weight of the wood that frozen ground pushing my posts out would be a problem anyway, but I’d rather not have to build this again. The rocky soil was certainly a pain, but fortunately I had supplemental manual labor to employ.

A bad design of engineering is to rely upon connecting hardware for load-bearing applications, so the supporting boards, which would hold the firewood off the ground, were rested upon sunken 2x4s, screwed into the outer frame. The goal being, the vertical support would rest directly upon the ground, rather than relying upon the main structure.

But not all firewood is cut to the same length, so in order to prevent smaller pieces from touching the ground, I installed fencing wire to shore up the gaps.

One cord down, I added a second identical section.

There are plans for a roof, using leftover metal sheeting from the house roof. I’m hoping it will match nicely, but the more pressing matter was to get the wood split and stacked for the changing seasons. And with the help of a newly-purchased splitter, it only took several weeks! Damn was that a lot of wood!

I’m glad that’s done. The wood situation needed addressing and I had been planning a storage solution for years. More pics to come once the roof is installed, but I’ll need some more time off for that. Hoping to wrap this up for 2025!

–Simon

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The Roof, the Roof, the Roof…

…is unlikely to catch fire, as it is now constructed of “Galvalume® coated steel with Sherwin-Williams Weather XL finish”, which is “cold-rolled steel that is hot-dipped in aluminum and zinc alloys”. So it’s unlikely to rust as well.

Fire and water – that’s two of the elements.

It’s also “typically rated for wind speeds of 120–160 mph — equivalent to EF-2 tornadoes (111–135 mph)”.

There’s wind.

And, it’s UL 2218 class 4 rated, which “means the roof can withstand a 2-inch steel ball dropped from 20 feet without cracking, splitting, or losing structural integrity.”

That counts as earth.

Yes – our roof is now likely the strongest part of the house.

Like most of the house, the existing roof was old and subjected to poor maintenance and former “repairs”. It’s always been a point of confusion to me that shingles are attached to the sheathing with nails that are over an inch longer than the boards are thick. The industry standard is apparently to waterproof a roof by punching thousands of holes in it, while simultaneously creating a hazard to many a cranium that dare to stand up too far in the attic. But I’m not a roofer, obviously. There must be a reason.

As for the prior homeowner, he had disconnected the attic fan, resulting in extreme temperature fluctuations which led to dry rot. The shingles were bent and shedding sand, and water intrusion was beginning. A full overhaul was needed, lest I fall through the roof and finally be freed of this mortal coil.

But first I needed to spend all my money. Leave nothing behind upon death, right? Isn’t that the Boomer credo?

And fortunately that wasn’t hard to do, especially not when selecting premium materials. It’s a pity I’ll have to strip the nice roof out and replace it with crappy shingles when we finally have to move out. Because, leave nothing of value to the next home-buyers, right? Isn’t that the home-seller’s credo?

But for the meantime, we’ll have a nice roof to enjoy.

Working with sales people is always a mixed bag. I had much experience with this when shopping for an HVAC replacement.

Aire de Vita

Sometimes they’re old people with no sense of humor. Sometimes they’re young people who haven’t acquired sufficient knowledge to talk about their products. Sometimes it’s obvious they’re trying to pull a psychological evaluation on me to bleed me dry (I’m not filling out a questionnaire on my feelings behind the purchase). In this instance, however, they appeared both mathematically-challenged and, shall we say, pushy on certain products, like a used car salesman. I initially asked about metal roofing, and was immediately dissuaded because of its high cost.

So we spent the remainder of the consultation looking at traditional asphalt shingles, colors, and cost. And when done with our selections, received a quote. Then we had a brief couples’ financial discussion. Then, before committing, I asked, for curiosity’s sake, what the metal roof quote would be. It turned out be about 10% more – which was perfectly doable. Rather than indulge potential buyers for a sales quote on a requested product, they had sized us up and steered us towards a more budget-friendly product. Which we rejected, because we wanted the metal. And that wasted us all a lot of damn time.

What followed was a confusing purgatory of delays and no-contact from the parent company. Bad weather, underestimated timelines of backlogged contracts, and failure to call and leave messages despite their protestations to the contrary, which left us impatient and annoyed. But eventually, they committed to a date.

Fortunately, the people actually doing the labor were far more competent than their administrative counterparts. Open to requests and forthcoming with information, only a few minor complains impacted the operation – which they willingly fixed.

I have yet to climb up there, mostly out of fear. Those standing seams look difficult to navigate, and I want it perfectly dry before I do any adventuring of my own. I anticipate gutter-cleaning and light-hanging to be somewhat more difficult, but at least the roof won’t need any further attention for what should be the remainder of our natural lifespans.

Oh, and we’re the first ones in the neighborhood to get a metal roof. Ha!

–Simon

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Your Beast of Burden

You can take away a man’s dignity but you can’t work his fields and cows.

Family legend has it that the old family farm, which my grandparents ultimately sold (yet another example of the ongoing death of all small family farms), was an original land grant plot parceled out as government payment to a veteran of the Continental Army.

My grandparents didn’t inherit this property. They acquired it sometime in the late 1950s, after my father had been born. I haven’t dug that deeply into the Moorheads’ lineage, so I don’t know offhand the level of our involvement in the American Revolutionary War. “Moorhead” – head of the moors – is Scottish by origin, hailing from the lowlands – Glasgow region. (That might explain something about my family’s temperament.) And the Lowland Scots immigrated in the 1700s, so it’s possible. And that group supposedly immigrated voluntarily to New England cities, and were supposedly of the more professional and merchant classes. Dunno why my family ended up farming. I assume it was more lucrative back then.

But it checks out with my own genetics test, which pinpoints a high percentage of my bloodline coming through Pennsylvania. And Philadelphia is a specific city called out in the Lowland Scots’ immigration paths. So this all aligns roughly: At some point when the country was young, the Moorheads came to Pennsylvania and migrated west to Ohio.

Anyway, back to the farm.

When the farm was acquired, it included some items with the property. The specific item of note for the purpose of this post is an ox yoke. It’s very old, naturally. Remember, the plot of land was very old, and always used for agriculture, and presumably it dated back to the original owners. That part’s oral history. Like so much of family history, it can’t definitively be verified. But if it’s true, it’s a cool story.

The yoke always hung in the farmhouse, then my grandparents’ retirement house, then it passed to dad. And just recently, he granted me stewardship. As the last blood-born male heir to the Moorhead line, it needed to be honored appropriately. And I had just the spot for it.

Thanks to the AirBnB movement, there are a lot of rustic-themed mounting options. For this application, I chose an iron pipe with applicable fittings. The idea was to compensate for the ceiling joists not being centered over the archway.

Ta-daa!

Since my grandfather refinished it, any monetary value it might have is strictly personal. But that’s all right with me, since it fits the nostalgia bill properly, like the old farmhouse shotgun.

May it survive to pass to the next generation.

–Simon

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Here There Be Zombies

The cultural zombie phase was fun, for a time. Then I started to notice that a segment of people actually believed they were real, or could be. And I’m not talking about that creepy part of Voodoo and their supposed zombifying drugs. I mean, some people actually thought that the majority of the population turning into violent flesh-eating monsters was a possible apocalyptic outcome for humanity. Zombies became less fun, knowing that not everyone was going along with the gag.

Personally, I thought the fantasy had gained so much traction because it scratched a certain violent desire in all of us to be morally permitted to kill other people…because they’re not people per se, but still the physical form of people, and that lets us justify it. I can’t shoot a neighbor I don’t like, but if that neighbor became a zombie well, that would be okay. Because not only am I now allowed to kill this neighbor, but I’m obligated to. For the future of humanity.

Yeah, that’s totally normal to find in one’s crawlspace.

Moving on, I have a crawlspace. Not just any crawlspace, but a dungeon of a crawlspace. Like the kind from those Evil Dead movies. But instead of a trapdoor, it has a full size vertical home interior door. Because the prior owner had dug out a portion of the crawlspace (supposedly to breed worm colonies for fishing bait – sure, whatever). Admittedly, it does make access to the bathroom plumbing much easier, but damn is it creepy. Compounded by the bizarre assortment of objects remaining within, like a work table above which hangs a single lightbulb. And discarded women’s undergarments. And rusty blades. You get the idea.

The door is also shabbily hung, with no backstop trimming to close it properly. I’ve been meaning to fix that so it seals tight and keeps the mice out.

But rather than tackle a practical project, I decided instead that this doorway to hell needed decorating. I thought about the classic Divine Comedy quote, but that didn’t quite seem to fit. No, it needed something more embedded within Americana. Like zombies, for instance!

It’s fun what you can find on Amazon these days!

Then combined with some hardware hanging around the garage and food coloring, and…

No, that wasn’t enough. More creep factor needed. After some contemplation, I hooked up an electronic actuator to tap the door and wired it into a motion-activated plug. Now, when someone approaches the door to investigate: “tap” “thunk” “tap” “thunk”…teehee.

I might not be a zombie myself, but I think this project will at least make others consider I’ve lost my mind regardless.

–Simon

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Macro Bonsai

Americans have an odd association with the Japanese. Following generational subsiding of WWII resentments, their culture crept into our cinema, represented as a dichotomy of both warriors and meditative perfectionists, personified in the Miyagi-type character (although technically Okinawan). Then apparently they became relentlessly career-oriented, who work themselves to suicide.

And from this toxic life path, Americans are oft compared as a sort of half-sibling, who admire their relentless capitalist pursuits and supposed ability to maintain their dignity of the soul while still contributing to the greater society. I can see it. Work forever to provide and go to church.

But I think we’re more like the Chinese. We approach capitalism in a similar manner of unsustainable growth and consolidation of the wealth therein produced, continue to allow those least suited to lead determine our government policies, and we hate each other (supposedly). And really, no one likes themselves, so dissenting ideologically with an entire culture is probably more telling of a similarity than a difference. (Don’t even get me started on Russia.)

But I also own a katana and aquascape my aquarium. So I’m not entirely disassociated. And then there’s also The Way of the Househusband, which resonates.

And bonsai. No, I don’t practice the art, but I’ve refined my own version: macro bonsai. Translated literally, that would sound like a paradox, but hear me out. As a non-native Ohioan, I like trees. Alas, they are expensive and slow to grow, but not the black locust!

Stage 1 specimen

Locusts have some “advantages” as suburban trees, depending on how you look at it. They’re colony plants, meaning they appear in non-forested areas before other trees, thereby starting the first stages of forestation. Obviously in areas where suburbanites don’t want trees, such as landscaped lawn where one’s landscaping company would charge extra for the bother of mowing around a tree, they’re undesirable. However, if one were to happen to appear in a desirable location, such as an open lot needing some shade, they present an opportunity to quickly attain canopy.

This is because they sprout from the ground as root suckers. A local parent plant, spreading its roots, will reproduce this way. The new tree, being attached to the parent, has access to the larger root system. So it grows quickly. Add to that the fact that locusts are legumes, and fertilization remains largely unnecessary. They’re completely self-reliant.

Stage 2 specimen

But they do need training. Following emergence, new growth is bushy. To obtain a tree shape, side branches need to be trimmed off as the plant grows. They’re also very thorny at this stage, but fortunately my trees are of the variety that the thorns stay small and disappear completely on larger trees. Regular trimming will also force upward growth, leading to quicker canopy.

Stage 3 specimen

Ultimately it’s a matter of personal taste as to which side branches should be left to grow, and each tree and its location is unique. But all side branches should be removed unless the growth is vertical, until the minimum desired height is achieved. In my case, my own height is the benchmark. If I can walk under the tree without ducking, then it’s at minimum required height and I start letting side branches above this height start to grow and fill out the canopy.

Stage 4 specimen

Beyond this, it’s just a matter of letting it grow until it becomes the electric company’s problem. Total time involved: 2-3 years. Not bad for a free tree, and it’ll grow faster than anything manually planted.

Stage 5 specimen, which had the unfortunate experience of being pollarded by the falling silver maple, but bounced back nicely.

It’s a much shorter timeframe, and using much larger trees (a native, in fact), than bonsai. I think I’ll call it dendroforming instead, to give it a more western type nomenclature. It certainly isn’t Japanese, but I’ll give them a respectful nod at their influence.

–Simon