Bridge
home improvement, projectYou already know that I’m an engineer, I recently graduated with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, but did you know that I’m a Civil Engineer as well? Yeah I build bridges in my spare time. Building a safe bridge is a prerequisite to gardening on my neighbor’s roof.
bridge to somewhere, the roof
As you may know from speaking with me, I live on the third floor of my apartment building, located here, and the three buildings to the south of mine are only two stories. This means the windows of my apartment open up to a huge roof, like so:
Walking over this gap wasn’t the safest thing in the world, especially when you’re drunk. One day, shortly after losing a friend to the abyss, I decided to fix the problem. A 2” x 4” x 8’ from the local Ace hardware store would serve as the structural base to my beam bridge. Biking home with a 8 foot long board was the most difficult part of this project.
After a few hours of chewing through a 1 inch thick board with my leatherman I stole my jigsaw to finish cutting through the cover of my bridge. Note the red-racer in the background. That bike is so fast I’m surprised it’s not blurry in the photo.
Our basement is pretty filthy in general, the sewer has backup down there a few times. But it’s been tagged / beautified in a few places.
It’s beautiful AND sturdy! I’ll have to replace this photo with one of a sumo wrestler standing on my creation.
I’m grateful that I took the time to build this bridge every time I look over the edge. I might build a railing in the future, but it’s a billion times sturdier than what we were using before…
Thank god I’m pretty light.