Joel's Secret Lair, Final Edition

I hear that you're building
Your little house
Deep in the desert...
You're living for nothing now
I hope you're keeping
Some kind of record...
Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

The shell of Joel's Secret Lair was actually supposed to have been complete before winter, but last year sort of went to hell. At some point you need to just stop feeling guilty about what you're not going to accomplish and say, screw it.

But the weather is getting intermittently non-miserable, and it's time to start getting serious. This morning broke cloudy, windy and cold. But then it took one of its weird turns and - for a space of about three hours - turned t-shirt gorgeous. Now, of course, it's blowing half a gale. But that window of nice gave me a chance to deliver the footer forms I'd loaded in the trailer yesterday. Or so I thought.


I'd already noted that over the winter a good bit of the rough trench I dug last fall had filled in. I'm going to need to work on a dike for the little gully I thought was sufficient to keep water and mud from running into my site, because...well, because it's less sufficient than I thought.

It may not look like much now, just a tiny little rectangle of trench. But before too awfully long there'll be a little stucco cabin on this site, if I just stay with it.




Yeah, they're a lot of help. But at least they find a shady tree and enjoy the change of scene, staying out of my way. I needed to dig out the mud and stuff that had partially filled in my trench, plus there was one corner I didn't finish before because I ran into a bunch of rocks. Today I finished the rough trench and hauled in the 2x12s for the forms.



The plan was to carry the lumber down the hill to the site, but by the time I finished with those @#$! rocks I felt like I was doing good just to get them out of the trailer and stacked. So there's only two or three at the site. These are some of the recycled 2x12s that are too short or too damaged to serve as floor joists. Perfect for concrete forms.


Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!

Actually, a road would be nice. It's part of the plan, but for now I'm shlepping materials down the hill or through the wash. That's going to get old, especially since I need about two pallets of concrete bags. A driveway may move its way up the list of priorities.

Updates to follow.