Tag: Carpentry
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Lakeside Staircase: Posts & Railings
Today we wrap up a productive week with an almost-done update on the lakeside staircase that’s been tag teamed first by Glen and Tony, then Peter and Supi, and then Tony and Peter. As we continue to explore all possible permutations, I’d like to tip my hat today too Misters Foster and Vaiciulis for leapfrogging…
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A Few Friday Updates
It’s been a productive week at Rosslyn. I tip my hat to Glen, Tony, Pam, Peter, Supi, and Steve for leaning in to the multiple tasks at hand. I’d like to share with you a quick photo essay showcasing a few Friday updates. What a difference one week makes! Now it’s time to unwind and…
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Lakeside Staircase: Cut Stair Stringers
Today we return to Rosslyn’s waterfront for another installment on the slow-and-steady lakeside staircase rehab. Glen and Tony have begun to cut stair stringers, the structural underpinnings that underpin a stout repair to the most needy element of the previous build. If you missed the previous installments, you may want to start out with these:…
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Dialing in Details
Allow me a morning meditation (minus constructive conclusions.) A wandering wonder. About process. About creative risk. About composing, crafting, constructing, carpentry,… Allow me a moment to meander from brainstorming and “ciphering” to dialing in details. Because details matter. But how we discern details, how we wend our way to destinations can be circuitous. Maybe even…
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Plank by Plank
A hale hurrah to Glen and Tony for their enclosure fence progress. Plank by plank, they’re installing the tree-to-timber pickets, advancing the privacy screen behind Rosslyn’s carriage barn that will conceal the generator, mini-split compressor, propane tank, etc. while framing the sunken courtyard west of the icehouse. Yet another tree-to-timber project, all of the cedar…
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Stump-to-Table: Ron’s Bistro Table
At long last — albeit ten months to the day after it was completed and delivered — I share with you the looong promised “concept-through-construction of a mixed species (ash and elm) ‘bistro table’ built by Ron Bauer…” mentioned in “Tung Oiling Ash & Elm Table” and elsewhere. I started to compose this reflection on…
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Planks to Pickets
Plenty of “ciphering” on the details of the privacy enclosure recently. True, the team has been juggling multiple concurrent projects, but designing an executable construction plan for the screening fence behind the carriage barn combines several distinct challenges from steel structural skeleton to stump-to-lumber (aka tree-to-timber) pickets. I’ll save the specifics of the steel skeleton…
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Lakeside Staircase: Demo
With a grateful nod to the weather gods and resounding applause for Glen’s and Tony’s concerted effort, I offer you another progress report on repairs to Rosslyn’s lakeside staircase. Several years into this slooow rolling maintenance project, we’ve successfully implemented the second phase: demo and cleanup. Here’s where I left off a little less than…
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Poetics of Planing
As Tony concludes his transformation of our homegrown cedar into finish grade planks for the privacy fence enclosure I pause to ponder the poetics of planing. Almost 3-1/2 months ago, the notion appeared as part of a poem. Come and chant with me,a poetics of planing —unroughing, smoothingtruing, straightening —for patient makersalchemizing plants in-to ingredients…
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Pickets & Kindling
While Glen has been enjoying some much deserved R&R, Tony has been finalizing preparations for the privacy enclosure behind the carriage barn. Woodworking, especially repurposing rough or recycled material into finish grade lumber, has proven to be a well matched and rewarding undertaking for Tony over the last year and a half. Again and again…
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Tom Duca’s Sunburst Gates
If Robert Frost was correct that “Good fences make good neighbors”, then experience has taught us that sunburst gates make neighbors into friends. And so today I doff my proverbial hat to neighbor, friend, and carpenter, Tom Duca. Tom was one of the first people we met when we moved to Essex in 2005, and…
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![Handrails [Almost] Complete](https://svs.ths.mybluehost.me/website_a50a90cb/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/img_6523.jpg)
Handrails [Almost] Complete
After a couple of months of ploddingly, almost imperceptibly, whittling away at the icehouse loft guardrails and stairway handrails, I’m finally in the homestretch. Aside from a few finishing touches, the handrails are 95% complete. When I abbreviated the finish carpentry subcontractor’s employ (after months of onerous babysitting and a parade of broken promises), I…