So... What are YOU doing? - Part 8

[Lamb]

I decided to abandon my house renovation project, figuring it's easier to start from scratch. Thankfully the local bulldozing company was free to help out. Hopefully all the rubble will be gone by the end of the day.

Wait, what? How much was bulldozed?

 

[tango]

Wait, what? How much was bulldozed?

Somebody forgot what day Friday was

 

[Lamb]

Somebody forgot what day Friday was

HAHA you got me! I had totally forgotten

 

[tango]

On a more serious note, I got my fiberglass pressed into place on Friday instead of bulldozing my house

It stayed in place all weekend too, which was nice. It was tricky getting it pressed into place from below but thankfully this part of the house has joists that are pretty uniformly spaced, which means the rolls of fiberglass will press into place and stay in place thanks to having enough friction between the material and the joists. I'll need to disturb it later to fill a couple of air gaps and to run a new cable to where the light/fan is going to go but that should be a pretty easy thing. I can pin some wood batons into place to make sure a minor disturbance doesn't grant me the opportunity to rediscover gravity.

There's still some more ceiling to pull down in that area but I need to figure how to contain the mess before I do that. I'll probably want to get a tarp pinned into place to make sure the debris doesn't fall down the stairs and liberally distribute itself across a wide area.

 

[Lamb]

I went out for blood work this morning and then my husband and I went out to grab some breakfast.

 

[tango]

Fun in the attic the last couple of days.

I got some more floor laid - nasty cheap OSB but with the price of materials these days I just used up what I had left over from a previous job. The boards that were $20 a couple of years back are now $55.

Next up was moving a load of stuff around. I need to be able to get at the tops of the walls in the attic so I can spray cellulose insulation into them, to save money next winter given the price of heating oil has gone up over 200% in the last couple of years. It's a temporary measure - when I pull the walls down all the cellulose will come down with them - but it will be a while until I get to these rooms and in the interim I'd like to improve the insulation available.

Now I've managed to move a load of stuff such that I can get at the tops of all the walls I need to get at. Because I didn't have to pull up the floor over the room I'm currently working in I could move all the stuff I cleared out of that space back into the space, which made quite a difference. And having rolls of fiberglass piled up against the wall in the corner makes the attic look less overwhelming than having seemingly randomly placed piles that partially obstruct a window.

Once I've got the cellulose sprayed a load of stuff can go more or less back where it was, so it doesn't need to be in the middle of the floor. That will also be handy. Hopefully I can get that done fairly soon and with any luck it will also provide some sound insulation as well as thermal insulation. Before I spray the cellulose I want to replace a single socket downstairs - it's a nasty old socket with no earth pin, connected to wires I've long since cut off. I haven't done anything with it yet because it's behind the piano, so I'll need to move that, replace the socket, run a short cable to a junction box in the space below, and put the piano back. Then my wife can have the light over the piano working again.

 

[tango]

Change of tack today. I ordered an mSATA device for my laptop which arrived today, so I cloned my boot partition onto it and need to spend some time tinkering with the settings. Because I went from having a 115GB boot partition to a 500GB boot volume I divided it into a couple of smaller partitions, and am going to use one as a boot volume and the other as a host for an encrypted volume as well as some swap spaces for things like Photoshop.

Assuming it gives me the kind of boost I'm expecting I'll go ahead and order a regular SSD to replace my existing magnetic drive. Then I'll just need a couple of big external drives for backups, although those can be 3.5" magnetic drives.

 

[Lamb]

Going shoe hunting today. I couldn't find any Iiked last summer and just wore the same old shoes. Now those shoes are giving me blisters so it's time to find new ones.

 

[~Jo~]

Sitting on my bed writing this post, then will watch TV and do some knitting again.

 

[Lamb]

Sitting on my bed writing this post, then will watch TV and do some knitting again.

What are you knitting?

 

[tango]

Morning run, then carried on with the work in the attic.

Over the course of yesterday and today I lifted sections of floor in the attic that give me access to the spaces between the bricks of the house and the back of the lath and plaster walls. There's a small part I can't work with because there's a top bar across the top of the wall studs, but the rest of the house doesn't have that. It's been an intricate process, having to drill holes and cut strips of wood with a combination of a jigsaw and oscillating tool, avoiding a cable that snakes around the space I need to be cutting and also avoiding cutting through anything supporting (like the joists that run at random intervals and sometimes at unexpected angles).

Along the way I've sucked up decades worth of abandoned spider webs and more than a few dead flies and stink bugs. Now I can get at all the spaces so I can rent a doodad to blow insulation into the space. It's a temporary fix but it will make a difference until I get to this part of the house. With the current price of heating oil the chances are the cost of buying the insulation and renting the blower will pay for itself within a month or less when it gets cold again.

I've got a couple of things I want to see to before I blow the cellulose. One is the socket I mentioned above. I also have a light switch I need to replace - it's a three-way switch that controls the porch lights and I want to replace it with a twin three-way switch for when we replace one of the porch lights with a fan.

Once I've got the insulation blown into place I can start putting things in the attic back where I'd rather they stayed rather than having them pulled into the middle. That will be nice. It will also be nice to see how much money this saves us. Our oil usage is down something like 40% since I started my insulation project. My initial aim was to cut it by 30% and now I'm thinking when it's all done I might have cut it by more like 60%. That would be nice.

 

[Lamb]

Getting ready to go get groceries with my husband.

 

[~Jo~]

What are you knitting?

Hi lamb, just another jumper (sweater) for my little granddaughter I've been doing this for ages but being ill in hospital last year for months now about to go for more test, I think god only knows when I will finish or maybe her teddy bear could wear it lol.

 

[tango]

In a change of pace I put a solid state drive in my laptop. Initially I just used a cheaper mSATA device, which is an older technology but my laptop is 10 years old so I figured I'd test it out to see if it gives me the boost I wanted. Since it looks good I'm happier spending more money on a big SSD.

I'll probably also get a couple of big magnetic drives to use as backups. I keep one in the house and one in a safety deposit box at the bank, just in case.

 

[Lamb]

Hi lamb, just another jumper (sweater) for my little granddaughter I've been doing this for ages but being ill in hospital last year for months now about to go for more test, I think god only knows when I will finish or maybe her teddy bear could wear it lol.

You must be really good at knitting those things!

 

[Lamb]

I'm going to pick up some ice cream for this weekend at the place that sells the BEST ice cream around. We will be celebrating Easter with our daughter this weekend and I want to surprise her with this ice cream and the homemade waffle cones they make at that store too.

 

[tango]

I'm going to pick up some ice cream for this weekend at the place that sells the BEST ice cream around. We will be celebrating Easter with our daughter this weekend and I want to surprise her with this ice cream and the homemade waffle cones they make at that store too.

Ice cream and waffle cones? Sounds good. Did my invitation get lost in the mail?

 

[Lamb]

Ice cream and waffle cones? Sounds good. Did my invitation get lost in the mail?

LOL I can give you directions to the store? They sell hand-dipped ice cream in waffle cones there that are HUGE for about $3.50 each. And you can sit outside on the gliders that they sell and watch the cows across the street.

 

[tango]

Sounds good. Not sure if I'm anywhere even remotely close but you can always PM me their location in case I ever am passing through.

 

[Lamb]

I'm still sleeping in late but that's okay. Tuesday I go back to the doctor and I hope I get cleared finally to resume some of my chores.