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

[tango]

Long run today which, with the benefit of hindsight, wasn't a good idea the morning after a visit to a brewery. But I got around it, even if I didn't feel particularly strong for much of it.

 

[Lamb]

Yesterday we had a lot of stuff to do so I slept in and am missing bible study, but will hand out pamphlets later for Lutheran Women in Mission Sunday.

 

[Krissy Cakes]

At my in laws house.

 

[tango]

Fun With Soundproofing, Again.

I got my wife to help me fit some soundproofing material because I was working with sections of material 4' wide and 5-8' long. It's tricky to stand on a ladder, holding one edge exactly where I want it, without any other part of the material falling or sagging, while also having to put screws onto a screwdriver and screw everything into place. All I really needed her to do was steady the roll of material curled up on a platform on the ladder so it didn't tip over, which freed my hands to hold everything in place. Everything's a bit cobbled together but it works, and having an extra pair of hands meant I could get through the work a lot faster than I might otherwise have done.

Now the room is mostly finished, I just have a few small gaps around the tops of the soundproofing (the joys of working with 4' material when the ceiling is 8'2 off the ground), and a couple of small spots over the tops of windows. I prefer to avoid joins but sometimes it's easier to accept a join than to fight with a bigger (and heavier) roll of soundproofing.

The rate things are going I might actually have some more finished rooms by the end of the year. That would be a bit radical....

 

[tango]

.... and a little more fun with soundproofing, following a coffee break.

My primary workroom is done, bar the small strips across the very top. I didn't feel like doing any more today so called a halt. The rest of the room is done. The bottom of the adjacent room, the room that will eventually be a bathroom, is done. The part above and to the side of the window isn't yet done, it's tricky to get a ladder into that space so I'll save that for when it's all a bit more finished (specifically when there's a floor to rest the ladder on).

I still have a couple of unfinished sections of the ceiling, which is also pending completion of a section of floor. Now so much else is done I can press on with the new floor and think about getting windows and drywall ordered.

I'm also very pleased that I didn't haul the third roll of soundproofing up into that room. I wasn't sure if two rolls would be enough but having done just about all I need to do there I used the remains of the working roll, plus all but a few inches of the first new roll, and so far a little over 6 feet of the second new roll. Had I hauled the third roll up there I'd have to haul it back down again, so I'm glad I didn't bother.

 

[Lamb]

Time to go get the groceries. I hate it that their customer service isn't open until 8AM, but the store opens at 6 or 6:30. That means, if you get charged the wrong price, you have to wait until 8 (which is not going to happen with frozen/refrigerated items) or you return (which means wasting gas because it's 15 minutes away). So now I've learned to just go in later to shop so I can get my money back when the registers mess up.

 

[Krissy Cakes]

Sitting in the ER. Waiting to be seen. They are busy tonight.

 

[Lamb]

Sitting in the ER. Waiting to be seen. They are busy tonight.

I pray things are better soon!

 

[tango]

More soundproofing yesterday, interspersed with lots of enabling work (mostly moving stuff around so I can get at the walls). I got some space cleared and a chunk of soundproofing rolled out and screwed into place. Then a visit to a friend to break up a piece of furniture. He said it was solid cherry but it turned out a fair chunk of it was plywood (nice grade plywood, but still plywood). It was held together with lots of screws, many of them inaccessible, and lots of glue. The shell of it is now in pieces in his yard, and the salvagable cherry is in the back of my car waiting to be unloaded.

Today I get to play with some more soundproofing. The material comes in 25-foot rolls, and one wall I want soundproofed is about 30 feet long. I can make a join at one window, which is easy enough. Every once in a while I wonder if I ordered enough material but I think I'll be fine. Upstairs is done, bar a few gaps that need filling in, and I think I have enough to finish the downstairs section with maybe a few offcuts left over. Offcuts are handy for when I start the next phase, and may need to fill odd gaps over windows and doors etc.

 

[tango]

More soundproofing. So far I've got three window wells filled in ready to go. The last one can wait because it's past the range of the roll of material I'm working with. It's been tedious getting stuff ready to roll but now I'm mostly there, and hopefully the rest of the process will go more quickly. I will need to move some more material so I can get a ladder into place, to put the next layer of soundproofing on the wall, but hopefully that won't prove too arduous.

The cherry wood is now in my basement. Unfortunately what I thought was a single huge piece of cherry turned out to be plywood. High grade plywood, but still plywood. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, given it isn't what I hoped it would be.

 

[Lamb]

It's a long weekend for us, so we're going to do some leaf spotting!

 

[tango]

The last window well to be filled in is within range (just) of the end of the soundproofing roll, so I'll need to find a piece of wood I can cut up to fill the gap. Aside from that I now have an entire roll of material screwed into place. Next up is to cover the front wall. That will come in two pieces - I'd rather not create the offcuts from the window space but at the front of the house (the part that faces the road) I'd rather deal with offcuts than have extra joins in the material. I can use the offcuts to fill odd gaps towards the back of the house where there's less noise to keep out.

 

[Faith]

My husband and I just returned from a “linner” late lunch early dinner with a recently widowed friend of ours. it was good seeing her. We really miss her husband, too.

 

[tango]

No real progress on the house, I met a friend for lunch and overdid it on the coffee so my head was a bit wired this afternoon. I got the ladder moved downstairs, and a spare door that I'll use to cover one of the windows. When I fit the soundproofing material I need to take the blinds down, and I don't want people being able to see in at the work in progress. The front window is wider than a standard door, so that will want a sheet of drywall to cover it. There are four other windows, and I'm not sure what I have available to cover them to maintain privacy. I can definitely cover three windows, maybe I'll need to dig out one of my old tarpaulins to cover the other windows. If all else fails I'll find a couple of sheets from the local thrift shop, it doesn't have to be anything fancy.

 

[Lamb]

My husband and I just returned from a “linner” late lunch early dinner with a recently widowed friend of ours. it was good seeing her. We really miss her husband, too.

I like that term Linner!! We like to do that too on weekends.

 

[tango]

Got some more electrics done. Now I have a dual wifi relay in one of my back boxes so it offers me remote control of what will be a light/fan combo. I've got two more of the relays on order ready to fit them to the next box (I'll need to strip everything down and refit it all to a deeper back box, because there's no way I'm going to fit extra wires as well as two relays into the box I'm currently using)

Today my wife and I went out for dinner and discovered a very pleasing limited edition sour beer at one of our local(ish) breweries.

Then because I couldn't make enough progress on my lighting to make it worth bothering I decided to.... work on some lighting. I've got a lamp I bought because it didn't work. I'd previously taken the wiring apart and it was ugly, so I stripped most of it out and replaced it, and now it works very nicely. It's a pretty lamp, so it's good to have it working.

Getting it working was frustrating, because I had to not only feed more wires through the threaded rod down the middle than I've had to deal with before but I also found that a shield was positioned such that I couldn't get the key into the new lamp holder. Thankfully a tungsten carbide bit in my Dremel opened the hole up so I can get at it.

I still need to find a tap/die combination so I can make my own brass extenders. Some lampholders come with them and some don't, and it would be handy to be able to make them as needed.

 

[Lamb]

We have errands to run this morning.

 

[tango]

Debating what to do with the pretty light that now works nicely. Every once in a while I think there might be a market in buying lamps that don't work, rewiring them and then selling them on as lamps that do work. It's just a question of how much time and money I need to put into making them work, and whether the market for working lamps is sufficient to cover costs.

 

[tango]

Went to see some of the local youth run in a cross-country meet. Then I got busy reworking a nasty switch circuit I've got. It's not so much a nasty circuit, but it's a very full back box and I wanted to put some wifi relays in there, so I took it all apart and reassembled it into a deeper back box. Now it's all back together and it works, which is always a plus.

Now I can control all my exterior lights from my phone, as well as what will be another light/fan combo. For now it's two lights, but I can control them both independently so I know the circuits are correct.

I'm thinking I might get another dual switch relay for the bathroom. Sometimes after a shower it's steamy enough to want to leave the fan on, but also easy to forget the fan is running. It would be handy to set something up so that if you turn the light off the fan turns itself off after maybe 30 minutes.