S wall deshingl'd

in the morning light the buttoned-up S wall can be seen, along with its talus slope of discarded shingles. 

S wall deshingled

previous lots of surplus used shingles have been offered to neighbours for kindling:  they're aromatic and have aged to where they're highly combustible.  some have been disposed of in that fashion and others have ended up at the dump.  recent energy price fluctuations might have made these more desirable for fireplace and wood stove use, but the builder's utility driver showed up bright and early to haul them off.  there's no need to start worrying about these as a diminishing resource.  there are plenty more where they came from. 

signage

one detail that's been getting a little attention over the past few days has been that of preparing signage for the front of the cottage.  the house numbers were on hand, having been purchased and set aside several years ago.  it's traditional in the Grove for named cottages to display a small sign, a nameplate as it were.  since the place will be getting a name, clearly a sign is in order too. 

with this in mind I had asked the trim carpenter to slice off the groove edge of some of the new beadboard for use as decorative trim.  he was going to fabricate the sign, too, but that is no longer possible so I decided to do that myself.  here it is after basic fabrication but before priming: 

house numbers and sign fabrication

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the next task was to pencil in the lettering.  I'm no craftsman so this was done by running off the text to size on an inkjet printer and splicing the output into a crude stencil.  the letterforms were transferred to the wood surface by perforating the paper along the shape edges with a straight pin into the wood and then connecting the dots. 

sign lettering

a thimble or pin vise would have made this task easier, but my stash of minimal sewing supplies didn't contain the former and the latter was better at hiding from me than I was at finding it.  for better ergonomics I experimented with using an old ice pick (point too blunt) and settled on a safety pin.  even so I'm typing a bit slower than usual. 

the outlines will serve as guides for painting, for which I'm going to have to procure some small brushes.  there's something droll about the notion of hand painting a wooden sign with a True Type font.