Waitress Builds Fortress
(Page 3 of 5)
April/May 2004
By Dorothy Ainsworth
Doors are symbolic. As a shelter defines our living spaces and controls the atmosphere, a door determines who enters that private realm of being. I wanted a front door that would break Hitler's toe if he tried to kick it in! Massive and medieval, it must creak with hand-forged hinges and black hardware.
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Each kind of door has its own character. The quaint Dutch door in a country kitchen will cool an aromatic apple pie resting on the door's mantelpiece. A little cat door in the bottom will let Foo-foo bring a mouse in. Sophisticated French doors make a woman feel like a princess in gossamer, even when clad in blue jeans and a T-shirt. There's something about a large view chopped up into little pieces that makes it easier to take in. Smaller French doors in the loft would open onto a cantilevered deck, for sipping mint juleps in the cooler north light of a hot summer day.
Mandatory for decoration, mirrors are magic. They're a poor man's way to double the square footage and keep an eye on things. They repeat architectural patterns for visual appeal and keep you company when no one's home.
Yes, my humble abode would be my castle, and I reserve the right to keep the Internal Revenue Service out with a moat and drawbridge if necessary, or let the whole Mormon Tabernacle Choir in, if I so desire.
Fortress Joints
"I am giddy; expectation whirls me 'round." (Shakespeare again.) It was time to roll up my sleeves, flex my little biceps and grab the drawknife. I peeled and stained 150 forest service logs. My sister, Meredith, made the mistake of visiting for a week. She peeled and stained another 150 logs, and escaped by plane when her "vacation" was done.
The next step was squaring off the 600 log ends. Kirt and I worked together using a Rube Goldberg contraption I devised to ensure a straight cut. I built the floor in three months. It was supported by a pier-and-girder foundation, connected together by 2-by-12-inch floor joists on 16-inch centers. It would support a house full of hippos.
To tie it all together, this 2,000-squarefoot design incorporated mortise-and-tenon joints (see photos below). Yikes! Mortise and tenon joints! Could I really do this? There lay eight 300-pound 14-footers and four 400-pound 18-footers on the subfloor. And there I stood with a hammer and chisel. It was my moment of truth.
I laid each "bent" (two upright logs and a horizontal log) out as it would appear standing up, flattened the surfaces where the tenons would plug in and cut the mortises (slots) just so, using an electric chain saw, ship's auger and chisel. I cut a tenon on each end of the horizontal logs after taking great care to ensure a 90-degree junction. Everything had to be kept square with the imaginary centerline of each log. The four bents created three bays (space between bents), that were joined together by connecting girts (logs) and reinforced with knee braces.
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