Productive Distraction
May. 16th, 2013 05:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeLisa had been driven to distraction by actions of others yesterday. (I may or may not choose to write about it later, but not in a public entry.) In an attempt to get her mind off of things, I got my coveralls and boots on and asked her to help me clear our yard of more wood debris.
When the workers replaced the broken floor beams under the house (one of the more urgent home repair projects), they left the old beams and junk wood piled in the front yard. Over the past two years, as time and energy permitted, Lisa sorted out those boards for which we think we have some use from those that should be discarded. Many of them are full of nails and/or covered in paint, and therefore were unsuitable for cutting down to kindling. The building contractor, who has lived his whole live in Fernley and played in what is now our house when he was a young boy, told us that much of the wood was salvage from the steam-era water tower from the town's days as a terminus of the Fernley & Lassen Railroad. It's a pity in some ways that we couldn't find more salvageable pieces, because despite the splits and cracks, that wood is still very solid in many ways.
The wood that can't be salvaged needs to be discarded; it's a hazard full of nails and whatnot. Our disposal method has been to put them in our rolling trash dumpster when there has been available room. This also requires cutting the pieces down small enough to fit into the bin. We got the sawhorses, Lisa got the carpenter's saw, and we went after the boards. I held boards while Lisa sawed around nails, and we made a very healthy dent in the pile of scrap wood. It goes substantially faster when there are two people working on it.
As a secondary task, Lisa got the bow saw and we sawed down to kindling size the small bits of branches from the trees on and around the property that Lisa had trimmed. There might not be a lot of it, but wood is expensive, and if this makes enough kindling to light some fires next season, that's a good thing.
An early evening of sawing and hauling wood was good for both of us, for various reasons.
When the workers replaced the broken floor beams under the house (one of the more urgent home repair projects), they left the old beams and junk wood piled in the front yard. Over the past two years, as time and energy permitted, Lisa sorted out those boards for which we think we have some use from those that should be discarded. Many of them are full of nails and/or covered in paint, and therefore were unsuitable for cutting down to kindling. The building contractor, who has lived his whole live in Fernley and played in what is now our house when he was a young boy, told us that much of the wood was salvage from the steam-era water tower from the town's days as a terminus of the Fernley & Lassen Railroad. It's a pity in some ways that we couldn't find more salvageable pieces, because despite the splits and cracks, that wood is still very solid in many ways.
The wood that can't be salvaged needs to be discarded; it's a hazard full of nails and whatnot. Our disposal method has been to put them in our rolling trash dumpster when there has been available room. This also requires cutting the pieces down small enough to fit into the bin. We got the sawhorses, Lisa got the carpenter's saw, and we went after the boards. I held boards while Lisa sawed around nails, and we made a very healthy dent in the pile of scrap wood. It goes substantially faster when there are two people working on it.
As a secondary task, Lisa got the bow saw and we sawed down to kindling size the small bits of branches from the trees on and around the property that Lisa had trimmed. There might not be a lot of it, but wood is expensive, and if this makes enough kindling to light some fires next season, that's a good thing.
An early evening of sawing and hauling wood was good for both of us, for various reasons.
