The weather was warm and the rains had gone away after finishing the garden prep and raised beds. I could now use my shop (a.k.a. the driveway) to start putting together some cabinets for the shack. With the leftover scraps of OSB from covering the walls and ceiling, plus two more 4 x 8″ sheets, I carefully planned the sizes of cabinets I could build with the least waste possible. Inventory of pieces in one hand and measuring tape in the other, my imagination had to work double time to see what was needed to store what I wanted, and how it could be integrated for the most efficient use of the space. I guess you could call it Charlie’s feng shui.
The building is 10 x 16′. The main obstacles I had to work around were the windows, two wide double doors and my hammock setup. One door would be kept shut and considered the same as a wall unless I needed to move something large in. My old table took up too much room and I had plans to replace it. I used a cooler, for which I built a makeshift foam insulation board box to help it out during the hotter weather. It ended up being rather bulky and had sweating issues that could lead to mold problems so it was a temporary fix. There were tools and items that I wanted available at all times to take care of the random issues and the endless projects that I seemed to have before me. Lydeana was still opening and closing the garage at the time and I didn’t want to constantly bug her, so keeping the most used tools and materials in the shack seemed like the thing to do.
I determined I could build a kitchen cabinet, a tool cabinet, a gun cabinet and a hearth for a wood stove with what I had. Plans were drawn up with detailed measurements so I could avoid as many stupid mistakes as possible. OSB isn’t as conducive to building cabinets as plywood because it lacks the equivalent structural integrity, especially along the edges. The easiest and cheapest solution was to frame it with 1 x 2’s as supporting structure. I did use a 3/4-inch piece of plywood for my kitchen cabinet since I was considering laying tile on top. Thinking back about the extra materials used such as various hardware pieces, screws, some oak for trim, tile and grout with accompanying tools and an extra piece of galvanized steel roofing for the hearth, I had less than $100 invested in everything.
The kitchen cabinet took the longest because I’m not a cabinet or furniture maker. The OSB was teaching me what was possible, along with what was necessary to use it for a solid cabinet that was light enough to move into place by myself. A 40-year-old skill saw, handheld jig saw, impact driver and drill were the only power tools used. A two-foot square, four-foot sheet rock square, miter box with hand saw, tape measure and two old sawhorses Dad cobbled up over 35 years ago rounded out the hand tool selection. The saw horses were different heights, which made for some interesting tensions on the saw blade when making long cuts. They were designed to hold 2 x 4’s in different positions without clamps, and also allowed materials to be cut with saws without cutting into the sawhorse if you used them correctly.
At the end of a long hot day I stood proud, not because it was nice or perfect, but because I was able to create a good solid cabinet out of crap. It was light enough that I could slide and swivel it across the driveway and up some boards into its final resting place. A little later I would add an extra countertop piece for my water cooler and makeshift sink and ultimately lay tile on the top.
The next day was a day of rest of sorts. I received my stove in the mail. Back when it was still cold I began researching stoves that could be used for tent camping or tiny house living. I was somewhat familiar with the light tin sheep herder stoves used out west. There was one in an old prospector’s A-frame shelter out in the desert in Wyoming. I camped there with my brother and one of his old high school buddies. It was built in the early 1900s as far as I could tell, with old lumber and using cardboard boxes for insulation. I imagined whoever built it to be a tough, crusty old character expecting to get rich finding gold or silver. That area was mostly rich in oil and fossils. We fired up the herder stove with dead sagebrush at night for heat and fried some stuff on it. The next day we had a coffee can of stew cooking on a bed of coals. The fire ring was made of flat shale stones that, to my surprise, started burning. That’s when I learned about oil shale.
I debated the pros and cons of several stoves. Each time I narrowed it down to a choice, they were not available due to pandemic reasons. I was looking for something to possibly cook on while safely heating a small space. I settled on the Tent Dragon made by a company called Silver Fire in Oregon.
It was a stainless steel gasifier. A gasifier stove is designed to feed air into the firebox in such a way as to ignite the smoke for a secondary burn. This allows the stove to burn hotter and cleaner with less fuel. This stove had a removable top that was adjustable for different heat, a two liter hot water tank, wire warming rack and an oven with a temperature gauge. The stove pipe was stainless steel 2 1/2 inches in diameter. The way the pipe fit together along with the small diameter has caused me a few issues along the way. I may need more time and experience with it to find some solutions I may not be considering. As I write this, it’s below freezing with snow on, and I can’t use the stove because the pipes are clogged with creosote despite a recent cleaning. Circumstances after a surgery dictate I can’t move the stove to work on it for a while, so an oil-filled electric radiant heater and extra clothes are doing the job for now. I’ll discuss the pros and cons of the stove in much more detail later on.
In the meantime I was like a kid in a candy store. I guess shiny things still catch my eye, though not all shiny things are what they seem. I spent part of the day setting it up and attaching the pipe to see how it might exit the window. Flitz found the box and assumed she had landed a sweet little kitty apartment. For some, the box is better than the contents.
Every intention was to be working on a new project, or finishing an old one, every evening before dark and knocking out the big ones on weekends and days off. Things like the tool and gun cabinets I would build needed longer dedicated chunks of time with no chance of rain. Since my shop was the driveway, the roof leaked pretty bad. My garage was too full to be used for anything but storage. Mr. Murphy was sure to rear his ugly head in attempt to trip me up.
We started having some heavy rains, and with the ground having been supersaturated over the last year, my forward momentum was about to stall. I jumped in the truck one morning, turned on the headlights and saw the driveway disappear into a mass of limbs and leaves that weren’t there before. Barely able to snake around it I went on to work. There are several huge oak trees on the neighbors land along the fence by the yard. Last year we had cut a giant down that threatened to crush the house. It was rotted halfway through, so cutting it down was truly a disaster averted. The tree that had come down now looked healthy, but had a rotten root on one side. It was already leaning heavily and gave way in the rain-softened soil.
I discussed it with the neighbor and offered to cut it down myself. He insisted on getting a crew together to take care of it. The crew was his son and another friend who does a lot of wood cutting and other work for him. I cut over half the top out that I could reach from the ground with a chainsaw and a pole saw. Any widow maker (dead limb ready to fall off) I could reach got trimmed, and anything to drop excess weight and torque was cut before they came. My neighbor is in his 90s and the other two in their 70s. Having cut the big tree with their help the previous year, I knew there would be some communication and organizational issues. I hoped to avoid as many opportunities for any of us to die as possible. The neighbor drove the tractor while the rest of us did the cutting and dragging. He wanted the biggest wood to burn and was happy to let me have the smaller stuff. I had to stack it up for him to come get it later. The stump slammed back into place when the last large chunk of the trunk was cut off.
If a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? I don’t think so. A tree fell in the driveway while we were there and none of us heard a thing. Maybe it was a quiet-natured tree?
The next project I managed would be to put in a more solid walkway to the door of the shack. Two cedar boards propped on bricks had kept me from making a muddy trail up to that point. Some square concrete stepping stones were set in gravel and sand for a walkway, and a big rectangular stone from the back of the property was set in place for a solid porch. The cedar boards were reallocated to the walk for the outhouse.
An afternoon spent cutting bamboo poles and lashing them into tripods for the garden and raised beds helped top off the weekend. The gardens were going gangbusters with Lydeana working from home. With Shayley cooking all the time, that left Lydeana free to walk out and do little stuff here and there whenever she had time. Being stuck in the house doing her job and on long Zoom calls made the the garden work a much-needed stress relief. Both she and the gardens thrived, and I was happy to help promote it. I avoid garden work as much as possible. I can do all sorts of hard labor all day long without a problem, but let me bend over in a garden for half an hour and my back is in sheer agony. While she would be taking a break from sitting as a prisoner of the desk, I would take a break and sit down in the grass nearby so we could talk. That and meals on the porch were the times to be together. As long as the weather was warm, if she didn’t have meetings into the night, the longer daylight of summer allowed us have those moments.
Less than month later, I would have a week of vacation to accomplish as much as possible. Murphy’s law has a way of spitting in my face, and time passes all too quickly. I had an internal clock counting down the days till winter even if it was still early in the summer. Some people seem to have an impression that living simply, primitively and independently will be some sort of nirvana that will free them from all their worries and problems. There’s a movie called Into the Wild about a young college student who attempted to leave everything and make it completely alone. He wasn’t fully prepared and ended up dying while attempting to live in an abandoned bus he found in the Alaskan Wilderness. It’s based on a true story. Modern people often can’t spot a black cloud on the horizon and successfully prepare for the fallout when it reaches them, much less do it completely alone. A black cloud came along and caught us all with our pants down. I’m far from being alone, but it was time to pull up my pants and cinch up my belt and be ready for those little puffy clouds in the distance with their faux silver linings.
Back Yard Shack 