New Life in the Woods

In every way I am getting closer and closer to that shower.

I got the last bit of scaffolding up today, ripped off a bunch of siding, and exposed most of the rest of the old copper pipes. Of course, everything took 5 times longer than I thought it would. Getting that last bit of scaffolding up was tough. I didn’t really have a ladder tall enough to reach the back of the house where I needed to attach the horizontal support, but there are a couple big saw horses under the cabin, and I piled some thick pieces of wood on top of one until I could stand high enough to screw in the support. Then I had to reinforce a 12 foot long plank to bridge the gap. Once I had the siding torn off, I found that there was another layer of plywood underneath that I had to cut through to expose the pipes. It is gonna be fun to put back together… not.

And, big surprise! Almost every section of pipe, between each set of studs, had a split or break in it. These pipes were really rotten! Just before these pictures were taken I smashed my thumb pretty good nailing up the insulation to get it out of the way. I know I said (back before I actually moved up here) that I was looking forward to the cold, roughing it, and skinning my knuckles (or something like that) while doing the repairs. And I seem to have an assortment of 5-10 cuts, bruises, burns, gouges, scrapes, and splinters at any given time. Whee! But it does get old after a while. I put down my tools, cleaned up a bit and went into town for plumbing supplies.

After spending pretty much all of the $150 that Mark gave me (that he owed to Susan) I bought a hamburger (I felt like spoiling myself a little) and came back. Tomorrow I should easily (ha!) be able to get the rest of the siding and/or plywood off, cut out the old copper pipes, and replace them with the new plastic pipes and fittings. Luckily I have some metal cutting blades for my jigsaw, so it should be a snap to cut out the old pipes in short sections and pull them out of the walls. It would be a real pain if I had to do it all by hand with a hacksaw (which is what I originally envisioned) but with that new outlet working down there and my tools, it should go relatively quickly.

I also walked across the gorge and met one of my neighbors today — nice guy named Steve, who was cutting wood on his property to the South. He’s a big guy with a mostly grey, full beard, and he was wearing a hard hat and ear plugs — properly equipped for serious wood cutting. I had been hearing lots of cars on Dutchy Way lately, and when I heard his chainsaw today I wondered if maybe we had folks coming in to steal firewood, so I went to check it out. He seems like a nice guy and even offered to help out if I need it sometime. I said I’d do the same. On the way back, I noticed a hard frost on all the plants and leaves, as well as ice in the stream at the bottom of the ravine. I think my outdoor thermometer is lying to me, because it never read lower than about 36 degrees today (it says 35 now), and yet everything is icy. There was actually what looked like a dusting of snow on Dutcher Creek road, about 500 feet lower in elevation from the cabin, but it was sunny and clear up here today. Wierd.

So, another productive day, and, as usual, I still didn’t get any new pipe put in, but tomorrow for sure! Hahahahaha.