Journey To The Center  

I just returned from my second trip of the day to the lumber yard in town. First trip was to buy more of the pine I’m using as siding on the north wall of the house. Yes, I needed more board feet, but some was to compensate for a weird problem that I encountered when I started cutting and nailing siding to the wall. The 10 foot boards and some 8 foot board that I bought — supposed to be the same — are not. They are milled a little differently and the 8 foots were about 1/8th of an inch wider and had a slightly different profile than the 10 foots, so they can’t be used together in the same course. Well, that kind of threw a screw into my carefully calculated materials list!! After hauling wood home in several trips, I decided to just improvise and use the 8 foots further up the wall as it’s not a noticeable difference — it’s more the plank width difference — which means I can’t mix them in each course. I’m okay with it. No biggie.

What was a bigger deal was removing some “repaired” wall to find THIS underneath. I mean, like who repairs a wall and replaces some of the planks with plywood, but leaves some planks looking like THIS? I know the repair wasn’t done a way long time ago as the plywood piece covered by the same batch of shingles was screwed to the wall with fairly recent looking Robertson screws, so we’re talking recent decades and not something done during the war years or the Depression. I’m kind of imagining a former resident, now hanging out in the cemetery across the highway, getting a laugh out of knowing that someone has finally discovered their little half-assed repair job where they covered rotten, carpenter ant eaten planks. Ahahaha. Pretty funny Mr. Skeleton!

Anyhow, that’s why I made the second trip to town — to buy more planks to go under the siding. I thought I was done replacing rotten planks further down the wall, but nooooo. haha. Guess the job has just stretched out a little longer. Thank goodness for the nice autumn weather we’re having!