22nd October 2022
It was all hands to the deck, and that has nothing to do with the large ship sailing down the small lake with its load of gravel. It’s hooter made our dogs bark, I’m sure they weren’t sounding it just to piss the animals off but it did anyway.
No, we had to work to complete the dresser that was posted yesterday and sold straight away. The customer was due at 2.00pm and I had the top to fit and wax, plus scrape off loose paint from the sides of the drawers so that Kelli could paint them. It all went well, and it was ready in time.
I finished sanding the panels from a smokers table, with is a small wooden piece where smokers would stash their tobacco. We got it from Goodwill and was painted pink, a hideous colour and paint job, but all that has been removed. It was held together with two inch nails, so I knocked it apart and removed the nails. We managed to paint everything with just the reassembly to do tomorrow.
Kelli had a call from her friend Elaine asking for help to cut some plywood. She had a table saw in her barn but didn’t feel safe using it, so I was volunteered to help her.
I had seen many places around that had barns next to the houses, but I had no idea what people stored in them.
When we got to Elaine’s I found out. Everyone needs a 1956 Oldsmobile up on a ramp, enough ten by twos to build a house and enough odds and sods to keep a treasure Hunter busy for weeks.
In the middle of this chaos was the table saw, an old machine that had seen better days.
My job was to cut up various bits of plywood that she wanted to upholster.
Elaine had used the saw fairly recently, she had successfully cut the tip off one of her fingers still heavily bandaged. I felt faint, I’m not very good with saw injuries, it’s what I fear the most, I sometimes walk up in the night after dreaming of that happening to me.
Nervously I started to make the cuts, I had to keep moving the saw about to make the space to work in, not ideal, but the task was done with no more digits mixed in the sawdust.
Just as we were leaving the conversation got round to bending plywood. I talked about a potbelly table that I needed to finish.
It just so happened that there was a full sheet of bendy ply stuck in a rack, that I could have if I could get it down.
This meant moving a few pieces of roller track, another essential item to have in your barn.
Once these were out of the way the sheet was easy to remove.
Feeding it into the back of the truck was easier than I thought, because it was BENDY!
It meant that we would have to drive back home with the board resting on our heads, more an issue with me, but I’ve had to do that a few times before.
We said our goodbyes and for some reason Kelli got in the passenger side. There was a pause as realisation occurred, followed by uncontrollable laughter. That sorted, we drove home with the constant flapping of the ply on my head like a constant patting of approval.
We even managed a bike ride to the park. The late afternoon sun bounced of the water, a few boats taking advantage of the last mild days of autumn.
Another Lifetime to go 