Tyler said to me once that I seemed to have a strange obsession with string and its role in building our home. I agree. I suppose it’s because I don’t understand much about engineering so the concept of string helping with straight lines, albeit very elementary and obvious once you think about it, was not something I had ever considered previous to this project.
It also makes me smile because I image the people building the original structure of the house in a similar manner, with string and sweat. Maybe not the florescent orange string we have been using, but probably string nonetheless.
However, there is another type of string. A very advanced string.
Chalk string.
This is a piece of string that stays wound up in a little holder, similar to a tape measure. The piece of string stays covered in this purple chalk. Which is brilliant, because it allows you to actually draw a temporary, perfect straight line on anything!
Here’s how the process works.
You pull the string taught over the top of the item that you need to make a straight line on and then just tap the string and the chalk falls in a perfect line onto that item.
Here is a visual representation:
In this case, we were measuring this material that is going into the basement that acts as a water barrier. It was sticky and sort of like a slip-n-slide. It also had an uneven surface, so it was not possible to draw a straight line on it. The line chalk allowed us to draw a straight line on the material in order to cut it to the correct size.
String really is magical stuff.
In Sound Health 