Unfortunately the snow in Chicago is usually gray rather than white, just like the blown insulation in our backroom. Taking down the ceiling in the backroom was something I was dreading because I could see the sixteen inches deep insulation that was in the ceiling from my kitchen view of the horribly sagging back roof. But it needed to be done and I had the day off in the middle of the week with no car to go anywhere.
So, I put up the plastic barrier, opened all the windows, and donned my mask. One by one I took down the rows of 1inch furring boards running perpendicular to ceiling rafters. The Snow began lightly as their is less ceiling where the roof slopes off at the exterior of the back room, but as I worked towards the kitchen, the insulation fell harder until a complete Gray-Out blinded my vision and I stumbled through the three foot deep drifts.
After a lengthy fresh air break, I started picking up the insulation. After an hour, I felt I had gotten nowhere, but eventually I found the floor again. In all I filled up forty trash bags of insulation! Alas there are no pictures of this adventure as Liz had taken the camera to work.
This weekend I finally finished the first in the great door reclaimation project, our bedroom door, which I’ve been working on since the Martin’s were here last. All the doors are now down but the most important one (the bathroom of course). All I can say is that doors are a lot bigger than the trim I’ve been stripping so far, and that there is a lot more of them than you think there is. And they have two sides. Ugh. Far more time consuming than my previous projects.
Although it is just the two of us, in our house we are so close to your neighbors that you need the privacy a door can give you. Especially since we have no blinds up since we’ve taken down all of the trim that you could hang them on. We have one spot in our bedroom that you can stand in to get dressed in without being in the line of sight of either of our neighbors, and we’ve definitely gotten tired of sneaking around in our own house.
I started by removing all the hardware from the door and throwing it in a bucket, screws and all, since I didn’t want to lose any of it. Then it was time to bring out the trusty ole’ heat gun and to strip the paint off the flat outside and inside portion of the panels on the side of the door that faced into the bedroom. I got this done in about two sittings (or hunchings). The edges of the panels took considerably longer. I couldn’t really go at it with the metal scraper because it was too easy to dig into and gouge the door. I finally found a use for all those chemical strippers on this part of the door, and they worked pretty well at getting a bulk of the paint off. I still can’t stand the smell and it is much messier compared to the heat gun, but seems to be quicker and less damaging to the door. After getting most of the paint off with the chemical strippers, I went over it scraping with a small screw driver the spots of paint that were still left, and using the Dremmel in some places. (more…)
It started raining Friday, around when the cable guy showed up and just never stopped. We ended up bribing the cable man with a 6 pack of beer to climb up onto the wet roof and install the dish (they are supposed to wait until it’s dry out.) It was either there, or on top of the garage, with a cable running over the yard to the house (ugh). I think if the world starts ending, alcohol could easily become the new currency. It is definitely becoming a luxury item in our house, and we have had positive results with the trash man as well ever since we gave him a 6 pack after he refused to take our trash away two weeks ago.
Anyway, the rain just continued and went on and on. Sunday morning, we woke up, with things starting as usual–vegging on the couch watching CBS Sunday Morning and eating breakfast. Then Thor wandered down to the basement and ruined our peaceful morning.
Two-thirds of basement was flooded. In some places there was an inch of standing water. The water was seeping in through the walls on all sides. After the continual oppressive rain of the past three days, I guess our basement never stood a chance. What a way to discover the basement is not water-proofed at all. We then spent an hour trying to salvage all of our tools and boxes of sopping wet wedding presents which we have yet to open since we’ve had no place for them until now, and pull all of the wood trim out of the water so it doesn’t get warped.
We didn’t have to pump the basement out, all of the water just seeped back into the floor. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, we didn’t have to really clean the water out of the basement. On the other hand, it just continues to enforce the porous nature of this space.
All in all, we are grateful, though. There were a lot of people who suffered a lot worse this weekend. My grandfather who lives in Galveston has probably lost his home (we won’t know for a few more weeks yet), and it will probably be 3 more weeks until my aunt and uncle who live in Houston have power again. So a little water in the basement we can deal with
