Nothing Personal...

Today, Brinn came home from a shopping excursion with an interesting story. On her way through town, she stopped at the super classy car wash place across the road from the hardware store (the same super classy place she faithfully visited whenever we needed to drop a bunch of those pesky quarters we were always tripping over into a hair and fingernail clogged, underpowered vacuum machine). There may have been a couple of half crushed, half empty juice boxes on the floor of the vehicle, perhaps a pulverized animal cracker or two; who knows, the point is she took advantage of the fact that the trash receptacle was, by some miracle, not billowing forth with car debris (you know the kind of stuff you always find when you clean your car, sticky pennies, that one old french fry, that super stout plastic spoon that came with your Frosty, that kind of stuff...). Maybe she should have waved the noisy, suckless hair tube around the car before she worked up the audacity to put a few things in the "customer only" trash can, but she didn't. She used the trash can, got back in the car and proceeded to leave (this is where the story starts). Almost as quickly as she had arrived, a man materialized in the driver side window, motioning for her to stop and roll the window down, which she did. The man then proceeded to inform her that the trash can was for paying customers only, not for [quote] "scumbags like her" [end quote].

Now, I saw a lot of Captain Planet cartoons as a kid, and I'm pretty sure Brinn hadn't backed a toxic waste truck up to the trash can; so... I don't think that guy really knew what he was talking about. I will say this however, some people get a little too personal when conducting their business. Sometimes this is really, really bad. Other times, it's maybe just a little bad, or not so bad at all. For instance, calling a frequent customer a scumbag? Maybe not so good. Giving a frequent customer a nickname and offering to special order and keep on hand that one odd item you're always looking for -number one reason for visiting your local, independently owned/operated hardware store-? Pretty good, pretty good indeed. So, next time you're humming through Buena Vista, VA, maybe looking for some ice cold refreshment, weighing the options of the soda machine in the super classy car wash's parking lot or the cooler just inside the front door of Buena Vista Hardware across the street, go with the hardware store. 95 cents for a 20oz Diet Pepsi, the nicknames are free.

Oh yeah, I've been out in the heat, the hot as blue blazes heat, building the baddest coop, run and fence combo you've ever seen. Have a look-see. It's going to New Jersey! The state!

Arches, walnut, handmade in the shade... actually, not in the shade.

The arches basically dictate where everything goes and how everything fits; so, what normally would have gone up  last (the trim), went up first. The top half of the walls and all the frame work for the roof had to be filled in from behind. If you've been with me for a while, you should know this is called working backwards.

This is Joel. He came out and spent the day working with me. At the fresh young age of 14, he's surprisingly experienced, capable and knowledgeable in the arts of spitballin', eyeballin', hackin' it, crackin' it and occasionally slackin' it (in the sanctioned 'chill zone', our 140 sq. ft. living room with the 25,000 BTU window AC unit pointed directly at the sofa).

After a brief, heat-induced flurry of confusion and discouragement regarding the best method for covering the arched roof, I returned to my original, awesome gameplan of wasting half of each expensive cedar shingle to combat the drastic effects of a curved surface on long, flat pieces of wood. In the cool of the evening, I came back to my senses and started ripping those babies in half.

Yes, I took another horrible night shot using the car headlights. Yes, Brinn accosted me, again, including a stern warning not to post this ugly picture which makes the coop look "crazy"; but I cannot help it. The arched roof is very cool.

I finally slapped together a jig, or a form. This way I can cut a pile of boards, stack em up and screw them together. Boom, a wall. Magic.

Yeah, that's a 100%, completely hand made from an oak log chicken tractor / run / wooden cagey thing. How is it tied to together? Long strips of of white oak wood fibers. I said 100%. (This one is really just a prototype, I've been playing around with different ways to build these).

I soak the splits in our canoe. In water, in our canoe.

Stay tuned to see how all this stuff turns out.

-F.W.