How difficult can it be to nail down some boards?

I yearn for a 90° angle in my house, or two parallel walls, or a somewhat level floor. Hell, it doesn't have to be level; I'd settle for planar instead of curved.

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Measuring for the cuts

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Making the puzzling cut with a jigsaw, of course.

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There's no way this will work
Here's that first full-length piece of flooring after being cut and hacked and filed to fit around the refrigerator base and trim.



Next time: Installing the floor

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Kitchen floor installation begins

In the beginning . . .
We removed the stove and cleaned up the debris as best we could, then went outside and cut the first plank.

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One down, many to go. I'm using a pneumatic finish nailer and 15-gauge nails every 12 inches or so. No one is measuring. Nothing in this house was measured when it was built in the 1940s, or during its many little additions, so why start now?

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The flooring for the stove recess is complete. Joan has added about three more coats of polyurethane varnish.

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Next: Planning and beginning the main part of the floor.

Kitchen floor: version 28, but who's counting

We've considered ceramic tile, vinyl tile, sheet vinyl, pre-finished wood snap-together boards, industrial locking tile, and others. Most just won't work with the irregular floor, so now we've manufactured our own special 1/4" plywood planks with custom painting and distressing.

Here's Joan with the first coating of primer.

Boards drying after prime coat

Finished boards curing on sun porch

The flooring is made from 1/4" B-C plywood, ripped to 6" and 8" widths by a cheerful Home Depot employee. Joan primed them with diluted black paint, then slapped on a coat of white, then used a scraper, hammer, chain, and other implements of torture to distress the wood.

Next: Installing the floor

Taste is in the mind of the beholder

Tempered glass is expensive
After breaking two windows with pebbles thrown from my mower, I decided to make some protective shutters for grass-cutting days.

But nothing about our house is traditional, so we decided on corrugated metal shutters that rolled on a track.

Front of the house with two shutters installed, plus one shutter (barely visible)
on the side room (right)

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I could have bought the track and the hardware, but why do that when I can spend weeks planning and making them myself. Some of you will  understand. The tracks are made from rusty angle iron and the wheels are from old rolling warehouse ladders. The corrugated metal is—well, just corrugated metal.

These shutters certainly meet my minimum expectations.

Closeup of track and wheels. The axles were made in my shop.

The original sketch and the first of six axles

Thanksgiving reflections

Michael Jackson was here.

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St Paul United Methodist Church as seen by a Honda

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Another dead squirrel. I did my civic duty and tagged it.

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This poor turkey looked so much like a person that I had to tag it.

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Forge back in business

Easy as 1-2-3
Here are the three steps involved in moving a carport and putting it back together.

1. FIND A CARPORT FOR SALE

2. MOVE PIECES TO MY HOUSE

3. PUT IT BACK TOGETHER WITHOUT REGARD TO APPEARANCE OR WORKMANSHIP

Step 3 is very important. If you get involved with straight, level, plumb, or any of that quality stuff, you'll never get finished.

End result meets minimum expectations

And now, the backyard forge is back in business—shady and dry and cozy.

The small black box on the right is the furnace heating a steel rod for practicing my point-making skills. In all facets of life, you need to be able to make your point.

Quotations

"Form . . . follows function."

–Louis Sullivan

"The perfect is the enemy of the good."

–Voltaire

"If you look for perfection, you'll never be content."

–Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina

"Be always sure you're right—then go ahead."

—David Crockett

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Man finds use for bamboo and hears an insect pray

A lesson in reverse roofing

These 21-foot roof panels are heavy and cumbersome, especially for one person. Worse, the roof panels start at the bottom right, then progress up to the ridge, curve over the ridge, and then move down to the opposite low side. That means the panels on one side need to slide under the edge of the higher panels.

If I did it the normal way—bottom to top on each side, it's unlikely that the grooves would line up at the top.

Elderly man finds use for bamboo

Yes, it's true. I found something good about the invasive bamboo in my yard. This small-diameter piece is used as a wedge to raise a metal roof panel so the next (lower) panel can slide under its edge.

Mantis poses

This little-bitty praying mantis was strolling around the edge of a red water bucket (filled with water). One split second after this photo, I dropped my phone into the water, where it quickly sunk to the bottom.

The power of prayer

The next picture shows the mantis (the only insect that can turn its head) looking back at me and muttering a few words of prayer. It worked.

I grabbed the phone, ripped it out of its allegedly water-resistant case, and saved it. It works just fine.

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Beltline near Boulevard

More photos from the future Atlanta Beltline between Confederate Avenue and Boulevard.

First, we have a different view of the Confederate Avenue trestle.

Another one of those mysterious steel boxes.

This is apparently a rest stop for track-walking derelicts like me.

I think this an indicator for a rail switch. 

Evidence of a serious accident.

Carport grows in back yard

The carport we disassembled in a few hours is taking much longer to put back together.

Here, the downhill side is raised and leveled, but it's still not at the same elevation as the higher side. I no longer care.

And here, the frame is complete. 

Is it level and plumb? No, but it meets my minimum expectations.

Next, the roof.

More Beltline photos

I spent another morning walking the abandoned rails on the unfinished (actually un-started) Beltline route. As usual, I found lots of interesting (to me) things to photograph.

Looking north toward Glenwood

Kudzu and concrete

Rail clamp

Cross ties versus Kudzu: Kudzu wins.

Signal flag ladder

Sand was dumped from the bottoms of  loaded hopper cars into this pit. The sand traveled by underground conveyor to a large open area where it created mountains of sand next to Berne Street.

Yellow flowers—nothing more