Urban Woman's Guide Back to the Land: #11 On a Buddhist Renovation & the Joy of Tools

What to let go of and what to hold onto? When to let go and when to hold fast? This question grabs us ever more intensely as we age, it seems.

I have loved the pine paneled walls of this cabin for 25 years (to left, image of old walls, couch and closet). I have loved its coziness, its funkiness, the fact that little matched or fit or even entirely worked. Why I've been attached to this closed-in little building with its dysfunction and quirks is another question, but we all have such attachments. It was a major life change to be willing to open up the walls, tear

out the closet, and redesign the space. (That's tar paper on the walls, and no longer a closet on the right.)

I think of parents watching their teenagers grow up and leave home for college or other ventures: you’ve spent so many years nurturing them that to lose them is painful, and yet the new opportunities that come with maturation and change are valuable, too.

I confront change in this home every hour or more. Tom the contractor and his carpenter crew, Mike and Chris, and the electrician Ralph and plumber Mike are all consummate communicators. Repeatedly throughout each day, someone comes to me, asking, “Kim, how do you want this?” Often I don’t know what I want since I’ve never had to think about construction details: the need for a beam to keep the loft aloft (to provide support in a structure that thoroughly lacks structural integrity—sounds like a good idea!); the implications of doors positioned 1½ inches one way or the other (why should I care?); new wood to replace the rotten and cracked boards (no brainer); how to choose and locate hose bibs (after I learn what they are).

When they walk me through options--what will be most safe, most convenient, most aesthetic, most affordable--my head may be whirling, but I come out feeling secure that the cabin will end up better for it. Doing the right thing can seep through every aspect of our lives.

Power Tools Are Cool
I am contributing what physical labor I can to the renovation effots, so on Day 2 of renovation last week, Tom suggested I help take apart the existing closet (behind the curtain above, the back of it by the ladder below), a flimsy structure of patched together

wood (like everything else in the Cabin-As-It-Was).

Chris the Carpenter handed over his power screwdriver when I started to take down shelving in the closet. Some of you know this tool already, but if you’ve ever struggled with a simple little screwdriver, then you know how cool it is to pick up a screwdriver that 1) has its own light 2) has a magnet to hold the darn screw without your dropping it repeatedly and 3) uses power to pull the screw out automatically. Magic! I have new appreciation for all those (mostly) guys in their toolshops absorbed in all they can make and do. Maybe Betty Crocker cakes seem just as magical.

Demolition Derby
The electric screwdriver’s power both thrilled me and put me in a meditative screw-removal trance: I saw myself heroically aligned with the philosophy of the 1984 classic back-to-the-land book, Chop Wood, Carry Water (by Rick Fields), promoting the idea that in returning to the simple tasks of life, we find spiritual fulfilment. Okay, maybe it’s not so easy as that for some of us, but certainly in slowing down we appreciate what it takes to keep us alive in body, mind and spirit.

So there I was, harmonizing away while pulling out screws. Sure, with a screwdriver built like a Glock pistol, but I was enjoying the process.

However, I got sent to town on an important task—getting the straps for the foundation that was going to be poured. Or was it so important? Maybe they wanted me out of the way!

Because by the time I came back, the guys with the big levers (or whatever they're called) and mallets had wrenched apart the flimsy closet, and it was gone! Every day now, for the 10 days of remodel so far, the “demo,” as Mike called it, has gotten more vast: I’m down to tar paper or simple open posts and beams.

So when I say I am letting go of what was, this process continues to be a daily confrontation.

Creative Reuse
Meanwhile, I keep trying to figure out how to utilize all the detritus I'm producing in this remodel. I feel not a little guilty as I see wood stacking up, thick boards used just once to contain the foundation walls for the new bathroom, or the remains of wood paneling from the former closet and walls. The carpenters use all the good wood they can, and plan to repanel inside with the good boards. But some lumber gets destroyed in its first use and is only good for firewood the next time around.

As I showed in my previous post, I've set up a denailification station; last Wednesday’s task was to create order out of chaos in my miniature lumber and junk yards. I now have neatly stacked piles of boards that can be reused, including former pine walls for reuse in the cabin, while other wood is stacked for making a garden shed or solarium one day, and yet another stack is destined to become firewood. I hope very little will be sent to a landfill.

A basic principle in construction, I have learned, is that it's often less costly to scrap a building and start from scratch than to try to save it. The carpenters have noted that the way this funky cabin was built 30 years ago or so was so irregular that window frames are not plumb, the plywood floor thickness doesn’t match, beams aren’t supported, the floor slopes down in one corner, on and on. So why bother saving a structure that is not safe and so difficult to repair and remodel? I can see the crew at the cabin wonder why I would bring the building down to its skeletal form in order to bring it back to life, like a cancer patient on chemotherapy.

In part because the structure is beloved. In part because every wall taken down has a cost to the environment in terms of the waste it creates and the need for more wood and other resources to rebuild. I can bear the cost of saving 70% of the structure and adding on to make it 110% better. But I still want to use all that wood that came off it in some creative way. Anyone wishing to come build a hut is welcome!

The Foundation
Last for this week is a report on the new foundation. Miguel (left) and Chris were on the crew for digging the hole where the new entry way and bathroom addition will go.

Then a wooden mold was build to hold the concrete.

The rebar bender (right) provided the form for the metal frame necessary for the concrete to hold. The wooden frame was now ready for the concrete to pour.

The arrival of the cement truck, with its constantly whirling freight was exciting for this city girl.

Once the cement was poured into the wooden foundation, Chris used the "vibrator," a long rubber tube that jiggles the cement in the foundation to insure that air does not get trapped and create a "void" in the finished cement block.

On another day, the plumber, Mike (left below)

and his assistant Billy (right) came to lay the (pvc) pipes for the new bathroom.

After the pipes were well secured and their ends sticking out covered and taped over, the cement truck returned to lay The Slab. I came to appreciate the collaboration and coordination in all of these builders, since the pipes, once set in cement, could not err in relation to bathroom sinks, drains, and hot water pipes. They have to know what they are doing. And they do.

As Chris said, getting the nomenclature for tools is obviously crucial if you are in the trades. The Guys are all patient as I asked what each tool is called and what it is for. One of my favorites is the Jitterbug, a flat piece of metal with small holes in it and grabbed by two handles standing up. You can see how the jitterbug keeps you dancing 'cause you have to keep raising and lowering it into the cement, as if moving a partner around the dance floor. It is used to tamp down the cement in the slab to make sure it is settling evenly and without voids.

Finally, Ralph the electrician and solar magician, was putting in wires throughout the house with his assistant Jeff, and used a Wire Wheel that looks like a cross between a gigantic spider and a gadget for inquisition under pressure.