27/09: Artisan-in-training
So we’ve been upgrading a few windows ‘round the place, over the past few weeks.
This is the third bout of this activity since we’ve been here—and this is just a group of four smallish ones—of a very few left (this leaves, in total, one biggish thing in the back of the original fifties aluminum horrors, which, with any luck, will be finished in the spring).
We’ve been doing it in bits and starts, over years, as really good windows involve much cash. And as we couldn’t find a window contractor quite up to doing the interior trim quite like we wanted (my lovely wife wanted to recover and reuse the original aprons, and we wanted a particularly extremely narrow trim scheme), I’ve been doing that part. We’ve hired folk to actually put the units in, do the exterior wrap and trim, but they leave the opening rough inside. Then I come along, build and put in a windowsill, replace the (carefully removed well before the contractors come, also by me) apron, build a box out from the window to the plaster, repair/build up the plaster to said box, then do the final trim over that.
A process which may take several days, going real careful, making sure the carpentry is as tight to everything as I can possibly arrange, waiting for each coat of plaster to set up, making sure that plaster build up is perfectly seamless, making sure the trim is mitred in immaculately, so on. Between the first rough tape of plaster and subsequent thin ones there’ll be some sanding, and the last coat especially takes a bit of feathering—where you carefully blend the last ideally submillimeter-thin step of plaster to the wall. Getting that right is part of the art of it—done right, no one should be able to see where the rebuild begins…
There’s a certain joy in the artisanship of this—countersinking then hiding everything, getting that feathering immaculate, and even under the primer (white-tinted shellac, my favourite thing in the world for such interior work) they look gorgeous if I do say so myself, never mind what happens with the sharp contrast the finish paint adds…
And my daughter, watching me doing some of this, seems to catch on: this is interesting, even kinda fun. She asks: can I help? How do you do this?
So I explain, and on one, she’s done all the feathering, all the finish sanding over the tiny plugs hiding the finish nails in the trim…
And she’s done a gorgeous job, well up to standard. Under the shellac, it is seamless—as good as anything I could have done.
Artisan in training. If she’s okay with the noise of table and mitre saws, I may have her help with the carpentry on the next.
This is the third bout of this activity since we’ve been here—and this is just a group of four smallish ones—of a very few left (this leaves, in total, one biggish thing in the back of the original fifties aluminum horrors, which, with any luck, will be finished in the spring).
We’ve been doing it in bits and starts, over years, as really good windows involve much cash. And as we couldn’t find a window contractor quite up to doing the interior trim quite like we wanted (my lovely wife wanted to recover and reuse the original aprons, and we wanted a particularly extremely narrow trim scheme), I’ve been doing that part. We’ve hired folk to actually put the units in, do the exterior wrap and trim, but they leave the opening rough inside. Then I come along, build and put in a windowsill, replace the (carefully removed well before the contractors come, also by me) apron, build a box out from the window to the plaster, repair/build up the plaster to said box, then do the final trim over that.
A process which may take several days, going real careful, making sure the carpentry is as tight to everything as I can possibly arrange, waiting for each coat of plaster to set up, making sure that plaster build up is perfectly seamless, making sure the trim is mitred in immaculately, so on. Between the first rough tape of plaster and subsequent thin ones there’ll be some sanding, and the last coat especially takes a bit of feathering—where you carefully blend the last ideally submillimeter-thin step of plaster to the wall. Getting that right is part of the art of it—done right, no one should be able to see where the rebuild begins…
There’s a certain joy in the artisanship of this—countersinking then hiding everything, getting that feathering immaculate, and even under the primer (white-tinted shellac, my favourite thing in the world for such interior work) they look gorgeous if I do say so myself, never mind what happens with the sharp contrast the finish paint adds…
And my daughter, watching me doing some of this, seems to catch on: this is interesting, even kinda fun. She asks: can I help? How do you do this?
So I explain, and on one, she’s done all the feathering, all the finish sanding over the tiny plugs hiding the finish nails in the trim…
And she’s done a gorgeous job, well up to standard. Under the shellac, it is seamless—as good as anything I could have done.
Artisan in training. If she’s okay with the noise of table and mitre saws, I may have her help with the carpentry on the next.
07/09: Another day, another sport
(Well, you knew I was due…)
So we’ve been rock climbing a bit, lately…
Well, more wall-climbing. As it’s all been indoor so far.
It’s my daughter’s fault, mostly. She learned at this camp she’d gone to—being belayed up these three stories or so things. Came back looking for more stuff to climb, so we found a local gym. Between turns belaying, I got to eyeing the bouldering areas, thinking: huh, I could probably do that, now… Got no one to belay me on the higher stuff, but they’ve got walls some twelve or fifteen feet high you can go up and over, a lot with these crazy inverse slopes ‘n overhangs…
Used to have these issues with heights. Not so much a reasoned fear thing as an instinctive thing—vertigo from nowhere, when I got too close to too big a drop. Had sorta incrementally gotten over it over years, and it didn’t stop me from working up to three stories up on ladders, when necessary, but that kind of drop was never something I’d exactly go looking to hang out around… Used to be somethin’ of an obstacle, early in our marriage—my lovely wife had always liked climbing; it really wasn’t my thing.
Dunno quite what happened, but I guess I’m that much more over it, over the years. Been scrambling up the bouldering walls, when not spotting/belaying little ones. Body’s still a little doughy in places from the summer being a relatively sedentary season for me, and I do get that slight, weird sense of spinning sometimes too close to the edge of somethin’, especially going down, but it all seems manageable, now.
Our daughter, meanwhile, is formidable. Climbs anything, at absurd speeds. No fear whatsoever of falling into the rope while being belayed—it’s like, whatever, she’ll scramble up, slip off, swing out and back, grab whatever else is handy.
Spidergirl, that one.
So we’ve been rock climbing a bit, lately…
Well, more wall-climbing. As it’s all been indoor so far.
It’s my daughter’s fault, mostly. She learned at this camp she’d gone to—being belayed up these three stories or so things. Came back looking for more stuff to climb, so we found a local gym. Between turns belaying, I got to eyeing the bouldering areas, thinking: huh, I could probably do that, now… Got no one to belay me on the higher stuff, but they’ve got walls some twelve or fifteen feet high you can go up and over, a lot with these crazy inverse slopes ‘n overhangs…
Used to have these issues with heights. Not so much a reasoned fear thing as an instinctive thing—vertigo from nowhere, when I got too close to too big a drop. Had sorta incrementally gotten over it over years, and it didn’t stop me from working up to three stories up on ladders, when necessary, but that kind of drop was never something I’d exactly go looking to hang out around… Used to be somethin’ of an obstacle, early in our marriage—my lovely wife had always liked climbing; it really wasn’t my thing.
Dunno quite what happened, but I guess I’m that much more over it, over the years. Been scrambling up the bouldering walls, when not spotting/belaying little ones. Body’s still a little doughy in places from the summer being a relatively sedentary season for me, and I do get that slight, weird sense of spinning sometimes too close to the edge of somethin’, especially going down, but it all seems manageable, now.
Our daughter, meanwhile, is formidable. Climbs anything, at absurd speeds. No fear whatsoever of falling into the rope while being belayed—it’s like, whatever, she’ll scramble up, slip off, swing out and back, grab whatever else is handy.
Spidergirl, that one.
