Tag: Glen Gehrkens
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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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A Lure Allure
Found artifacts. Found art. Found stories. Found poetry… Art from artifacts, I pledge again and again. Glen sent me this photo earlier today. He came across it snagged on the dock, revealed by the ever so slowly receding water, still about 2 feet higher than historic mean. I immediately abandoned the blog post I was…
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Lakeside Staircase: Recon
After several years of delays — from false start to postponement to more false starts — Glen and Tony have resuscitated Rosslyn’s lakeside staircase repairs. Today I’ll catch you up on their preliminary “deep dive” (don’t worry, I’m speaking figuratively since Lake Champlain water temperatures are presently inhospitable at best.) We started out by assessing…
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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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Tree-to-Timber
As we prepare to fabricate the privacy enclosure behind the carriage barn, the constituent parts are starting to fall into place. One of the most important is the material that we’re using for the pickets. Yet another tree-to-timber project, all of the cedar slats/boards that will comprise the fence pickets grew less than 150’ from…
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Lead, Leader, Leading
What makes a good leader? Plaudits to the Bloganuary team for another provocative prompt, this time digging into the question of leadership. I’m tempted to wax lyrical about the merits of many present and past members of our team. So many good leaders over the years. But the hour is advancing so I need to…
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Crazy Biz?!
Crazy biz?! It’s fair to say that, since day one, I’ve taken pretty ample creative license with these Bloganuary prompts. I accepted the challenge without much reflection. Why not add a new twist to my daily installments? Like discovering a new spice? I remember when I discovered za’atar via Yotam Ottolenghi. Wow! It was like…
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Old Year’s Day
Did you know that another name for New Year’s Eve Day is Old Year’s Day? Not used widely, in my experience, but logical. Retrospective. Emphasis on the year expiring rather than the year arriving. Despite a personal proclivity for forward-looking and possibility, a year-end review offers merits too. This day’s, this year’s minutes are too…
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Hibernal High
I almost preempted this evening’s post with an update on the rising, rising, rising lake levels. Given the alarming uptick — Lake Champlain has risen approximately 2’ in the last couple of days with waters currently approaching spring flood stage — our attention is focused on meteorological forecasts. But angsty fretting serves no one, so…
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Compost Bin v2.0
Probably about a decade and a half ago we repurposed a shipping crate (that happened to have been fabricated out of tropical hardwood) into a compost bin. We’ve used it for years, far surpassing the value I anticipated at the outset. When the top began to fail, it got pulled aside for eventual repair. Today’s…
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Cargo Sled
Hat tip to Tony, Glen, and Yard Glider (yardglider.com), “the cart without wheels”. After brainstorming how best to transport seven aluminum framed, wood decked dock sections to three different areas of the property. Heavy, large, (4’x13’) and unwieldy, relocating the docks had been challenging my imagination. Meet the cargo sled! This clever contraption turned out…
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Stump-to-Lumber
In yesterday’s post I mentioned that we’re felling trees again. But my update was brief, overlooking a couple of important details, so I’m revisiting the stump-to-lumber topic this afternoon. (I probably should have titled today’s post something more inclusive since our homegrown wood isn’t exclusively destined to become the next round of Rosslyn furniture, floors,…