Email #26 - The Sleeper Board Factory

"The first usage of any building is as a factory to build itself."

When former CM professor Dave Riley said that at a presentation around 1998, I was immediately inspired to start looking for the "factory condition" on the construction sites which I was photographing.

In particular I looked for the temporary workshops set up by the workers in the different trades as they work on a particular part of a building. When one trade finishes their task, they pack up their workshop and move it somewhere else. Then another trade might set up in the space just vacated.

The simplest workshop of all is seen in the top attached photo: it's just two sawhorses and a waste can. But the task at hand is quite interesting, at least to me.

Most of the original 1909 "sleeper boards" will be re-used for attaching the new floors to the structural concrete floor. As I understand it, plywood will be attached to the sleeper boards, and then the finished floor will be set upon the plywood. Problem is that some of the original sleepers suffer dry rot and need to be replaced. That replacement process is what you see in this series of photographs.

The first photo on top shows the location of the Sleeper Board Factory on the first floor of the south wing where the old CM offices used to be (and will be again). The second photo zooms in to a detail of the new sleeper wood resting on the sawhorses. The dimensions are approx. 1.5 x 2.5 inches, installed short side up.

The bottom two photos show portions of new sleeper boards installed where dry rot had compromised the old sleepers....So the old and the new bed down together... asleep for another 100 years?

John Stamets
Sept. 11, 2006

See also #23, #28, #35 and #36