upstairs and downstairs: weekend projects

Well, it's the weekend, and not just any weekend. It's Seafair Weekend. The highlight of which is, for many, the annual visit of the Blue Angels. Also known as the U.S. Navy's precision flying team, also known as the U.S. Navy's very expensive way of recruiting high school dropouts into the service in hopes that they'll be top gun pilots when they are really going to end up refilling vending machines on aircraft carriers team.

I'd be less grouchy if they'd stop buzzing my house.

There's a lot to do around here, and Seafair is not enough of a reason to stop. Yesterday I embarked on what could generously be called a fool's errand, my own kind of wrestling with a plane.

On Tuesday, Robert and I pulled a big header out of the wall when we were putting in the new master bedroom windows. It wasn't really holding anything up, it looked more like a 12' spacer more than anything else. But now, we have the opportunity to actually use it as a header, holding up the roof over the new windows in the south bedroom. There was only one small problem- the 2 x 8s were not exactly the same size. For some weird reason, one of the beams was about a 1/4'' wider than the other. Which could lead to an out of balance issue when the beam is actually carrying some load. Maybe. Of course, it could just be me reclaiming my 'Most Cautious Man in America' mantle.

Anyway, I decided to plane the overhanging beam with my tiny little hand plane. 12 feet by 1/4'' is a lot of hand planing. It's fir, so it's kind of soft, but it was a solid hour of muscling it out. After I was finished, I screwed and glued the thing together and tomorrow, we are ready to set it in place. By we, I mean me and my muscles.