Turns out the 30+ miles walking at work per week plus cutting firewood etc is beneficial Stress (ahem) is highly discouraged. Was hoping for a "a Take it easy," prognosis
Got some wiring done in the basement. I started the job a couple of days back but my motivation went away part way through so I didn't get to the bit that involves connecting to the live circuit. Today I finished it off. It means the socket we usually use for the vacuum cleaner is no longer on the same circuit as my power tools in the basement, and a couple of sockets that were connected to knob-and-tube wiring and then spent months disconnected because I cut the wires, are now live and wired with 12gauge cable. They also feature other little bonuses, like being properly grounded.
I'm not. But there must be something in the water up here because there seems to be a lot of twins in this town.
Taking a break from pulling down ceilings to pull up some floor. Much as it pains me to do it, I have to lift the floor in the attic. What I have there is tongue-and-groove fir that's at least 80 years old, but I need to lift it to replace the insulation and the wiring. Sadly whoever nailed it down seems to have used the biggest nails they could find. With an 18-inch pry bar I can't get them out and even with a 36-inch wrecking bar some of them take a lot of force. So once the antique fir is lifted it's going to cost me the fat end of $1000 to put OSB down to replace it. I just hope I can salvage enough of the fir to make something else with it.
Interesting experience in the attic. I needed to move a wingback chair to make more space for floorboards that I lifted from elsewhere. I managed to work my way to get to the chair easily enough and then had to move an old printer so I could move the chair. Lifting the chair high enough to get it past everything else while I stepped over a big pile of boards, stepping blindly because I couldn't see past the chair I was carrying, and hoping I didn't step into the gap in the floorboards I made while I fixed another one of the many issues, was precarious. Now I've got most of the area I need to work on cleared and most of the floorboards lifted. Then I get the real joy, the chance to lift something like 200 cubic feet of blown cellulose insulation. I'm not sure how many bags it's going to take to gather up all that, but once it's done I can lay fiberglass. For good measure I found a section of the attic that has no insulation at all, which could explain why that particular wall gets really cold in the winter. Onward and upward, and looking forward to further savings on heating oil this winter.
Needed to rethink some sequencing. I'm running out of space to lift floorboards in the attic and it seems that continuing to pry stuff when standing on the joists substantially increases the chance of misplacing my feet and falling through the ceiling below. Quite aside from the damage to the ceiling, I'm not sure I really want to fall with one leg either side of a wooden beam. That seems like a distinctly suboptimal outcome. So I need to go and get the boards to cover the area, then I can stand on the boards while I remove the last few floorboards, then do the fun job of lifting the cellulose. So in the meantime I'm going to be pulling down ceilings again, so I can haul as much as possible when I borrow my friend's truck. Currently I'm at 25 bags of rubble, a pile of bits of drywall, a box of old roofing felt, and an old hose reel. I'll potentially be adding a stack of bags of cellulose, because something that weighs nothing but takes up a lot of space is something I'd rather add to a substantial pile at the landfill rather than paying their $15 minimum charge for a carload that is light enough I could lift it with one hand without even trying very hard.
Have you considered making sure your insurance is paid up and lighting a small fire in the attic to stay warm?
A day of heavy things today. First off I took my car to where my friend works, left it there and drove home in his truck. Then I loaded a mountain of trash into his truck, and took it to the landfill. I had something like 24 bags of rubble, 8 bags of cellulose insulation, a pile of drywall pieces and a box of roofing felt. Then of course at the landfill I to unload it all again. This trip was a total of 820lb so by the time I'd loaded it up and unloaded it I'd shifted 3/4 of a ton of trash. Then it was off to the hardware store to buy a load of board for the attic. Got that loaded onto the truck and drove it home. Unloading that was seriously tedious. Now it's stacked in the dining room waiting to be hauled up to the attic. I had hoped to get it all done in one day but my body was reminding me I'm not 25 any more. Taking it up to the attic can wait until tomorrow.