The lumber rack

The other day Oceana and I were working out in the shop and were talking about cleaning up the yard. One item that was pretty big that would help clear out the yard and some of the driveway was installing the lumber rack. You see, I purchased a heavy metal lumber rack a few months back at an equipment auction and it’s been sitting here waiting to be installed. One of the reasons it hasn’t been installed was because lumber needs to be kept dry. When stored outside, it’ll need to be covered. And I hadn’t figured out a simple yet good looking way to cover the lumber while on the rack to keep it dry without it turning into a giant ugly monstrosity.

Oceana’s solution

I’ll normally have half dozen or so projects like this going on in my head at any given time. I’ll spend my quiet mornings thinking through the options and building the solution piece by piece mentally. When I’m happy with the outcome, it’s real easy to proceed since I’ve already been through it step by step. However, with the lumber racks, I hadn’t reached a successful outcome mentally yet. Back to the shop – I told Oceana my quandary with the situation. She replied back with the simplest and best answer. She said, why not just get a tarp for each stack? Perfect!

Now the hard part begins

Now that I had the solution in hand, it was time to take action. I picked up some lumber from Bagwell’s so that I could make a foundation and cross braces for the uprights. I could pour a concrete pad for it, but I opted for lumber as it’s quicker now and easier to remove in the future. With the lumber in hand, I laid out a foundation of 6x6s and got them sitting level. Next, I drug the uprights over and stood them up in place. These things are heavy! As I stood them up, I clamped on some temporary cross braces to keep them from blowing over in the wind. After all three were standing, I plumbed them and then added the permanent cross bracing.

Time to load the lumber

Next, I set the arms in place. I had already mentally loaded the lumber on the rack so I knew what I wanted where, which helped lay out the spacing of the arms. I bolted the arms in place and called it a day. The next day was the fun part – loading the rack. We untarped the big stack of lumber on the edge of the driveway and sorted through it by species. Once it was organized, we started loading it up. I started at the top and worked my way down so that I could use a walk board on the arms below as scaffolding. We got the whole stack of lumber loaded! Oceana thought we were done. Poor girl.

Wait, there’s more?!

I pulled the enclosed trailer over and opened the back door. You guessed it, more lumber. So we got to work and got it emptied out and loaded up on the racks. Now we’re done! For the time being I used the old tarp to cover the entire rack until the new tarps arrive. I ordered custom tarps for each stack so at the end of the day, it should all look neat, organized, and clean while staying dry.

Back to the kitchen

Back on the kitchen. Next up was to finish the plywood on the ceiling. We had gotten started on this the other day so at least everything was still set up. Piece by piece, I worked my way across the ceiling and got the plywood screwed in place. That panel lift is handy! I cut out for the overhead can lights and cut around the A/C unit. It’s nice to finally have separation from the attic space as it’s been pretty warm here recently. The attic fan will kick on and then suck all the cold air out of the house (or at least out of the kitchen/dining/living rooms). Next up will be insulation and plywood on the walls and then tongue and groove on the ceiling.

That’s all, folks

That’s all for this week. Thanks for following along.