The pile of fresh-cut scrap wood against the back deck smells good. Especially in the morning when smells are sharp and clean to begin with. What can be more promising than a pile of lumber set against a pinkish sunrise, splashed across the southeastern sky?
A man loves a project. When it involves wood, double that love. Wood passes every test known to mankind including looks, smell, feel and if you wanted to sink your teeth into it and see how it tasted, you could do that too.
We’re building a roof over our back deck. Unless I have somebody in my back pocket it is probably more accurate to say that Joel Darrah and his guys are building a roof and “we” as in Sue and I are along for the ride.
The deck faces east. When we moved in, there was a magnificent eastern redbud tree (Oklahoma’s state tree) in the backyard shielding the morning and midday sun but the tree died. We didn’t want it to die but it died anyway. Maybe the tree went to tree heaven so that the Dust Bowl generation, who were leaving us in droves at the time, would have a tree to sit under that reminded them of home.
In lieu of a sunshade, an awning or a new tree that might grow big enough for the next owners, we chose a roof. Tom Jannino sketched the plans and when I say sketched, it’s almost akin to a quarterback drawing a plan in the dirt. Tom talks about being pretty old-fashioned when it comes to these things. He can make it sound like he hands off the plans to the tech people after drawing it on his drafting table with a ruler, t-square, pencil and a compass, while wearing a vest and a green eyeshade.
We go way back, having raised kids together. That was a long time ago so it felt like old home week. Better to have an old home week before the old home is somebody else’s home and we’ve gone to another home.
***
There is no better day than the one when the wood is delivered. Beams, headers, posts, joists, fascia, four-by-eights, eight-by-12s and the sheets of oriented strand board. We’re talking wood, big wood, the kind of wood you drag people off the streets — friend or foe — in order to show and tell them about it.
“These two headers are 27 feet long and weigh about 400 pounds,” I said. “It will take a crane to lift them up.”
When you mention a crane —Jimmy’s Crane Service in this case — you are a serious man, with a serious project and some seriously big wood.
A few days later, I showed Thomas, our youngest, the stack, and when I pointed out the glulam beam (laminated and resistant to everything including King Kong and a volcano), I told him it weighed 600 pounds. Big wood was getting bigger and would soon dwarf and outweigh the General Sherman redwood.
Fresh lumber isn’t the only thing to like about a construction project. The parade of trucks out front, some with the trailers that hold ladders, saws, drills, extension cords and levels, everything but a flying buttress. Neighbors walk by impressed and wondering which bank you robbed or who died so you could afford this but also secretly hoping that you will soar way over budget like they did with their project.
One of construction’s most enjoyable features is the ballet and the sure-handedness of a crew that has worked together for a while and knows one another’s tendencies. There is flow and very little wasted motion.
It is the building equivalent of William’s Strunk Jr.'s rules of good writing:
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
With this sort of channeled necessity, the roof was framed in one day by a father and his two sons making it feel like an Amish barn raising and a construction miracle.
A roof changes things. A roof, open on three sides, blocks the sun and rain. What it cannot block is the smell of fresh wood and the promise of a sunrise in a southeastern sky.
The Link LonkFebruary 12, 2021 at 05:29AM
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HERB BENHAM: Zen and the art of sawdust - The Bakersfield Californian
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Herb
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