Day 8: Big Update

Things are going slightly better digitally.  Still only have internet on my Mac but some of the other image issues have either been solved or have workarounds.

The other day, before it rained, I got to climb up onto the roof deck above the sunroom, and check out what the view will be like from up there.  It's actually remarkably similar from what it is in the room below, but it's just more exciting to be on the roof looking at it.  That's why I love roof decks.

Plus, it will be an awesome stargazing spot, and what could be more romantic?

Here are a couple of pictures where I marked up how they relate to the views above:

Also, while I was up there, I got to get an idea what the Great Room will be like from the mezzanine, even though it's full of scaffolding and stuff and it's a little hard to read:

But that was on one of my recent, frustrated blogless days.  Today I had a different kind of fun: I got to play The Enforcer.

Our local timber supplier, which is a very important item on this house, sent over a beam that was completely substandard.  Before I arrived on the scene here, it got installed.  Bob the Builder is on board with changing it out, even though it means that a lot of temporary supports will have to be put in place to hold up a whole corner of the upper part of the walls and roof while it is done.  But, Mr. Client is the one signing the checks, and once he told me it was unacceptable to him, my work was cut out for me.

(I have to say, I really appreciate how Bob is stepping up and taking responsibility for making sure things are done right, and correcting them if it's pointed out to him that they aren't.)

Here is the beam, in all its ugliness:

It's pretty bad.  That is way too many, and too large of, knots in the wood.

The rest of the timbers to construct the mezzanine are all cut, kiln dried, and ready to be delivered to the site, but we are having them hold off, until Dave the framer gets back into town next week and we can start installing.

Today, I took the opportunity to travel a few towns over and show these photos to the guy we had been working with at the lumber mill, and explain that this beam need a replacement, because it was not 'appearance grade' in the least.  He actually defended it somewhat(!?)  but ultimately fell back on the 'but the client isn't happy and he needs to be happy' as his justification for replacing it.  Damn straight, the client needs to be happy - so jump to it and cut us a new beam, STAT!

The other purpose of my visit to the lumber mill, given the problem with this beam, was to check out the stuff we had there, waiting to be delivered, and make sure there weren't any other issues with that material, since we still have a week until its delivered.

There were issues with that material.

2 beams will need to be replaced, and a 3rd needs additional planing because it was not the required smoothness.   I hope they can see, at this point, that we are serious about quality.  If not, they'll be hearing from me again.

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Yesterday Mr. Client and I explored Knoxville a little bit, and checked out some potential steel suppliers for my furniture and welding projects.

The first place we went was Triple-S Steel.  I was in heaven.  I felt right at home.  It was a giant steel warehouse building full of ... wait for it ... STEEL!  I talked steel with the Triple-S Steel peopleguys and it more than overcame all my digital frustration.  I felt my sense of life quickly restored as I soaked up all the steely goodness like a sponge.

We had parked on the other side of the building, and as we drove away, I felt even more sympathetic towards the Triple-S Steel peopleguys, when I saw their message to the President.  I definitely want to buy some metal from them.

The next place we went was as different from Triple-S as you could get, yet still be selling steel.  It was a 'salvage' company, but in reality, it seemed more like the Town Dump with a makeshift yard sale going on within the premises.  As weird and slightly upsetting as it was, I will be going back, because they had a few interesting things that I want to transform into furniture.

These two corrugated panels could make a roof for a doghouse for P + T;

The second piece from the left (not counting the pipe-like thing towards the back) is actually a piece of railroad rail.  I would love to make something out of that.  Mr. Client is into that idea, too.

The scale is a little hard to read with this one.  The holes in those pieces are about 1 1/2" in diameter.  I think there is enough material for 2 chairs there.  That would be 2 really playful, cute chairs with big ol' holes.

I have no idea what this next one even is.  It kind of breaks my heart in a weird way though.  Someone spent some real effort engineering this thing, figuring it out, designing it for a specific purpose.  It looks like it held part of a machine axle in place.  I feel like I could write a whole blog post just on this thing.

And yet, I suppose it had a useful life, and served its purpose.  Now it is obsolete, and it's sitting here in this junkyard, and there's nothing really wrong with that, is there?  I wonder how many of them were produced?  Hundreds?  Thousands?  Where were they cast, and by whom?  What role did they play in improving peoples' lives?  This piece rests on a whole body of knowledge developed over hundreds of years.  I think I might have to get it and return it to useful service in some way.

These ones are even weirder than the one above.  All the same questions apply, but they almost have characteristics of dead bodies.  Sorry to get morbid here.  There was a ton (actually many, many tons) of this kind of thing laying around at this salvage place.

And then there was a moment of verdant life amid the desolation.  These plants remind me of a type of papyrus that is grown ornamentally around L.A., but which also can easily just sprout up voluntarily in your yard.  Without knowing what it is, I would guess they're related.

And then, as I was leaving, I recognized something that really made me smile.  Not just a smile, but a big grin.  It was somebody's 'learning to weld' sample piece.

Here, they first welded those parallel lines as a way to practice making a bead on the metal, and getting used to the way the welder feels in their hands.  Then they welded that piece of angle in the upper right-hand corner.  I've taught enough people to weld that I can easily recognize this for what it is.

It makes me smile because it represents the passing down of a skill that I value.  It marks the continuation of my craft from one person to the next.  This is how knowledge grows and human achievement is advanced.

And now that person is out there making his own welded creations.  I wonder who it is?  What are they making now?  Are they still alive?  Who did they teach or inspire during their lifetime?

Who will you teach or inspire during your lifetime?  What will you teach them or inspire them towards?

All worthy questions, I think.

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Tomorrow morning I'm up early for a visit to the vet with Paul and Todd, for some shots.  Can't have them getting lyme disease while we're here.  They've been quite busy learning about life around horses and donkeys, and I hope to update you on all that over the weekend.

Days 6 & 7: Digitally Frustrated and Trying Not to Get Behind

Ok, it happened.

I knew when I threw down the gauntlet to myself at the end of Day 3, that sooner or later, I'd miss a day in my daily blogging challenge.

Turns out, that day come sooner rather than later.  Sorry about that!

At the moment, my new Mac somehow seems to feel the need to download billions of gigabytes of stuff just to allow me to get the photos off my iPhone.

On top of that, my only good internet source is this Verizon USB modem that works pretty well with the new MacBook Pro (which is a really slick machine, I have to say, in spite of the current hiccoughs in my learning curve with it) but doesn't work for shit (sorry) with my Windows XP desktop tower that I dragged here across 7 states from L.A., which has my entire life in it, but remains without internet.  Even after I downloaded what I thought was the driver, using the Mac, and installed via thumb drive.  The lovely Mac didn't even need to have a driver for the USB modem, it just ran with it.  Otherwise I wouldn't even have been able to blog for the last couple of days at all.

I'm in total digital frustration.

Yet, there have been some interesting things going on here, and today I even scoped out some really good sources of steel supply up in Knoxville.  With pictures!  For the Blog!

Hopefully tomorrow I will get this all sorted out and be back to my old blogging self.

Please stand by.

Sorry for the rant, but I can't go 2 days without blogging something, and that's all I can seem to manage at this point.

OList Twitter Party Kickoff

Big Announcement!

The OList Twitter Parties are kicking off this weekend with Brunch tomorrow/Sunday morning from 12 - 1 Eastern and 9 - 10 Pacific time.  #WooHoo!

OList Brunch is a non-topic-specific open conversation on Twitter, for OList members and lurkers.

New to Twitter?  William has put together a nice brief (yet thorough) tutorial on getting started, here.

Twitter takes a little getting used to, but if you just jump in and follow along, you'll get the hang of it in no time.

Also, our first OList Happy Hour will be this coming Tuesday evening.  Based on the poll we conducted, that evening is the most convenient for the most people.  I will post a reminder Monday morning with the Happy Hour Appetizers and Drink Specials (aka discussion topics), here at Creatures of Prometheus.

Don't forget to use the #olists hashtag on your tweets.

Hope to see you there!

Day 5: Further Adventures in Atlanta

I was up at the crack of dawn this morning (I was going to say the butt-crack of dawn, but decided against it in the interest of taste) since contractors are notorious for starting their day super early.  Architects, not so much.  But on this construction site, things get rolling at 7 a.m.  When my alarm went off at 6, it was still dark out.  That was a little unsettling, since I'm not ready for summer to be over and waking up in the dark.  I guess it is late August after all.  *sigh*

By the time I pulled it together, fed P+T, coffeed myself up and got going, our contractor, Bob, was instructing the roofing crew.

Bob, aka Bob the Builder, is doing a very good job with the project. He's probably in his late 50s or early 60s, very friendly, and always has a great attitude.  He is clearly very proud of his work and wants the house to be a success.  His voice is rather similar to Mr. Haney from the old TV show Green Acres, not only in the way he enunciates, but also in the way his voice slightly warbles and cracks every now and then.

This morning, we were in the basement working on how to best distribute the heating/air ducts around the space and feed the rooms above, with the minimum amount of disruption to the basement ceiling.  One area in particular was difficult to get a supply duct to, and we decided to each ponder it further and reconvene on that issue later in the week.  "We'll figure it out betwixt us," he said, confidently.

We walked through the project and I told him some changes I wanted to make with the electrical rough-in, which was in progress.  That's where they run the wiring and set the boxes in the rough framing, where the outlets, light fixtures and switches will be installed later, after the drywall goes on the walls.  My comments were mainly things like, "Move these outlets to line up with those over there, so they look more uniform."  At one point, I remarked offhand that I was sorry for having him redo all this work that had already been done.*

He stopped.  "Don't say that.  We want it to be right."

That's when you know you have the right guy running your project.

Then it started raining, which put a bit of a damper on things.  So, there wasn't a lot of sexy photography to do, and there wasn't much going on that made anything look much different from the day before.

The other thing that happened was that there was a crew spraying greenish-colored expanding foam insulation into the roofs from below.  (I almost just wrote 'rooves' like the plural of hoof.  I think I've been playing way too much Cow Clicker on facebook.  But I can't help it.  I'm addicted.)

And, in the end, it was as good a day as any for a rainy short day on the site, because I had to leave early to drive down to Atlanta, to hang out with the Atlanta Objectivist Society, for their monthly social.  Shout out to the AOS!

Next month, I'm presenting a special event in conjunction with this group: a Thursday evening lecture on my design process for this house, followed by a Saturday tour for them of the site (for the first 30 of them to RSVP, that is).  I'm extremely excited about the event, and looking very eagerly forward to it.

And speaking of the AOS and their social tonight, I think it's time I wrapped up this post, which I've been typing from the patio of the Gordon Biersch in Buckhead, and go inside and get a beer with my people!

Hopefully it will be a nice day tomorrow, and I'll have more pictures from the site.  Until then, Cheers from Atlanta!

-->CLINK<--



*Please take note that I would never make such a statement to a general contractor on a large commercial project.  Those relationships are very "by the book" and the chain of command is strictly observed.  On a small project like this, it is in my interest to have a good relationship and a very team-oriented approach with the contractor, and certain key subcontractors (like the framer and cabinet maker in particular, on this job.)  We are definitely allies on this project, and such a remark is, I think, appropriate.

Day 4: It's Nice to Get Where You're Going

Today we arrived.

All in all, it was a pretty good day.  We started out from Middle-of-Nowhere-but-West-of-Nashville, and drove straight to the Parthenon.  That's right, the Parthenon!

The Spokesdogs really know how to show a building, don't they?

In 1897, this replica of the real Parthenon in Athens was built for an exhibition in Nashville, in the newly created Centennial Park.  That they chose this particular monument, from among all the available ancient buildings (or anything else that they could have done, for that matter), is a wonderful testament to the 19th Century reverence for the Aristotelian ideals that allowed both the Ancient Greek and Early American cultures to flourish.

Observe how the fluting (the grooves) in the columns create shadows that reveal the column's round shape.  If the column were purely round, rather than fluted, it would appear much more flat, with just a single shadow line.

The only thing I think is a little weird about the Nashville Parthenon is the color and texture of the stone. The real Parthenon is white marble.  This one is some kind of composite stone, with exposed aggregate.  The color is a tan/buff color.  I can't quite wrap my head around this obviously non-historically-accurate choice, for a project of this historical magnitude.  They clearly went to great lengths to copy the building accurately in so many of its details.  But the color and texture?  Strange.

All in all, I think its wonderfully great that they made this (relatively) faithful copy of the Parthenon for a public park.  I think every city should have a Parthenon.  Why not?

But to copy it as a bank, or a city hall -  or a picnic pavilion - not so much.

Then we were on the road again and heading for our final destination: the construction site!

With Paul Baby acting as copilot, we motored on down the highway.

We passed a nifty old dump truck:

and a barn on wheels:

and we crossed the Cumberland Plateau:

Then I got tired of fighting with the big rigs and other impatient drivers, and turned off the main road early.  We drove the rest of the way on back roads.  This was a good move, and brought on a huge sigh of relief.  For the rest of the drive, it was like this:

and this:

and this:

and then the road got even narrower, and the striping went away, and we were there!

After a beer or two and not too much relaxing (yet) Mr. and Ms. Client and I walked over to the site and walked through it.  We looked at things that were exciting, and talked about things that needed adjustment (which is perfectly normal for any construction project, so no worries.)

 It was terribly exciting!

And Paul and Todd got to see what all this excitement has been about, and why we drove all this way.

I think they were excited, too.

Day 3. I Throw Down the Gauntlet.

This morning I got off to a later start than I had wanted, because last night, like right now, I was up late blogging.  But it was fine, really.  By tonight, I had covered enough ground to feel good about the day's drive.

The morning sun was pretty dramatic, streaming through the clouds, as we pulled out of Podunk, Oklahoma and made our way East, towards Oklahoma City.

We passed a couple more cool agricultural structures, and then that was the end of those.  But there would be neato large structures of a different kind, later on.

The scenery gave way to a more lush, rolling landscape.

We passed Earlsboro, which I'm sure must be a really amazing place to live:

And then things were pretty uneventful for a while.  We passed through Oklahoma City and made our way towards Arkansas.  Somewhere in Eastern Oklahoma, we stopped for gas and a break.

I let the dogs out first, as usual, and they did their business and ran around on the grassy area behind the gas station.  Then I got them back in, gassed up the car, parked it in the shade, rolled the windows down a couple inches, and went inside to pay and freshen up.

Apparently, while I was gone, Todd got some ideas of his own about how things were going to be, moving forward.  When I came back to the car, he had put himself in the driver's seat, with a big smartass grin on his face.  Paul had his ears back in the "I had nothing to do with it!" position.

Come on, Todd, come on, get out of my seat, buddy, let's go.

Notice Paul is totally out of the picture?  He's staying out of it!

I was trying to get Todd into the front passenger seat.  He really wasn't doing it.  Pulling gently on the collar, nice voice asking him, gently encouraging him, nothing worked.

So I opened the driver's door and pushed.  He got the picture.  Notice the change in Paul?

Hopefully that's the end of his mutinous thoughts.

I really can't blame him.  I'm sure they're both wondering what is going on.  Why are we doing this?  Are we ever going home?  When do we get to sleep in our own beds and run around in our yard again?

We moved on.

Arkansas was lush and green, but kind of a yawner.  We passed one distant factory/grain elevator thing that made me want to divert and go investigate, but I resisted the urge.  There will be a lot more of that on the drive home.

One of the rest areas was particularly nicely landscaped, and they had those cool BBQ grilles with the adjustable-height mechanism that I like, so I photographed it.  Maybe I'll make my own version of it for the house I'm about to go help build.

I like how the handle is an extension of two of the rods of the grilling surface.  Seems a little dangerous though.

We passed another town with a great name, but they got the spelling a little wrong.

As we left Little Rock, the next major milestone was crossing the Mississippi.  I got more and more excited as we approached.  I went to college in St. Louis, and I have a real fondness for old river towns, and the warehouses and steel bridges that dot their shorelines, and for this river in particular.

I used to spend hours sketching and photographing along the river in St. Louis.  I wrote a report on and build a partial model of the Eads Bridge, the first bridge to span the Mississippi.  Its design allows it to carry 2 railroad lines, so trains can pass each other, and a regular vehicular roadway above those.  It still stands and carries traffic in and out of St. Louis. The problems they had to overcome in the construction of that bridge still rival anything you would see on one of those "Engineering Marvels" cable TV shows today.

You can tell when you're approaching a major river, because you can identify the wide, flat floodplain that parallels it.  My anticipation grew as we got closer, and the ground dropped away.  Off to the right, I saw a viaduct marching along towards the river, parallel to the highway.  Again, I really wanted to go find it, and trudge out into the field and photograph it.  It was at least 3x as long as the amount you can see in this pic.

The viaduct turned into a steel bridge:

Sorry about the crooked photo -  I think we were climbing at that point.

And then suddenly there it was, ahead of us...

...and we were through the bridge and in Tennessee before I knew it.

And now we are in our motel in the middle of nowhere, but somewhere West of Nashville.  Actually, we're only a few miles down the road from Loretta Lynn's ranch, according to the signs.

Hmmm...that sounds tempting...



Epilogue:

If I can drive all day with 2 dogs, and take care of them, and take care of myself, and take lots of pictures, and check into a motel in the middle of nowhere, and then blog about it before collapsing on the bed (but not before a beer or two, or equivalent) then I see no reason that I can't keep it going and blog every single day of this trip.

There.  I said it.  I've been wanting to challenge myself like this with the blog since I read this blog post over at tod.fm, where he challenged himself to blog a substantive article daily for a month.

So, Gentle Reader, you can expect daily updates on my adventures for the duration.

Who knows, maybe the mutiny will be successful and you will get updates from Paul and Todd!