Firewood, other wood, and projects

Posted on by under living aboard

firewood

Sorry it’s been so long to post here. Happy 2012 and good cheer to all!

The run down on what we’ve been doing–we visited our former house-mate and friend, America, in Portland for a week. We’ve missed her very much and haven’t seen her since we left Washington, DC in 2006. It was great to hang out with her and her husband Shamir there in Portland. We also enjoyed the drive up and back–it was green, wet, and just very pretty.

We purchased new tires for Wesley while there (no sales tax and better pricing) so upon our return to San Francisco Bay area, David changed out a clunking ball joint and then we took the car to an alignment shop. On the drive back to the boat, I saw a nice little cabinet shop in Redwood City. I immediately thought of the wonderful piles of firewood (mahogany offcuts we had in San Diego from our huge boat planking project) and how those are pretty much gone now. I have stashed about a week’s worth of mahogany, oak, and other hardwoods under the floorboards. We’ve been using the kerosene heat and cooking stove mostly since I’m stingy with the wood these days. So, we stopped in the cabinet shop and the very nice fellow manning the desk did give us their hardwood offcuts. Some very kind fellows in the back also brought us a bit more as we were loading. Nice people. We shared the new little firewood stash with friends Jackie and Mark since they’ve been primarily using wood heat on their boat lately. I hope the cabinet shop will be a good source of wood for both boats in the future as well.

As I walked into the shop, I was immediately transported to three different places: first, the shop of a wonderful wood re-finisher in Corpus Christi, Texas. He taught me how to clean up the finish on David’s grandmother’s bedroom furniture and he refinished several pieces of furniture for us while David was a flight instructor stationed in nearby Kingsville. That refinisher also had some lovely cherry shield back chairs that I really coveted. They belonged to a customer who had the refinishing shop strip them and then never returned to pick them up–but the nice man couldn’t bring himself to sell them because he worried that the own must have good reason for not returning for such nice chairs and would eventually come back. The chairs remained in the shop for the 3 years we lived in Texas. The Redwood City shop had a similar set of chairs sitting in the front room. The second place I was mentally transported to was….home in Washington, DC. Our workshop was so very nice there–the cabinet saw, planer, dust collection system…oh…so good for projects…and so many projects we had there in our house! And, finally, I thought about San Diego and the awesome tools we had access to at the North Island wood working shop as well as at the boat yard. Oh, yes, and our still huge stash in San Diego of Sapele and AYC for completing Mahdee’s interior!

Seeing all that cabinet work going on and the refinishing projects…makes me realize that I’ll be really happy once we’ve settled into the Bay area for a bit and we can outfit another workshop, bring our woods North from San Diego and start doing projects again. David is itching to build our main saloon table. Of course, the problem there is that we actually have the lovely large pieces of Sapele for that project on the boat! Just not all the tools…

More of “Three Things”

Posted on by under interior, Weather, wildlife

Remember the three things (link) are: pretty things, projects, and howling winds?

Yesterday I realized that one of the reasons I’m really enjoying this particularly great harbor is that every single time I come and go from the boat or look outside I see something–big or small–that makes me smile. It could be an otter or seal swimming by, a Snowy Egret fishing through the shallows at low tide or a cute cluster of Grebe hanging out by the transom or yet another dive bombing Brown Pelican. There’s always something alive and entertaining.

About the projects? Ah, well, I’m making cushions for both the main saloon and chart house seating. No more sitting on camping foam pads. I located an awesome deal on 2″ latex foam mattress toppers (Walmart) to be cut and stacked into 4″ thick seating. So, yesterday found me in the marina parking lot on the pavement behind the car with my bread knife sawing 19″ wide strips from the queen sized mattress toppers. There is no place on the boat big enough and perfectly flat to do the cutting here. I’m reusing the coverings the latex came with (and nice zippers too) so we can sit on the foam but today I’m ordering the fabric I need to upholster the seating. Hopeful that will arrive next week.

And the howling winds? Well, I do need another wind-in-the-rigging story–we haven’t had many of those lately. Yesterday, as I was wielding my bread knife in the parking lot, the harbor master stopped by to say “hi” and share the information that the Coast Guard had called to let him know that the high winds coming from the Nevada desert will include gusts that may reach 70 knots–so batten everything down. Of course, the NOAA forecast doesn’t say that. Go figure. There is a gale blowing outside the Bay and a small craft advisory inside of it, though. Anyway, we used the winds as an excuse to either tie things down or clear them from the deck. Today, I hear that sound of wind in the rigging. Sounds like low to mid 20 knot range at the highest but winds are supposed to increase this evening. So maybe more howling to be had tonight–and therein a story.

December 2 update: No wind story this time. No real howling, just a little whistling…

CG

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