I woke up early, as usual in my old age. I asked my neighbor if I could borrow her wood splitter; because I have a couple cords of Alder, pine and fir rounds ready to split for stovewood.
Unfortunately, a rude tradesman had buried the splitter at the back of the barn behind half-a-year's supply of hay. She doesn't expect to see the splitter again until October. "No Biggie," I said, rentals are cheap and I'd rather swing an 9 pound maul than go to a gym. I like to accomplish something when I "work-out."
I need a new plan for the day, then.
We're having house guests in a couple of weeks. Elaine has been a bit fussy about having her "Door Yard" in order; meaning looking good for the Public. She's been riding me about the appearance of the entire house which had more cobwebs on it than Sleeping Beauties castle. I reply, "If this house is really Haunted; we have more to worry about than some wretched spiders."
Elaine's other interminable grouse has been about my dearly beloved Pic-a-Nick table. Thirty years ago, I built this table, from scraps from a deck project, out of OLD GROWTH REDWOOD! You can't even get the real deal anymore. Amazingly rot and bug resistant. OLD GROWTH REDWOOD is a lost treasure. This table has weathered 30 years of storms and still stands tough.
But it has lichen growing on it. I like lichen. What's not to like about lichen? Elaine unlikes lichen.
Thus, Wednesday I rented a Pressure Washer and blasted the house, the windows, the cobwebs, the patio, the birdbath, the cars and even the picnic table with torrents of water propelled at 2900 Pounds per Square inch pressure.
The house and the windows and the concrete sure looked spiffy. So did the picknick talble. Except the picnicker looked a bit shredded and sliverous, Needs work.
Meanwhile, I had bought a magnificent dining table set, about ten years ago. Solid Oak, claw feet, ornately carved chairs. Not an antique; but a fair reproduction. Over the years, a couple of the chairbacks had delaminated. The separated joints had been assembled with a straight butt-joint. A greater craftsman would have added dowel joints or biscuit joints to strengthen the lamination. We had two chairs which had broken off the tops of their backs.
Today, then, I hauled the chairs out to the shop and resurected my biscuit-joiner machine. The machine is well designed for working with flat boards; but the chairs had slipped me a curve. Literally.
The first chair took two hours to figure how to cut a biscuit joint on a curve, then I had to cut down some clamps to make them fit. One crisis after another to figure out how to make this plan work.
While the glue on the first chair was setting, I went off to tackle the pic-a-nic table. I disassembled two of the ragged seat boards, flipped them over to a smoother side. Trimmed of the ragged ends with a Skil saw, and belt sanded the whole shitterrree into submission.
The other chair took 20 minutes to repair; having all the parts and details of the procedure previously figgurred.
Then Elaine came home, told me how wonderful I am. We opened the wine bottles. I cooked dinner and we smoked a joint.
Good Day!
