[davetrow]

I'm getting back into woodworking after 30-or-so years and I expect to be doing a lot of routing, so I was glad to find RouterForums.com. I'm currently shrinking our garage gym and expanding the garage workshop (which now is only about 8' x 15', too much of which is taken up by not-very-useful workbench space), and my first woodworking projects will be aimed at increasing the versatility of my workshop space. I'll be building a roll-around cabinet with storage for the table saw/router table combo I'm putting together, and flip-up or flip-over surfaces for my small bench-top tools.

Even more of a priority will be making little swinging "doors" to seal the between-rafter openings to the outside. We get anywhere from 40 to 100 inches a year in rainfall, and I'm already fighting rust on my new table saw's cast-iron table!

I expect these tasks will take some time and give me the experience to start experimenting with "artsier" projects, and given where I live, I will likely be doing a lot with raw redwood--maybe even burl wood if I can afford or find it.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to being able to draw upon the accumulated experience of all the other members of RouterForums.com

 

[davetrow]

Dan, the garage ceiling is the underside of the roof; IOW it's completely unfinished. I don't want to put in a ceiling under the roof joists because the storage space above them is too valuable, especially for long lumber. (Your question about the gable makes me think that I might indeed need a couple of doors in them. Thanks!) I might someday insulate the underside of the roof.

But to answer your question in more detail than you may have time to read, there's solid blocking above the top plate only between every other pair of rafters. The alternate pairs have nothing at all, not even screening.

So while I can put in screening for pest control, I need the little swinging doors for humidity control and ventilation. (We've never had a squirrel get in, although we did have one set up housekeeping above our bedroom, but we do have a rodent problem. Last time it was a wood rat--a kind of pack rat--and for a couple of years after we got rid of it I kept finding caches of small L-screws up in the rafters.)

As I said, we get a lot of rain, and rust is definitely a problem in the garage. My second year up here was an El Niño year that delivered over 100 inches, and in 1982, following 2 months of record rainfall and a 24-hour total of around 12 inches, the steep mountainside above Love Creek in a town just down the road basically melted, burying 9 houses and 10 people under 600,000 cubic yards of mud: 80,000 dump truck loads. None of the bodies could be recovered and that part of Love Creek Road now literally runs over a cemetery.

I can't just block off the openings permanently because I can't afford air conditioning, so I need the doors openable to get the most ventilation possible in summer, which is very dry and often hits triple digits. In fact, the year before last, during a scorching heat wave, Boulder Creek was the hottest place in the U.S., even hotter than Death Valley. Fortunately, since we're in a Mediterranean climate, all but a tiny fraction of our rainfall arrives between November and April, with freezing temperatures in January and February, so I'll only need to open or close the doors twice a year.

Anyway, thanks for your welcome and your questions, which not only gave me an idea for lumber storage, but also taught me the proper terminology for some of the components of a roof and the part of the wall it rests on. That sort of knowledge makes it a lot easier to communicate with a contractor; much more so that pointing, handwaving, and using words like "thingumbobby!"

 

[davetrow]

Thanks for all the insulation advice, Tom!

I'm familiar with the radiant barrier, which we used in our library shed--when two writers get married you end up with a lot of books; even after assiduous culling we still have close to 5000. We never added additional insulation because we we mainly using it to reflect light from the fluorescent fixtures, which face up from the bookshelves. I'll probably follow your advice on the rest of the roof insulation.

I have two "counter-top" roll-up door: the steel kind that look like a roll-top desk, so they can't be insulated. I wish I'd thought of that.

For the walls, they're a patchwork of no-insulation and insulation I was able to put in on non-dry-walled areas. Don't know what I'll do about that; I rather doubt we can afford the blow-in stuff.

Got a lot of work to do!

 

[davetrow]

Sounds like a nice setup, Tom.

As for writing, I wrote a five-volume space opera called Exordium with a friend back in the early 90s. Despite having been published by Tor Books, arguably, then as now, the leading publisher of science fiction and fantasy, with covers by a leading genre book cover artist, it quickly dropped from sight, although it still has a small cult following, especially among naval analysts! (I spent a lot of time figuring out the interaction between weapon and ship design and tactics and strategy.) I wrote one short story after that, based in the same world, and that was it for fiction. I then concentrated on marketing writing for a Silicon Valley startup (with one foray into technical writing) hoping for a big cash-out that never materialized. I had my own writing business for a time after that, but it was making me crazy so I retired.

My wife's career, OTOH, is and has been quite a bit more successful. Most SF readers of our generation here will know the world called Darkover and its author, Marion Zimmer Bradley. She and Deborah (Deborah J. Ross) were good friends when Marion suffered a series of strokes at the end of the 90s that made it impossible for her to continue writing. Long story short, she chose Deborah to keep Darkover alive, and so far she's published seven novels on Darkover, with an eighth in the pipeline, along with several collections of her short stories set in that world that were originally published in Darkover anthologies. She has also published three SF novels of her own (with more on the way), a fantasy trilogy, a book on the craft of writing, and many short stories. It's not exactly a living, but it makes a nice supplement to Social Security. And the nice thing about fiction writing, at least, is that you don't have to retire until you're gaga--and some writers (I'm looking at you Robert A. Heinlein) hang on even longer.

FWIW, I'm paying for the woodworking tools and supplies I'm buying with the proceeds from a job that's also a "mitzvah," which in Judaism means commandment, blessing and good deed. (My wife's a Jew, I'm a Quaker.) I'm helping a disabled man by driving him around and doing handyman tasks around the hours. I'm only charging him minimum wage, but it still adds up pretty quickly. (I also contribute to the household budget to keep Deborah happy: right now, everything I earn is going to pay for a new garbage disposal. And then, more tools!)