January 18, 2006 - 1:24 pm
(Note: Again, please be patient as the images load.)
If you have not already, read Vol I for the rest of the story.
One week after finishing phase one of the climbing wall, Tammy and I made yet another trip to Lowes. Most climbing walls, especially in commercial gyms, have a thick texture applied to them to give that “real rock” feel. There’s more to it than aesthetics. Texture is very helpful when climbing. If you can smear (gain traction by pressing your shoes against the wall), you can set and climb more creative routes.
There are a few different ways to achieve texture on a wall. The simplest is textured paint designed exactly for this application. But at $60 a gallon, you have to be pretty serious about your texture and I’m not. Next, you can use any number of muds, putties, or spackles that are commonly used for decorative texture and faux finishes. The drawback in this case is durability. Stucco is not really designed to be walked on repeatedly. The poor man’s method is to mix sand or concrete mix with regular wall paint. As you can imagine, this is a risky endeavor. There is no science to the mixture and failure is the greatest probability.
After talking to some experts (the paint guy at Lowes and the manager of Dyno-Rock) we decided that for a wall as small as ours, texture would not have enough benefit to justify the headache. Still, bare wood presents problems of its own, so we spent twenty bucks on some cheap primer and interior latex paint. Tammy decided we should go for blue. I picked a color swatch and we where in business. (After the paint guy mixed the color, he opened the can and exclaimed, “Wow! That’s BLEEEEW!”)
We also picked up another sheet of plywood to cap off the 30 degree end of the wall and fill the gap between the 30 and 15 degree segments. This would have to be done before the painting started.
In this picture you can see the cap is in place on the far end. We opted to attach a 2×4 at the near end to cap off the wall instead of sealing it with plywood. The 15 degree wedge was going to be too small to be useful for climbing, and by exposing the structure we could keep an eye out for structure fatigue. It also provides us with some storage space within the wall.
We spent some time discussing the remaining wedge. The 2x4s there were not flush with 30 degree panel, so attaching one piece of plywood would leave a one inch gap. While it might seem cool to have “crack” to climb, something so narrow can be very dangerous. Falling with a finger wedged in the wall can cause serious injury and result in painful nick names like “Lefty” or “Nine-finger Nita”.
Tammy recommended cutting three pieces and leaving the 2x4s exposed. This would offer the 2x4s as “natural” holds and eliminate the dangerous gap. However, success would depend on me being able to accurately measure and cut three irregular polygons (extremely unlikely). The second challenge was that we would need an additional 2×4 to which we would attach the plywood. This board would have to be installed on the inside of the existing structure. Enter, Tammy, the Carpenter Mole!
It took some careful maneuvering, but we finally got Tammy, tool, and lumber inside the wall. It worked like a charm.
As Tammy confidently drove screws into the new support piece we realized that she had just closed the gap which she had used to get into the wall. Hmmm.
We discussed the options. I could dismantle part of the wall, Tammy could crawl through the structure to the other (open) end, or I could bring her food and a bed pan twice a day for the rest of our lease. One mention of bed pans, and Tammy started crawling.
Once I had my wife back, I measured and cut the plywood to fit the gap. As I mentioned before, my chances of a precise fit were remote to say the least. When I fit the ply into place, my machismo took the expected hit. “Oh fer three!” Once again, Tammy came to the rescue. She shifted the pieces around and said, “Look! If we do it this way, we fill all the gaps and we’ll have a cool little ledge hold.”
Sure enough! Not only did we eliminate the dangerous gap in the wall, we introduced some really neat options for natural holds.
Finally, it was time to paint. In no time we had the wall primed. Primer is required if you’re painting bare wood. Interior paint is designed to use on sheet rock. It does not bond well to bare wood and runs a good risk of pealing. Also, having a white base coat (most primers are white) gives your final coat a nice, bright look. (According to decorator lingo, the final color “really snaps”. *shrug*)
After an hour or so, the primer was dry. We loaded up fresh brushes and got to work on the blue. The first coat was done in just a few minutes. You could still see a lot of the primer showing through, but I knew the second coat would look great.
We gave the paint a couple of hours to dry before throwing on the second coat. It was dark out by the time we wrapped up the day’s work. The final product looks great. And the Lowes paint guy was right. It is bleeeew! I call it “choking smurf”.
Volume III coming soon!
