My building buddy Nicolas & I are done for the season. We consider a dry Spring-Summer-dry Fall a season because in the world of architecture there are only two seasons- WINTER & CONSTRUCTION. I officially name this building season The Season of the Bent Nails. Since I didn't write about last building season I should let you know we called that season The Season of the Valley of the Stones. The season of the Valley of the Stones was the transportation of the foundation down a shallow incline, up a steep slope then across a mountain ridge. If I was to do this again- llamas and sherpas. It was the two of us. Its hard to convince anyone to do that kind of manual labor when it evolves 30 lbs of lifting our a half mile 30 times. My historically minded friend mentioned that the entry to Stalingrad was a rock. The city was built on a plain without a quarry & if you wanted to come into the city you needed to help build the city. Stalingrad offered protection & commerce, I just offer beer.
The Season of the Bent Nails was my attempt to repurpose building materials. Some amount of 65% of landfills are filled with building materials. My grand idea was to help the environment & my wallet but using salvaged materials. If I have one lesson to teach, salvaged wood is good, salvaged fasteners are not. I purchased a bucket of donated 16d nails from Habitat for Humanity. If it wasn't for the idea of carrying them back down I would of spread them in the parking lot of the ReStore. They either crumbled on the first stroke or the head snapped off. ONE OUT OF TWENTY NAILS WENT IN THE WOOD. At one point I started using my most vulgar German, chucking my favorite hammer into the woods & spent the next half hour looking for it, cooling down, while Nicolas continued on with the work...laughing the entire time.
