Programming a Tree Fort: Day 1

Ah, nothing like a good night sleep to rejuvenate the soul. But today started off not much different than the day before. A midmorning trip back to Home Depot.

In the programming world, refactoring is a way of life. In fact, most tools have methods to refactor built into the tool itself. So if I don’t like a variable or method name, I quickly change the name to something else. All instances of the name throughout the project is completely renamed without much effort.

You can refactor wood. A saw is a magical refactoring tool. The saw will make a 10 ft board into a 8.5 ft board. It will shape a rectangular block into a triangle. However, no tool can make a board grow. The 8.5 foot board you just cut will never again be 10 ft. I am not saying I made such an error today/yet. But it does seem the support beams I purchased the day before shrank over night. The 2X10X10 were actually 2X8X10. CRAP!!!

I am very tired of going back to Home Depot to get different sized wood. After all, at this point in the project I have no need for anything except 4X4 posts. Additionally, I determined the two other boards need to be 12ft long instead of 10ft long. Yippee!

With an additional $30 I know have the right wood in tow and after a short rain delay, I am ready to dig the holes for posts. Two holes, approximately 2.5 feet deep, in Georgia red clay equates to about 3 hours of digging.

The last remaining hour of light was a mad dash to mix concrete and center the posts into the holes. New tip for all of you adventuring tree fort builders: one 80lb bag of concrete will not fill but half of a 2.5ft hole. Tomorrow, I get to once again go back to Home Depot.

Today’s progress:

• Correctly sized wood ready to go
• Two post holes dug
• Both posts fitted into the hole
• Half a hole filled with concrete

Picking up speed and I hope to finish the posts tomorrow.

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