Construction: Deck Overview Video

A Periscope video captured and shared.

On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the time-lapse and walkthrough movies that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.

I’ve been experimenting a bit with Periscope lately. That’s a Twitter-owned app that makes it possible to do live video broadcasts. Although the vast majority of what’s on there is utter crap, there are a few accounts with live broadcasts of very interesting material. (My personal favorite is the Department of Interior (@Interior), which seems to have embraced Periscope as a way to show off our national parks and monuments.) Like Twitter, it’s all about who you follow.

Deck Construction
My front deck is just about done.

While I don’t think my broadcasts are so interesting, they are a way for me to share what’s going on in my life with folks who might be interested — and to answer questions that they type in while the broadcast is going on.

Although Periscope only saves broadcasts for 24 hours, the video I record is also saved on my phone and can be copied to my computer. From there, it can be edited and shared to non-Periscope users. That’s what the following video is.

In this video, I offer a narrated overview of the work I’m doing on my deck. The front deck, which measures 10 x 30, is just about done; I still haven’t started the side deck, which is 6 x 48. I haven’t done the railings yet, but hope to get them started this weekend. In the video, I discuss the materials and tools I’m using and why I made some of the decisions I made. The wind machines in nearby orchards were going while I recorded and you can hear them in the background sounding a lot louder than they really do.

The only drawback I see to recording in Periscope and then sharing is that Periscope seems to severely limit the resolution of what it records. As a result, any Periscope video I share on my blog is at only 240 pixel resolution which, quite frankly, sucks.

Spring Day from My Deck Time-Lapse

A windy spring day.

I set up my GoPro on a tripod on the deck outside my bedroom door for a time-lapse on Monday before dawn. Unfortunately, Monday was a rather ugly day — cloudy and kind of dreary. The resulting time-lapse would not have been share-worthy.

So I left the GoPro running and captured enough images for a 4 AM to 10 PM time-lapse on a much prettier — but windier — day. Can you see the point where the wind blew over my tripod? (I deleted the shot of my deck roof.)

Should have set this to music but I didn’t. Sorry!

I’ll try this again in a few weeks with the image zoomed in a bit. I thought I’d set it right for this one, but apparently I didn’t.

Construction: March 3 Walkthrough

Show and tell + lazy blogging = another quick video of my new home progress.

On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the time-lapse and walkthrough movies that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.

A lot has been done since my last video. I blogged about some of it but have fallen behind on other important parts. Life’s been keeping me busy these days and those of you who know me well know I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In any case, I did another walkthrough video. This one is a bit long and I go into some detail about the work that’s been done and still needs to be done. So grab a cup of coffee or a snack, settle down in your comfy chair, and take an 8-minute walk with me through my new home under construction as it was this morning, March 3, 2015.

More to come — of course.