Productive Procrastination

The past month has been a busy one. The crunch to finish up work before winter has begun, preparations for the class I am teaching have been taking some time, and I have been building a piece of furniture. This furniture project has been interesting in many ways. It is a cherry pedestal that will hold a stainless steel sculpture that one of the other shop members is building. It has been fun learning, and relearning, some techniques. It also turned out to be good motivation to do some work on the house.

I have known for a long time that I am most productive when I have a deadline within sight. I can try to get things done ahead of time, but really, that time is spent doing anything other than the project at hand. Sometimes those things done while procrastinating are very important tasks that I would never get to otherwise like tuning up tools, cleaning, and practicing skills.

I was working on someone else's deadline. I knew that the sculptor would not make the deadline, but I still had to pretend to be working on the pedestal as if it would be ready in time. The real work could not begin until progress happened on the sculpture. In the mean time, I had to clear some space in the shop. A pile of old panelling that I salvaged from the firehouse caught my eye. The easiest way to take care of that pile was to strip the old brown shellac off refinish it, and install it as the kitchen ceiling in my house. That is the easiest way to move a pile, right? (to be honest, it wasn't even in the way, but provided a good distraction). But here are the results! It was a long overdue improvement to the house.

Also in this time, I built the frames for the windows in the gable ends and installed temporary plexiglass windows in them.

Unfortunately that is it for progress on the house at this point. Here are some photos of the pedestal though.

Design

Shooting board for 30 degree bevel

Wedges and rope for the glue-up

Glued!

Leg stock

Leg pattern

Legs were cut 1/16" oversize then finished with pattern bit on a router

Legs and the column after a messy glue-up

Cutting the tenon

Pared to size

Chamfer to dress up the bottom. This will get a brass
plate over it to hold the staves together and cover the hole

Mortice layout

Hanger bolts installed

Top layout

Upper brackets

A visit to the screw museum- all made right here in Worcester

A screw goes through each stave to hold the wood together,
and three more are prepped to fix the granite top in place.

Last glue-up

Several coats of Tung oil and some wax,
ready to be entwined with stainless steel
roses and graced with the sculpture.

Fall

This past week I finally built and installed the two removable panels that make up my gable walls. For once the place is fully closed in (minus the windows)! It is nice to hear the wind without the accompaniment of fluttering tarps over the holes. This is also the first time I have used dimensioned two by fours and plywood. I wanted to keep them as simple, light and rigid as possible, and plywood was the best way to do that. The west end has a diamond shaped window that will hopefully be stained glass at some point. For now it is just plexiglass siliconed in place. The east side over the loft will have a double casement to match the smaller kitchen window. For now it is also plexiglass.

Is that another tiny house in the background? ...possible future story

I seem to go through phases where I do mostly planning, then I switch and build for a while. This one seemed to take a long time to get to, but it finally happened last Sunday while I was reading a book about tiny houses. Seeing photos of other people's houses inspired me to get up and do something. Five hours later, I had just finished installing the new wall! A couple of days later the second one happened, and then the following day a window frame.

Hopefully this productivity continues. The perfect Fall weather helps.

The next step will be to finish trimming out the edges, install siding, and hopefully get a couple of top coats of paint on before winter!

1000 watts

I just received 1000 watts worth of cracked and broken solar cells from Ebay. They were really cheap and should be fun to experiment with. I am hoping to be able to build about 500 watts worth of solar panels for the house. We will see what happens.

Soft under foot

Since I last posted about the floor, I have done quite a bit of research and work. At that point I was debating what I should do with the cracks that had oppened up between my floorboards. I was hoping to fill them with a dark epoxy that would stay flexible and move with the seasonal changes in the wood. I nixed that idea because of the cost. Other fillers would not stay flexible long enough in the wood. Eventually, I found a company in England that sells long wedge shaped pieces of yellow pine that you cover in glue, pound into place and sand down. I didn't feel like having some little pieces of wood shipped all the way from England, so I grabbed some old boards and sliced them up on the bandsaw.

Since the cracks were not necessarily consistent over the length of each board, there was a lot of custom fitting to do. It took a couple of sessions in the summer heat to get it done, but now the upper section of floor is wedged, glued, and planed.

I think it looks great and it feels nice under foot!

New England Tiny House Community

Two weeks ago a reader clewed me in to the New England Tiny House Community. NETHC is a group of people from the area who live in, are building, or are just generally interested in tiny houses. It is organized by Christopher Kyprianos who is building a tiny house to put on his land in northern Massachusetts. He and his partner Deb organized a barbeque this month for all of us to get together and chat about tiny houses. I never knew there were so many of us around here! In the same way that a well designed tiny house can feel big, a group of 10 tiny house enthusiasts around here was huge!

While the adults talked about salvaged windows and zoning laws, the two girls who are working with their mom to build a little house constructed fairy houses. It was a good time for all.

For a copy of the latest issue of the New England Tiny House Times, email me or Christopher, the editor. Sorry, it is a PDF and I couldn't figure out how to put it on the page!

SolarFest

This weekend Lauren and I will be heading up to Tinmouth, VT to be part of SolarFest; an 18 year old festival showcasing alternative, sustainable energy. I was asked by a friend of mine to help him run a workshop on tiny houses. We will be talking about all aspects of building and living in a tiny house. If you will be there, be sure to come find us! We will be presenting on Sunday from 3:30 to 4:30.

www.solarfest.org

Sustainability Design Class

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that I will be teaching a class at the Worcester Area Think Tank this fall on sustainable design. The class is designed for students age 13-18 and will be held on Tuesdays between 11 and 2 from September 4th to December 21st. We will be building our own solar panels and all sorts of fun things! To make it even better, the cost is only $425 for sixteen three hour classes!

Here is the course description from the Think Tank Website.

For most of us, energy is the electricity that comes out of the wall or the fuel that runs our car and heats our house. Where does it really come from and what are the environmental consequences of how we typically produce it? We will explore these questions and learn about alternative methods of energy production. Students will learn about energy from the sun by experimenting with ways to collect, store and use it. Some of the projects will include building a solar oven to cook food, active and passive hot water and air heaters, a solar powered hydrogen car and photovoltaic solar panels to take home and experiment with. Using formulas relating volts, amps and watts, students will be challenged to calculate the energy usage and component specifications for a small photovoltaic system that we will build to power a device at Think Tank. Hone your soldering skills and learn to use Google SketchUp (a free Computer Aided Design program) to plan and visualize ideas as we learn what unplugging from the grid is all about!

By the way

These are some of the things I saw just outside my house a few weeks ago. Remember, this was or is a heavy industrial area of the city. The color is due to the hard work from many people at our shop, Blank Slate, and Amanda who is growing food with the urban CSA, Nuestro Huerto (http://senergysm.com/NuestroHuerto/home.html)

Floor finising

Since It has been so long since I have been able to put time into the house, I decided that I should do something quick with big results. I picked sanding and finishing the floor. I planned on spending last sunday on this and imagined myself watching the finish dry by evening. I should have known better than to think that I could let a simple project be so simple...

Some of you may remember reading way back that I bought this flooring from a sawyer in Rutland for next to nothing. I carted home rough cut oak that had air-dried for an unknown amount of time and spent many days planing, shaping and installing the flooring. Over the past couple of years it has endured many spills, environmental changes and even a short time with a cat named Pete who liked his presence to be known. In that time it has also had plenty of time to finish drying (shrinking). As I sanded the boards down, some of these imperfections vanished while others came to the surface. These imperfections are what make this floor interesting and unique. I am even okay with the ones left by Pete. The last thing I want is a floor that is "perfect" with no character or distinctions. 

The sanding was a longer process than expected. It was too small of a job to warrant renting a floor sander and I couldn't track down a professional edging sander. I ended up using a decent sized random orbital sander which worked well, but slowly. It took three passes- one with 40 grit, a second with 60 and a final with 120. The first pass took me hours since I had to knock down all the ridges between boards and bring them all into the same plane. The other passes went quickly though as I only had to remove the gouges from the rough sand paper. All in all, the sanding happened over a two day period, but the results were encouraging! Note the Purple Heart plugs over the screws on the edge trim.

At this point I could have just picked a finish and completed the project, but since I already exceeded my timeline, I might as well go all out. The first holdup came when deciding what to do with the spaces that opened up between the floorboards. Some are tight but others have as much as a 3/16" gap between them. I love how this looks, but don't like how it feels underfoot and don't want them to constantly fill up with dirt. I have been looking into an epoxy filler made by Advanced Repair Tech (www.advancedrepair.com) that supposedly stays flexible and will move with the seasonal expansion of the wood. It can also be tinted. I really like the idea of using a dark color to accentuate the lines. The only problem is the cost. It comes out to nearly $100 for 15 oz of the filler! The kit that comes with all of the proper mixing nozzles and gun retails for $214.95! I would probably need more than 15oz also. So now I am back to square one with this. I am having a hard time picking a shade of finish without knowing what I am doing with the filler. If I can fill the cracks with a dark filler I will probably go with the natural color. If not, I will probably use a dark stain. Either way, I will probably go with an oil and wax finish.

Anyway, while I am muling over my options, I have started to lay out a fibonacci spiral on the floor. The ratio of the length to width of the house are almost exactly the golden ratio- 1.618. With this in mind I had hoped to route a 1/8" spiral into the floor and inlay it with a thin brass strip. A while ago I decided against it in the interest of time, but why not. I am committed to this house. At least it is fun.

A quick rant...

Sustainably is one of those words that we read every day in the paper. It is the newest career. You hear that caffeinated pair at the café table next to you telling the world how to live sustainably. I probably say it ten times a day. It is in bold on every billboard in front of a construction site or the first page of a viewbook for college. If you are a car company your commercials show how efficient and clean your factories are, and how your car’s exhaust sprouts flowers (actual Volkswagen commercial). It is so easy to be green. All you have to do is live in company A’s condos, buy B’s cars and get your groceries from C.

Every once in a while I snap out of this thinking. It happened to me tonight as I was taking apart my speakers to figure out if the annoying buzzing noise could be fixed by soldering a loose connection or if it would be a slightly more involved repair requiring a new woofer. What we are taught from every angle is to get a new one, and make sure it is has a sticker on it saying “energy star compliant”, “fair trade”,  “organic” or whatever it is that speakers are supposed to be. Shops that repair electronics don’t seem to exist. Everything is meant to be thrown away when it breaks, or even worse, when a new model comes out. You can talk all you want about recycling your manufacturing waste, but it is going to be better for the environment if that product that you are making is meant to last and build to be repaired when something does go wrong. I am lucky enough that I have the desire to troubleshoot and fix problems. It brings me a lot of joy. I know that I will not go out tomorrow and buy a new pair of speakers. In the worst-case scenario I will have to buy a new set of woofers to install in the cabinets. It is more likely that I will just find another set of complete speakers in perfect shape that someone threw out because they got a new pair. We live in a throwaway culture and are given the choice of throwing away “paper or plastic?” Why aren’t things set up so that they can be used and used again?

Even the way we build seems to be temporary; from stick frame houses to concrete malls. I get this sinking feeling every time I drive by the gigantic mountain of crushed concrete and rebar that was a thirty year old building in Worcester’s City Square. It will soon be the next newest idea to make Worcester’s downtown more active. It will probably have a similar lifespan to the last one. The embodied energy in concrete is staggering. It is an incredibly permanent substance that is used too frequently and a temporary material. “Recycling” the crushed concrete as fill for the site doesn’t sound so green on the second look.

I am asking you to try to break away from the greenwashing that we all fall victim to and really think about our decisions. There are more options. Maybe the answer is what was in place before all the choices.  Is the compostable utensil is probably better than the plastic one, but is it better than a plain old fork that can be washed and used again? I guess I am trying to say is create for the future: Make it to last, make it repairable, make it so that people want it to last.