Obsessiveness can get things done. It can also keep you from doing things.
I've been engaged in a major project at home -- building a cupola for our house, the design of which is meant to resemble a Victorian carriage house. The cupola, if done well, should be the finishing touch in that illusion. (The house is a modular that now is 4 years old.)
I wanted the house to have a unique cupola, so I eschewed (what a lousy word that is. Can't I find a better way to say this?) the ready-made cupolas that every Amish vendor around here offers. Instead, I visited several of the New Jersey towns in suburban Philadelphia, driving their back streets and studying carriage houses and their cupolas.
I learned at some point along the way that to be proportionate to the structure, the cupola's length should be at least 1/10 of the length of the ridge of the house. This means that I needed to build a cupola that was about 5 feet square.
The half-finished project is in the basement. There are windows on four sides, fully installed and caulked. Today I applied the white stain on the trim. (The walls will be unpainted cedar shake, just as is the exterior of the house below.)
I was glad it rained last weekend because that meant I could stay home from Robin and work on the cupola. But the coming weekend looks promising for sailing. How sick am I? At a level very close to the surface, I wish it would rain again.
The carpentry proceeds very slowly because I'm inventing the design as I go along. One detail that has been solidly in the design from the beginning is the copper roof.
I is 11:39 p.m. I went to bed nearly three hours ago, but I couldn't sleep because I kept trying to visualize how I would apply the copper to the roof. I got up and have been searching the Internet for more than two hours, looking for the answer. I've made drawings, none of which has totally eliminated places where overlapping copper sheeting leaves small gaps where rain could get below.
Tomorrow, I'll visit one of those places selling the Amish cupolas and inspect their copper work. I won't be thinking about sailing, I can assure you.
But if we indeed go to Robin this weekend, you can be equally assured that I will be thinking about the cupola.