D E S I G N /// ck

Well, I haven't posted in a while, partly because I was burned out on blogging, partly because I've been busy:

I went up to West Virginia to build some stuff for my parents for a few weeks, basically rebuilding their front porch and building a new garage on the side of their house.


The existing porch.


We demolished the lower part of the porch (which was all rotten) and re-framed it complete with new concrete footers. I put in four columns instead of the original three- the porch beam had begun to sag in places. The new shorter pans corrected this.


We laid out the new footprint for the new garage.


To be able to dig the garage footers, we had to saw up and demolish the existing driveway slab. (that's Cevin, my sister's fiancee who helped me the whole time)


My Uncle Jeff came and dug out the footer trench one evening.


Meanwhile, framing continued on the porch. The subfloor went down and the column bases were built out.


We set our grade stakes with the laser transit and poured the concrete, but the truck chute wouldn't reach the far corner, so Cevin and I shoveled and raked a cubic yard of concrete back into it. We slept well that night!


The columns were wrapped in poplar with a craftsman-esque design and the skirt walls were framed in. Contrary to my earlier design, we like how the porch felt with open sides and decided to not put in the solid rails. However, we'll have to raise the dirt up to within 30 inches of the floor to meet code requirements. The big wrap around steps were the last thing we got finished.

A mason is coming to lay block on the footers and then in a few weeks I'll be back up to frame the garage in and finish the porch. But for now, I'm resting up!

It's cool to see past projects have a life of their own and how their presented artistically, in this case musically and visually on the web.



via the Square Room site.

See here.

This is the savviest video I've seen yet explaining a philosophy that has become a cornerstone of my personal and professional life:

I don't know if this will be as good. I don't know if I'll cry silent tears in a movie theater seat the way I cried in bed at 3:00 in the morning while I was reading it. I'm not sure how I like this "action" style trailer, but the little bit of the Coke scene makes me hope the movie exceeds this marketing. What I see here makes me realize that I'll be seeing this movie, for better or worse. Early review here.

p.s. No matter however the way the movie portrays it, I'll always see the father and son walking across the Henley Street Bridge in the ash, finding the mummified remains of the dead on the streets of Knoxville.

p.p.s. After watching it a half dozen times, I realize that this will definitely set Appalachia in a post-apocalyptic Deliverance light. But let's face it- when the world falls apart, it probably will be only West Virginians and East Tennesseeans left, eating each other.

A hair raising experience on the road this morning prompted me to do something I don't usually do- send an angry email. Luckily the culprit was well marked:

To: karen.estes@knoxcac.org

Ma’am,

I bicycle commute down Western Ave. everyday and typically have no problem with cars passing me in a lane. However, this morning one of your buses showed that they are apparently unaware how to safely share the road with bicycles. Bus No. 3172 passed me between 11th St. and Henley St. without giving the legally required 3 feet of buffer space, which wasn’t so bad, but they also accelerated extremely rapidly while doing so. Bus No. 3172 could have easily caused an accident this way. I understand that your driver has a schedule to keep, but such driving behavior is very dangerous for bicyclists on the road. While one might expect this from a common driver, seeing it from a public vehicle with a commercially licensed driver is startling.

I am trying to be polite here, but I have to say that it makes me very angry to see a professional driver so flagrantly disregard the rights of others on the road. I trust that this letter will reach whomever it needs to so that the driver of 3172 will be reprimanded for his/her actions this morning. If your drivers don't know how to properly accommodate bicycles on the road I fear that accidents may be inevitable, especially in the downtown area where there are hundreds of bicyclists everyday.

Thank you for you attention to this matter-

Regards,

Christopher King

Which was promptly responded to:

Mr. King,

Thank you for your email. I am sorry that this occurred. I will follow
up with the driver and also check into some Bicycle Awareness Education
for all staff.


Thank you.

Karen Estes
Senior Manager
Knox County CAC Transit

Hopefully this will lead to good things.