workin in a winter wonderland

Tis the season to be jolly... and we have reason to as we are getting going on our -fourth year in a row- wintertime home building project.  It's a smallish home out in the West Danby area of New york.  Easy to build -compared with other recent projects.

As I have said before, I like building in the winter.  The way I look at it, if I can't be cross country skiing, out playing hockey on the frozen pond or just gazing at snowy mountains across the valley from my cozy wood fired hot tub unfortunately I no longer have one, I can at least go to work out in the snow and cold.  Crazy right.  Well maybe, but seriously i have always been a lover of winter.  As i kid growing up in Seattle where snow was more of a treat than a regualr visitor, I used to stand at the front windows for what must have been hours looking to the sky for that first snow flake.  I'm not so different now tho i use the NOAA radar page to help know just when to look out the window.  These days as a father of two and breadwinner for the family, I must go to work on days I might rather be skiing, and although it has its unpleasant moments, working in the snow and cold does something for my mind and body that is hard to acheive in more normal work envirnoments.  Frankly I like the bracing wind on my face, the crunch of snow on the ground, the colbalt blue sky, the threat of snowfall in the air. 

Here in central New york Lake effect snow is always a possibility-bright and sunny one moment, a white-out the next, and back again.   Of course outdoor work goes a bit more slowly in the winter and one has to be more careful when climbing around on ice covered rafters and ladders, but when it come to feeling alive and well while at work, send me out in the winter weather. 
Okay its only December, we'll see how I feel come march.

Scherer home progresses

Summer is in full swing, and lately I'm just too busy to post much. Even so, here are few pictures of the new home we're building for/with Dan and Lisa Scherer out near Trumansburg.

Dan in the basement with the first floor frame above him.

nailing down the sub floor

GO Lisa!

"SIP wall panels going up

pictures windows on the south side of the house

second floor going up -so far all work completed on solar power, notice PV panel trailer in foreground.

then there was the rain...and more rain...

but things have been getting done, although somtimes you need a rope and pulley to make it all work especially with 180 pound 38 foot trusses-yikes.

and sometimes you just need a break in the shade to think it over.

next week the red steel roofing!

nice folks to work with --Dan and Lisa!

in a pinch, a cedar shim can serve you lunch

The other day while eating lunch at work I made an interesting discovery.

I had just reached the "yogurt stage" of lunch- that's what we jokingly refer to as, the wind up of lunch break, the point where if you have a yogurt for desert, you savor it lovingly before putting the tool belt back on... (perhaps ya had to be there)...Anyway, On this day, I didn't seem to have a plastic spoon in my lunch bucket to enjoy the fruity refresher I had before me. But this was not too unusual an event. And, when I am with out utensil, I often will grab an unused cedar shim from our supplies and carry on just fine ~ thank you very much . This time however, Rod, offered me his just used "greasy spoon" for the job. I accept thankfully, but notice that the spoon he had passed me was one I had lent him over a year earlier! How do I know this? Because it was a unique spoon that came from my son's second birthday party--- and he's three now! The spoon is red and has Lightning McQueen on it....not something just anyone has in their silverware drawer. When I pointed this out to Rod with an "ah ha!" he said, "well, how do you know for sure it's your spoon..." I said "c'mon Rod where else are you going to get a red plastic kid's spoon, with Lightning McQueen on it- He responded in his best kid voice,"Well, I like cars too you know!"

Of course it was just a silly, light moment on an otherwise mostly hard working jobsite, but it struck me later as telling about our closeness as a team and how well we work together...etc etc.

Okay, I guess you probably had to be there :')

eco friendly concrete floor staining and sealing

Recently in the process of staining a new concrete floor for clients in the trumansburg area, we had the opportunity to use a great new- new to us - green product, part of a line of eco friendly staining and sealing products that are sold under the brand name Eco-procote.   Soycrete "espresso" is the name of the stain we used on this new 1,000 square foot floor, the sealer was labled Acri-soy.  Both were completely benign to use with basically zero V.O.C.s and no acids. That's a big switch from what we have been using. Typically when staining a floor we are forced to protect ourselves from the acid meant to react with a the lime in the concrete chemically changing it's color as well as the volatile solvents in the wax and poly finishes.

Eco-Procote products get the job done with out these harmful ingredients, you can read about how on their website. As well, we found the Soycrete stain more forgiving to use than acid stains-- If you feel the color is to dark, you can actually wipe off the stain with a wet rag up to 6 hours after your initial application --or you can add more stain as you like once you have had some time to let the surface dry and consider the depth of color you have applied.

The Soy-crete stain, Acri-soy sealer, and Eco-Tuff -high traffic top coats were all very easy to apply and with out the noxious off gassing typical of floor finishes and sealers. The clients loved the finished product, and we loved the lack of exposure to potentially harmful materials. Check em out!

too hot to build

Like other outdoor work, Major league baseball, or farming for example, construction is a weather dependant endeavor.

And you'd think that all things being equal, summer would be the best time to build things, just as it seems like the best time to grow things, or play catch. Most would agree that whether your setting trusses 20' off the ground, or plowing a field for corn, it's pretty nice to work when it's 68 degrees and there are puffy white clouds drifting across a sharp blue sky.

Unfortunately in Ithaca, it's not 65 degrees very often, especially in the summer. In fact, it tends to go pretty quickly to 80 or 85, even in late May or early June, and there are frequent days when it pushes 90 or more. Keep in mind that as a carpenter you're often working without shade, and with east coast humidity doing it's part, by mid afternoon you're not making sense to your co-workers because you're working with a fever.

That's why when folks ask me if framing through winter (as I did the last two winters) "isn't it just awful...you know being out there in all that cold, wind and snow?" I reply, "actually no, in fact I prefer working in the cold of an Ithaca winter to slogging around through the dog days of summer.

I was considering this question another humid 92 degree afternoon as I stumbled around the work site in a weather induced fever, lifting material, climbing ladders creating my own heat wave, and I found myself longing for the kinder, biting cold of winter.

During early winter when high temps might reach only into the low 30s, being out in it seems pretty okay, a bit unpleasant at first, especially if there's a wind, but okay. Hey, you're not going to get frost bite, and you can always add another layer. Anyway, you gradually acclimate. As the winter progresses and temps continue to drop, you just go with it, commenting about how cold it is to the person on the other end of the 2 by 12, checking the radar for possible snow squalls before heading to work, and agreeing on a low temp cut off point (LTCOP) with your work mates for the following morning. That is, the forcasted high temperature at which you'll all just stay home. In early winter its 32 degrees, then a week later its 28. By January you're okay with working outdoors all day at 25 degrees, but you pick up a box of those magical hand warmers on the way to work just to be safe. As long as you keep moving your okay, so you take a short lunch break to avoid getting too cold while sitting. Gradually as the winter reaches its depths, you find you can tolerate 19 or 20 degrees with out much complaint and are willing to continue working with temps as low as 15 degrees, if there's not much wind.

None the less, winter does bring forth some days that are just too cold or too snowy to build, and on those days you're glad to stay home with your family and make soup or something. What I decided the other day is that we need the same allowance for the summer. Frankly, there are days each summer when it is just too damn hot to be out. Days where it takes a couple hours after getting home just to get your body temp back to normal and your brain restarted. Days when it would have been better to have gone to the lake with the kids. How does the saying go something about...mad dogs and English men?