shed-plex

   Alex has been tolerant for many years. She's let me keep a workshop in the unfinished cantina all this time. I've had to move all the tools and scrap and shelving and workbenches around the floor several times to make way for progress, but I've always had a roof over my head. Until now. I should have made way for progress some years ago. The downstairs was supposed to be a modern kitchen, dining room and living room, unlike the rail-car life we've become accustomed to. Ask anyone who's visited and they will tell you stories of armchairs facing each other. The leg room between which lies a sleeping dog and two children trying to get their jammies on. Not to mention the red-hot iron woodstove. But never mind. If you ever felt the need for fresh air you simply turned around and faced the frozen window behind you. It's remarkable what house guests can get used to. They can get used to anything if it's only one or two nights. Alex has been cooking on a portable gas stove for what? ten years?
   But some of us here are running out of patience. There's only so many times one can fall headlong into the woodpile, tripping over the mound of unfinished homework before something cracks. Don't get me wrong. No plates have been thrown, but I'm keenly aware of when it's time to head off any trouble and bow out gracefully. That time has come and gone and my stuff is out in the rain.

    To my rescue arrived Charlie and Richie, two English dudes. Richie came to us some years ago as a workaway volunteer and has returned with a degree in architecture along with his assistant, Charlie. They convinced Alex that my building skills needed some "support," and after several agonizing seconds, she relented. Richie is keen on learning about preserving old buildings and I agreed to let him help, allowing me more time to ponder possibilities.
     Our first project was the construction of an open-air workshop incorporating two prefab, cardboard toolsheds we'd imported from Britain. I had constructed these sheds myself, but the wind kept blowing them down; so a plan was proposed to enclose the two under an oak-framed shelter where I might feel comfortable with all my scrap iron and bits of string. It began with the enslavement of two innocent workaway volunteers, John and Sinead, who were given the task of building the foundation without any guidance. Our lumber supply is the same pile we burn for warmth in the winter. You might find photos of Bob Henry at work on this wood in a previous blog post. With little more than a box of screws and a glue pot, Richie and Charlie constructed a series of roof trusses, stood them up on oak posts, covered the thing with decking and roofing paper, and clad the whole with bark-cuts. It looks like a quasi log cabin and is just about as waterproof. Under this now sits about $1000 worth of bicycles, two lawnmowers, Matt's chainsaw, countless rolls of scrap tubing, electrical cable, old paint cans, workbenches, and another $2000 or so in hand tools. The whole thing is probably illegal but at least we can get a clear shot at the floor and walls in the cantina, even if the tools we need are a mountain bike ride away.
    With me out of the way, there appears some possibility that our cantina may someday be transformed into a new living area for the house. And in the meantime, I can fiddle about to my heart's content in my new workshop.