The Tool Shed

To really explain how bent I am when it comes to having projects, our home is exhibit A. The project of projects for DIYers, a home can be an unending laundry list of projects, some looked for and most catching you with your pants down. When my wife and I started considering what we wanted in a home we set our criteria as most house-shoppers would: price, size, location, amenities, style, quality, and age were all considered as high priorities. I was also semi-conscious of another priority lurking just below the surface; potential for expansion and modification.

When we finally found the right home for us, it was indeed everything we had looked for and the potential was endless. Immediately there were tasks to be done such as paint over the sterile off-white walls and add some character, remove the neglected and overgrown multiple rows of hedges and shrubs, and fix a variety of other minor items. One thing severely lacking was any sort of storage area for outdoor tools. The house had neither shed nor garage nor any other sort of covered area so my first real project was to build a shed to house all of our newly acquired gardening and maintenance implements.

At one point in time, our lot was under the same ownership as our neighbor and the previous owner had decided to put a door in the middle of the fence that separated the two. By the time we moved, the key to the door had been long lost and the lots had been sold off individually. So what do you do with an eyesore door to nowhere? What a perfect place for a shed! Because our lot is so narrow, a pre-built wood shed would not fit so a custom one had to be made. Looking back, I wish I had spent a bit more time trying to source reusable or reclaimed materials but for a small, first project, I think I did okay. We picked up some old windows and door from the Rebuilding Center in Portland and I was able to take the remaining cedar siding and some old gutters from my parents' lake cabin they had recently finished. Another neighbor had a leftover downspout so I ended up just having to purchase new the framing lumber, sheathing, roofing, and hardware. I also put in some pegboard inside to help organize the space since it is a very small shed. Now our shovels and lawnchairs stay dry and mostly rust-free and we have a place to quickly toss the clutter into when we need a quick clean-up in the backyard. One of these days we'll get the garage built and we may no longer need the shed but for now it's very convenient.

Can You Have Enough Lawn Chairs?

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, we brought a lot of stuff back from Missoula when we moved my grandfather in-law. Included in the giant U-Haul were three 60's vintage metal lawn chairs that my wife wanted to restore and use. Apparently you cannot have too many lawn chairs because we were about to accumulate these as well. Like the Monarch stove, the chairs had sat outside for a long time and even though they were under a covered area, they were still quite rusty. Despite the rust they seemed to be mostly intact without any major damage so we tossed in them the back of the '66 and brought them home. Once we got them back, we toyed with the idea of brushing, scraping, and sanding them down ourselves but after taking a closer look we determined we would be better off having them sandblasted professionally. The hardware had rusted together so badly that the bolts would need to be drilled out and there were some holes in the legs that needed to be patched and I don't have a welder.
While looking for sandblasting shops I stumbled upon a website for a local powder-coating specialist. I hadn't considered the idea of powder-coating, thinking that we'd just shoot them with a couple layers of outdoor enamel, but after doing some research I thought this would be a much better option, especially since these chairs would be put back into service outdoors in the rainy Northwest. I called the vendor up who was somewhat surprised at the request (he typically did motorcycle parts) but agreed to take a look. We hauled the chairs over and for $300 he agreed to disassemble, sandblast, and powder coat all three. I thought it was steal. During the process, he did find one section of a leg that required some spot welding to reinforce the rust-eaten metal but when they were done they were beautiful. We put some rubber hose on the leg bottoms to save them from being scratched on the pavement in our backyard and now we have some great vintage seats to relax in. The design of the chairs is a typical 60's modern look that I admire. Although our home is becoming a weird blend of 20's and 60's era decor, not exactly complementary of each other, I think there are some similarities in the intent of much of the design aspects. The 20's still saw major influence of the Craftsman style design on the west coast (there are several typical Craftsman bungalows in our neighborhood) and the less ostentatious designs of the 60's remind me a bit of that with their attention to practical use without completely ignoring aesthetics. This last picture is the final product, on our at-the-time nearly finished front porch. Don't worry, I know what you're thinking, "Where are the cold-ones that should be enjoyed while using said chairs?" I assure you, I quickly remedied that situation.

The 1928 Monarch Malleable Stove

On New Year's Eve day, I picked up my friend from his house at 7 am to make the nearly 13 hour trip to Missoula, MT. We were driving there to spend the weekend packing up and moving my wife's grandfather back to our hometown where he would be near his family and closer to advanced medical facilities. As luck would have it, I had the 24-hour stomach flu and was trying hard just to keep water down. My friend, who can typically lift the heaviest of objects effortlessly, had cracked a rib two days prior. When we finally arrived after driving through snow, ice, and delays at the auto part store, we were the most pathetic 'help' anyone would want to see. Yet, when my father in-law saw us, he was still so happy he almost cried.

He had arrived several days earlier to start boxing everything up and during that time, he and my grandfather in-law had almost driven each other mad. Best of all, this ongoing getting-on-nerves culminated in a dispute over fruit pies. You know the little individually wrapped ones that are chock-full of preservatives and kind of taste like sugar-glazed cardboard with some jelly filling? Yeah, those ones. We had a good laugh over that, or at least we would have if my stomach still didn't feel like I'd been deep-sea fishing all day and my friend wasn't wincing at his cracked rib every 10 minutes. Sadly, we spent our New Year's Eve in the living room at that old house half-consciously watching a football game instead of reveling in downtown Missoula with the rest of the crowd.

By the next day, I was feeling much better and we continued boxing, labelling, and sorting. Grandpa had collected quite a few vintage things over the years including a pedal-pump organ that was brought to Idaho in a covered wagon, vintage 60's metal lawn chairs and dining table, an original Forest Service-commissioned trail-bike, a '66 Chevy C10 Fleetside pickup, and two antique wood/gas stoves. Growing up, my wife knew about all these treasures and I had merely glimpsed them during our brief visits so when she found out we were moving him, she asked that we make sure and bring as many of these back with us rather than just try and sell them. Often, as we were huffing and puffing our way up the very steep stairs from the basement with some of the heavier items we would ask Grandpa how the heck he got them down there and he'd say with a straight face, "By myself." Guess you just can't find good help these days.

The lawn chairs and the stoves had been outside for a long time under a little covered patio but they had still seen a fair amount of weathering. Of the two stoves, one looked to be in pretty bad shape and was a rather unremarkable model but the other was emblazoned "Monarch Malleable" on the oven door and, though quite rusted in parts, had a wonderful enamel coating that just looked classic. So I decided to bring the Monarch back. Disassembling just the top part would've taken half a day with the amount of rust on the bolts so we opted to lift the entire thing into the U-haul. Talk about heavy. Thankfully, it was one of the last things to load because after that we were done doing anything productive.

Since then, we've had the old stove in the back yard until better weather arrived and I recently started disassembling the thing. It's been a fun project and I've learned a lot about these old stoves. Most helpful was www.monarchrange.com that gave a lot of history of the Malleable Iron Range company and the website's administrator who was able to send me scanned copies of their old catalogs and helped me identify the year and model of our particular stove. I hope to have the stove restored soon and post some of my progress as I go along. Projects like this have always intrigued me and that's why I'm starting this blog, to retain my own thoughts about the various good and bad projects I consider tackling and then share my joy or misery with anyone that cares.