April 2009 – Into the Woods

Shellac

Mixing my shellac sample

First, I apologize for not having yet posted interior photos. I’ve been really busy trying to keep the interior work moving while also getting some garden going. Also, it seems that every time I get the house cleaned and tidy, we mess it up again. The current clutter is for the installation of the kitchen cabinets. Anyway, I’ll have photos as soon as I come up for air.

It’s daunting to see how much wood I have to finish — floors, doors, trim, stairs. There probably is more than 2,000 square feet of wood to finish. I’ve put a good bit of time, anguish, and research into what to use. I have never liked the polyurethane finishes. It’s just a skin of plastic that doesn’t soak into or nourish the wood. After asking a number of people how floors like mine would have been finished in 1935, I came to understand that the answer was almost certainly shellac. Shellac is a natural resin made by a tropical insect. And what goes on after several coats of shellac is old-fashioned Johnson’s Paste Wax.

I ordered a sample of some “button” shellac on line from the Shellac Shack. It’s a lower-cost shellac, with a reddish color that I think will work well for pine. I started mixing the shellac tonight, and I plan to do some tests tomorrow. If I like the results, that’s what I’ll use. Premium shellac, by the way, costs about $20 a pound, and for jobs like floors two pounds of shellac would be mixed with a gallon of denatured alcohol. The shellac I’m planning to use is a grade that fine furniture makers probably would scorn. I would not be able to afford furniture-grade shellac for floors and doors.

The Wikipedia article on shellac describes the source of shellac and how it’s used. Says the article, “These modern chemicals, while some come closer than others, can never completely replicate the warm, inviting glow that shellac lends to wood. ‘Wax over shellac’ (an application of buffed-on paste wax over several coats of shellac) is often regarded as the most beautiful finish for hardwood floors.”

How to live to be a hundred

Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini [Times of London]

Everyone should read this remarkable interview with Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, who is now 100 years old, and who won a Nobel Prize in 1986 for her research on the brain.

“The secret of life is to keep thinking. And to stop thinking about ourselves. That’s the only message I have.”

Update: rural internet access

My internet antenna. It’s a 12-inch omnidirectional antenna. The fencing is a quick-and-dirty ground plane.

Last year I started using Alltel’s EVDO wireless system for internet access. I had a rough start with slow speeds, but after some nerdly noodling the system settled down and was pretty reliable, with typical download speeds of 500 kbps and typical upload speeds of about 90 kbps. This is not as fast as DSL, but here in rural America where we don’t have DSL, that was a pretty good speed.

Then, about a week ago, my speeds suddenly dropped from EVDO speeds to what is called “1x” speed — 130 kbps down and 40 or so kbps up. Very bad. When I called Alltel tech support, the tech told me that I had almost certainly been roaming to a Sprint tower for all those months, and that, because of the Verizon merger with Alltel, the roaming agreement with Sprint had ended. Now, he said, I would have to connect with an Alltel tower or a Verizon tower. All Alltel towers support 1x, but not all of them support EVDO.

On Sunday, tired of working on the new house, I decided to do some nerd work. I put a directional EVDO antenna on a portable mast and turned it in all directions, searching for a (possibly distant) tower that would give me EVDO speeds. I could get a 1x signal by pointing in almost any direction. In some directions I could detect a faint (-117 dBm) EVDO signal, but the signal was too faint to connect to. Disappointed, I reconnected the omnidirectional antenna that I’ve been using for months. I found that I could get a slightly stronger 1x signal if I improved the antenna’s ground plane by putting some metal fencing under the antenna. Slight improvements in antenna efficiency never do any harm.

To my surprise, about an hour later, I found that I was getting EVDO speeds again, better than the speeds I had all winter. I have no idea what changed.

Without accurate and up to date information on exactly where different carriers’ towers are located, and what data services are supported on those towers, making EVDO work out in the sticks is guesswork and voodoo. Plus I’ve never had an opportunity to talk with anyone who truly understands how cellular technology works. The employees of cell phone companies know nothing beyond “what PRL are you using.” At this point I have no idea whether I’m connected to an Alltel tower or a Verizon tower, or where that tower is. One of my nerdly rules is, if it’s working good, leave it alone. The high speed connection has been up for 14 hours. I hope I can hold on to it.

People think I’m weird because my cell phone (a Motorola M800 bag phone) weighs 10 pounds, and my data card (a Kyocera KPC680) has an outdoor antenna. But, here in the sticks, I would never consider buying a cell phone or a data device that can’t be connected to a proper outdoor antenna. The built-in antennas are pathetic and work well only when they’re close to a cellular tower.

.82 Mb/s = 820 kbps. That would be a decent speed on DSL, and it’s a great speed for rural EVDO.

Chicken house move-in day

The chickens pose for a picture shortly after moving into their new house, before they had a chance to dirty it up.

The chickens moved into their new house today. They’re now 12 days old. They’ve spent the last week living in a box upstairs in my unfinished house, where they got in the way of all the work that was going on this week. Now that they’re older and the weather is a bit warmer, I’ve moved them into their new chicken house. They still have their heat lamp for cold nights.

My brother built the chicken house. We considered a number of designs for backyard chickenhouses, but we liked the house-on-stilts design the best. It affords some extra protection from predators and easier access for human caretakers. There’s a screen around the bottom, and a door in the floor of the chicken house. There will be ramp stairs between the two levels soon.

I’m still thinking about security from predators. I may put a run of electric-fence wire around the base of the chicken house and have a timer turn it on from dusk until dawn.

The plywood panel in the front is temporary, covering the spot where the nests will be. The nests will extend out from the front of the chicken house, with egg-robbing doors on the outside.

Trim work

The gothic window in the upstairs bedroom, newly trimmed. I haven’t made a decision yet on what kind of finish to use on the floors and woodwork. Shellac, probably.

A lot’s been happening this week, and I haven’t had time to post photos. Also, the house is cluttered right now with saws, tools, ladders, and wood scraps. By Monday or Tuesday, the work should be finished on the wood trim work, as well as the stairs and balcony rails. The bathroom floors also remain to be done, though I have the materials for that. Lowe’s had a special on some marble tiles that I’ll use for the bathroom floor.

After the trim work is done, I’ll be in the home stretch. The remaining work will be installing the cabinets, the plumbing fixtures, and the electrical fixtures. Then I’ll have a huge amount of work to do finishing all that wood and painting all those walls and ceilings.

Chickens!

On Friday my mother and sister drove up to Stokes bringing me five baby chickens. The chickens were hatched the previous Monday. There are three barred rock hens and two golden comet hens. No roosters. Roosters cause too much noise and turmoil. I’m trying to learn more about barred rock and golden comet chickens, but they’re supposed to be hardy, friendly, and good layers of big brown eggs.

I have not had chickens since the 1970s. I’ve wanted chickens for a long time, so getting baby chickens is a big deal. My brother has built me a chicken house. A bit of work remains to be done on the chicken house, but as soon as that’s complete I’ll have photos. The chicken house is 4 feet square. It sits high off the ground on legs to help protect the chickens from predators. Right now it’s too cold for baby chickens outdoors anyway, so they’re temporarily housed in a box in the new house, with a heat light.

Neighbors have told me horror stories about the high risks to chickens around here from predators. There are coyotes, foxes, possums, raccoons and owls in the woods and hawks in the sky, not to mention dogs. I am still thinking about my chicken defenses. One neighbor says that defending the chicken house with electrified fence wire is the best solution. I may put up some electric fence and get double duty out of it to keep deer away from my vegetable beds.

Right now, I’m still nailing down my flooring, and that has kept me extremely busy. I’m almost done with the floor. Then I’ll be able to turn my attention to some other things, like chickens and the spring gardening work that needs to be done.

Here comes the electricity

My electric service cable will be buried, but first they had to bring the line over the road with a small post below my driveway. The post was installed today. A separate crew will appear soon to dig a 175-foot trench and bury the service line below my driveway.

I was not eager to have a power post on my side of the road, but at least it’s a small post, much smaller than the posts for the main line.

Nailing floor

One room finished — that’s a start.

I decided that, to save some money, nailing down my flooring was something I could do myself. The mitre saw seems relatively safe for an amateur, and the pneumatic nail gun really does the job. So my brother got me started on Monday. If I stay at it (not that I have any choice), I may be done in about a week.

This is white pine. I’ll give it a natural finish. I decided not to stain it. The wood finishing work is two or three weeks off.

Big piles of flooring = a long way to go.

Interior doors

At the plant, just finished, invoice waiting

I’ve tried to stick with honest, traditional materials for the house, inside and out. Modern building codes, of course, override some choices. For example, my exterior windows and doors are modern on the outside (high efficiency double-pane glass, aluminum clad) but traditional on the inside (unfinished pine). For my interior doors, I don’t think I could have settled for anything less than old-fashioned, solid wood, paneled doors, even though they’re humble pine.

My brother directed me to a place in East Bend (near the Yadkin River) that sells salvage paneled doors, assembled to order, at about half the cost of similar doors at the local builder’s supply companies. If the doors have flaws, I can’t see them. Anyway, I ordered my interior doors two weeks ago, and they called today to say that they’re ready. Here’s a photo of one of the smaller doors, a closet door. The other seven doors are stacked behind it.

I also ordered my flooring today. The flooring, too, is humble and honest — tongue and groove air-dried pine. I’ll have more photos soon. Mostly this week I’ve been making arrangements for the interior finish work. I’m in the home stretch.

What the boom did to Ireland

New York Times: Dingle town and Dingle harbor

The New York Times on-line edition has a little essay this morning on what the boom did to Ireland. It left the countryside littered with tacky little houses that no one wants. There is a hidden cost in that, because it cost Ireland, and least in many places, its old Irish look.

Whatever the next boom turns out to be, let’s hope it isn’t something that eats land and lays down pavement.

Dingle town, by the way, is fairly unchanged by the boom, as is the awesome stretch of road over Mount Brandon.