All for the love of Glorificus

Remember Glory on the 5th season Buffy the Vampire Slayer? She was the god from a hell dimension who was banished to Earth and was trying to get back to her dimension. She would suck the life force out of the brains of humans, which would turn them insane. Once they were insane they became pawns for her to use as she pleased.

Most effervescent one


She used them to build a crazy tower on which she would drain the blood of Dawn, Buffy’s little sister, who was really a key, in order to open all of the portals between the dimensions so that she could return to rule over hell once again.

Ahhh, good times.

Any way, the insane people built a crazy tower at a construction site, which ended up being the death of Buffy for the 2nd time on the show. All this weekend as I was working on my stair scaffolding I couldn’t help but be reminded of that tower. I’m not sure if I was reminded of the tower because mine ended up kind of crazy looking or if it was because I felt kind of insane for building it. It really did turn out to be a much bigger production than I had planned. If I get visited by a Queller Demon tonight I'll know there is something wrong with the scaffolding.

The Under Belly


When I ran out of new, store bought 2X4s I made many trips to the wood shed to get salvaged redwood lumber to finish up. So there is this mix of modern fir 2X4s and old full dimensional redwood boards. I also became less interested in the cosmetic appeal of the construction as the project grew, so boards are cut longer than they should be. It looks haphazard in places, but it is very stable.



The deck ended up being two layers of quarter inch plywood. It is a little springy in places, but very safe. This is the last of the plywood that came off the walls in the kitchen many years ago. The hole you see to the left is where the water heater vent fed in to the chimney. I have used and reused these pieces of plywood for so many things over the years. I think this may be their last tour of duty in the house, though. I’m pretty sure they will end up in the dump after this.



Here is that same space from a few weeks ago. The stairs make a U turn and end up in the foyer.



The height worked out very well. You can see the ceiling in the picture above. When I’m standing on the scaffolding The ceiling is about 6-inches over my head.



At it’s height, the deck is about 14-feet off the floor of the foyer. As I was building it I had the feeling like I should have waited to mount the box for the ceiling fixture after I built the scaffolding. Really though, it was partly due to being on the articulated ladder last week that made me want to do more scaffolding than I originally intended. I no longer feel like I might break my neck doing the stairwell.