Drive Shed Project Summer
2004
Phase One TWS Expansion
This is the state of the out-buildings as we took possession of the farm in 1989...
You don't get a good sense of the mountains of horse shit, or the poor construction of the box stables...
The building just sat as is until Feb of 1990, it was a new decade and Sandy & I found the initiative to strip the patchwork of tin and gut the buildings...
Fifteen years later, after being a Dog Kennel, Pig Pen, Chicken Coop, Geese, Pheasant & Ghinea Hen building and lastly back to a pony stable, here it sits...
The log cabin (original homestead) from the turn of the 1900's needs to be re-chinked again, the building now has a separate septic system, 125Amp service & water with plumbing...
This photo was taken while we were boiling off maple syrup and got me to thinking that I should clean-up the site and make better use of the building.
The fencing was the first thing take down...
There were a couple hundred feet of 6ft Corn Crib wire that was cut out and neatly stacked into 10ft lengths... A chum is building a new garage and the wire will find a home embedded in his concrete floor.
I've kept a few sheets for my own concrete projects.
The pad that the tractor is on, is 7 cubic yards that we poured in the summer of 1991...
As we were completely clueless about what we were doing beyond the help of numerous family members and friends there are sections of the pad that are over 10 inches thick.
It's taken me weeks to get to this point... I have any number of excuses, it was hot, I'm lazy, there were deer in the field, I got side tracked, what was I saying?
Here I reflect on how I hated doing the original renovation, and this one doesn't seem to have improved on the situation much...
In actual fact I'm not minding it this time around... The multi-media experience of working with wire, wood and concrete has me in better shape than I've been in for a while...
This is the interior as the individual kennels/pens are being removed.
The most valuable tool in my shop is starting to be the broom, I leave the site as-is in the evening as I'm generally bagged. But in the morning, I take 15 minutes to sweep-up nails, scrap or just hay and plan what I'll attack for the day (without a plan I'll sit and drink coffee until 10:00A.M. & then it's break-time...
The next room over is now full of over 20 sheets of 1/4" melamine hard-board and another 20 or so sheets of 1/2" OSB wafer-board... This stuff is worth a mint and well worth the effort of salvaging for "Phase 2" of theworkshop.ca renovation.
This is turning out better than I'd hoped and has been a worthwhile use of my time... The shed area is 20ft X 21ft with a 12ft X 21ft room immediately adjacent, plus a 24ft X 24ft exterior slab.
The point is to have separate area for metal casting, machinery work (fixing the truck & tractor) including but not limited to painting, welding and mechanical repairs.
As this is a top priority with only me, I've made an effort to make it as enjoyable an experience as possible, the number one component is a 50W pioneer Stereo with good speakers, interfaced to a small MP3 player. This arrangement has made the long boring hours of pulling nails and careful material recovery sail by quite quickly.
Beyond loading-up a diversity of music ranging from Alice in Chains through to Muddy Waters, I've consumed a number of audio books, most recently Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice & Men and Kerouac's On the Road... The only draw back of the books is that when a book is finished in the middle of the day, one feels empty and it's hard to stay motivated on the task at hand.
After Santiago returned to the Cuban fishing Village in "The Old Man & the Sea" I sat in the shade of the building drinking ice water and watched the non-activity in all directions.
Disclaimer
(an unfortunate necessity)
All
Rights Reserved theworkshop.ca © July 19, 2004.