Measure Twice, Dig Once..........
Sort of a twist on Norm's maxim of "Measure twice, cut once". But damn if it doesn't help avoid the same kind of trouble.
Of course I'm telling you this AFTER I didn't follow that advice.
I've been building a little shed for wood storage the last couple of days. Real basic and simple and scrounged together with mostly stuff I had on hand here already. I'll have about $30 bucks in it for the rafters and the sackcrete when I'm finished.
Got the 4x4 posts at a sale last year for $2 bucks each and the 2x8 stringers, front and rear are from the freebie stuff I scrounged from the motel demo
Last Year.
I need to come up with a few more braces yet, but I'm pretty sure I have some more 2x4's around here someplace.
The roof material is an old sliding barn door that blew off 3 years ago and wasn't likely to get hung back up anytime soon. Big problem with that is it's damn heavy and getting it up on top there should be a pretty good chore.
I'm pretty sure the BFI index is fairly low for this job though.
"BFI Index"? That equals- "Brute Force and Ignorance" required and is pretty simple here. Just gotta muscle it up there, square it up and drive a few nails.
Which leads us back to the title of this post - "Measure Twice, Dig Once".
I failed on that one and it's a damn good thing I wasn't building a piano. While setting the last post, I ran into some big honking tree roots just where I was digging the post hole. This required some good old fashioned hand sledge, long handled chisel and serious pounding to get get them cut out of the way.
Of course I smashed the shit out out of my hand with that hammer and that's sort of where things really went off track.
Now don't you believe it when someone tells you that old fat white guys can't dance. James Brown would'a been proud of me the way I was dancing around in a circle after I smacked my hand with that hammer.
The sound track that went with that dance was not fit for genteel or sensitive ears, but I cussed for a good 3 minutes straight without repeating myself & that should count for something.
Anyway, that's where my train of thought came off the rails.
Damn if I didn't measure wrong right after that.
A 4x4 post is actually, 3 1/2" square. And damn if I didn't use the outside to outside measurement as the outside to INSIDE measurement. Ooops! 3 1/2" longer on one side than the other.
Of course I didn't measure twice.
And I secured it with concrete.
So what I have is a shed that's 3 1/2 inches out of square. That's a Trapazoid I believe.
Oh well.
I had to cut all the rafters individually to fit the mistake and that pissed me off a bit, but there's only 8 of them so it wasn't to big a deal.
Damned if I was going to dig that post up with the concrete and redo it. Like I said, good thing it wasn't a piano. It'll bother me every time I go our there after it's finished seeing the screw up, too.
Serves me right for not double checking.
So let that be a lesson for y'all at my expense.
Double check your measurements!
Gratuitous Picture for a Wednesday Night-
