Sunday, March 28, 2021

Scavengers

 Tim has always been a collector. He sees stuff and he immediately has a vision as to how these things can be used. And so they go 'in storage'. He's got multiple garages full of things. The old house at the retirement property. Caches. 

One of the things we've had on our 'want' list for quite some time is a greenhouse. The problem is that we needed a place to put it. We knew that we weren't going to be in town long-term. The house is too big, and the work on the rentals is dying down. He fixes things with an eye to doing those things well and correctly so that they stand the test of time. As he gets the tasks ticked off, there is less and less to do, so we can consider moving farther away from the work.

Tim found the retirement property on his own. We were at my sister's house and he went walking. And he noticed a derelict little property, over grown, ramshackle house, junk everywhere. Much of the ground was swamp from the flooding of a batch of very busy beavers. But he saw a place that would be good for deer hunting, a place for a large garden, something with its own producing gas well (free heat), sewage, water, electric already run to the site. 

(Damn beaver dams! They already have another one started.) 


But he saw that property and he wanted that property because he saw what could be instead of what was. He was desperate with the wanting of it, and bought the 10 acre parcel. 

We just got the garage built. It needs the batten boards finished, but it is done. 


Next on the list was my green house. It is too late in the season to get much use from it this year, but I am quite excited about it. The best part of it is that it is pretty much free. 

We used the dump truck to drag an 8 x 8 deck into place. The previous owners had a modular home with back and front decks, well built. The modular home was repossessed (long before we got the land) for non-payment. The decks were pushed out of the way and left behind. 

We pulled that deck up, and leveled it right close to the garage. Since we plan to collect the run off in a rain barrel to supply water to the green house, it needed to be not so far away. 

We have a nice pile of hemlock 2 x 4s from building the garage. Those will be used to frame in the four walls. On the south end of the wall, we have a set of sliding glass doors from a renovation. They were in good shape but did not 'fit' the place they were in. They were just too wide, and we needed the wall space in a very small kitchen. So we removed and replaced them with sliders that were narrower. 

On the east, west and north side, we've got 15 storm windows that came with a house that we bought. The storms are in perfect shape and probably have not been used in 40 years. The windows that they protected are long gone, replaced by energy efficient double paned windows. The previous owner stacked them neatly in the dry basement with no idea what to do with them. We bought the house probably 13 years ago, and immediately thought 'greenhouse!' when we saw them. The wood frames are perfect, and painted white. We will pull out 9 of them and haul them down next weekend. 

The roof will be a 3/12 pitch. (late edit: now a 9/12 pitch) Long ago, Tim found a pile of poly carbonate greenhouse material, left over from a greenhouse build evidently, 5 sheets of it, still wrapped in their protective film for $20. They are normally $45 a sheet, so he snapped those up like nobody's business. 

All this stuff has been waiting patiently to be built, and now it is finally happening. 

I am very excited. Will post pictures when it is done. It will take a couple of weeks because we can only work on our project on weekends. 

In the mean time, I remembered. 

For Joanne



This is the table that we have stored away from his mother's house. It has two leaves that pull out from the sides, and a drawer beneath. I guess the pattern top is not exactly the same as yours. 

For Northsider


A very bad picture of a very old truck. It is a 1981 Chevy Sierra and Tim does love his truck. I was the one who did not love it enough to stand in a windstorm and protect it from harm. Instead, I placidly sat inside folding laundry, waiting for things to blow over. Which they did. 

Afraid I don't have a photo of our work horse, the dump truck. I will try to think to get one for you. 

14 comments:

  1. Great picture of Tim's Chevy. It sounds like you've got a great set up there. I agree with Tim you can never have enough sheds and maybe a polytunnel or two?

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  2. LOL. I always say this to Tim: If I were a clothes horse and told him that I needed bigger closets, he'd tell me firmly that I needed to be getting rid of stuff. However, it seems to be quite a bit different when it comes to the stuff of menfolk. Although I really should reserve all discussion, since a lot of the stuff for the new house is my finds.

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  3. I am impressed by the size of your garage. Our new bungalow would easily fit inside!

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  4. It is 24 x 24. It has to be big enough for the tractors on one side. The other side will have a concrete pad poured so that Tim can work on his vehicles comfortably.

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  5. I love the table and started my marriage with one like that. The pull out leaves were so handy and easy to store. Being a young bride I thought I needed a new table a few years later, silly me, I would now love to have it back. I have an old burcher block that I will need to sell if I move to a smaller house. Living alone comes with making choices you don't always want to.

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  6. Tim needs to take up trapping. Our state pays a bounty for beaver tails.

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  7. How satisfying to build things by hand - to leave a tangible mark on the houses and places we live in. My eldest son is an architect and I envy the physicality of what he will achieve - my career was all fluff and nonsense really; corporate stuff that's simultaneously important and yet not real at all... My writing will last longer, or at least that's what I hope.

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  8. We have a greenhouse on the farm but it is too far to tend with nobody there on a daily basis. I've promised my wife I would build one here at the house just as soon as I got my shop built and she hasn't let me build my shop yet so we'll see. Perhaps one of these days.

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  9. I have been patiently waiting for over 10 years. Waiting builds character. It is why I am such a character.

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  10. I've only recently learnt about beavers and dams. It seems they just loathe running water. The greenhouse sounds like it will be a substantial creation.

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  11. Not the same but mighty close. You have wooden legs, mine are bent aluminum. No matter, it's a fine table. It will see you through retirement very well, and then folks may fight for it.

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  12. LOL, Joanne. My kids will NOT fight for it, to be sure. Andrew, beavers are an awful problem. They really had probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the property underwater. We have reclaimed it. They have not surrendered, however. My nephew is a trapper. Tim and I don't have the heart for it. We do take care of the problem. By 'we', I mean 'he' and I ask no questions, Kelly.

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  13. It's great when people have a hobby (if I may all it that) that works to enhance their lives. In a sense all hobbies do that, but some give back more.

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  14. I have looked at porcelain tables like yours on the Internet. I want one so badly, and since we're in a trailer house, it would fit in my kitchen better than anything. Alas, I've fallen in love with something I'll never be able to afford, because it's an antique.

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