It's remarkable just how much garbage this stage has produced. I thought maybe 4-5 bags of drywall scraps but I'm at three already and only pulled down about a quarter of the ceiling. And then there are three more full sacks of cellulose, with another bag full of mixed trash (mostly cellulose by volume, but also some odd scraps of drywall and the contents of my separator bucket). The rate this is going it's going to give me enough extra garbage to take me the rest of the year to get rid of it all. But then that will be it, until we start moving into the newly finished space and fixing up the space we're currently living in. Curiously that's the part I'm kinda sorta looking forward to.
Finally got some motivation to fight with the soundproofing material. And right away I noticed I needed to shim the ceiling joists before I could do much of anything else. And then I started working with the material only to find my shoulders tired rapidly, from working over my head dealing with shims. It's not a lot of fun dealing with a 50lb roll of material when I'm trying to keep as much of the weight as possible supported on a contraption I built, while trying to position the free end with enough precision to screw it into place and have two edges properly aligned with everything else. Still, now it's started it should be that much easier to finish tomorrow, hopefully with fresher shoulders. Now it's just a question of unrolling it and screwing it to the ceiling joists as I go. And from there I get to do it all a few more times to do the rest of the room. Oh what fun. I just hope I have enough soundproofing material to finish everything.
I do hate working on anything when I have to have my arms extended over my head for any length of time... no bueno.
I don't mind working over my head iin and of itself even if it does get tiring after a while. But working with heavy stuff over my head, trying to get it into position with any precision at all, and then have to hold it in place with one hand because I need the other hand to drive a screw through it, that gets tedious. Playing games of "guess where the next joist is" don't help the situation.
Slowly plodding along with the work. Today I got the rest of the strip of soundproofing installed and started taking down another wall. The wall needs to come down so I can frame it properly, it's just really tedious having to do work like this when it's almost certainly going to go back up in exactly the same place. I need to take it down because the way the studs are set there isn't space for an electrical back box in the wall cavity. Since the wood I'm taking out is, much like most other places in the house, very old wormy chestnut it seems sensible to keep the wood for something interesting and replace it with regular construction lumber. Perhaps some time in the future a future owner of the house will cut into a wall hoping to find aged lumber and find modern spruce instead. I hope they aren't too disappointed. There is still some vintage wood but it forms the central supporting wall of the house. I could remove it but the benefit would be minimal and the potential downsides are catastrophic. Tomorrow I plan to take down some more of the wall, including a door archway, pull down some more ceiling and get some more soundproofing cut and fitted.
Banff, or I suppose technically, Sulphur Mountain (we went up the Banff Gondola). Most of our time was spent around Calgary, but we're back in the UK now.
Speed repeats this morning, more wall demolition this afternoon. I've got the drywall on the ceiling cut into 4-foot strips so I can pull it down a section at a time and replace it with soundproofing. Although it slows the demolition process down it helps keep some semblance of control over the whole process. At least to the extent that such things can be controlled....
Flight to Bay Area end of Sept, then haul one more trailer load down and transition will be complete. Good chance of getting killled there these days but totallly worth it. Done with all faith forums - writing, blogging, tract & DVD creatiion instead.
Progress update. Another wall is down, more ceiling is down, bags of rubble are accumulating faster than I can get rid of them, and soundproofing material is going up. Slowly but surely getting closer. The dust is proving mostly manageable so far. For extra fun the wheels on the platforms I made for the cast iron radiators buckled so I had to figure out a way to get the radiators off the platforms so I could use a heavy duty hand cart to move them. And of course they were close to one of the (thankfully smaller) holes in the floor, just to make it more interesting. It's always fun lifting something that weighs about twice what I weigh from horizontal, using a cart, knowing that at some point it will slide about four inches before coming to a halt on the wood I taped into place to support it but not knowing exactly when or how fast it will slide. Fortunately it didn't slide too fast, and now it's out of my way. But I have another radiator in the room, and before long I'm going to need to move both of them. At least this time I know to just use the cart and be done with it, even if the cart is just something else to move around along with everything else.
It would certainly go a lot faster if I had 20,000 slaves with nothing to do except follow my every command. I don't suppose you know where I can get some?
I got a load more ceiling pulled down and another good chunk of space covered with soundproofing before my arms decided they didn't want to play any more. Tomorrow I get to move two radiators, pull down some more ceiling, and fit some more soundproofing. I think then I'll be in a place where I can frame the dividing wall again, although I think I will need to go and get some more 2x4s to finish that job. I just need to figure out how many so I only have to make one trip to go and get them all.
Having bear issues around our place. Couple black bears been in the neighbourhood looking for apples, but now in the garbage. Not some small scraggly bears either. One looks to be like 400lbs.
It can depend on what they are eating. There is a spring hunt, which seems odd, since they are just coming out of hibernation. In the fall, they are eating berries and apples, so the meat can get pretty sweet. If they are eating fish, I imagine it tastes different. We had a very poor berry year due to essentially drought conditions. Coupled with the bad fire season, I suspect that has pushed the bears into the towns looking for food.
I got my radiators moved out of the way so I could work in the last part of the room, and then pulled down some more ceiling. It was a more involved process than I hoped, as I also needed to cover the hole in the floor to stop big chunks raining into downstairs. But I got a load of it pulled down, broken up into small pieces and bagged up, and the huge mess cleaned up. Then there was a section of ceiling joist that isn't hugely well supported and, now I can get at it from below rather than working in a desperately confined space above it, I added some structural strength to that. A few sections were still insulated with cellulose (more fun, as that stuff rains down) so now that's bagged up and gone and replaced with fiberglass. I've got a strip of soundproofing cut to length so tomorrow's job will be to fit it, and measure the space where the wall used to be so I can figure out how many 2x4s I need to buy. All being well I'll have the outline of this room framed before long. A friend has a trailer and agreed to get the sheets of insulation I need for a continuous outer layer, and then I can restud the exterior walls once the continuous insulation is put in place. That should be a fairly quick and painless process, and from there I can get the wiring done and the thicker insulation panels fitted between the studs.