Tag: Justin Buck
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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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Flashing Flashback
Weather reminds us that autumn will inevitably yield to winter. Frost. Flurries. Cooold nights… Probably soon-ish, at least for short intervals. And yet the threat of colder, wetter, even snowier and icier days ahead is 100% less concerning than it was a year ago. We’d only just begun our foray into Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation. And…
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Icehouse Stairway Update
Spoiler Alert: the icehouse stairway is not 100% complete. Yet. But it will be. Soon. I hope! There’s still an itty-bitty electrical wrapup (finishing up the riser lighting installation), but the main hurdle — one that’s been delayed again and again since winter — is the banister. Handrails and balusters. Everything’s been fabricated for a…
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Framing Flashback
At the outset of Rosslyn’s icehouse rehab, I envisioned posting weekly summaries, highlighting the team’s accomplishments in 7-day installments. Noble vision. Ignoble follow through. Among the many overlooked episodes, one especially significant accomplishment stands out: building interior structure for the loft, bathroom, mechanical room, etc. So today, months after construction was completed, I offer you…
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Clapboard Complete
Installation of clapboard is complete! All four façades of Rosslyn’s icehouse are now handsomely clad in cedar, primed and painted before installation, ready for nailhead touchup as temperature rises in the weeks ahead. Especial accolades are due Supi and Peter who stayed late last night to finish all but the last four boards at the…
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Field Notes & Punch Lists
So many photos and field notes and punch lists, marked up plans, pruned and grafted scopes of work. This is the ephemera of construction and the detritus of rehabilitation. A midden of sketches and diagrams, souvenirs of collaborative problem solving, artifacts of alterations and adjustments,… this is the tangled and layered chorus we seek to…
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Snow Falling on Homecoming
Today’s ferry ride from Charlotte to Essex — with snow falling on homecoming — tasted bittersweet if vaguely familiar. There was a wellspring of anticipation upon returning to inspect firsthand the team’s progress on the icehouse rehab, boathouse gangway, and some painting and tiling maintenance inside our home. There was also the poignant pique of…
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Upcycled Christmas Gifts
What wintery wonders shall I share with you today? How about a celebration (and showcase) of upcycled Christmas gifts dreamed into existence by three allstar members of our icehouse rehab team? Pam, Hroth, and Tony stopped Susan and me in our just-barely-post-winter-solstice tracks with an early Christmas gift (or three) that exemplify the apex of…
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Winter Solstice: Longer Days Ahead
Welcome to day one of the Adirondack Coast‘s coldest season. Today is the winter solstice, the first official day of winter, and — more importantly for the likes of my mother and others who favor longer days and shorter nights — the threshold between the briefest day and the most prolonged night and imperceptibly-but-steadily lengthening…
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Icehouse Rehab 7: Window Apertures
It sure is fun to see the three double hung windows emerging on the north elevation of the icehouse. And the three fixies above. And the three fixies on the south elevation. And the freshened up window aperture in the southeast corner, opposite the new bathroom in the small anteroom (once framing, well, and everything…
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Icehouse Rehab 4.5: Foundation Collaboration
Last Friday I gushed that it’d been a monumental week. No hyperbole. Tackling (and completing) Rosslyn’s icehouse foundation was an epic accomplishment, a concrete collaboration conjoining two separate teams to rescue the foundering concrete project. And while Friday’s post was brief, timely-but-abbreviated recognition for the indefatigable individuals who pulled off this remarkable feat, today I’ll…
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Icehouse Rehab 01: The Ice Hook
Our first full workweek is in the rearview mirror, so Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation is officially underway. No gold plated spade plunged into the earth, no glossy speeches, and no hoopla aside from a collective sigh of relief, some well earned rest today, and an antique ice hook. A what?!?! More about the ice hook in…