Old Projects

These are some of my first construction projects.
Arguably the worst month of my entire career in construction was spent on this project. A flood had ruined all of the insulation in the crawlspace of these buildings. For four weeks, Ben Townsend, Mike Sherman and I crawled in and out of these buildings and removed loads and loads of wet insulation and replaced it with new insulation and then stapled plastic around it for protection. It was especially difficult because of all the plumbing pipes that we had to cut around and the height of the crawlspace ranged from 18" to 36". There were three large buildings connected by tunnels which shared one access point at the far end. It would take us 5 minutes of army-crawling on our bellies to get in and out. Like miners, we worked with lamps connected to an extention cord at the entrance. We also found a few dead rodents during the process, which made it especially nice. During the entire month, our boss never came inside to inspect our work - not even once. If I recall correctly, this project marked the end of Ben's construction career.

Sunapee does not allow any new boat houses to be built on the water, so we kept busy renovating old ones. This boathouse is on an island. We traveled to it by boat and snowmobile during the fall and winter of 1999/2000. We jacked the whole thing up in the air and built new cribs, foundations, decks and docks. I remember chainsawing through the ice and climbing into the freezing lake in fishing waders and using long electrical rubber gloves to reach down and build the underwater cribs. I also remember sitting huddled around a propane heater in the upstairs of the house during our lunch break, and never really getting warm. During this project, I made an easy $20 for jumping into the lake in December off the diving board at the Yacht Club. We also went tanning every night to try to get our blood temperature back up. Our boss almost lost a loader trying to make an ice road out to this place. It came 2 miles from the marina and fell through the ice about 200 feel off the shore of the island. They saved the loader, but the road was never finished.

We also built this stair case which goes from the house down to the water. The stair sections were built at the shop on Stagecoach road and were lifted into place. This one was built during the summer. Funny thing is, I ended up in the lake several times while working out there during the winter and never seemed to find my way in while working there during the summer months. Ironic.