Bucket list…
I was talking to a friend the other day about our bucket lists – that list of things you want to do before you die. I have done several things on my bucket list.
The first is living where we do. This is the 6th place we have lived and we have been here for 26 years. Before we lived here I would imagine what my ideal home would be like. I wanted a house and 10 acres. We bought this place at auction and originally we had 40 acres. We were able to afford it because the house, though it was sound, had not been lived in for 7 years. The last stove in the house had been a wood cook stove, the plumbing was cast iron that had frozen and split, the wiring was single strand with ceramic, there was mold an inch thick on the basement walls and some of the windows were boarded up. We lived in a 8 ft by 38 ft 1957 mobile home for 6 months while we fixed the place up. We replumbed, rewired, new heating system, all new ceilings on the first floor and refinished 600 sq ft of hardwood floors. The heating system was the result of a lot of research and will maintain a 90 degree difference between the out side and inside of the house, within a 2 degree range for 8 hours on one loading of the furnace. We were later able to buy the 50 acres across the road. We make Apple Cider in the fall and Maple Syrup in the Spring. I think we live in a wonderful place.
Another item on my list was a woodstrip canoe. We had a Wild Cherry tree come down in the woods. I got two logs out of it. The first one was 20 ft long and was 29 inches at one end and 25 inches at the other. The second log was 25 inches to 19 inches and 15 ft long. We had a fella with a portable sawmill come out and cut them into boards. At that time I decided I wanted to build a wood strip canoe. Seven years later after reading several books I decided it was time. The book had offset tables for the molds. I built the strongback and made the molds, planed and cut the boards into strips. Then I planed the strips and coved and beaded them. The strips were then put on the molds and clamped and glued together. The canoe has 4 mils of fiberglass on the outside and inside. Every piece of wood in the canoe including the paddle was a tree in our woods at one time. Including making the molds to finish the project took 100 hours.
Another bucket list project was the new pond. When we had been here a couple of years we had a 1/3 acre pond put in. That was a great decision as we have swam in it and skated on it for years. I watched as the pond was put in and figured that if I had a dozer I could put in a pond. 20 years later I had the chance. I bought the dozer in the picture and started in. The guy I bought the dozer from told me I would be 50 hours into the project and wonder what I was doing. He was exactly right. I had about 70 hours of time on the dozer before it started to look like a pond. The pond took 120 hours to put in. It is 1.25 acres. That is slightly larger than a football field. The only real problem – other than almost getting the dozer buried in mud once – was that I lost the seal for the cylinder that maintains hydraulic pressure for the left track. The dozer was big enough that it took a special permit to move it on the road so it was best to fix it on site. I could not find anyone that would work on it at their shop or help me fix it. I had the technical manual so I ordered the seal and went to work. I worked on the dozer out in the middle of the field by the pond. I had to crack the track and drive the dozer out of the track. I borrowed at 3/4 in. drive socket set and pulled the idler (big wheel the front of the track goes around) out of the undercarriage and then pulled the hydraulic cylinder. The cylinder was too heavy for me to lift so I borrowed an engine lift, rigged up a rope sling and jacked it out. When I weighed it up at the house the cylinder weighed 190 pounds. I replaced the seal and put it all back together. It worked just fine. It took me and around 10,000 misquitos working in the evenings after work about 3 weeks to do the repair. After the pond was in I sold the dozer for what I bought it for. The biggest thing I had driven before this was a UHaul truck one time when I helped someone move. By the end I got pretty good with the dozer. Fuel, oil, grease and parts I have about $2,500 in the pond.
I am happy to get to post an item from my wifes bucket list. She had always talked about a play house they had in the back yard when she was a little girl. Last summer she and I built a play house for the granddaughters. We had looked around and determined that any house we bought would not be what we really wanted. All the framing for the project is Hard Maple 2x4s that came from a tree in the woods. As you can see it fit under one of our English Walnut trees perfectly.
The most important thing about fulfilling my bucket list has been a great wife. She has been willing to live in the midst of chaos and have faith that the goal will be accomplished. How many wives would live in a 1957 mobile home that cost $300 for 6 months or let you spend a bunch of money on a huge piece of machinery?
Uncategorized | admin February 1, 2010
