We needed a smoke house. We had some recycled OSB and 2x4s that had at one time been crates and so I slapped together a box figuring that the sheets were square, the cuts on the ends of the board were square, the box would be square. It made no sense to me when the shed roof went on and it just didn’t fit right.
“Weird,” I said to myself standing back to admire my work.
Later on, I would make the fire in the smoke house too hot and bake my fish right off their skins and onto the ground. I was twenty-five and definitely had not yet arrived.
Before building our first house, I did a little bit more reading and remember being completely blown away by the diagonal rule: the diagonal drawn from one corner to the far diagonal corner had to match the diagonal of the corresponding corners in order for the building to be truly square.
“Who was the genius that came up with this method,” I whispered to myself as I put my book down.
Out at the building site, I had placed a spike in the ground where I wanted my first corner, measured out the 33’4” to where the other corner would be, measured 16’ in a direction I thought was perpendicular, and worked my way around the perimeter of a rectangle that looked pretty “square” to me.
I dragged a tape from one diagonal corner to the next and then repeated the process for the other diagonal only to find out they were different by about six inches.
“What’s a half a foot between friends?” I mumbled to myself as I pulled a stake and moved it in the direction I thought would make the building square. I moved its friend the same distance and remeasured.
“How have I made it worse?” I sighed to myself.
I mentally and physically wrestled with those pins for the next forty-five minutes until the diagonals were within less than a eighth inch (close enough when using pilings as I would have to square it up with the sill logs later). Much mumbling and scratching of my head took place during that time. A couple of times I walked to the wrong corner and measured the same diagonal twice.
Perhaps I am a simple man, but there was something tough to picturing the actual shape in my head based off of the concrete measurements I took. I danced around the square gesturing with my hands, drawing in the dirt, and then by sheer luck and the will of God, it lined up.
Ten years later, and the square dance is continuing. My family, with the help of some good friends, just poured the pad for our garage.
“Build your garage first,” Dave pointed out, “and it will make the house build easier.”
He paused for effect.
“You just have to convince your wife that it is a good idea.”
Myra was on board from the very beginning and she jumped right into the conversation.
“I want the garage built first,” she emphasized.
Dave and his crew built a pad of gravel harvested from a borrow pit on our property. We checked it for square to assure the garage footprint would fit. Myra and I measured out where the forms would go and squared all the corners with stakes, then we built the forms, checking for square as we went adjusting how the short walls connected with the long walls.
 |
| I am blessed with good help... once she got the hang of it, she wouldn't let me run the compactor anymore. |
 |
| Dane putting down insulating rigid foam with his help. |
Barn raisings are still a thing in the rural communities, and Myra and I felt very blessed early on a Saturday morning when our neighbors and relatives showed up to start a long work day of pouring and smoothing cement.
 |
| Forms square, 4 inches of rigid foam, rebar in place for footings, two loops of pex for infloor heat, wire mesh... ready for the pour. |
The pour itself only took a couple of hours, but the smoothing of the concrete took the entire day and involved a lot of kneeling on hardening concrete. The crew just kept coming back.
“I think this is my last time up here today,” Dave repeated the phrase he had been using each trip up. It just became his greeting each time. “I think you guys have it from here.”
I was not surprised when he was the first one back to the site when I arrived the next time to continue trowel work.
 |
| "Uncle" Dave Cunningham troweling for "his last time that day." |
Thanks to that group of friends, the concrete set up beautifully, smooth, level, and pretty much square. Later, I laid out my lines for the sill plates and assured that the corners were again correct. The dance was taking less and less time. I got ready to snap my lines and then remembered that I needed to set the lines back an extra inch to make up for the cdx I was using to sheath the walls.
I danced a little more, changing the location of the corners to make up for the sheathing. Myra and I each held a different end to the chalk line and snapped out the marking that would allow us to put down straight, square walls.
Bub then hijacked the process and had me making purple chalk lines on a sheet of plywood she had claimed for her chalk art project.
We drilled all the holes for the sill plates and spent two days getting them all into place. The level said we were good to go from that point, and measuring for square was only done for the sake of saying we did it.
“We’re off by ¾ inch,” I yelled from my corner.
“Is that close enough?” Myra asked.
“No.”
We jimmied the corners around and found the front wall was not quite on its line.
“Half inch,” I said.
“That’s better,” Myra consoled.
It was, and with the light fading, it would have to be good enough for that day, but at home I rolled in bed all night trying to find that half inch. I watched in my head as the walls went up and the sheathing didn’t fit quite right, and my dreams only got worse as I worked my way through putting the roof on.
“We’ll pull each plate, and make sure each one is correct a wall at a time,” I greeted Myra as she walked down the stairs rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“Coffee,” she mumbled.
When we got back up to the site after work, I pulled the east wall plate and found it was not at the line like it should have been. A half hour later after drilling out the holes more to give the wiggle room necessary, and bolting them back down, we remeasured.
“It’s an inch off now,” I frustratingly shook my head.
As I pulled the west side plate, the chalk line looked a little funny. We had held the line at the new adjusted corner mark on one side, and had held it on the old corner mark on the other side. We had chalked out a diagonal line.
45 minutes later and I was truly doing the square dance as the diagonals were exactly the same.
“Man, this building will be up in no time,” I promised Myra as she grinned at her crazy husband.
No comments:
Post a Comment