Where Does The Time Go?

[2x4s are wet...]

[...with a solid floor so they would stay that way]

I still get caught by surprise at how long it takes to do things here on the land. A project that should take an hour takes a day. Here's today's example...

There were two sheets of 3/4" plywood stored safe and dry near my cabin when I left for San Francisco. Today I had allocated an hour to install them as a floor to distribute the weight of my loom when I put it on the loft. I don't want all that weight on just a couple of joists.

I went to retrieve them and, surprise! They weren't there. A search of the land located them, laid as the floor of an ill-conceived lumber storage platform. It had been designed and built in a way that maximized the capture of rainwater and kept the lumber wet once it had gotten that way.

Notice that I don't name the person who did this. I generally do my best to make other people look good, especially in a public forum like this. In this case I don't even know who did it and I'm not going to try to find out. It's more important to me that we solve the problem and teach new people how to make good decisions in the future.

[Two hours later, it's restacked to dry out and shed future rainwater]

After a couple hours moving all the lumber, removing the plywood, and restacking the lumber, I was ready to... bring the plywood into the house and let it dry. I'll be installing it tomorrow, my one-hour project requiring 10x the work and stretched to 24 hours. I now have plywood crowding my house on the day that guests arrive to stay with me. Thank goodness I found it today, though. It's warped, but another week soaking in water and it would have been ruined.

As I passed through the garden after stacking wood I noticed some birds eating the last rotting apples at the top of the tallest tree. Cedar Waxwings! They are beautiful with their crest, black mask and smoothly colored bodies. They look like they were painted with watercolors. Seeing them is just what I needed to cheer me up. I've never seen them here before.

[Image from the iBird Explorer app]