A Firm Foundation

The building contractors showed up for serious work yesterday, but they wanted to change the construction plans based on how the floor beams under the kitchen actually run and because they aren't consistent. As I've mentioned before, this house is somewhat erratically constructed. We've been given to understand that it was built by a Southern Pacific Railroad employee (which is one reason it's right across the street from where the Fernley train depot used to be; he could walk to work and didn't mind having trains around). Some of the house (aside from the original core on the north end, which is our current living room, master bedroom and bathroom, and kitchen) is built from whatever surplus stuff he could squeeze out of SP, and it was extended in fits and starts over a twenty year period. Among other things, this means that there is a run of 4x4 timbers in the underfloor at one point with a 2x4 in the sequence, and therefore the notches in the underfloor aren't consistent.

Yes, I'm living in a house made of salvaged railroad materials.

( Plans A, B, and C )

One side benefit to all of this work under the house is that there was all manner of junk down there, such as an old box of Coors beer (without the cans), perfectly good unused metal ducts, and odd bits of timber. They cleared it all out so they could get at the floor from underneath.

Soaking

It doesn't rain in Fernley that much, but last night there was a pretty wild wind storm — it shook the trailer quite badly and worried Lisa a lot — with lashing rains. This morning everything is calm and damp, which unfortunately includes the wood we bought. I've not been able to find enough dry wood to get a fire started this morning, which is annoying. I rather expect that when Lisa gets up, she'll scoff at my puny efforts and get something running in jig time. Well, I've never had great Mountain Manly Man credentials, despite my partial upbringing on US Forest Service bases. I did have to kindle the morning fires when we lived in Bishop (because I had to be up earlier than anyone else anyway to do my paper route before going to school), but (a) we often had enough of a leftover fire to get going without much trouble and (b) we had a better stockpile of kindling and dry wood at hand.

When we get things better organized, of course, we expect to build a cover over a wood rack to keep off the rain and snow, and we'll have proper kindling wood set aside. There are only so many things we can get done here, and we're doing them as best as we can.