!!!! SEPP to Boot: Stephen's Experience (BEL)

Austin Durant wrote:Happy Birthday, Stephen!

Thanks for the well-wishing, man! Hope you make it back here sometime soon.

BRK #211

Taco Tuesday has treated me exceedingly well, once again.

Earlier this morning I was treated to a smile, nearly as soon as I walked out the door of the Solarium today. It was on a brief walk past the "Season Extender" on the way to the Classroom.



Sure, it's cheesy. I won't apologize.

In the first part of the day, I worked with Reid on the last little bits of sealing the Solarium. Here he is, measuring and trimming paper to pack behind the paneling in the upper-part of the wall.



Reid, Grey, and I traveled to the Lab for the second half of the day. First, we bucked, split, and stacked all the wood over at the Gregorian Woodshed. Unfortunately, I failed to catch a photograph of this, however...! Next time we're there, I'll catch a picture of our progress. Once that was done, we headed back to the Sawmill and continued processing the log we set in there yesterday. Here, Grey and Reid begin the day's first cut, adjusting the horizontal position of the saw.



Grey felt it necessary to replace the blade. This is the first time it's been replaced in months and we'd been doing quite a lot of milling lately, so it certainly seemed worth doing, to me.



Spending the early part of the evening reflecting on some of the old-skool wisdom of Earl Nightingale, a guy I first learned about maybe two years or so before I'd moved out here. While much of his economic advice has since become outdated and superseded (in my opinion, that is), the maxim of, "we become what we think about" still rings true. Honestly, I doubt I'd be here otherwise.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BRK #212

Happy Art Day to you...!!!

Wrapped-up into two projects for Art Day. One I'll reveal as a video later this week. The other was preparing the meal: things you would eat in an art gallery. Leave it to the vegan to cook up all the sausage, eh? Well, there were no bad reviews so I suppose it was a win all around.







Major shout-out to Grey, who assembled all the margherita bites:





Thanks once again for all your help, man!!!

(PS: don't tell anyone, but it was vegan mozzarella! Hahahah! I ate the hell out of those things.)

That's all for now. I hope to have a video sorted out and ready for Paul to publish as soon as tomorrow. We'll see.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

BRK #213

So, to improve the insulation in the Solarium, we started a fairly big initiative. Reid, Moto Jeff, and I started framing-out the wall above the Solarium entrance (which used to be a conventional garage door). There was absolutely no insulation there before we came along, and to sum it up we're going to add studs to this section of the wall and then load it up with RockWool in an effort to reduce condensation and preserve the desired temperature. We're hoping to have everything done before new boots arrive this coming weekend. We'll do as much as we can.



In the second half of the day, I was working with Reid and Grey up at the Lab. We're over at the Sawmill as much as we can be, in an effort to process a large number of wall panels.



While Grey and Reid were at the Sawmill, I went hiking nearby to fell some dead-standing for always-useful firewood. I loaded up the truck with the tree I felled, and at the time I was pretty proud of this picture:



Meanwhile, as soon as Grey arrived, he easily noticed and then pointed out that I had actually felled a green Larch. I completely missed the clues that it was a still-living tree.

Can't win all the time, I suppose. It'll need seasoning throughout the year ahead before it's actually usable. I hope to not make that kind of mistake again. It's the kind of knowledge that comes with experience, unfortunately.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

Where is the condensation happening?