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ardie's handcrafted dulcimers
The Woodworker's Shed
By Randy Davis, craftsman.
Copyright 2002 by ardie's handcrafted dulcimers
The Setting
The shed is a modest affair: 16 feet wide by 18 feet deep, set on a Dek-Block and 4x6 treated lumber foundation; it has 8 foot walls, four windows, a regular-sized door and one that is 5 feet wide. It has a composition-shingle, 5-in-12 pitch roof (which simply means it rises 5 inches in height for every 12 inches in width marked from the center of the 16-foot, non-weight-bearing wall). The floor joists are set 16” on-center (OC); the wall studs and roof rafters are set 24” OC (setting the wall studs at 24” OC was actually a mistake, described later, but more than compensated for). On top of the floor joists are three layers of flooring: the sub-floor of 4’x8’ ¾” treated plywood, the floor of 4’x8’ 7/16” pressed wood set cross-grain to the sub-floor, and a final layer of commercial grade 12”x12” floor tile. On the outside of the wall studs is a layer of 3/8” plywood, 15lb black-tar building paper, and 3/8” “SmartPanel” wooden siding. It is an electrified and a clean, well-lighted place. Being in Texas, it is also air-conditioned.
Its setting is in the backyard, over-looking a hog wire fence and a run of woods deep enough to hide any houses behind us, even after the stripping of winter. Look out the back window of the shed and you see oak trees and briars, poison ivy vines, and Mountain Cedar evergreens. Squirrels frequently frolic and play, or scamper and fly away from mean-tempered Blue Jays.
Skunks live there and sometimes venture into our civilization to play on our deck to our alarm and amusement. One night my wife and I were sitting at the breakfast table and noticed a commotion on the deck. When we flipped on the porch light, we saw to our eventual delight a family of five baby skunks and their mama running, flipping, rolling and chasing each other for their own amusement. It was a simple reminder that we share the land and the woods, and that with proper precautions we can coexist with animals that can be cute but dangerous. It was also a reminder that the land and woods are a priori and that we are the party responsible for getting along and fitting in.
We also have snakes, one of which made itself into quite a story. Outside our back door we have a covered porch, supported by brick columns some eight feet tall and eight feet apart. Between two of the columns, a foot or two from the nearest one, we suspended with hook and string a wooden birdhouse, the kind fashioned out of small, rough sawn log-side boards. It wasn’t long before it had a nest and a bird that flitted in and out. Occasionally my wife would check the house for signs of eggs or baby birds. One day she peered in and screamed. Not the response one expects. Peering back at her were two eyes, neither of which, she said, belonged to a bird. So she reported a snake in the birdhouse. But when one is confronted with the unexpected, or the extraordinary, or the extra-natural, the tendency is to respond with incredulity, and to deny and look for proper explanations. So I didn’t believe her. Debbie, snakes can’t crawl into a suspended birdhouse, and they can’t fly. Debbie, you saw a bird. Debbie, are you pulling a joke? Anxious to prove her wrong, I shown a flashlight beam into the birdhouse, focused my eyes, and shouted. Peering back at me were two eyes, neither of which belonged to a bird, but which were attached to the head and the coiled body of a two-foot snake. There were no eggs or baby birds, and the snake appeared to be very healthy and well fed. After removing the birdhouse from the overhang, and carefully taking the birdhouse apart, we discovered an adolescent corn snake where birds should be. Corny became our daughter’s pet until it stopped eating and we returned it to the woods behind our house. How it got into the birdhouse we don’t know. Was it brought there for food as a tiny snake-let, but turned the tables by becoming the devourer rather than the devoured? Did it perform some super feat of snake acrobatics by crawling up the brick pillars and across the ceiling into the birdhouse? Did someone put it there? We don’t know. But whatever the truth is would still make for a good story of how snakes can live in the sky.
Besides skunks and snakes, we have opossums, armadillos and an occasional red fox. For birds, in addition to the blue jays, we have mockingbirds, cardinals, red birds, roadrunners, dove, scissor tails, woodpeckers, and several common varieties like finches and black birds. Our white and liver English Pointer, Bucky, never tires of roaming the fence line, peering into the grasses and the brambles with undaunted courage, protecting, hunting, and showing off.
The shed’s purpose is to be decided later. It could be that its purpose was served in simply being built. In its building I found both therapy and an outlet for creating something solid and admirable. Who cannot stand back from a fine building built by an amateur and not say with some envy and admiration, “I’m impressed!” It could be that its purpose is extended beyond its creation into becoming a place for activity – creative or otherwise; or a place for escape or safe harbor; maybe it will be a place to piddle and dawdle away the stresses of life. Maybe it will be my cave into which I retreat to mull over my difficulties and from which I sortie to fight the behemoth again. Who’s to say? The point is, it is ready for and capable of use, for that’s the way it was designed.
I have been in the software business for 18 years, and I learned two things from software: it’s never complete, and it’s never satisfactory. This is the source of unending frustration and dissatisfaction to me. In fact, the nature of the software business forced me to build the shed just so I could experience the creative process culminating in a thing that could be touched.
Building the shed also reintroduced me to the wonderful, restorative powers of hard, physical labor – the kind of labor that takes away my appetite and makes me dizzy from exhaustion, and causes my fingers to stiffen up as I lay asleep so that only hot water poured over them in the morning can make them flexible again. It’s the kind of labor that takes 20 pounds off of a soft, lazy body and returns more energy than it takes. It’s the kind of labor that induces sleep so deep that I no longer snore, and restores the health of my stomach so that I no longer take antacids after every meal or in the middle of the night. It is the kind of labor I knew in my youth but thought I wanted to escape by going “white collar.” There is joy in hard labor and satisfaction that something is being accomplished, that real work, in the scientific and philosophical senses, is being done. At the end of the day, weary and dog-tired, a certain satisfaction settles in that cannot be matched by mere intellectual exercise. One has pushed and something has moved. One has strained and something has given. This has its own pleasure that is deep and pure and satisfying. Would that more of life could be so.
The Foundation and Floor
In laying a foundation I had two choices: pour a concrete slab, or support the shed on pier and beam. I chose the latter for rather prosaic reasons, but came to have a surprising appreciation for the nature of a supported floor.
I actually thought that using pier and beam would mean less work and expense than pouring a slab. In preparation to pouring a slab I would have to excavate a 16’x18’ area, dig footing-trenches around the perimeter and through the middle, place rebar and wire mesh, and build forms. Then I’d have to haul the concrete in, pour it, and smooth it to even it out and eliminate air pockets. By using a pier and beam foundation I thought I could get by with just leveling the earth and setting the piers in place. It sounded easy, but it was by far more work than I imagined. First I had to excavate more than a foot of earth to compensate for the slope of our yard. That’s when I remembered that our yard is laid on top of an old sandstone creek bank and, under a thin veneer of top-soil, is full of sandstone rock, some as big as young children. So with the help of a rented roto-tiller, I leveled the ground, and, with the help of a strapping young nephew, painstakingly placed every one of seventy piers. It certainly was not less work than pouring a slab, and I suspect it wasn’t less expensive. But I think my shed on a supported foundation and floor is more pleasing as I compare it with the slab-based shop my father built 20 years ago.
The reasons I think so are philosophical. When I enter my father’s shop and step onto the concrete floor, there is little transition between the sidewalk outside and the floor inside. They are both hard and, when wearing soft-soled shoes, silent. When I step into the shop I don’t get the feeling that I have walked out of one world into another, but merely that I’ve walked into a covered place. A small sense of disappointment results. There is also the illusion of permanence, as if the solidity of the floor extends down to the bowels of the earth, and that when the earth in its dotage creaks to an end, this floor, this concrete floor, will remain. Concrete is also sterile and antiseptic to me. It has no organic quality. It does not live nor has it ever lived. Above all, it does not speak. It records no age or history or evidence of decline and thus pretends to hold superiority over civilization itself. It is this false pride of concrete that I abhor.
On the other hand the supported floor is pleasing to walk on and listen to. It reminds me of times long past at my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Lloyd’s house in Iowa Park, where my brother and I could never sneak around because of the creaks and thumps, and where I was always aware of the darkness underneath. Looking into the floor heating-grate I could see nothing. Looking behind the skirting I felt fear and excitement as I peered into the darkness and smelt the musty odor of earth and the matter of earth. What treasures were hidden there, I wondered? The supported floor contains mystery and doubt because it is suspended between light and the earth, with darkness in between. What now lurks under the floor, what creatures inhabit that space, what will I find if I shine a light there? More importantly, will it hold me up? Thus, the foundation one chooses either invites thoughtless confidence or contemplation.
The supported floor is unpretentious and aware of its temporal nature. It will need maintenance and attention. There is no illusion that in some years it will decay, sag, fail and need repair. But it is warm and inviting and says “hello” the moment I step in.
As I proceed from the quite, solid ground outside into the shed, I immediately sense the difference in sound and feel. I appreciate the sense of resonance the floor conveys, and this resonance is sympathetic and comforting. I step and the floor speaks in deep tones of pleasure, and establishes a symphonic relationship between my movements and the place in which I move. Inside the shed I am suspended and separated from the earth; I am in a place apart and for a time am out of touch with the earth and its troubles. I am in retreat.
This is a pleasing thing, to retreat but not to escape. In war one wants the opposite: to escape without having to retreat. But in peace, when the only wars are personal or professional, escape is cowardly and retreat is to prepare to fight another day. To escape is to run away and admit defeat and is to avoid the difficulties of life; escape is a sign of weakness and powerlessness to make a difference, or the refusal to try. But to retreat is to refresh. It is an opportunity to collect one’s thoughts and energies and to focus them anew. It is a way to remain engaged in life and life’s demands.
My wife was very concerned about which it would be with my shed. She was worried that if I were seeking escape from my turmoil then I would never resolve to continue the battle and would slip into apathetic remoteness. The shed would become the hiding place in which to brood and remain aloof from her and the family. It would become my new primary focus of attention and energy, and as a result my life would still be out of balance. I have told my wife that it will not become my escape, but if it does, she can come and get me.