You know what's useful?

These things:


Thanks to them, the new light in the upstairs closet is finally installed, and (since it's mid-line on a circuit) the light in the laundry room is now back on.

And it only took an hour and a half (although fifteen minutes of that was searching for my wire strippers. Which still haven't been located. Whatever - bedtime.)

This was the old fixture. Clearly it needed replacing:

With friends like these...

I should have more people over more regularly. It's not just the multi-person projects that get done (painting part of one of the exterior walls, for example), something about having other people around gets me more active, to the point that I'll swap a couple of mismatched cabinet handles in the kitchen (that I've been staring at for months) while we're all standing around and chatting.

Sarah and Mike stopped over today and we did the above plus: mapped out shed dimensions to make sure I'm placing it well; installed a new jack in the basement to replace one that was missing (!); moved all the tree limbs that came down in the storm the other week to the front for city pickup; and I just put some plumbers tape on a valve in the upstairs shower to stop a small drip.

Pictures soon.

Catch up

Still digging out at work, meaning not much has been happening at the house. I hope to be back to actually part time soon. I also hope to order that shed in the next two days which will really be the last big thing that needs to happen before winter hits. Even the scraping and painting and such are either isolated sections or, should it come to it, they can wait.

Things done today:
- more porch scraping since the weather was nice; found that the squirrels are getting ready for winter and thus need to get kicked out now.
- hung blinds in the kitchen window so it looks less bare
- turned this:

into this:

Also discovered that this light fixture and both outlets in the room are on the same breaker - the ceiling units and the outlets in other rooms are often separate due, I suspect, to when the lines went in. This is a little bit of a concern because I thought at least one other load is also on that circuit, meaning tenants might not find it so easy to watch TV, have the light on, and run the popcorn maker or whatever else they're doing at once. Will need to double check the panel labels and add this to the list of rewiring jobs for next summer.

Finally, the latest entry in the series 'People Who Passed Out Asleep on my Couch'. Doug took a red-eye drive in from Minnesota (11.5 hours) and fell asleep mid-sentence whilst laying on the couch.

Four rooms

Three, actually, but some with 4 walls. Okay, all with four walls, but the point is - the painting in the bedrooms is done. Hey look, it doesn't look like a tenement anymore!

Only a couple of small projects left upstairs, but I've been bogged with actual work (Alumni Council Weekend this weekend is sucking my office's lifeforce) and a minor cold for the last couple of days. Mofre updates next week, fingers crossed

New tag

I'm adding an 'advice wanted' tag to the blog for projects and peculiarities I'd like to try and crowdsource. If you're looking for a puzzle, these would be the posts that need addressing.

Right now the main point to ponder is at the bottom of this post - how do I get the paint off these spindles so I can repaint everything?

No longer a hole in the wall

Readers may remember the section of wall in the back bedroom that needed repair and how locating a plug to match the old 1/4" wallboard was proving difficult. I decided to just break out the plaster down to the lathe and plug it with drywall instead.

Fortunately I don't think there are other sections of plaster/wallboard that are cracked and buckling, so I shouldn't have to do this - or something smarter - again soon.

This section of wall was clearly redone at some point - we're talking 40+ years ago no real idea if there was a door or different wall there, or if there was damage repaired, or what. If anyone knows when they stopped using horse-hair plaster (which covered the lathe on the left side) and started using the more uniform plaster (used to cover the right), that might give me a sense of whether this remodeling was connected to the back addition (circa 1920) or something else.

In any event, clearing just this section of plaster(s) was an adventure, involving all the tools below plus an aborted attempt to use a circ saw. The 'newer' plaster was very disinterested in budging, which I suppose bodes well for the long term integrity of the house, but sucks for me trying to get this done in a day.

On the left, the drywall plug set to replace all the plaster on the right:


There's some slight unevenness with the two sections of lathe, probably due to the studs not being perfectly aligned. The screws seem to be holding the plug in fine, and I filed the edges a little to create a better gradient. Then used up a quarter of my jug of spackle:

After I was done I realized I'd missed a great opportunity to install a safe or secret compartment. Ah well - plenty of other walls in the house.

Not much to report

Been moving things around in anticipation of tomorrow's (today's) garage sale. If you're in town, come over and take this stuff. Please.

After that's gone, all I need is to figure out where I'm putting the shed out back (still... yes... I know) and then I can move the rest of the things I don't need in the house out of the house. And THEN I can get some work done.