model citizen

oh, right, that.

i was keeping a blog and it's not like it would be so hard to just write down what i'm working on.

right now (read: for the last three weeks or so) i am working kind of obsessively on what barbara is calling my snowfort, since this year there isn't enough snow to make a fort and this fits the pattern of doing SOMETHING obsessively at this time of year.

-did i even show you all of last year's snohaus pictures, or did i shelve them until i processed all the pictures? eh, probably that second thing.

anyway, i'm making a little sketchup model of a friend's house and it is a challenging project. most houses are basically a box or two with some sticky-out bits but my friend lives in a house that's five boxes with a slightly asymmetric T and a quarter-round room and some sticky-out bits. add to that the challenges of the original builder having been the original homeowner who was an engineer but not an architect or a building professional and what appears to be his natural predilection for dividing spaces by threes or fives and it gets interesting, never mind that for some reason no roof anywhere on the house is a standard common pitch.

and there are places in the house where everything goes fine until you draw that line out to its logical conclusion and - uh-oh! - the basic geometry of those things do not form intersecting planes in any universe, but a multitude of rough edges (up to two inches!) can be covered over with putty and tape before painting.

the upshot is that as i work my little model, i am having to make a lot of guesses as to what the actual framing of the house might be and i'm just drawing most things to standard lumber dimensions, nevermind the siding or sheetrock.

idiosyncrasies aside, it is a very pleasing house to the eye, lovely and gracious, even if you know that the stringers were inexpertly cut.

if you want to see the progress on the model as i go along, i'm posting the dailies here.