Wooden fruits of my labors

Well, that date has arrived -- July 11th -- that the construction company supposedly has ''posession'' of our property next door, where they're building our house. Thus, we're supposed to stay off (unless we get permission), for liability purposes: if we sprain an ankle, it's on their insurance.

Construction is supposed to start within four weeks.

I managed to finish up piling and protecting the various stashes of wood from the property. Being a mostly-desert continent, lumber (or ''timber'', as it's called here), is surprisingly expensive -- at least, from the perspective of someone coming from Washington state in the U.S. As such, I hit a pretty good bonus of a motherlode.

My wife's grandfather was very much a collector, of the ''could come in handy'' variety. He used to move houses (jack them up; slide them onto a flatbed truck; relocate), and if useful bits were left behind (pipe, sinks, bits of wood), he'd take them, rather than let them go to the tip (i.e. ''the dump''). Thus, there was a big carport-like structure on the property that had LOADS of dimensional lumber piled up. The bottom layer was rotten, but the middle was mostly good, and the top was fine.

On top of this, I salvaged some of the beams (and roofing) from another shed that was the first ''cabin'' my wife's grandparents lived in: I'll eventually use this to build a potting shed for my wife.

There were also many, MANY chunks o' metal in this shed (car parts, pipes...), which my next-door brother-in-law (BrotherDave) saved for ''could come in handy'' purposes (he aspires to old car restoring, and has taken a welding class -- so this makes sense [see photo; one of two tanks o' metal, reasonably well sorted by shape).


(Since he's taken a welding class, and I'm interested in wood-working, we have a division of labor, whereby he stores most all of the metal scraps, and I save up most of the wood. But I do have a few metal chunks, including some rusty scythe blades, and a rusty drawknife blade that BrotherDave tossed my way. And there's the half-an-axle, with two large bolt holes in it, that I plan to use for an anvil: not for blacksmithing, but just for when I need to hammer flat something metal; see photo.)

And, prior to the demolition of the big shed (the two-room cabin where my wife lived for the first two(?) years of her life), I salvaged most of the (hardwood) floorboards; I'll clean them up and use them as a floating floor for our home office/library in the new house. BrotherDave and I also managed to salvage a few support beams from the big shed, after it was knocked down; these will be used for... well, something, eventually.

So: loads o' wood. :)

In preparation for this, I'd asked the bulldozer/
backhoe guy to move some of the dis-used, concrete-lined water tanks to the back left corner of our yard (plus one or two for BrotherDave, across the fence) for storage purposes. Each tank is roughly six foot diameter by six foot long (2m x 2m x 2m). The rear tank holds the longer pieces of wood (e.g. most of the floorboards); I had to put up the green awning to shield the ends that stick out; the green awning is at an angle, so it's visually confusing in the photo. The front tank holds the shorter lengths of timber: you can see the side, and the mouth has some tin roofing leaned against it, to prevent rain blowing in (yet still allow for air circulation). In the foreground are the thicker ''beams'', and various past and future salvaged fenceposts -- all under salvaged corrugated tin roofing. And, in the very foreground is a temporary fence I put up, to indicate to the builders ''Mine; Not Yours'' when they're cleaning up at the end of the construction process.

To illustrate, here's the tank with the shorter lengths of wood. I ''stickered'' the longer lengths with other shorter lengths, to allow for air circulation. The pink tips are part of The Lady's initials, earmarking the lumber from that layer for the potting shed project. The entire stack is held up by bricks, as a defense against the local termites (or ''white ants'', as they're called).

And, here's the rear view, from standing next to BrotherDave's tanks, shooting over the fence. It gives a better sense of the size of the tanks, and of the green awning relative to the ''long stuff'' tank. On top are a few metal pipes and rods that may come in handy; to the left is more salvaged corrugated tin roofing, for my wife's future potting shed. Under the side of the green awning that isn't covering the mouth of the tank -- and thus, out of the rain -- is where I've piled some miscellaneous metal pieces that I've found.

Treasures! I reckon by Australian standards we probably have over a thousand bucks worth of lumber here -- maybe closer to two thousand.

Another big ''thank you'' to The Lady's grandfather. I wish I could've met him -- kindred spirits in the salvaging and collecting department -- but he died when The Lady was in middle school (or high school?) -- long before I came on the scene. But, his son (Uncle Jak, lives two houses down) and his grandson (BrotherDave) carry on the tradition. As does the man who married his granddaughter: me. ;)


--GG