Frieze - Will this Ever Get Finished?

Months ago I started planning what has turned into a massive remodeling project. Months later, I wonder if I will ever get to what originally inspired it.

Let's review. I want to place a Yankee Stadium inspired Frieze (pronounced Freeze) on the top shelf of my work bench. Before I could do that, though, I thought it best to rebuild/expand my workbench. What the heck, y'know? That would include expanding the original bench, the addition of new bench to the left of the original bench and adding a platform underneath for shelving and what not.

So, above becomes below. What you don't see is how primitive below was when I first "finished it". It wasn't square, hardly plum and certainly wasn't something that would increase the value of our home. No matter how pretty it may look when painted or in the case of this picture, 10 feet away. 

I have no one to blame for this mess other than myself. First, I'm a woefully inexperienced carpenter and engineer. Secondly, I don't have the tools necessary to quickly pull off what it is I want to do and finally, I just don't have a lot of time. There's also the weather. When it's 10 degrees outside that means it might be 25 in here.

Back to the inexperienced part. I've made so many mistakes building this thing that I'm at the stage where I'm doubting I will ever finish it. And then, on top of the mistakes I keep working around the challenges I've encountered by doing even more work! Example. Because the panels for the shelving platform that I had custom cut at Lowes are 8 feet long and the work bench is 10, I'm going to now move that post you see above over below in by two feet. That means those frame rails will also have to be moved 2 feet necessitating yet another dismantling and rebuild. Great.

My greatest folly. Not only is was the kick plate here too long but the whole thing was slanted like a ski slope. I can't believe I didn't keep an eye on making sure this was level. It was so bad you could see something was off just by looking at it. Not good. Rip it out. Rebuild. Again. And again till I got it right.

Honestly, if I was as bad at my job as I am at carpentry I'd be unemployed. Who would hire me? Who would pay me to work on their home or business? Certainly, if I was paying someone to build this for me and they were taking as long as I am I would bolt the garage shut and tell them to get lost.

I know that I grossly underestimated the complexity of this thing. These aren't shelves as much as they are elevated flooring. They're going to be that sturdy when completed.

Onward. And upward.

2000 Mercury Grand Marquis - Middle Child Syndrome

Ford's now defunct Mercury division and I have a lot in common. My first car was a Mercury Comet. My wife was driving a bubble back Mercury Capri RS when we first met. My brother drove a 1989 Mercury Grand Marquis back in the early '90's. Most importantly Mercury and I are both "middle children". My wife is a middle child too.

Being a middle child can be tough. At worst you're either neglected and ignored or unfairly put in the cross hairs of demanding parents who are not happy that you're not exactly like the fair haired, much prized older sibling. At best, you're the star of the family rising above the train wreck that is your older brother or sister and becoming the solid example for how to get life done for your younger sib that your parents wished their first born was. Good or bad it's a different ride for us middlers. My wife and I came through fairly unscathed from the rigors of middle child-dom. Sorry to say, Ford's middle kid did not. 

Mercury's, for most of their time here on this earth, were either a Fancy Ford or a "entry level" Lincoln. A Mercury, with the exception of the spectacularly unique and wonderful 1949-1951s, was never a "Mercury". My Comet was a slightly more upmarket Ford Maverick. I guess. I didn't think there was anything upmarket about it. My wife's Capri allegedly a tarted up Mustang.

Case in point. This brutal 2000 circa Grand Marquis. So what is it? A fancy Crown Vic or less expensive Town Car? I'm confused myself. It's a shame because underneath the hilarious schmaltz is a solid, dare I see good automobile. Net, net? A truly tortured retiree mobile. 

  

Pick a lane, Grand Pa. Ford never did. That confused buyers and ultimately killed you.

 

Frieze Update - Game of Inches

I ain't no carpenter but if I was I think I would flat out suck at it.

The biggest problem with finishing this endless workbench expansion has been the weather. It's been brutally cold here the last couple of weekends and with a business trip thrown into the mix on top of the weather it's now over a month that I've been tooling with what I thought would be a 3 - 4 hour project.

Last weekend my younger son was my helper again and it was no more than 20 degrees out in the garage. The doors were closed to keep the relentless wind at bay but it was still stinging and numbing cold after about 15 minutes. Some classic rock tunes on the radio helped to keep our conversation going between passes on the table saw but the cold eventually crushed my ambition to finish the job.

My goal though, despite mother nature, was to finish at least the shelving under the "new" workbench. Everything was going along beautifully except that I noticed that the kick plate needed to be trimmed by about half an inch. Hrmph. That would've required significant disassembly and that meant more wasted time. So, instead, I worked around that problem and soldiered onward toward final assembly.

After it all fell together with some hammering, cussing and screwing I stepped back and took a look at my work. Oh. No. The whole thing is not square (I could live with that) but more importantly it's not plum. Great. So much is this thing off that you can notice it with a naked eye. This ain't gonna work. I huffed and I puffed and resolved that this beast is going to require more time to complete. That's right, Bob Villa. It needs to come apart. That means more time.  

Sweet, cold, frigid time that I myself was dissappointed in needing to invest. When you have a 14 year old jogging place to stay warm my decision was easy to make. Ditch the project until next weekend.

Hello, level. We'll meet again for another weekend afternoon of battle this Sunday. 

Adventures In Snowblowing

Woke up this morning to an unexpectedly heavy snow fall. It was supposed to Cleveland more in the snow belt and leave the west side of town with next to nothing.

When you've got 5 inches of snow with 15 degree temperatures there's only one thing to do!

That's right! Fire up Ole Red!

Things were going along swimmingly well until all of a sudden I heard a sickening screech coming from the Ole Fire breathing Powerhouse. The last time I heard a sound like that was back in Dallas when I ran a brand new lawn mower without oil. Brilliant.

I pushed the hulk into the garage going over in my head how I was going to tell the wife that I blew the engine on another expensive piece of apparatus. "It was...soap. Poisoning..."

First thing I did was check the oil. If the dip stick was bone dry and smoke poured out of engine then I knew the engine was toast. But the dip stick indicated there was plenty of fresh oil in the crankcase. What the?

So I plugged the starter back in and cranked the engine. Started right up!

Ohthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!

Thing was, when I engaged the blades it stalled out again with he same sickening screech. Something was wrong. Quick check up and inside the blower and I found what was the matter.

Is it spring yet?

Frieze - The Frieze and The Freeze

With projects that take longer than I originally planned I usually get to a point where I feel as though they're never going to get finished. I'm there right now with this work bench expansion/Yankee Stadium Frieze project. The good news is that the new 'bench looks fantastic.

The plan here is to expand the original work bench, add an additional work bench the same size as the expanded "old" bench and add shelving under the entire structure. I plan to paint the whole thing (undecided on the color scheme) and finally, to finish it off, add a Yankee Stadium inspired Frieze at the top of the whole thing.

 

Time goes by so fast. After spending an entire weekend expanding the existing the bench and framing out the new one and the shelving, I thought I had maybe one more weekend of work on it to get it finshed. Yeah. Well, the next weekend I had to go to Memphis on business so I lost that weekend. Last Saturday I lost the day because it was freezing cold outside and only slightly warmer inside the garage. Forget that. The Frieze has to wait til the Freeze passes.

This past Sunday I had maybe 2 hours to work on it when it was a little warmer. I got the shelving under the new side of the bench reenforced. That was it.

 



This week has been a sweet old tease. It's been 55 to 60 degrees all week so far. Just in time for the weekend we're expecting a good old fashioned blast of mid January Fury 'd Mother Nature. Great. If I'm going to get anything done out here this weekend it'll have to be done with me looking more like the Michelin man than a hack weekend carpenter.

 

 

I'm getting there, though. The original structure above as become the beast below.
 

 

Time marches on. So does the cold. It's been a pretty intense winter so far.

Cadillac Ranch

Well there she sits buddy just a-gleaming in the sun 

Eldorado fins, whitewalls and skirts

 

Rides just like a little bit of heaven here on earth

  

Cadillac, Cadillac
Long and dark shiny and black  

Open up your engines let `em roar
Tearing up the highway like a big old dinosaur

 When I die throw my body in the back
And drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac

You're my last love you're my last chance
Don't let `em take me to the Cadillac Ranch

Ford Ranch Wagon - The Company Car



When the mechanic at Stu's Gulf gave the diagnosis that the Rambler had a cracked block, he gave my father two options. He'd either replace the engine at considerable cost or he'd take the car off his hands for $150. Sitting next to my father in the greasy office of that long gone service station at the corner of Merrick Road and Silver Lake Lane back in Baldwin, I could hardly contain my excitement when my father said he'd take the money.

Despite a push button transmission, I was never impressed with the gray on red, 1961 Rambler "Classic" that was the Connolly family ride when I was very young. When you grow up on a block loaded with automotive talent from Cadillac, Buick, Chevrolet, Lincoln, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Ford and Plymouth "The Rambler" seemed woefully if not painfully inadequate.

What's more, back then my father was an executive for Burlington Industries. At least once a month if not more it seemed, he'd fly to North Carolina for several days and return home in a "company car". It was a rental from Hertz but since "the company" was paying for it that's what we called those cars. For the most part he came home in something that was much more interesting to me than the Rambler. From time to time though he would bring home some clunker like a station wagon or little foreign job. One of those "little foreign jobs" was a 1973 era Mercury Capri btw. I hated it at first because my father, who was a big man, hated it. What did I know. This is a story for another time.

 

With the Rambler finally gone I was giddy with anticipation as to what we'd get. How exciting it would be go car shopping! Would we get that amazing Impala Sports Coupe he had brought home not so long ago? Perhaps that gigantic and magical Fury convertible he brought home in the middle of winter! Oh, sweet joy, the sky was the limit!

 

Our Ranch Wagon looked EXACTLY like this except ours had blue rims not black and did not have whitewalls.

 

So, when a blue '68 Ford Ranch Wagon showed up one day I simply shrugged my shoulders that it was one of the clunkers he'd get every now and then from Hertz. You can only imagine the crushing disappointment I felt when I found out it was in fact our new family truckster.

 

I found this quickie shot of a '68 Ranch Wagon from an epsiode of Kojak. Who loves ya, baby. Note roof rack, chrome rub strip, black rims and whitewalls. This is probably a Ranch Wagon 500. We had the bone stripper Ranch Wagon.  

Turned out my father was such a fan of Hertz' rentals that he bought one they had for sale. It was the company car that came to visit and stayed for a long, long time.

Forty plus years later I'm still reeling from it.

Frieze Update! - Work Bench Expansion

 

The Frieze project rolls on. Albeit slowly. This past weekend, with the considerable help of my delightful younger son, I made significant progress towards starting on it.

To review, my plan is to construct a Yankee Stadium inspired Frieze (pronounced "freeze") at the top of my work bench. A ridiculously frivolous project. Exactly why I want to do it.

First things first. Updating our master bathroom not to mention finishing a stoop and shelf in the garage has taken most of the winter so far. And then there's the way over due expansion of the work bench itself. All this I deemed had to be done before I dove into something frivolous.

 

 

The expansion of the work was three fold. First, I wanted to expand the original bench. Secondly, I wanted to add to the existing structure by adding another section that was as large as that original and finally, add a parallel shelf under both sections for much needed storage.

 

I think I enjoy planning and engineering these projects more than actually doing them.

 

So, this...

 

 

 

Has become this.

I'm pretty happy with it. There's re enforcing to be done, electrical and paint. Then perhaps I can start on the Frieze. My plan is to have it done by Opening Day. Play Ball!