The tongue and groove boards were to be nailed to the top of the rafters, turning them into internal rafters, so all the joins would be invisible. Each rafter was 50mm wide, which meant even the crookedest end or the worst cut - or even both together - would also be hidden. To me, this was the equivalent of telling a bogan there were no speed cameras in the South Island. Full steam ahead!
The only foreseeable difficulty was getting the timber up there in the first place. There’s just no easy way to move 800 metres of T&G sixty metres down a grassy path and up to a point five metres off the ground. It doesn’t matter how you do it, you just have to do it. But I’ve never been content plodding along and finishing one job at a time, so although it may not have been the most efficient approach, I alternated between carrying, and continuing the building.
I’ve got more empathy with the hare than the tortoise. Run like mad then have a sleep appeals more than slow and steady wins the race. OK, so the hare didn’t win the race, but what did he lose? I don’t recall the tortoise being particularly elated by his win either. Life’s short, play hard. Maybe life’s too short for playing hard? Or perhaps life only seems short when you’re busy playing hard. Just look at how much you must lose in order to win. How many hours squandered preparing for ‘the game’? How many days recovering? How many opportunities foregone? Is it better to be number one in a single race, or to compete in them all? Life’s short, play!
So the long process of nailing 800 metres of T&G began, starting at the apex. The tongue of each new board was slotted into the groove of the attached board above, squeezed together, then nailed. Sometimes, if the board was vaguely straight, I could simply use my hammer and a spare piece of T&G, gently tapping until they clasped each other tightly.
But having too many straight boards would have contravened not only the laws of nature, but The Builder’s Tenth Maxim - the only way to keep timber straight, is to nail it straight onto the house. Storing timber correctly is supposed to stop it from warping, but I’ve never seen any timber which remains straight long enough for me to stack it correctly. Once it’s released from its wire straitjacket, you’ve got about an hour.
Even then, it’s usually a losing battle. If you stack it lying flat with heavy weights on top, it warps sideways. If you stack it lying on its edge, it warps upwards. Sometimes it seems like it’s trying to assume a crash position, reliving the trauma of its felling. Or is it expending its final drop of growth potential, reaching sunward one last time?
More frequently than I wished, my legs were needed to coerce the board’s tongue into the groove, using the battens to generate leverage. Twice I generated a little too much leverage, dislodging the batten and sending myself sliding down the rafter in an avalanche of boards and a shower of nails. Fortunately neither slide ended in hospital, but with my legs dangling over the edge after my flailing hands managed to halt my fall by hooking into the top of the frame.
Despite such minor mishaps, the ceiling progressed rapidly, getting easier as I descended. Once the ceiling was finished, the house not only had a definite shape, but also the first whiff of atmosphere. From inside I could begin to imagine the kind of life that I would live beneath its swirling caramel canopy. For the first time I felt some gratitude towards the sawmill, too. The specifications had indicated radiata pine throughout, and not knowing any better, we’d allowed the sawmill to dictate the type of T&G used, with the prime consideration being cost.
In retrospect, it was an entirely ludicrous, and risky, approach. A home is such a huge investment, it pays to spend that little bit extra to ensure the final product will be exactly what you wanted. There may be areas where budgetary corners can be cut, but for something as important as the lining of the ceiling, walls and floor - the very essence of the house - what’s a few thousand dollars more or less?
In this case, we’d been extremely fortunate that the sawmill had, for whatever reason, a special on larch at the time. Despite the fact it’s a very brittle wood with a tendency to split if nailed within a centimetre of any edge or along the tongue. It’s actually recommended that you drill each nail-hole first, unless, like me, you don’t mind a house with lots of character. It's also a very dangerous wood, syringing inch-long, semi-transparent splinters beneath your fingernails with unnerving regularity. It’s saving grace is it's also a very beautiful wood. It varies in colour from oregon peach to radiata cream, and the texture covers the gamut from gently undulating pastel barcodes to hypnotic spiralling vortexes of vibrancy.
Over the next month, I also discovered it darkens under the influence of rain and frost. It wasn’t something I necessarily wanted to discover, but I just didn’t have an 80 square metre tarpaulin, and my ragtag assortment of smaller tarpaulins were barely managing to keep the unused timber protected. Perhaps I should have continued with the roof first, especially as winter was rapidly approaching, but the first heavy frost had already deposited a crusty skin of ice over the house, and I had little enthusiasm for inventing any new alpine sports.
By now the apple season had finished, and David offered to help with the cladding. He had no deadlines, so was happy to stay as long as it took to finish the shell. I accepted his offer, glad for his assistance and his company, and he moved into the shed with me.
Although we managed to live quite harmoniously together, we quickly discovered we had vastly different (often conflicting) working styles. This was not only a reflection of inherent differences in our approach to life in general, but also our different motivations. I was comfortable compromising a degree of accuracy in return for speed, while David strove for precision. I just wanted to move in as soon as possible, while he wanted the experience in case he decided to return to Rainbow Community and build his own house.
My safety procedures extended no further than immediate dangers (ensuring the cord wasn’t lying in a pool of water and minimising the chances of my falling from any height), while David was also concerned for his long-term well-being (protecting every bodily orifice from potential harm). For me, the house was ample compensation for any future ailments such as powersaw tinnitus or chronic sawdustosis, while for him, they would just be a pain. While I believed improvisation would overcome any obstacle, David never felt comfortable without first planning each stage in detail.
Not that we struck many difficulties in the beginning. But then, we’d opted to close-in the bathroom first, simply because we could stay on the ground and get into some sort of routine before scaling any greater heights. It was all rather straightforward. Every board or batten was the same length, so David set about sawing the pieces, while I hammered them onto the framing.
In fact, the process was going so smoothly, we had visions of finishing the entire house in a few days ... until we realised we’d forgotten the building paper.
Attaching building paper is like wallpapering in a hurricane. As well as being a fire-retardant moisture-barrier, building paper is designed to create a draft-proof envelope. This quality is both its biggest advantage and its most frustrating disadvantage, because it might be draft-proof, but the environment in which you have to attach it seldom is. The slightest breeze causes it to parachute skyward, while a sudden gust transforms it into a spinnaker of a Whitbread yacht in full sail. And try stapling that to your house!
Of course the process was further complicated by not having a stapling gun, but rather ‘improvising’ by unfolding my old school stapler until it lay prostrate across the paper like a Moslem at Mecca, then pounding it with my clenched fist.
There was also the issue of reaching the points we needed to staple, and later, nail. The un-papered framing was ideally suited for reaching every point of the house, so I never did get around to buying a ladder. But as soon as we attached the first metre-wide strip of building paper, access became suddenly complicated. I had to hook my legs around the frame and, dangling almost upside-down, stretch out like Cheetah reaching for Tarzan’s hand. It wasn’t the most orthodox building method, but if there was a Builder’s Olympics, I’m sure I’d get at least a few points for style. (Though my points for technique would almost certainly rob me of any chance of a medal.) And it got the job done. Which was, in my view, the only thing that mattered.
But it was about this time that building site tension began to mount. I think it all started one cold, sunny afternoon while I was dangling from the western frame waiting for the next board to be handed up. Normally this was a straightforward procedure - I held one end of the measuring tape against the highest intersecting point between the next board and the roof line, then let the tape unwind down to David who took a measurement against the floor line. While I stayed entangled in the frame, David would find a board of appropriate length. Easy.
But there were four points along the way where the boards had to be cut to fit around the protruding piles. Normally it would be a simple matter of a quick measurement allowing a reasonable margin of error (or rather, erring slightly on the side of too big rather than too small), two quick pencil lines across the board then two quick cuts ... or so you’d think. Not, however, when the title of the show is Precision and Safety, Jane Austen’s little-known building classic.
I’ve always preferred watching buskers to full-scale theatrics, but as I hung there, waiting for the next board, the performance below seemed less like street theatre than a full-scale, complete-with-song-and-dance, twelve-Act melodrama. But I couldn’t just ignore the crumpled hat on the pavement and walk away, because I’d become an unwilling member of the cast - a captive participant suspended in a wooden cage high above the stage. I tried to relax and contemplate the sunshine or focus on the props and settings, but I could feel my impatience mounting as the drama slowly (oh so very slowly) unfolded ...
Our hero enters stage left. Measures the required length as described above. Finds board of appropriate length. Lays board on ground. Measures horizontally and vertically around intruding pile. Searches for left-over scrap of timber. Searches for pencil. Once suitable scrap and pencil found, scribbles measurements onto scrap. Re-checks measurements. Re-checks scribbled measurements correspond to re-checked measurements. Goes to board. Searches for tape measure. Finds tape measure discarded in grass beneath spot where measurements written. Returns to board with tape measure. Hooks tape measure onto end of board and begins unwinding. Drops tape measure when hooked end unhooks and snaps back inside. Picks up tape measure. Searches for a small block of timber. Returns to board. Hooks tape measure onto end of board again. Lays block on top of hook as anchor. Unwinds tape measure to end of board. Engages lock. Finds pencil. Finds square. Finds scrap of timber with measurements. Marks horizontal measurement in appropriate position. Lays square across board, pinning tape beneath. Marks horizontal line either side of tape. Removes square. Removes anchor block. Removes tape. Returns square to position and fills in the centimetre-wide gap in the line left by the tape. Removes square. Stands on tape. Swears. Disengages tape lock and rewinds kinked tape. Marks vertical measurement in appropriate position. Lays square along board. Marks vertical line until it intersects with horizontal line. Places square and tape on ground. Writes ‘waste’ on piece to be discarded. Scribbles squiggly lines outwards from word ‘waste’ to clearly highlight dimensions of piece to be discarded. Lifts board. Realises cutting blocks have fallen over, so drops board. Re-arranges cutting blocks. Lifts board and places across blocks. Finds powersaw and carries to blocks. Removes earplugs from pocket and places in ears. Removes handkerchief from other pocket and wraps around mouth. Finds goggles in grass and places over eyes. Lifts powersaw and places left foot on board. Makes horizontal cut to vertical line. Turns and makes vertical cut to horizontal line. Places powersaw on ground. Removes goggles and places on ground. Removes handkerchief from around mouth and returns to pocket. Removes earplugs from ears and returns to other pocket. Finds handsaw. Finishes horizontal cut. Finishes vertical cut. Places handsaw on ground. Carries board to house. Wakes up skeletal form passed out from thirst, starvation and boredom, hanging from frame. Passes up board. Nails board to house. Moves onto next board ...
Of course I appreciated David’s assistance. It not only reduced the number of times I had to scale the framing, but also simplified much of the process, making it far less strenuous and generally more enjoyable. Having someone hold that five metre board up while you hammer in that first nail is infinitely more relaxing than keeping a tenuous grip with one hand while trying to nail with the other. But at that moment I would have gladly traded the reduced strain and enjoyment for a little more speed. No matter how much I prodded and cajoled - “Little gaps don’t matter”, “Rough is good enough”, “It doesn’t have to be perfect”, “It’ll be covered over anyway” - David seemed incapable of changing his approach, or increasing his speed.
I chided myself for my lack of empathy and patience. I chastised myself for failing to heed the lessons learnt during that honeymoon cycling trip.
The first lesson had been ‘we should buy a tandem’, because there’s nothing more frustrating than two people with different levels of strength and fitness cycling together - or should that be trying to cycle together?
The second lesson had been ‘we do need more than five gears’, because there’s nothing more frustrating than walking half your cycling trip.
The third lesson had been ‘don’t wash dishes in the surf’, but that wasn’t at all relevant to this situation.
And, finally, ‘people have their own cruising speed’. No matter how incomprehensible it may seem, it’s just as difficult for some people to cycle any faster as it is for others to cycle any slower without falling off.
But although we discussed it over and over, and I knew I shouldn’t be annoyed, because progress might be slower than expected, but it was still faster and easier than doing it on my own, it never ceased to irritate me. “Why can’t he just work a bit faster?” I thought. “Why does he spend so much time trying to be precise when the finished product is invariably no more accurate than my imprecise work?”
In the end we had to resign ourselves to the fact that our approach to practicalities were like chalk and fingernails - one got the job done, while the other’s attempts just caused irritation. Though we probably both saw ourselves as chalk, I knew better.
Of course it was an arrogant and baseless assumption, but I plead for clemency on a stack of my father’s famous speeches. Who could hear his first-football-training-of-the-year speech (“There are only two ways of doing things... my way and the wrong way”) more than twelve times, and his twenty-first-birthday-party speech (“When Cameron/David/Kyle was younger he used to think he knew everything ... but now he knows he does”) three times (Raene missing out by virtue of being in Europe at the time, though it’s also debatable whether such sentiments applied to daughters), without being affected in some fundamental way?
Little wonder, then, that ‘knowing things’ and ‘being right’ seemed like such a noble (and natural) state of mind. How could I know it was all based on a lie? How could I guess the ‘things we know’ were just trees planted in our backyard to obscure the forest looming over the back fence? I’d believed my father had once braved that dark tangle to gather the finest seeds of truth for our garden, so there was no reason to venture far. In reality he’d never gone further than the local nursery of ideas, and had no intention of ever straying from his well-tended little patch.
His tales of bandits waiting to steal our treasured family pearls, of consuming pits of quicksand, of misleading trails and elusive shadows, of stumbling blindly through thick undergrowth and never finding a way back home, were mere superstitious myths. It wasn’t until many years later, until I succumbed to the lure of the forest, that I finally discovered the pearls were worthless trinkets gladly traded for a bandit’s song. The quicksand of ignorance was a hazard only for the unwary. Every trail was worth following, every shadow worth pursuing. The well-worn path was easiest to follow, but the untrodden path was lush with possibilities. And the only home worth returning to was the one which followed you into the forest.
I once thought to leave the forest and return ‘home’ to finally fell that sickly stand of ‘things we know’ one by one. But they were dead, hollow things, petrified by time and fear, and even the sharpest blade couldn’t bring them down. And my father had abandoned the forest edge to become a disciple of ‘them’. He no longer tended his own plot of ‘things we know’, because this mysterious clan of faceless, nameless men knew everything, and their cups of wisdom, scooped from the unsullied, undisputed, infinite font of Truth, raneth over. “They say it’s going to rain.” “They think it’s genetic.” “They use a flat trowel, not a pointed one.” “They mix concrete on a board, not in a barrow.” “They keep their pencils in their left pockets.” And how I despised their arrogant ignorance and the possibility genocide they espoused in the name of stability.
Further in my defence, at the time David and I were building together, I was relatively new to the forest. I was still gathering every musty fungus, every fragrant bloom, every shiny beetle that crossed my path, thinking they were valuable parts of some greater truth. Even when my pockets were bulging, weighing me down, I refused to abandon any of my precious jewels. Instead, I guarded them with feral jealously, locking them away at the back of my lair, away from greedy eyes and cold scrutiny. My priceless collection of treasures made me feel wealthy, powerful. The world was no longer a frightening place, because I knew, because I was right.
It was much later that I realised the forest is full of mysterious beauty and beautiful mystery, more ‘things we don’t know’ than ‘things we know’, with creeping lianas of doubt and a tangled profusion of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ beneath its canopy of confusion. It was much later that I discovered what I ‘knew’ was no longer what I ‘know’, and the most I would ever ‘know’ was a little more than nothing. It was much later that I learnt I wasn’t ‘right’, and the most I could ever be was a little bit ‘less wrong’. It was much later I read Emerson (“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.”) and felt the burden of ‘rightness’ slip from my shoulders. The world rotated not on an axis of fact, but of belief, so I was free to opine, argue, agree, discuss and dispute, with anyone, at anytime, and to do them all at once or to not do any of them, at all.
It’s strange, though, that it’s easier to forcefully disagree with someone’s opinion or to argue vehemently against their attitude, than it is to tell them you’d prefer coffee to tea. Why should it take at least two attempts to ascertain a beverage preference, and a minimum of three attempts to determine whether or not they want something to eat? “Tea or coffee?” “Whichever’s easiest.” “Either is no problem.” “What are you having?” “Tea.” “OK, then I’ll have tea.” “It’s no problem to make coffee.” “Are you sure?” “100%” “OK, I’ll have coffee.” “And would you like to stay for dinner?” “No, I better not, thanks anyway.” “Are you sure?” “I wouldn’t want to impose.” “It’s no trouble at all.” “I shouldn’t really.” “It’d be my pleasure.” “Are you sure?” “I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t.” “OK, thanks.” If such simple questions cause so much anxiety, it’s little wonder larger questions remain untouched. But though it’s often a struggle, I’m gradually learning to be comfortable with my opinions, or with my not having an opinion. So you’d better not ask me to dinner just to be polite, and don’t bother asking me whether you should wear brown shoes or black.
Despite David and I being unable to maintain a cordial co-operative working relationship, we were both determined to ensure this failure didn’t result in the failure of our friendship. So, after much discussion, we reached the conclusion that now that the complicated sides had been clad, there was no reason we couldn’t work independently of each other, providing assistance only when required. This would involve a degree of extra walking (since we had two hammers but only one of everything else), but it seemed like the most amenable solution. So while David finished the bathroom wall, I finished the verandah floor, thereby establishing a solid platform from which we could launch our assault on the last unclad wall.
Each board was the same length, so we cut enough boards to complete the entire front, and started cladding from opposite ends, averting the need for either of us to witness the other’s exasperating sawmanship. The only minor complication during this entire process was the constant need to avoid standing on Spindle who refused to move off ‘his’ stool, and continued sleeping between my feet as I worked.
With a minimum of fuss or delay, the house was soon officially (apart from the openings for the windows and doors, and disregarding the fact the floor was little more than joists and emptiness) closed in.
There was now plenty of storage room for timber slowly seasoning in the increasing frosts and rain, and for the bloated pink batt dummies which had been occupying the corner of the shed for the past few weeks.
The house still wasn’t entirely weatherproof. The windows were covered with taut panes of plastic, and the gaping door wound was temporarily healed with a plywood bandage, but the tongue and groove ceiling still occasionally trickled a cold tear down its cheek, and the wind still swept the floor with dust.
But I knew the days of stormy internal weather were rapidly drawing to a close. So let the wind have one last waltz inside. Let one more tear pass through my home. Soon there would be no more tears. Soon the dancefloor would hum with the whirling rhythms of life.
I had already cried enough, and I had been a wallflower too long.
My eyes were now filled with laughter.
And my feet were tapping impatiently on the earthy floor.
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