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careful right-brain questions
Sunday, July 23 2006
I'd ordered 24 sheets of eight by four foot half inch drywall, and today I put up the last of those. The garage still requires about 16 to 18 additional sheets for completion, but I won't be ordering those for awhile. I'm at the point now where I can focus on the furnishings that go on the outside of the drywall, leaving vast swaths of ceiling and the remaining 20 feet of wall for later. Those furnishings will consist largely of a work bench on the west end of the shop, so I can finally have a place for my drill press and other table tools. I'll also be installing all or most of the old kitchen countertops (including the sink!) on the east end of the shop, if only to find a use for them. Their thick formica-clad particle-board-based planks would be very handy as work surfaces in a shop environment. For the workbench itself I'll be splitting a ten foot long spare garage opening header otherwise clogging up the the garage. It consists of two sistered two by twelves, both of them slightly longer than the ten foot two inches I need.
On this project I've been able to eat substantially into my drywall scrap collection, some of which came with the house and date back to its original construction in the mid-1990s. Most of what I have are tiny rectangles that I'll end up throwing away or large triangles, most of which date to the tricky geometric puzzle that was the teevee room (drywalled by a professional whose apparent method when dealing with non-right triangles was the ancient art of guestimation tempered with the dual philosophies of "'good enough' is fine" and "joint compound can erase any error"). I have some use for triangles in two corners where a sloping ceiling meet the walls, but I'll probably end up throwing out most of those as well.
It's amazing how quickly the day passes when you're working on a job like this. It has something to do with the careful right-brain questions that proceeds action. "I have these scraps here. What is the easiest way to fill in that part of the wall?" Before you know it, the sun has gone down, and you've barely touched that last cup of that second pot of coffee you've made that day. Then the next time you look at the clock, it's 12:30 AM. Where the fuck did your day go?
Today was the first time I'd heard the This American Life about Frank Sinatra. Two highlights included a description of a performance of the old Sinatra of the 1990s, singing as best he could with a failing voice, taking every error of his vocalization as an improvisational opportunity. I also loved Sarah Vowell's reading of her plea (written before his death) that Sinatra's inevitable broadcast obituary not conclude with the most obvious of his farewell songs, "My Way." My favorite of her lines was "Ixnay on the 'My Way'."
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