So our flight circled over town a couple times, then decided they could not land due to weather. Then off to another town. Landed. Then we had to decide to stay on or try again later. About 3/4 of the passengers decided to find their own way from there. Mind you it was about 4 hours away from our destination and not many rental cars available. But people pooled together. So five of us rented and drove the 400km to town. In the middle of a rain/snow storm. But it went fairly well. Tomorrow the temperature drops to -28°C.
Ha. Canukistan. I think here in the US, the FAA would just prohibit the passengers from getting off the plan and making them stay in a freezing aluminum tube for 18 hours eating peanuts and sharing 4 outhouses. Glad you made it home safely, Teddy.
Thanks. It was very nice to be home. Oh yeah, the airport we landed at is on an island that is connected to the town by a 15 to 20 minute ferry ride. So my journey home involved almost all forms of transportation - starting with rail, then air, then van, then boat, then a car.
Found cold air seeping in around one of my windows. Given what a bad job the guy I paid to fit them did I might as well have hired an ape. Had it not been several years ago I'd seriously be considering legal action against him - there's not much point installing new double glazed windows if you're going to fit them so badly that cold air can seep around them. A short-term fix for this one was easy enough - I pried the side trim off, taped up the offending areas, then pinned the trim back into place. Not a pretty long term job but it will suffice until it's time to work on this room. It may be in my head but it feels warmer in the room already. The curious thing is that I was only alerted to the issue because a strange noise came from the window. I think it was just something like the locking mechanism shifting, what with thermal expansion and contraction and stuff, but when I went to investigate I noticed it was cooler than I expected, and found the draft. I really wish there was a way of measuring just what difference each individual change makes. I know once I get into the area of diminishing returns the returns will, well, diminish, but it would be really nice to be able to quantify the savings generated by a simple job like this one. The funny thing is that it probably took longer to gather the tools and put the tools away again than it did to actually do the work.
Tango, they made a movie a while back that sounds like your struggles with your house. It was named The Money Pit.
I've heard of the movie. I doubt that house has anything on my house Seriously, so far it hasn't been all that much of a money bit. I think so far I've spent more on tools than on supplies. I know that will change when it's time to buy drywall, paint and particularly new flooring material. It pains me to have to lift old hardwood floors but some of them are in a really sorry state and I'm not sure if refinishing them is an option. Perhaps some of them will be secured down with pins rather than the largest nails anyone could find, and I'll be able to lift the good parts and just replace the bad parts. I can hope.....
Tango, if you have to completely pull some floorboards up try and save the good ones. You may be able to use them four patches or make other things with them.
Finished prepping chicken wings for the game. (Had to cut the wings into pieces, so glad that is over) Go RAMS.
I plan to salvage as much wood as I can. I've got a huge great pile of cedar I recovered from a ceiling that I'm debating what to do with. At the moment it's in the way because it's in lengths that don't quite fit anywhere cleanly. It makes a nice smell when I feed it to the table saw. I don't know what I'm going to end up making with some of this stuff but there's enough wood there I can probably do something quite interesting with it. If the floorboards are 3/4" thick (which I suspect they will be) I may use them to build an adapted design for a dining table. I've wanted to replace our dining table for a while and it would be kinda cool if the dining table used to be the floor, or the ceiling, or something.
Interesting that you have cedar there. I don't think that would be very common out east. If anything, you can make flowerboxes or some other outdoor stuff with it. Wow, 3/4 inch floorboard. That's thick for a hardwood floor, but it is an older place. Years ago we salvaged a red oak floor from my wife's parent's house that was going to be demolished. We installed it in our townhouse. It took a fair bit of work and a lot of sanding, but it came out quite nice, although you could see it was not new material. It certainly gave a slightly more rustic look.
For some reason whoever replaced the ceiling put about a 15" drop, then put 2x4s across the room, then 3/4" cedar planks across those, then stapled ceiling tiles to the cedar. When I took the tiles down I wasn't sure if the wood that said "cedar" on it really was cedar but as soon as I fed some to the table saw it was clear that it was. What I've lifted out of the attic so far is 3/4" fir. I'm not sure what the other boards are made of. I'll certainly look to reclaim as much as I can, although at least some of it is visibly not really fit to continue service as a floor. It's not fun dealing with a floor that you can't walk on barefoot in case you get splinters. That said maybe much of it can be salvaged and reused - it could be I just need to cut a couple of feet off the end of some boards and can reuse the rest. Or perhaps cut it out of one room and reuse it in a smaller room.