Nice to know you have not become a grizzly snack. Keep us posted, and be safe! You are in our prayers. After all, you aren't as young as you used to be...
Finally getting some good progress in the room I'm working on. Now the window trim is all pinned into place, the door trim is pinned into place, and most of the baseboards are pinned into place. There's one piece that isn't pinned and that's because I need to paint a little lower than I did first time around, so I'll do that before I pin the baseboard on. Most of the tools are now out of the room - all that is left is the vacuum cleaner and separator, finishing nail gun and sanders. Once the baseboards are pinned I'll give the floor another once-over with a finer grade of sandpaper and then I can lacquer it. Once it's done I can move on to the next rooms to face the wrath of my wrecking bar.
Room mostly emptied and a start made on sanding the floor one last time. I've needed to run a chisel over a few patches where there are rough edges on the boards. I suspect lacquer will dull some of the edges but since this is going to be a bedroom I don't want anyone getting splinters in their feet. Tomorrow I can do more sanding. I wish I could just get on and do the whole lot but my respirator is out of action and it's still all but impossible to find protective face masks worthy of the name, so I'm doing it in short stints and trying not to breathe too much. That's tricky when running 120 grit sandpaper at speed - the dust is quite fine. Perhaps I'll run an extension cord in there and connect the shop vac to the sander. It makes it much more cumbersome to use but means I catch more of the dust as its created rather than having to empty a bag later.
Barely can see through the fog, which is annoying as people are supposed to be leaving camp, but no flying in this soup. Heard a chopper went down on another project a couple days ago. Pilot got in the clouds, lost his bearing and went into the hillside. He did not survive.
Ouch My wife's mcle is a retired pilot. He says it's only the last 10 feet that count. Spatial disorientation is low visibility kills more pilots than anything except mechanical failure.
Got a load more sanding done today. I went over the rest of the floor with my 120-grit belt sander, then ran over it again with 120-grit paper on my random orbital sander to get rid of as much of the last linear sanding marks I could manage. Now you can run your fingers along the floor and most of it is dead smooth. There are still a few areas that are slightly dinged from 90-odd years of being a floor but most of it is really smooth. Tomorrow I need a final run with the shop vac to get the last of the sawdust up, then maybe run a slightly damp cloth over it to make sure I've got all of it, then it's ready to be lacquered. I've got a gallon of lacquer which I hope will be enough. I may get a second gallon so I've got some spare on hand just in case I need it. I'll probably put three coats on it, given it is a floor.
I remember a family friend once had a job that periodically involved going out into remote areas to inspect something or other (pipes, wires, cables or something). He wasn't a pilot so would be assigned a helicopter pilot to take him out there. He told me about an assignment he refused to complete because it would have involved the chopper landing on a very rough and steep slope. The pilot looked at it and insisted he could do it, but the friend saw the twisted wreckage of a previous failed attempt to land nearby and told him not to even try it.
Need to figure the timing for my lacquering. I can run a second coat after 6-8 hours but if I leave it more than 10 hours I need to run 220 grit sandpaper over it. I really don't want to have to do that because I hate dealing with the fine dust and the need for tack sheets to make sure I've got it all off the floor. For good measure I'll need to leave windows ajar to let it ventilate, so I really need 22-26 hours without any rain to speak of forecast, and when I can get back in there at an appropriate time. I'm thinking maybe tomorrow afternoon I'll get one coat done, then the other right before going to bed, then the third in the morning.
Instead of sanding you can use a mild buffing compound - go lightly, just enough to dull the first coat, then wipe it away. Very fast and no mess.
That's worth knowing. I think this time around I've got timing figured out so I can do three coats and not deal with sanding, although it means a late finish tonight. For the next room I'll have to look into that. The room is now completely empty, I took a very slow pass over every inch of the floor with my shop vac to make sure I got all the sawdust up off the floor. Then I took the shop vac and separator out of the room and got the first coat of lacquer down. I think I was too sparing with it, I didn't use as much of the tin as I expected and as it's started to dry it looks a little patchy. I think the second coat is going to be applied more liberally than the first to make sure it's more uniform. It's looking really nice so far - I expected the floor to look good once it was lacquered but even with high hopes I'm really pleased with how it looks. For good measure the oversize switch plate I ordered is in. I ordered it from a company a friend works for so maybe he can drop it off one evening this week - he drives right past my house on his way home. Once that's in place and the lacquering is done the room is ready for the furniture to go back in.
The floor is done. The first coat went on about 3pm yesterday and took about an hour. The second coat went on about 11pm and I'd expected it to take about the same time but working in the dark proved trickier than I thought - the light in the room wasn't enough to clearly see where I had lacquered and where I hadn't. Thankfully I figured I could use one of my battery powered shop lights set on the floor to not only shine a light to help see which bits were shiny and which bits were not but also to give me a handy marker for which board I was working on. That pass took longer - I didn't get finished until nearly 1am. This morning the floor was beautiful but, being a floor and working with virgin wood, I decided to put a third coat on. This one was harder still because the floor was so glossy that even with daylight coming in through the windows it was hard to see where I'd already been. Cue the shop light again. That thing has already proven its worth and I've only had it a few weeks, and originally only bought it so we'd have light if the power goes out. The third coat took a little less time than the second coat, simply because I'd figured out how to work with the light and get everything covered. It's curious, while I'm working I don't really notice the smell from the fumes but once I stop it's as if the fresh air suddenly hits me and I can smell it. So now we've got the two windows in that room cracked open at the top to let the air out, and a window fan at the end of the landing pumping air out as fast as it can. Hopefully the smell doesn't linger for too long.
Might not look like Kevin Costner but I have embarked on the process to become a rural postman. (We don't all get to be cute.)
Excellent. They are hiring here in Podunk for rural route carriers as well. My wife said she should get her a gubmint job...
Here apparently they are desperate for school bus drivers. Because it's well known how children almost never transmit the virus, except now that school is about to start suddenly they do. I must admit I considered the possibility to make some fairly easy money but then realised I'd have to get up way earlier than is natural for me, and the easy money started to look a lot less attractive.
Our distributed learning school (essentially home-schooling with a certified teacher monitoring the learning) has been getting calls from all sorts of parents looking for options.
Meanwhile, back out from the field - nice to be home. We spent almost twelve hours straight demobbing the camp. I think the helicopter only stopped 3 times to fuel up, but otherwise was just constantly slinging gear out. Then, on the way home, as we came into cel range, I saw a message on my phone from a local geologist I know. He's basically offering me another job, which is totally commutable from here.
A job that doesn't involve going into the back end of nowhere - sounds like a good plan. Unless you like being out in the back end of nowhere, of course