Forgot to say, I got my initial piece of wiring work done. Now I've got a light in one work area with a switch that doesn't leave me walking across the room in the dark, playing "guess where I left the trip hazards". I've started running the cables that will power the replacement lighting and fans, connected it into the existing circuit, and got rid of the nasty wire that ran across the attic. Now each circuit is stand-alone, with no neutrals crossed over. And the big ugly circuit now powers nothing more than a few lights downstairs. The odds and ends that were connected to it upstairs are kinda sorta botched together on an extension cord, pending destruction and rebuild of the last couple of bedrooms. It's ugly but it works. And a little more of the nasty knob-and-tube is coiled up in my box of scraps, as is another 20-odd feet of nasty old armored cable. I was surprised to see it was 10ga wire - when I pulled it out I thought it was heavier than 12ga, and an electrician friend said it looked like 10 to him. Not sure why they'd have used 10 for some of it and 12 for the rest, then put the whole lot on a 15A fuse, but there you go.
Sometimes you have to wonder what, or if, people were thinking. I once started working in the clubhouse of some condominiums only to discover that the outside lights only worked when the hot tub, which was on a timer, was working. Which meant that the lights kept shutting off.
Cokes etc - dangerous temptation. Got me a 1 gal cooler for ice, lemon, water. But, killing one's self can be so tasty
My router table is complete and seems to work. It's not ideal having a 3/4" thick base because the router is a compact one, so I imagine some of my bits may not work as well as they might with a thinner table. That said it's operational and the dust collection seems very effective, which is always handy with routers. It was quite handy really, I'd geared it around the extension tubes of my shop vac but nothing quite worked - the problem was that they stuck too far into the hole and interfered with the router bit. Then I found the hose from an old defunct micro vac, figured I could extend my main hose using it and, because it's from a vac that isn't going to get used any more, I just cut the end off with my miter saw so it fits neatly. So now my router table has its own custom dust extractor, which is nice. Now I need to build a jig for putting picture frames together. Hopefully that won't be too difficult.
Got busy pulling down some more wall. Another four bags of rubble and another pile of old laths. I found a local lady who uses laths for her primitive-style crafting, which is handy. It means she gets material to use for free, and it means I don't have to stand around the burn barrel feeding laths into the fire. The last lot of laths found a new home - I was fixing some brickwork outside and a lady walking past approached me and asked if I was going to use them. She was looking for firewood, and wasn't phased by the fact they still had nails in them. She came back within minutes to take them all away. Another win-win - she to burn them for heat and saved me the time it would have taken to burn them as trash. This might come as a shock to people who have been following my house-breaking adventure, but I found another draft when pulling down the wall. It seems air is getting from the attic space into the wall cavity. I'm going to need to look closely at safe options for packing insulation around the chimney stack so that the warmth from the chimney (coming from flue gases from an oil furnace) can radiate into adjacent rooms but wintery cold air from the attic can't flow back down through the house. Hopefully this will save another chunk of cash going forward. I'm thinking rolled up fiberglass pressed into any gaps around the chimney breast will do the job without creating a fire hazard being pressed against a concrete block chimney carrying warm exhaust gases.
Got back home a couple hours ago after our trip down south. Spent a few days camping on the way back up to decompress a bit after the stresses of the previous 2 weeks. Nice to be home.
Was just asked to quit everything to remodel my sister's 5 bedroom house in prep for sale. No doubt, property value can be easily doubled.. Then build them a small retirement unit up in the mountains. All very enticing.
That doesn't have to be a problem. My house project isn't exactly speeding along. Although having said that, I suspect it's going to take a sudden lurch forward - when I can get the first room done I think two others will be fairly close behind it.
It also takes a high tolerance to dusty footprints everywhere. Thankfully my wife is at least reasonably gracious when my attempts to contain the mess are less than 100% successful. As I've said to her, I keep it to a minimum but it's not a sterile process so it's inevitable that some dust will get into the places we'd rather not have dust.
Got a couple of small picture frames made. They were a little fiddly - they are the right size to take a postcard or greetings card - but they are made, glued and lacquered. Now I'm just waiting for the UPS man to show up and deliver the sawtooth backs I ordered so they can be hung. Hopefully I can turn a profit out of them - there's a place near me that makes cabinets and drawers, and often sells skidloads of offcuts for next to nothing. I can often take one of their offcuts and make a frame out of it, so if I can get a whole box of offcuts for pocket change and sell each frame for maybe $10, it could work out quite nicely for me