Building the Perfect Shed
Well we had a pretty good day – my brother and I – got the outside frame of the floor done and put 4 out of 20 joists in place. The rest of the joists should be easy, might do a couple a day in the evening. When we put on the plywood subfloor (six sheets of plywood) the floor will be done, then we start on the walls, then roof. I’m not sure I want to go with the barn style per the plans I bought, as it seems limiting in terms of windows and skylight, but I don’t have to decide just yet. I think the hardest part was the foundation and floor. It should get a bit easier from now on, although the roof will be a challenge. Now, unfortunately, it’s back to work at the paying job, gearing up for trial.
My brother and I are like Gary Cooper in that movie about the architect – Ayn Rand’s fantasy The Fountainhead. We bow to no man, and follow the dream . . . of the perfect shed . . . as art … death before conformity! To Hell with the Building Code! The act of creation must be preserved, on film or in lumber!
So The Fountainhead was modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright? Yeah, as in Frank Lloyd Wrong! Nice ideas on paper, but horribly non-ergonomic buildings, chairs that hurt to sit in, doors where you have to step down and duck through simultaneously. Please, spare me FLW/R! Art belongs on a wall. A wall with a doorway fit for midgets is not art – sorry! Nor is a chair that is a hemorrhoid waiting to happen! Nor is a fork that won’t pick up a piece of rib-eye or a piece of lettuce. Patricia Neal can have the beamish S.O.B.!
Now, give me a nice piece of landscape architecture, and that’s a different story. A fountain, a waterfall, a barbecue pit. . . .
Here in the South, we’re concerned with space and ventilation, leg-room, gut-room, head-room, mind-room, mud-rooms, and cockroaches. We’re pragmatists who believe that form follows function, not ego, mushrooms, popularity, acid, adoration, publicity, sun-stroke, weirdness, funkiness, dementia, hero worship, or other flirt-ilizer, gim-crackery, crack, or general nonsense. We prefer horse-sense, barn style, barnyard, right angles, Anglican righteousness, righteous indignation, indignant outrage, and basic outrageous-ness, not to mention Elliot Ness, Lake Ness, lake effect, effective opposition, oppositional defiance, defiant self-righteousness, and generally being right (which brings us back to right-angles – which, frankly, Frank wrongly thinks are evil).
The ground in south
