A Tipping Point

Previously I have mentioned my mostly-antique lumber inventory, and adding to it via building demolition and salvage, lucky finds, and whatnot.  Last Tuesday brought a figurative and literal tipping point in my “management” of this mass of lignen-cellulose composite macromolecules.

A view of the stash about three months ago; it had grown considerably in the time since.

About two weeks ago I visited my friends Mr. & Mrs. C about ninety minutes away.  Mr. C had been harvesting and lumbering trees on his farm for some time, and I had arranged to acquire a truck load of mostly white oak and butternut from him.  And I did.  Shoehorning the purchase into the vintage chestnut log barn was a chore, but I got it done.

Then I went back to our old home and loaded another full pickup load to bring back with me, again destined for the storage barn.  As I was progressing with the transfer, one of the stacks started moving.  Then  the one next to it also moved in response to the movement of the first one.  Before long every stack in the storage barn was tilted westward at a 45 degree decline.

The result was a full week of work to get it fixed.

I first spent two days pulling out the inventory from the barn and stacking it out in the yard.  Once that was done I began building a proper lumber rack similar to those I see in lumber yards, that is, back in the day when lumber yards stored and sold lumber properly rather than stacked out in open weather.

Four days later I had accomplished as much as I could.  The space, being less disorderly, has much greater capacity for storage.  I was pretty surprised at the amount of vintage and salvaged chestnut I own, but learned a critical fact.  Last weekend when dining with my daughter and her boyfriend I mentioned that I really did not care for chestnut and had no desire to make anything with it.  To which Mrs. Barn replied somewhat tartly something like, “Well, some people who live in the cabin really like chestnut and would like some furniture to be made from it!”  I’ve now got five or eight pieces of furniture on the list for this coming year.

I was also surprised to find a fine lot of lumber underneath the pile that pre-dated my time here.  The best discovery was several hundred linear feet of 8-inch eastern white cedar ship-lap siding.

Now I have to make sure I have enough room for the remaining six truck loads of lumber still back in Maryland.  If not, I may have to sell some lumber.

Nah, that’s just crazy talk.