March was still pretty much a cold month. A couple few snows and a rainy day or two, otherwise it was bluebird days but certainly crisp outside.
Now when I got here I had a down tree over all three "driveways." Dead and down beetle killed trees.
The phone company pushed one tree out of the road and cleared one long drive they could lay line under. That was just fooking huge of them to do that. I got a full day of backhoe use for free which would equal (I'd guess) about 8 hours at $150.00 per hour. You do the math. I'm quite sure they will get their money back in the long run. So...we're able to actually drive right up to the house when they're done.
The second tree is blocking a small drive that's a little further from the house but a less severe slope to navigate. That tree gets cut to fire wood first, then the pushed tree, then the last tree blocking the route back out to the road. It's kinda a loop thing ya know?
In the midst of all this damn wood cutting, my neighbor Tom comes and tells me that a front is coming in and snow tonight.
What? I looked up and there isn't a cloud to be seen! He was adamant.
We drove the 35 or 50 or so miles to town (Inyokern) to a place named Herb's Hardware.
I haven't been to a real hardware store in quite sometime. The guy has everything! I mean everything! I could get lost in there for a couple of days! Isles crammed too close together, girls working the cash register who drop the money taking and actually know how to fit different gas line fittings together to make what you need, hay, horse, chicken, duck feed at your finger tips, recycled benches and desks from other peoples failed ventures, rolls of this, sheets of that, lumber, nuts and bolts, tools, etc. I just loved this place.
I ask if the guy has rolled plastic sheeting. Old Herb himself walks me back to a small area, points and turns me loose, disappears.
I come up with a 20' X 30' heavy plastic tarp (ala Harbor Freight) that will perfectly cover the living room roof. One piece, no seams. The bedroom will remain uncovered and unprotected as will the rest of the house. I can't even open the door to the bedroom because years of rain, snow, and ice have warped the floor too badly for the door to open. Fine by me. The rest of the house is simply a wood framed roof over a "mobile home." The mobile home part is still tight even if the wood roof over it isn't so I am not going to worry about it. It'll stay dry enough.
Roof on!
Then it actually did snow. Got about 6" stayed dry, have continued to stay dry!
So...onto other things! During all this wood cutting and trying to stay warm and dry, Tomtheneighbor keeps checking out all the junk laying around here. I know he wants it.
One afternoon, he walks over and tells me that his neighbor has a 45 or 50 foot single wide that he wants off his property. No charge, just get it gone.
I ask Tom what he thinks it might cost to move it here? 500-700 bucks is the reply. Tom has a dozer, backhoe, etc. I know where this is going. I tell him I'll think about it.
Now my old man had a nifty little 12 or 14 foot little travel trailer. My buds used to spend the night in it when they visited.
My original thought was to move my shop into a very small little storage shack on the premises. Once I got up there and saw just how small that shack was, I knew I was in for trouble. It was SMALL! A 50' mobile home gutted and refitted would be much easier to make happen...except for the 500-700 cost of putting it on the property...make my thinking cap go to work I tells myself...
I decided I would offer the travel trailer to Tom as partial payment. He was agreeable! Fook YES!
I asked him if he was interested in any of the crap my old man left lying around the place...this was going to happen!
My old man (who happened to be a much better man than I) was a welder by trade and was into steel decking and sheet metal for his source of income. I don't think my old man ever through away a single piece of metal. Anyway, there was quite a bit of metal decking laying around. Sheets of very heavy gauge roughly 30"X 30' pieces. All this (and much more) was buried under a collapsed shed that had been destroyed by snow and ice 20 years earlier. I never had any real reason to clean it up until now.
Tom indicated he might be interested in the trailer and decking as part of the cost of moving the singlewide over here. I indicated that I would be interested IF there was NO out of pocket expense to me. He mentions he can't see everything that's under the collapsed roof. I mention that neither could I. I told him that if he was willing to gamble a little backhoe time and clear the roof off, I would be willing to gamble on what might be under the pile of lumber.
So a deal is struck!
Next morning, Tom pushes his hoe up one of the drives and clears all the sagebrush out of it. He swings the machine around and in about two or three swipes of the bucket, the roof is pushed to one side and all the junk is more or less exposed.I tell Tom I'm going to need a day or two to clear all the stuff out of the down and dead shed. Where the shed is, is right where I want to put the new "shop." After the roof is cleared off he's hmming and humming...I ask him if he thinks it's still worthwhile on his end. He tells me the trailer will more than cover the moving and the steel will buy me about half of a new roof.
DEAL!
We hook up the old travel trailer to his truck, yank it out of the dirt and move it to his place. Then we hook up a trailer of his loaded with half of my new roof and toe it over to my place. Unload it, and then load up all of the old man's decking and haul it back to his place. That was a full damn day brothers! I don't know how my old man did that for 35 or so years everydamnday. Backbreaking!
So...since I had gotten here, I had started to clean the place up. Huge piles of pine needles and cones, scraps of roofing the wind had blown off the roof, pieces of, well, just junk, loaded onto the trailer to be hauled off to the dump, A 1950's vintage travel trailer and tons of scrap metal that Tom will put to some use removed. And in return, I get a 50 foot shop, a pad cut for it, driveways cleared, AND the shop actually moved over here! I'm ecstactic!
Moving day!
Drive over to the new "shop" and get it hooked up and ready to yank over here.
So we get started on it. Pull it out from between a couple or 4 trees and try and swing it around. Wham-o! 3 popped and quite flat tires...shit.
Amazingly...within about 20 minutes spare tires and rims are found and mounted back on the shop. and off we go again!
The shop leaves the guys gate and enters the paved road. She's your problem now! That from the guy whois looking after the "previous" owner's property.
We get her moved to my road and ready to push onto the pad.
Now going up the hill was smooth as butter until...we try and squeeze between a tree and the shed that was going to be the shop.
It didn't do too well. Someone who was supposed to be watching one side of the trailer wasn't and a tree just ripped a window and siding right off the damn thing. Trashed.
I ended up cutting the tree down and was quite unhappy about it.
Got past it, over it and time to push the shop down into it's spot...
The back hoe is out of the picture now on the right. Tom's got to push the ass end down and around this tree and swing it into the pad he cut. That's about 6" of clearance at that tree. Things are ripped all to hell now and I'll just deal with whatever damage is done from here on out.
No, it's not easy moving a new shop onto it's pad AND dealing with Bonniethedog's obsession with the frisbee, but it's in it's final resting place waiting to be demo'ed and leveled.
The mean machine crew...Tom (L) Mike(R) and Jason (C). The spared shack/shed right and the cut down tree left.
Next....demo-ing and leveling...
Oh by leveling I don't mean reducing the shop to rubble ya know?
OK...Trying to catch up on two months or so of stuff makes for damn lengthy posts. I'll try and do better and make posts shorter and more frequent...
Love,
Mike
YES.
ReplyDeleteI love it when a plan comes together.
I'm pullin for you man.