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Russell Wangersky \/ Free Press<\/p>\n
The new shed, in mid-construction.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, my new beam safely tagged together, I put down the impact driver and realized I was happy. Very happy.<\/p>\n
There were boreal chickadees singing in the woods, a very small audience of two blue jays watching my efforts, and a soundtrack of distant chainsaws and roof-shingle-nail-hammering in the near distance. An erratic wind was occasionally bringing small wafts of cool air from the east, the kind of breeze that makes you stop and turn your face straight-on into it, if for no other reason than to savour the cool change as it washes over you.<\/p>\n
One task completed, a short break before the next one. A drink of sun-warmed water, a pause occasionally for a healthy handful of roast chicken-flavoured potato chips (yes, they exist), a quickly eaten small apple, the core thrown from the rooftop into the underbrush to hopefully start a new apple tree.<\/p>\n
It was a bizarre version of \u201cHow we spent our summer holidays\u201d \u2014 my wife Leslie and I building a 10-by-16-foot shed on top of the not-quite-square foundation of a former root cellar.<\/p>\n
We framed, we strapped, we sheathed, we roofed. The kind of project where you lose weight not just because of the physical exertion involved, but because, eager to get back at it, you forget to eat as regularly as you usually do. The smell of wood from fresh-cut spruce in your nose and on your clothes basically on a full-time basis.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, wanting nothing more than to shower away the sweat and grime and itching sawdust, followed by shutting off as completely as you can, a clock that has clearly surpassed its winding.<\/p>\n
I find working with wood to be one of the best things I can do.<\/p>\n
The math involved clears your head of wandering worries \u2014 the power tools do, too, because they demand your full attention, if for no other reason than plain and simple safety. You write cryptic notes in fat carpenter\u2019s pencil graphite on the sides of two-by-fours, on corners of plywood, on scraps of paper or cardboard you stuff in your pockets and forget about until they surface later \u2014 and then can make absolutely no coherent sense of anything that you read. It\u2019s like casting pencil-lead spells.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t always go right \u2014 I hate mismeasuring and wasting perfectly good lumber. But today\u2019s accidental waste is often tomorrow\u2019s essential discovery. Cleaning up when we had finished, I realized I had found a whole new space to fill with bits of leftover wood.<\/p>\n
I have gathered \u2014 and have also, sadly, occasionally had to give up \u2014 collections of random scraps of wood in many cities and provinces now. I have salvaged Douglas fir from street-side bunk-bed scraps, have discovered bright, beautiful red oak in trashed greyed bench boards I\u2019ve then cut down with the table saw, stashed away a quarter-sheet of oak-faced plywood. Old, rough-cut full-dimension boards from old houses. Tongue-and-groove wall board from the DBP \u2014 the days before plywood.<\/p>\n
The fir, red oak and oak plywood have been used in a just-about-finished cabinetry project. The other wood in my current collection \u2014 clear pine boards, small triangular cedar blocks from a staircase in Saskatoon, a white-painted five-panel door, cutoff pieces of pine too useful to discard \u2014 are just awaiting their purpose.<\/p>\n
Because there\u2019s nothing more satisfying than possessing a wood scrap that is the perfect solution for a small problem, a problem that would otherwise require purchasing\u2026 more wood.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, fresh from the shed project, I got into a discussion with a family member about trim. It expanded rapidly. He\u2019d done all his own interior house trim. Had opened up rooms and taken down full-size two-by-fours from inside the walls years before \u2014 and still had some of them stashed away in his lumber collection.<\/p>\n
He had \u2014 wait for it \u2014 a bench planer.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s wonderful to find, accidentally, a fellow traveller you hadn\u2019t expected to find.<\/p>\n
We went out to his garage to look at his superior power tools, and, of course, his collection of random scraps of wood. It was a big collection.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to need to build a bigger garage,\u201d I said, almost accusingly.<\/p>\n
That was the envy talking.<\/p>\n
Russell Wangersky is the Comment Editor at the Free Press. He can be reached at russell.wangersky@freepress.mb.ca<\/p>\n
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Russell Wangersky Russell Wangersky is Perspectives Editor for the Winnipeg Free Press, and also writes editorials and columns. He worked at newspapers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan before joining the Free Press in 2023. A seven-time National Newspaper Award finalist for opinion writing, he\u2019s also penned eight books. Read more about Russell<\/a>.<\/p>\n Russell oversees the team that publishes editorials, opinions and analysis \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber<\/a>.<\/p>\n Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.<\/p>\n \t\t
Perspectives editor
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