![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I was going to begin on the boat today. Since I have a choice of buying my plans from Source A for 75$ (good reputation, well known source), Source B for 25$ (original owner now in assisted living, not sure how long plans will take to ship or whether anyone is even minding that webstore anymore) or draw up my own plans from the measured illustrations in Featherweight Boatbuilding, I waffled for a while and decided to draw up my own plans. I'm pretty sure a couple of the measurements are wrong (hull depth should vary smoothly from center to stems, and in this case it wavers back and forth by about a half inch) but I think I have worked out how to smooth that out. From stuff on the accompanying website, I am not the only person to make this observation, which reassures me a bit that I am less likely to be contemplating something stupid.
However drawing out the plans is kind of intimidating. I don't have a drafting table or even a drafting board, and I figure I can compensate by taping my straightedge to the dining room table and running a T-square off that, but I don't even have a T-square or any big paper.
And, as often happens when I'm planning to start an intimidating task, I got a lot of other things done this morning. I did a load of laundry and a big load of dishes, and took the recycling out and threw out the trash, brought in the mail and sorted it, practiced mandolin and even got started on grouting the shower.
Unfortunately before I can grout the shower, I need to scrub the cracks out as well as possible so the grout will stick, and remove all the old silicone caulk which the person before me used in place of real grout. Plus I need to remove the old caulk anyway, because I need to re-caulk.
And folding my 6 foot 1 self into the bottom of the shower to scrub and pry out old caulk is a bit hard on my rickety old frame. I figured out in fairly short order that I was not going to be able to keep at it for the multiple hours necessary to finish this task in a day.
So I decided to fall back and punt. I don't actually know much about football (American football) but I have always taken this to mean "substitute a smaller, but achievable, portion of a task for the more ambitious original plan which has been discovered to be impractical."
In this case, I decided I would work on the shower for an hour, and then an hour tomorrow and so on until it is done. I have done the first hour, removing the old caulk and scrubbing the bottom of two sides of the shower, but I expect I have at least two more hours to go. I intend to finish by grouting, letting the grout cure, and then caulking the bottom edge, where the walls meet the shower floor.
Now I think I will walk down to Carson Newman to see if they have any kind of drafting facilities or even a T-square I can borrow instead of paying for one. :-) That way I can mark "exercise" off my list for the day too. And maybe even start on the planned project.
However drawing out the plans is kind of intimidating. I don't have a drafting table or even a drafting board, and I figure I can compensate by taping my straightedge to the dining room table and running a T-square off that, but I don't even have a T-square or any big paper.
And, as often happens when I'm planning to start an intimidating task, I got a lot of other things done this morning. I did a load of laundry and a big load of dishes, and took the recycling out and threw out the trash, brought in the mail and sorted it, practiced mandolin and even got started on grouting the shower.
Unfortunately before I can grout the shower, I need to scrub the cracks out as well as possible so the grout will stick, and remove all the old silicone caulk which the person before me used in place of real grout. Plus I need to remove the old caulk anyway, because I need to re-caulk.
And folding my 6 foot 1 self into the bottom of the shower to scrub and pry out old caulk is a bit hard on my rickety old frame. I figured out in fairly short order that I was not going to be able to keep at it for the multiple hours necessary to finish this task in a day.
So I decided to fall back and punt. I don't actually know much about football (American football) but I have always taken this to mean "substitute a smaller, but achievable, portion of a task for the more ambitious original plan which has been discovered to be impractical."
In this case, I decided I would work on the shower for an hour, and then an hour tomorrow and so on until it is done. I have done the first hour, removing the old caulk and scrubbing the bottom of two sides of the shower, but I expect I have at least two more hours to go. I intend to finish by grouting, letting the grout cure, and then caulking the bottom edge, where the walls meet the shower floor.
Now I think I will walk down to Carson Newman to see if they have any kind of drafting facilities or even a T-square I can borrow instead of paying for one. :-) That way I can mark "exercise" off my list for the day too. And maybe even start on the planned project.
