Huge sigh of relief. We have ceiling tiles that, from what I've been reading, were a potential cause of concern with regard to asbestos. Today I found an old box I knew was tucked away somewhere that contains spare tiles. It turns out they were made by a company that has confirmed that asbestos is not, and never has been, used in their ceiling tiles. So that's really very good to know.
.... and another sigh of relief. A friend at church has a house built from the same kind of concrete blocks as ours, and knew a lot about the construction of the blocks and the timeframes. It confirmed what I already thought, and pegged it at the earlier end rather than the later end of the window I was thinking. The very tail end of the window I was thinking had a small overlap with when asbestos was used in some of the product brands I found in the house. Based on what I learned today it looks like there was a window of 5-7 years between the drywall going in, and asbestos being used in the drywall. I have to say it feels really good to have shifted from being concerned that there might be asbestos, to a growing fear that its presence is more likely than not, to a growing sense that it's probably OK, to where I am now where I have a lot of confidence that there is little to no asbestos in the house. At present I believe the only possibilities are the kitchen ceiling tiles (which I think are safe but can't be 100% sure) and the linoleum in the kitchen (which is unlikely ever to be disturbed, as a new floor would just go over the top of the old floor). I'm still going to wear my HEPA respirator to keep dust etc out of my lungs but now I'm not worried about really nasty things that absolutely, positively, need to be kept out.
I am hopeful for the stray kitten living under our house. This kitten is orphaned. After having two kittens present themselves last November on my porch steps and not being able to catch them to help them (they were tiny and quick to run-- then a terrible storm came as I called I could hear them crying but I could not find them) I never saw them again. This hurt me very badly and I am a dog person! We have one cat about 9 years old. Our dog was laid to rest last year, and our cat has been a bit lonely since, even though she acted like she didn't care. She was a kitten when she came to our home, the dog was full grown and took to her very well. I am determined to take in this kitten who has never had human contact until now, take it to the vet and introduce it to our home. (get it spayed when it is time) Finally after 3 weeks it allowed me to pet it today! (it also bit me, but that is what peroxide is for) My cat knows there's "something going on" and so cat nip is in progress to calm her. If anything, I hate to see feral cats dying because people just let their house cats roam outside, without being fixed- or just throw unwanted pets into the wild-- Regardless everyone should have their pet spayed or neutered because they can escape the safe confides of your home--sneaky and curious--but innocent of the dangers.
A day of cleaning up the bits of wall I pulled down at the weekend, and fixing the concrete wall behind it. Interesting logistics trying to figure out how best to get stuff out of the way without having to keep kicking the cat out of the way. In the end I shut the cat in the kitchen and went in and out through the numerous doors in the house. I got the bags of rubble with the others, then laid out a tarp and dumped the larger pieces of drywall out of the window onto the tarp. Then bagged them up until it began to rain, so I dragged the rest onto the porch. Then I set to fixing the wall. There are so many gaps in the wall it's no wonder it was permanently chilly in there. I fixed a bunch of gaps in the inner surface and a couple of gaps in the outer surface. One was easy - I leaned out of the window and applied some silicone to the window frame to replace a perished seal. Another was fiddly - I got my pointing trowel into a space from the inside, to block a small gap in the outside. The rest of it was just about filling gaps, the same as I've done before but sooooooo many of them. Today I went through about 15lb of cement mix. Subjectively speaking, the room feels warmer and there's less of a draft in there. It also feels quieter when traffic goes by. Objectively speaking, the room increased from 50 degrees to 55 degrees even as the afternoon moved into evening, even though there's no heater in there. Thermal images of the coldest area indicates it went from 35 degrees to 44 degrees, although some of that will be due to it being warmer outside. There's still a lot to be done but I feel like I made good progress today. Now I just need to decide whether to keep the wall studs as they are, or rip them all out and reframe the wall. I'm leaning more and more towards ripping them out.
On and off for about 11 months now. I say "on and off" because I didn't do much over the height of summer because it was too cold, and had to take several weeks off over the winter because I cut myself and had to let the wound heal. That was frustrating, given I'd lifted insulation out and it got cold. There are also lots of days when I don't do a whole lot on the house, and days when I work for a couple of hours and then do something else. And then there are days like today, where I work for most of the day and get a lot done.
Haven't been out on the bike in longer than I care to count. I was actually talking to our pastor the other day about cycling routes - living on a main road now with lots of honking great logging trucks it doesn't feel as safe as it did before. But I plan to get out again when it's warmer..... just not in July when it's stiflingly warm.
I must admit I did wonder what the horses were doing in there I've been wondering whether I should have just brought the bulldozers in and started over.
Pulled down some more wall today. It was interesting moving furniture around in a small space unaided, but I managed it and then got the dust sheets over it all again. Then I pulled down another 50-odd square feet of lath and plaster wall. At that point I realised I could barely move in the room so I took the bags down to put them with the others, and found I had 22 of them. So I took the 22 bags of assorted rubble, and a mountain of chunks of drywall, off to the landfill. It turned out to be another 560lb of general debris, bringing my total so far to something in the region of 1.5 tons. Then I set about mixing up cement and patching the numerous gaps in this section of wall. Along the way I moved an electrical outlet to a temporary home so I can pull out the sections that previously housed it, and while I did that I disconnected a piece of cable that has been disconnected at the far end for a while. Previously I had it wrapped in red insulating tape to indicate it was still live, and now the ends are wrapped in green tape to show it's totally disconnected and just waiting to get pulled out. And for good measure, along the way I found I've got another load of flies in the attic. There are a few gaps in the roof and I'm not sure how best to seal them all up. I looked at having the kind of company who sprays insulation into attic spaces come and do it (which would give me the added benefit of insulation up there too) but that looks like the cost would run into five figures and I don't really want to be dropping that kind of cash. I vaguely recall seeing a gap on one side of one of the window frames but now I'm struggling to find it. If I can find it I can cut a piece of wood to fill it and seal up the gap. Then I'll just have the gaps in the roof slates to deal with.
Not quite sure what you mean by gaps in the roof. Does that mean there are missing pieces of sub-roofing, which underlies the roofing material? Or are there sections between the rafters that are not isulated?
Parts of the roof are slate that's over 100 years old. In places there is material under the slate and in places there is not (I assume there was once material under everything, but those days are long gone). In places there are small gaps between the slates. Not sure whether slates moved slightly over the course of 100 years, or small pieces are chipped off, or something else. I'd like to get all the slates sealed but finding a roofer who is interested in even coming to look at the job around here is tricky. There aren't very many roofing companies, and many of them exclusively work on commercial roofing projects rather than domestic. Last year it took multiple attempts to get one of the contractors who does do domestic roofing to even call me back, and when he did it was clear he wasn't interested in coming out to look at it.