Weekend update: July 8

Oh, wow. So much done this weekend. Any my phone wiped my notes. I know there's stuff I'm forgetting. 

I got part of basement cleaned out and set up my hammock down there. I figured the basement was cool and the hammock rocks so I should sleep well. Then I sat on it and ropes started breaking.

I got a portable AC to use in the rest of the house. The heat can be handled once the humidity comes down. The ground floor kept the cool pretty well once it cooled down.

The neighborhood got weedwhacked. The poison ivy got more trunks snipped. And I talked to the guy who cut the trunks last time. It took 4 years for it to get back where it was when he went at it.

Poison Ivy now.

Poison Ivy a month ago.

I pulled up the carpet in my bedroom and found linoleum rugs below it. Have you seen these? It's like an area rug, but made of linoleum. My midwest friends reaction was "what? Why would someone do that?", but Yummy insists that they were really popular for awhile. When everyone has wood floors and you want to liven up a room but can't afford a full rug you get a colorful linoleum rug with no installation costs.

Linoleum rug.

The insulating people have seen the place and are just trying to schedule when they can come out and spray the place. I figured I should get my wiring in place and put bags over the fixtures so they won't get foamed. So here's what I did to my future bedroom. You can better see the framing I did a couple of weeks ago. A queen sized bed will go between the windows. And now there's a light, a switch, and an outlet for someone on each side of the bed. Does it mean I'm old when I'm more concerned with reading lights for the bed than mirrors or swings or somewhere for handcuffs?

Future bedroom exterior wall. 

You can kinda see above the window to the left that there's new brickwork. A bunch almost fell on Yummy's head during the initial demolition. Luckily, structural brick walls are built two rows thick. I got a rubber mallet and tapped the outer bricks until they were even with the rest of the wall. Then I applied a skim coat of mortar to help hold them in place. Then I rebuilt the wall with different bricks that I started with. The original masons used a lot of half bricks. I used the few whole bricks they used, the bricks I used in making my hexagonal paving stones a couple of years ago, and some bricks I pulled from abandoned yards around the neighborhood. 

Then I cleaned the room. Even with all the bags of debris that we'd gotten rid of there was still a lot in this room. And the super powerful shopvac that Yummy bought sucks up rocks. Alas, all the plaster dust clogs the filters so it needs a regular beating. And there was lumber to haul out, window counterweights, wiring I'd cut down, things like that. After I was done it looked like a museum piece. A modern art museum, but still. There was a radiator, a step ladder, a box fan, and a shopvac standing in an empty room and looking like they were trying to ignore each other while hoping someone will talk to them. Then the dance music came on the radio just to cap it off. 

The room below this got vacuumed, too. Lots of dust and rock slipped between the floor and the wall to foul things up downstairs. As soon as the bedroom is done I'll tear up the carpet downstairs and put in bookshelves and make an awesome library. 

I got some beadboard installed over some brick. That's hard to do, but you'll like the results once I get it all installed. 

Then I got down to where I was running out of things to do until parts get delivered or other people do their thing or the weather cooperates. So I spent a few hours scraping very hard to remove wall paper. 

My furlough starts this week. Three day weekends until October (at least). So more 3 day weekends to get stuff done.