Whatcha doin????

A friend of mine lent me one, although I haven't tried it yet. I want to make sure I can get the mortar mix right and it will actually hold before fussing with something else. When I'm in a place where I need to do a load of seams at once I'll certainly look to use it, when I'm mixing the mortar in a bucket rather than on a slate because I'm using it a little at a time.

The acrylic mix sounds good, although what I may look to do is add acrylic (Quikrete makes an additive for their mortar) that makes it stickier, and therefore easier to work with. I just need to make sure that the sandiness of it is because the concrete blocks are sucking moisture out of it, rather than anything I'm doing wrong. It's frustrating to be wanting to press ahead but having to constantly deal with this, but if I can figure it out now it will make a big difference when I do the other half of the house.

 

Holey moley just another brick in the wall
All we are is just another brick in the wall

 

They really aren't that interesting. Imagine, if you will, a brick wall. Now take out the mortar from between two bricks. That's about as exciting as it gets. It's more fun (depending on how you define the word "fun") when you're the one who gets to put the mortar into the space.

At first it was interesting to learn the new skill. Now it gets tedious wondering how many more of these things I'm going to have to deal with.

 

Going to the National Finals Rodeo this afternoon.

 

Visiting, visiting and more visiting.

 

I can't imagine doing this for a career. I think I'd lose the will to live within a week.

One trouble I have is that many of the gaps have no clearly defined back. The back opens into the cavity inside the hollow blocks, and it's not even as if that space defines the gap because the blocks below are also hollow. In theory I guess I could pump in enough cement/concrete/whatever to fill the entire wall but that seems like overkill, not to mention the potential effect on vapor management. With a hollow wall I can at least have some confidence that in the summertime any rainwater driven into the brickwork by the sun has a fair chance to vaporise and then rise up through the hollow blocks and out of the house, rather than being driven relentlessly through solid concrete so it can condense inside the house.

Hence using anything that isn't reasonably sticky is a problem because it just keeps pushing back into the space and using up far more material than is needed. Something like a sealant gun also doesn't necessarily work because some of the gaps are very wide, not to mention the issues with the backs of the gaps. I prefer to avoid expensive, I've learned to live with messy, and would really rather not deal with fumes until I can open windows. So I guess I'm stuck with my mortar mix....

 

I may have found a solution to a problem that has been bugging me for a while. It seems whatever I do with my windows I still have at least something of a cold draft coming in. I know the window fitter cut just about every corner it was possible to cut but even given that there seem to be more problems than there should be. Today I figured out what I think it is. The window fitter put new windows into existing wooden frames, and it looks like there may be air gaps between the wooden frame and the brickwork. So I cleaned out the cavity in a few of the windows and then sprayed foam around every seam and crack inside the cavities. The cavities once housed window weights.

What I'd really like to do is get rid of everything and lose the cavities completely. I just don't particularly like the thought of having to replace all these windows again already, so I think I'll end up sticking with what I have and just filling the cavity with a combination of building foam, wood for strength and fiberglass for a bit of extra insulation.

 

Not sure whether it's all in my head but it seems quieter since I sprayed foam all around the window cavities.

 

In the words of Albus Dumbledore, "Just because it's in your head doesn't mean that it isn't real."

 

True, although where possible I like to use objective measurements rather than "it feels", simply because however it feels today might feel different tomorrow. Where things like heat is concerned a pretty good objective measurement is how much oil it takes to keep the house warm, although noise is something where perception is often more important than numbers. I'm thinking that by the time I've got all the windows foamed up it should make quite a big difference. Finally, only several years after having the new windows installed, we'll get the benefits of the extra soundproofing.

 

Trying to get my head in gear to prepare my taxes. The new forms are allegedly easier but now it seems even worse than before as far as "guess which forms are needed" is concerned.

At least with the previous format it would say something like "Interest and dividend income, attach Schedule B if needed" and "Rental and royalty income, attach Schedule E if needed", which at least gave a clue as to what forms were required. Now it just says "total income" and leaves you to figure out for yourself what there is. It also loses the basic sanity check where you could complete a schedule and it would say "put the total here and on line xx of your Form 1040".

I wonder how many people will be making fresh mistakes on their tax forms this year.

 

That's one reason I hire a professional to do mine.

 

On further inspection it seems all they have done is broken a load of things apart, so that instead of filling one form that sits on two sides of letter paper you now fill in several and put them together. Good job IRS. Digging holes and filling them in again seems positively productive compared to this. Was it really that big a deal for people to just write "0" a few extra times if something wasn't relevant?

 

Hiring a professional means a lot of extra costs. As soon as you mention the word "foreign" the price is unlikely to go down.

 

Well, federal taxes are done. The reshuffle of form 1040 seems to have turned 2 pages into 5 pages, in the interests of saving resources. There are other schedules that don't apply to me, so I shudder to think just what they were hoping to achieve. It's not even as if they saved anything - 1040 used to take two pages and now takes..... two pages. Presumably writing "0" in the box if you don't have, for example, any "Additional tax on IRAs, other qualified retirement plans, etc." is too much to ask of people.

 

Part of what makes tax forms fun in the US is the game of "guess what forms I might need".

The basic form is pretty easy and tells you if extra forms might be needed. But then there's the form to reconcile insurance premium tax credits, a form to declare things like foreign assets, inheritance from a foreign individual etc that aren't mentioned anywhere but somehow you're supposed to know if you need to file them. Then there are other forms that can save you money if you happen to know to file them but seem to be kept quiet. Maybe this year I'll read through everything to see if there are other forms that might be useful to know about.

 

Don't forget the form to tell them that you are using the right forms.