Short cuts can short change you: Part II

For Part I, click here.

After I returned from the fruitless search for the missing sheet of plywood, I ate supper, went to bed, and tossed and turned too much of the night, considering various options for the next day.

The next morning I plotted out the work for the day.  On one of my crawls underneath, I noticed that there were lots of staples sticking out.  These would have hindered moving plywood sections and so I began removing them.  I think it took me all morning to get them out; I don't remember if that was one-quarter of joists or all of them.

Finally, maybe it was after lunch, I measured out lengths of insulation and stuffed them between the joists, two layers of 3-1/2 inch denim "no-scratch".  I think I did one "sixteen inch by six feet" section at a time.  However, the insulation would not stay between the joists; it sagged and even dropped completely out.

I had set aside some of the old insulation supports, springy sixteen-inch wire rods.  These did the trick of holding the insulation up.  I also had a full package of them left from when I had first put insulation under the floor.  Fortunately, I didn't let my wife throw them out or give them to a rummage sale.

Sometime in the afternoon, I had insulation in place on one-quarter of the joists.

My memory may be wrong, but I think I considered that it a good stopping place.  The next step would be to cover what I had done with plywood.  That would be the next visit's work.  Now it was time to return my friend's trailer.

For some reason, I took the longer way around, thinking that a more direct road was still closed, even when I knew it had been opened.  I had gotten directions to my friend's house from Two Harbors from Map Quest or Google.  When I got into Two Harbors and cell phone coverage, I called him to let him know I was on my way (his Duluth number was long distance from our cabin).  It's a good thing I did.  He told me that I can't use Cant Rd. to get to his place.

When I did get there he noticed the tire iron wasn't on top of the loose spare tire.  Hoo boy!  At 65 mph it must have bounced out.  At least traffic was sparse and it didn't slam into someone's grille or worse.

On Friday I returned to our cabin and tried getting a 4x8 sheet of 1/4-inch plywood in place to screw it to the joists.  No way could I manage this by myself.

So I cooked up what I call Plan A-.  My trying to cover the insulation with whole sheets of plywood was Plan B; the original Plan A having been to put the insulation in from the top.  Plan A- was putting in pieces of plywood from the bottom and holding them up by some means.

Before I cut up my brand new sheets of plywood, I found some old, squirrel-chewed 1/4-inch plywood on our lumber left-overs pile.  The squirrels probably liked the glue.  There was enough good wood to make two about 70x14 panels.  I also found that my circular saw, unused for many years, had a plywood blade and still worked.

My original thought had been to screw runners to the side of the joists and then zigzag the plywood up and let it drop back down.  I measured a "pocket" carefully and tried to cut each piece carefully.  I cut one piece in and tried to fit it in.  I couldn't push up on one side and get the other side to go over the opposite runner.  That didn't work so well.  I took the runners off one side and then just held the piece up with one hand and used a cordless drill to put 1-1/2 screws every 18 inches or so.  That worked.

Except!  There were hangers over the support beams that prevented the piece from going completely to the outside edge.  I had to make notches in the piece.  Then, because I was using low supports to cut the plywood, my cuts weren't the straightest possible.  I had to trim wherever a piece was too wide.  And of course, the joists are not precision cut or placed lumber and are different distances apart - 14-1/2 inches one place and 14-1/4 another.  Some places a piece may fit snugly, and other places there are huge gaps that will have to be filled with caulk.

To shorten this long tale of fortitude, stubbornness, stupidity, and cleverness, the two pieces of scrap worked, and so I cut four more pieces out of the new sheets.  At five o'clock Saturday afternoon, I had one quarter of the insulation up and supported.  Now I began putting all my scattered tools away.  That took an hour.  Then another hour straightening up the cabin and packing up.  When I went to turn off the refrigerator I discovered I never turned it on.  Fortunately the cabin had been so cold when I arrived the day before that the food stayed cool enough.

At about seven I drove out the driveway and locked the cable.  I looked East down the road and saw a full moon almost over the center of the road.  Take a few pictures.  I should have done it with a tripod; the moon is bleary.  Off I go on the hour-long drive listening to the latest "To the Best of Our Knowledge" on my iPhone plugged into the radio.  It gets darker and darker.  I'm not used to this.  My eyes dart back and forth watching for deer.  Then I realize I don't have my high beams on.  Ah, that makes a difference.

Finally I arrive back in Duluth, but no way am I going to prepare supper for myself at this hour.  I stop at Bulldog Pizza for a pint and a big sandwich.  What a relief to sit down without a cabin floor hanging six inches from my face or without a steering wheel in my hands peering into the dark.

Still 3/4 of the insulation to go.  At least the next time I'll have my wife there to help in so many ways.

Short cuts can short change you

For readers not familiar with American idioms, let me explain the title.

A short cut is doing something with less time or money than normal.  It comes from taking a shorter route than the usual route, say cutting through the woods rather than following the road.  A short cut now may mean doing something quicker than normal.  Like not putting on a hard hat to save time.

Giving short change is not giving all the change due a payee.  For example, if you present $20 for something that costs $16.10, the seller may give you only $3.50 in change or $2.90, not $3.90.  Short change has now come to mean not getting full value from something.

So, my short cut in building a cabin has cost me more money and time over the years than if I had done it right the first time.

When we built our cabin in Brimson, Minnesota in 1994 or so, we were living in the Twin Cities, a 200-mile, 3-1/2 to 4 hour drive each way.  Each time we did a bit of work, we tried to make as much progress as possible.

We built the cabin on six posts stuck in the ground with the floor about 2-1/2 feet above the ground.  I should have put insulation between the joists before I put the floor on, but I didn't want the insulation to get wet if I didn't have time to put the floor on.  The way to put insulation between the joists is to nail runners along the sides of the joists, drop plywood on the runners, caulk the result, and drop insulation between the joists.

No, Mr. Know-It-All would crawl under the building and put the insulation in from underneath.  No big deal for a fifty-something "kid".

Our cabin floor was warm through most winters, but then the squirrels discovered this wonderful nesting material.  We would see wads all over our yard.  I tried putting plastic screen under the insulation, but the squirrels would rip that off.  I talked about putting 1/4-inch screen underneath, but never put more than a few square feet in.

Finally, there was practically no insulation left, and our floor was always cold in winter.  This spring and summer, I pulled out what was left.  I intended to install new insulation the proper way this fall.  I finally started two weeks ago.

I intended to stuff insulation between the joists and then screw 1/4-inch plywood to support it and protect it from squirrels.

I borrowed a trailer from a friend, went to Menard's to buy all the plywood and a couple of packages of insulation.  As a clerk helped me put the plywood in the trailer, he asked if I wanted to put the spare tire on top to hold the plywood down.  I said no, I have tie-downs.  Mistake one!

When I tried putting my tie-downs on, I could not find a good purchase on the side of the trailer, at least within reach of a single tie-down.  I didn't think to hook two together.  Mistake two!

As I drove the fifty-plus miles to our cabin, I kept looking in the rear-view mirror to be sure the insulation was still there.  At not quite 25 miles, the insulation wasn't there.  The North Star fire station was just ahead and I used that to turn around.  Within a mile of backtracking, I saw the two insulation bundles stacked beside the road.  Some kind person had stopped, picked them up off the road, and put them at the side.  This time I put the bundles in the back of my SUV.  But I didn't count the sheets of plywood; I saw that the top sheet was wedged under one of the back slats of the trailer and that should hold them in place.  Mistake three!

When I unloaded everything at the cabin, I discovered I had only five of the six sheets of plywood.  Hoo, boy!  I drove the twenty-five miles back to where I had lost the insulation,  looking carefully on both sides of the road (lots of tall grass, embankments, and such), as the daylight dwindled.  As I drove, I pondered that I'm probably spending as much in gas as the missing sheet of plywood cost.  I didn't find the sheet.

Tomorrow or soon: Part II - the actual progress of the insulation.