Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Putting a Damper on Things

Is it an oxymoron to say that I was excited to have a damper put on something?

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The brickyard was out of dampers and left them off the order when they delivered the bricks.  So, yesterday no brick work was done.  The dampers arrived today and the masons got right back to work.

 

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Have you ever wondered why dampers have adjustments?  I mean, after you open the damper and build a fire, are you really going to say, “Gee I think I’ll reach up there and open the damper a little more?” 

Maybe it’s an energy saving measure so that you can close it down a bit when the fire dies down.  But I still wouldn’t want to reach up through the smoke and grab onto a piece of cast iron that has been above the fire for an hour or two.  Would you?

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Anyway, I think there is a lot of appeal to being a mason. You get to play with building blocks, and with mud.

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Big, glorious, gloppy wheel barrows full of mud.

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And then you get to be all precise and get everything all trimmed up and level so that nobody knows what a mess you made.

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Meanwhile not to be outdone by the mason’s neatness, here’s Bill:

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Bill has been hanging around for about a week. 

He’s been hanging around the rafters, the ceiling joists, the floor joists, and everywhere else.  And while he hangs there, he pulls cable.

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Miles and miles of cable.

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Boxes of every color cable imaginable.

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There is so much cable here you can hardly swing a CAT (5 or 6).

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But see how it is all so neatly labeled? Soon it will all go into the home automation panel and each labeled cable will go just where it needs to for the alarm or the audio system or the computer network.

Meanwhile out front, the framers were back doing a little tidying themselves.  Check out the before:

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and after:

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They were putting up the cornice boards and the fascia.

 

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Everything was getting trimmed out and ready for the roofer.

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And speaking of trim,

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Builder Gary nailed up a few pieces of trim around the window and the corner so we could get a sense of scale.  The corner board looks kind of bulky on this short wall, but…

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taking in more of the house, it doesn’t seem so bad.

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I guess that’s how it is supposed to look.

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