Light posting lately, because Uncle Joel has actually been working to pay off a debt.
Since October I’ve possessed all the materials necessary to tile the floor of the Secret Lair. In fact I suspect there’s enough to tile three of them. It’s what was left over at the end of D&L’s all-season-long floor job from last year, four thousand square feet on an adobe base that turned out not perfectly flat or level, and I think they sold it to me on spec mostly because they wanted it gone from their sight. Can’t really blame them.
Truth is I could have done the job last fall, but by the time the ever-meticulous L had passed on all her knowledge about floor-tiling I was so intimidated by the prospect that constructing a working space shuttle from tie-wire and Popsicle sticks seemed easier than tiling the Lair’s paltry 200 square feet. After all I have built rockets that worked fine.
But I really must do it this season. There weren’t any excuses then and there are fewer now, and I’m extremely tired of my rustic OSB floor.
First, however, I’ve been paying off the debt. As mentioned before, this involves constructing 29 concrete piers. With two guys working on it, it really isn’t terribly hard work and we may finish with one long push tomorrow. By the end of the weekend for sure, weather permitting. The weather has been a factor lately. About half are completely done, and all the remaining forms and rebar are in. All that remains is mixing and pouring about 20 sacks of concrete which, with a decent start, we can easily knock out before lunch.
On another topic, I’m told by my super-secret maildrop operator that I have received a very heavy care package. Don’t know what it is or who it’s from, and it won’t make it up here for another ten days or so and I’m dying of curiosity.
But in the meantime, I prayed “give us this day our daily bread,” and got the answer “Make it yourself.” So I did, and now it’s out of the oven. Yum!
I started making my own bread this winter. Not much else to do with no building funds and 20 below outside.
It took 6 tries to get it right even with the internet. It all came out like a solid mass.
I now get nice fluffy loaves.
I let the yeast rise up in a bowl with 115 degree water and some sugar. Mix everything up and let that rise, then beat that down and put in a bread pan and let that rise to it’s full height, then bake for 20 min.
What’s your recipe?
Go online to the revised recipe for Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day, make half the recipe (6 cups of flour and cut down on the salt) unless you are feeding a crowd. No sugar, no warm water, no milk, no fats or oils, regular flour is OK but 2T bread flour makes a more chewy crust, no kneading, no bread pans needed. It’s a cold rise bread that you can add grains to. The dough keeps in the refrigerator (Joel, about that refrigerator…) for a week or two if you don’t want to use it all at one time, and when you want bread you rip off a hunk, shape it, let it rise 25 to 40 minutes, bake it quickly in a very hot oven (minimal fuel use). You can use hunks of bread for dipping or slice the loaf. Same dough makes rolls, pizza crust, English muffins, pretzels, cinnamon nut log, whatever. Because you choose the amount of dough to use, you can customize the size and shape of the loaf you make. You get a decent chewy crust bread with the least amount of time and work. There’s a ciabatta bread recipe online (olive oil, water, tiny amount of milk, bread flour, tiny amount of yeast) that is also cold rise and very good, makes one loaf, no refrigeration needed. Both of these breads are perfect for an outdoor clay, brick, rock or adobe oven. Oh, and you can wrap the dough around a stick for campfire bread.
Unless they used a stabilized, reinforced adobe mix and compacted the underlying soil/sand/clay really well in small lifts, when the 4 thousand square feet of tile over adobe floor starts to crack and shatter you will have enough pieces to make an artistic mosaic covering for the outside of the Secret Lair and every other building in sight, plus a patio outside your door and a paved road to the Lair. There are really good underlayments for tile over OSB. Just saying…
Zelda: Neighbor L makes that. I probably would too, with refrigeration.
And as for D&L’s floor: I expect most of it to remain quite stable. It was laid down and compacted in small layers. There are a few spots where the tile mortar needed to get rather thicker than is quite right, and I’m not sure they won’t be repairing grout in those spots. But it’s been much of a year with traffic now and no problems.
Joel, I think the first sentence of the last paragraph pretty much sums up my view of our relationship to the Engineer of the Universe. Pray, by all means, being sure to be grateful for good fortune, but be prepared to do the grunt work yourself. Hmmm…metaphor for political/personal outlook there, too. Pray for someone else to do it, or pray for help & work with what you’re given.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to veer into amateur profundity, but I call it as I see it.