A little light tinkering on the house project. The last section of wall in the downstairs room is now fully insulated. I've started removing the fiberglass I stuffed into the window wells with a view to filling them with a combination of insulation and soundproofing. Also a little more cleaning up after yesterday's grinding. That concrete dust gets everywhere. I need to fix my separator - the sealant that holds the pipe fixtures in place has failed so I'll need to clean up the wood around the hole and reseal everything. That should be a fun job. Hopefully tomorrow I can get out and burn some of my piles of scrap wood. It will be good to have at least fewer and smaller piles of scrap wood, even if I don't get through all of it.
A sunny morning on a burn day gave me the chance to get rid of a lot of my scrap wood. I loaded up my burn barrel, added some accelerant and threw in a match. A couple of hours later I'm no longer the not-so-proud owner of two buckets full of nail-embedded wood scraps. I also burned a few other scraps that didn't fit in the bucket and about a quarter of the big sack of scraps I'd accumulated over the last few months. If the weather holds for the next day I'm allowed to burn I plan to chop up the big pile of old laths that have been bugging me for a while. Chopping them into short lengths mean I can just throw them into the burn barrel rather than leaving longer lengths sticking out of the top and potentially falling out onto the grass when the bottom burns. Now it's getting cooler it will be easier to find people who want wood scraps to burn for heat. In August and early September not very many people need heating.
Something like that I got my two buckets refilled with short lengths of laths. Now they are ready to go next time I can get some burning done - I've got enough to start a fire and be burning stuff while I cut up more stuff to burn. Looking at what's left in my sack of scraps and burn pile I can probably do it all in a single hit if I can get started reasonably early. The trouble is that I don't do early very well. Maybe it will take me two days. That said if I empty the ash out first I can get a lot more scraps in there because I don't lose a big chunk of the space to the accumulated ash.
A little more work done, mostly clearing out the fiberglass I stuffed into the empty window wells and starting to refill them with better insulation. So far I've got rockwool and polyisocyanurate cut and pressed into place. Now I need to put a wood strip carrying sound proofing over the top of it all. It was interesting trying to feed a slightly irregular strip of rubber, about 1/12" thick, through my table saw to cut it into strips of a uniform width. I figured I had to push it forward from a safe distance from the blade and use a push stick to keep it pressed down so the blade would actually cut through it. A few times it tried to rise up on the blade and not get cut but the push stick kept it doing what I wanted it to do. Because one edge was unevenly cut (the strip was an offcut from another project) I couldn't use it to push everything against the fence. This should give me enough material to fill a few window wells. I just hope I don't find I need to trim 1/8" off the width of it or something. That would be a nuisance. I'm also trying to figure out what to do with a stack of 8x4 sheets of surplus insulation. I will use them in another room, but don't have anywhere readily apparent to move them pending fixing up that room. I want the current work room emptied so I can get up on a ladder, make sure the ceiling is reasonably even and shim it if necessary, figure out where I want to put the ceiling fan and get a back box and wiring run into place, and then look to get someone in to drywall the room.
I got a good chunk of my scrap wood burned. Some of it was really nasty thin plywood flooring that splintered as I lifted it, so cutting that into manageable pieces with a circular saw was an interesting experience. For good measure I had to avoid the nails that I hadn't managed to remove as I lifted it. Technically speaking I'm not supposed to be burning after noon so I balanced the last couple of items on the fire, rather precariously, at 11:59am. Nearly two hours later the fire is still burning, albeit now a foot or more below the top of my barrel. It's at a point where I keep a loose eye on it rather than standing beside it making sure nothing falls out of the side when everything shifts as it burns. This afternoon I'm thinking of a gentle run and then some more work in the room that's dangerously close to being ready to roll. Initial indications are that the ceiling is reasonably even with relatively little shimming required.
My strips of soundproofing rubber turned out to be enough to cover two window wells with two stubby ends that, combined, aren't quite enough to cover another window well. I have a few more offcut strips so I guess I'll be feeding them to the table saw later on. Life is just one excitement after another....
Planted (I guess, technically, TRANSplanted) 9 ferns, 4 elephant ears, 2 spider lillies, and several clumps of "Wandering Jew" that we brought from T's mom's house to our new place. Also dug up and transplanted to azaleas last night, so I guess, after a full day law stuff yesterday, yesterday evening was "horticulture time." Eventually, the new place landscaping and gardens will be spectacular. I'm just Manuel Labor. My wife is the green thumb and designer. I just tote, fetch, and carry heavy things... and dig holes. I'm an excellent hole digger.
Not a lot of work done today, but got a bit of stuff shifted around ready to shim out the wall studs. I now have all the window wells in one room filled, and most of the stuff (except my surplus insulation panels) moved out. I'm still not sure where I can put a block of insulation panels 8 feet by four feet by two feet so I can get at the ceiling in there. Having framed out two walls now I'm thinking when it's time to renovate the next rooms I might just cut all the studs off and restud everything. At least that way everything will be consistent and I won't be trying to endlessly cut weird shaped chunks and trying to cut them to size. Not only that but I can cut them to the depth I need and not have to figure out how much to shim each individual stud when it's all done.
Lazy day today following a bad night's sleep. So I went for a walk rather than a run, then went to get some more lumber so I'm ready to shim out my walls. I got enough to shim out the walls and hopefully the ceilings in two adjacent rooms. One won't be ready to be drywalled for a while longer but I figured I might as well get as much as I can ready even if the rest of it isn't ready. It's easier strapping two pieces of lumber to the roof bars than 11 pieces. This evening I might have accidentally visited my favorite local brewpub. I'm not sure how that happened.
Ought another new end table Finished painting 2 walk in closets cat to vet assembled first of 3 closet systems
Got another couple of buckets of scrap wood burned this morning, then went for a run. I was all set to start shimming out my walls but figured I'd wait until I hear back from my contact at the sound proofing place to make sure that's the best way of doing it. The idea is that a shim gives the material a little space to vibrate and thereby absorb more of the noise, with the drywall mounted over the material so the room looks like a normal room. I still have no idea where I'm going to stack my spare insulation panels while I finish work on the room where they are currently stacked. I don't really want to carry them upstairs because I don't have space there to feed them through my table saw, which would mean I'd only have to carry them back downstairs again later. But maybe it's a price worth paying to get them out of the way for now....
I struggled for a time to figure out how best to shim out my wall studs, given they aren't all straight and I don't want to find a small error in one place compounds until I start needing shims several inches thick by the time I reach the other end of the room. In the end I figured I can lay down a long piece of wood, screw it to the floor and then use it as a baseline. With a long level I can figure if my studs are straight and shim out my shims as needed. Not only did it prove to be remarkably easy to measure everything but the angle in the corner is pretty close to 90 degrees. Much closer than I expected it would be. I could probably get it a little closer with additional shimming but fear that if I did I'd end up with weird looking window wells and also face the potential for finding something didn't quite fit in another corner. So I'm accepting that the corner isn't quite perfect, and the corner between the wall and the new wall I framed isn't quite perfect, but it's close enough to be entirely workable. Given I never framed a wall before I'm pleased it is so close to 90 degrees to the existing one. Maybe tomorrow I can get busy cutting shims and pinning them in place. It's a tedious task but gotta be done.
Got some good news yesterday. Somehow I developed some soars on my feet. I've been having a technician from Woundteck coming over 2 times a week to treat them. They have been getting better. Yesterday he pronounced the last of them healed. Now I start taking showers again.
Got a long run in yesterday. For the first time I ever I managed to run the entire way without taking any walk breaks.