More fencing, more... sick

So, our more astute and observant readers may have noticed in the last post that our careful and awesome fencing job left something of a gap between the new fence and the house. (Visible here.)

Well, after a little consideration, we decided that the gap was a little too big, and allowed a little too much view of our back yard to any casual passers-by on the street. In short, anyone walking by our house could look right down the hedge, into the back yard, and even into the park beyond. That would just not do at all, and so we took it upon ourselves to head off to Rona to buy a couple of cedar 2x4's, a box of good quality coated screws, and a couple dozen cedar fence boards.

We's gonna build us another fence!

This one, fortunately, would not involve a power auger, or indeed, any digging at all. We simply attached a pressure-treated 2x4 to the house (yay! TapCons!), a couple of stacked cedar 2x4's to the fence panel, and built a simple frame. Then we attached the fence uprights with a few finishing nails and voila!





Okay, so it was a bit harder than that - it was actually a full day's worth of work for the two of us, but it looks pretty good, even up against the manufactured panels.

Anyway, that's all the pictures for this post, but as a special bonus, we have a long-overdue return of everyone's favorite feature,

The Injury Report

So, part of our restructuring and re-tooling the fence involved reworking the gate for the neighbors. You see, when we originally hung it, the two posts on either side weren't quite exactly plumb, so we had to use shims to space out the 2x4 we used as a door jamb. Well, the shims worked... sort of. Meaning they looked ugly, and the door didn't close very well at all.

The fix was to take the gate and jamb apart, and to trim down the 2x4 so we wouldn't need the shims. This would require some rather tricky free-handing on the table saw -- but don't worry, this isn't an Injury Report about the table saw... well, not about the blade anyway.

To cut a long story short, apparently when you cut or sand cedar, you should really wear a dust mask. The reason for this is that the dust can carry microbes or bacteria from within the wood into your airways, or just irritate your breathing passages enough that whatever bacteria is in the air is more likely to infect you.

I spent the last three days lying on the couch with a nasty, nasty head cold and brutal cough.

Yuck.



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We've reached another milestone

Or should I say, we've PASSED another milestone...

At any rate, there we were two weeks ago, merrily enjoying our new carpet, and busily moving stuff back into the office from the garage where it had lain forgotten and ignored for (great Caesar's Ghost!) a year and a half. I had just found a home for all of my files and papers in a new filing cabinet (scored for free from the War Department's work - sweet!) and was preparing to start filling up the bookcase.

Then the War Department woke up and realized something rather disheartening. We still hadn't had the final occupancy inspection.

Of course, this meant removing all of the stuff from the filing cabinet, putting it back into boxes, and finding a place to store the boxes while we finished off the last couple of things we had to do before the inspector could come and look.

The first of these things was the bane of our entire existence, the dye test. (See here for the whole sordid story of why the dye test has nagged us since Day One.) We had done all that work on the drains, but had never actually called the city back to have them make sure all our work wasn't for naught, and that we really are connected to the city storm drains.

As usual, and of course, getting the dye test done meant I had to physically present myself at City Hall and fork over the sixty bucks in person. I wanted to book the final occupancy inspection at the same time, but I had this niggling little feeling that if I showed the least amount of cockiness, the karmic bastards in charge of home renovation would make the dye test fail or something, and we'd be scrambling around with picks and shovels in the rain. I resisted the capriciousness of fate and simply booked the dye test.

Which, of course, went off without a hitch. These pipes are clean!

That left the final pre-inspection task: building a cover for the electrical panel. Which we've been putting off and putting off because we KNEW it was going to be an absolute bitch to design, and an even bigger pain in the ass to build.

And we were right.

As usual, the best way to explain why this thing was such an enormously unpleasant undertaking would be to illustrate it with a picture. This one's from a while back, but aside from the color of the walls, nothing in the general area had changed at all:



Covering the actual panel itself wasn't really the problem. The real difficulty lay in designing something that would cover the corner and the ceiling and tie into the bulkhead without impeding anyone trying to get into the panel to work on something. Oh, and of course, I hadn't really framed in any extra support to attach whatever we finally did design to the wall. Bad Don.

Anyway, after a few heated discussions and some wildly unfair accusations of incompetence leveled against the cats, we decided to take the simplest approach, and just build a cover in place using 1/4-inch plywood.

So I hauled out my trusty framing implements and some scrap pieces of two-by-four and set to work. Several hours and a couple of minor injuries later, I had this:



Then I made these:



Then I attached them to the framing, filled, sanded, and painted them, cut and painted a door, attached some magnets, and now it looks like this:




Ta da!

Not the most elegant of solutions, but it actually doesn't look too bad (from a distance), and it didn't seem to even warrant the inspector's notice, so I'm going to call it a job well done.

Fortunately, you don't have to book the inspections in person, but you do have to be at home to let the inspector in, and as luck would have it, (Injury Report Exclusive!) I was home nursing a really sore neck that day. Which I'm pretty sure was caused by the awkward angle at which I had to hold my head so I could paint the bottom of the electrical panel.

Anyway, the inspector showed up, checked the interconnected smoke alarms, had a look at the programmable timer for the bathroom fan, signed the papers, and left.

We passed our final occupancy inspection! Wooo!

Of course, this is by no means the end of the reno. It just means we don't have anyone checking up on our work anymore.

Anyway, lots more to come, including some shots of the finished (yes, FINISHED) bathroom, and the re-furnished office.


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A two-day reprieve

Well, the Top Brass were SUPPOSED to arrive today - or, at least, that's what they TOLD us. Turns out they don't arrive until Tuesday, so we could have been working on the basement this afternoon instead of sitting around in the living room waiting for a rental car to pull into the driveway. Silly parents. At least I know where the War Department gets it from...

Anyway, it hasn't all been lying about on our bums. We've been quite busy, and so has the plumber.

Oh, before we get into it: the pictures in this post may not be up to the usual scratch; my camera is in the shop getting cleaned, and won't be done until tomorrow. So all of the pictures in this post were taken with the old piece of shit we all knew and hated.

So, we had a little extra job waiting for Leonard when he came on Thursday. The sink in the bathroom upstairs hadn't been draining properly for months, and because we had a rubber P-trap on it, we couldn't really snake it ourselves. Also, I had really no interest in doing it with that damn pedestal in the way. So we figured we might as well get the professional to do it, seeing as he was in the house anyway.

Even so, I really have no idea why we ever thought it would be a straightforward job. Nothing else in this house has been, is, or ever will be, and this was no different. He got the pedestal out of the way okay, but then noticed that the pipe in the wall was really corroded and cautioned us (well, Amy - I was at work, getting the story via a stream of increasingly hilarious emails) that it might be difficult. Then, while he was snaking the drain, his auger got stuck in the pipe and promptly broke off. ("Oh, dear," Leonard said. "That'll cost you.") So he had to break open the wall and replace the entire pipe:



I thought we were done with this drywall nonsense, I really did. Anyway, you can see how much fun making THAT patch is going to be.

Oh, and before I forget, take a wild guess what was blocking that pipe... that's right, about sixteen pounds of hair. Guess whose hair?



I haven't had hair that long since my head-banger phase in 1991...

Anyway, that little job took him most of the morning, but by the time he was done, he'd hooked up the shower and installed the toilet and vanity in the downstairs bathroom:





Man, I'd forgotten how much that camera sucks. I wanted to take a picture of the whole bathroom so you could see what a nice job Leonard (and us!) has done, but that camera couldn't take a decent picture of the inside of a lens cap. Piece of shit.

That said, it's time for another edition of everyone's favorite blog feature, infrequent though it may be,

The Injury Report

So, we've been painting the sills and trim around the windows in the office, and the combination of the plywood and the paint we bought just hasn't worked very well. I finally decided to just use the same paint we used on the walls in the laundry room for the last coat or two. Before I could start with it, though, I had to sand down some of the more egregious brush marks and whatnot. So I was sanding furiously along the top of the big window when I rammed my hand into the lip of metal on the edge of the window. It took a nice big gouge out of the back of my thumb, but it was actually the impact that hurt more than the cut.

Still looks pretty impressive, I think:



Anyway, may or may not get to the trim around the office side of the bathroom door tonight.

My money's on probably not, but don't tell Amy that.

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Another weekend, another piece of drywall

Yes, that's right. We managed ONE piece of drywall this past weekend. But to be fair, it was a REALLY tough piece.

Remember this?



Yes, that really was ... uh ... god, I suck at math ... um, close to EIGHT months ago. Yeah. Anyway, if you don't recall, that's the hole we had to cut in the drywall (plaster, actually - more on that in a bit) so the plumber could run the vent stack for the new bathroom up the wall, through the attic, and out the roof.

Well, we wanted to make sure we had a goodly amount of time in which to tackle drywalling over that particular hole, so we waited until this weekend. And it's a good thing we did.

Saturday started with a trip to, of course, Home Despot, where we picked up a couple of 2x2s and a few steel brackets. We need these to create nailing edges for the drywall to screw into. (As a general aside, anytime you have to make an extra trip to the hardware store to pick up material just to make sure you have something to drive screws into, you're in for a long day.)

Once we got home, it was time to move all the stuff out of the front hall, and hang a sheet of plastic across the entrance to make sure the dust didn't coat the entire living room. We - okay, the War Department - initially thought the dust wouldn't be too bad, given that it was plaster we were dealing with and not the dust factory that is drywall, but within about thirty seconds of starting to work, I knew we'd need a dust barrier.

The first step was to even off the sides of the plaster with the existing studs inside the wall. We hadn't been too fine with this when we first cut the hole as we were more concerned with just opening up the wall for the plumber. Of course, now that there was a pipe running up the right side of the wall, this was a little more difficult that it would have been if we'd just cut it better the first time. But, armed with a drywall saw, a sharp utility knife, and the godsend of a woodworker's rasp, I managed to trim both side edges flush with the studs. Of course, I managed to hurt myself (that's right, the Injury Report makes a triumphant return this post!) and cover myself with a thick layer of plaster dust in the process, but if nothing else, home renovations are sacrifice personified (that's deep, I think I'll get it put on a T-shirt or something).

Anyway, with the plaster trimmed back, it was time to install the nailing edges. Of course, this wasn't quite as easy as just lining up the 2x2 with the edge of the existing studs - oh no. You see, the plaster on the walls averages 3/4 of an inch thick, whereas the drywall is a 1/2-inch. Yes, I said it averages. To get the spacing right, I had to use a piece of scrap drywall (fortunately, we had enough lying around) fastened to a piece of scrap 2x2 to draw a mark on the parts of the wall that weren't blocked by the vent pipe.

To get around the vent pipe, I had to use a piece of half-inch plywood fastened to three brackets that would fit just behind the pipe - but not too far, or I wouldn't be able to drive in the screws. Needless to say, all this took some time.

Sigh.

I really wish I'd taken a picture, but by the time I got the nailing edges installed and the piece of drywall cut to fit (only took three trips up and down the stairs to do it - it wasn't exactly a square piece, even with the plaster trimmed back), I was covered in dust, tired, hot, and somewhat unwilling to take the drywall out of the hole just so I could go and get my camera.

So, no work-in-progress shots I'm afraid, but I do have one of the finished project:



So yeah. That's a weekend's worth of work right there. Oh, and of course, it's time for another edition of

The Injury Report

The plaster on our walls is made of concrete - or something very close to it. At any rate, it's very sharp.

I scraped my right pinkie finger on some protruding plaster inside the wall while I was trimming the sides of the hole. It bled somewhat, but not too badly.

While trying not to touch the injured part of my pinkie to the plaster on the back of the wall, I scraped the cuticle of my right index finger across what proved to be an exceptionally sharp part of the plaster I was attempting to trim. It didn't bleed as much, but hurt much, much more.

Anyway, I hope to get one more post in before our travel-imposed hiatus next weekend. But if not, well... see you in April.


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Some interesting, little-known facts about drywall

Now that we are fully engaged* in the task of covering up all that hard work I did on the framing, we're starting to find out some interesting things that we really didn't know about drywall.

That's not to say that they're things we necessarily wanted to know about drywall, but things that we've just come to know through the course of the monotonous, soul-crushing drudgery that is drywalling.

It's almost enough to make one wish there was still some digging to do instead...

Okay, I exaggerate - somewhat. I'd still rather be drywalling than digging, but only because there are markedly fewer wasps when working inside. And more supervisor kitties that look really funny when they've been sniffing around in the drywall dust. Hee.

So, the first thing we learned about drywall is that it's really damn hard to get into the house. Drywall sheets are usually (always?) sold in pairs, which is fine for loading them into the truck, but not so good for maneuvering them in through the side door, part-way up the stairs into the kitchen, and then down the stairs, over the dryer, and into the basement. It's a veritable obstacle course of tricky corners and annoying edges of sharp things - or sharp edges of annoying things, as the case may be. Getting ten sheets of drywall from the store is a major undertaking, and we learned that the hard way when we bought 16 at one time to do the ceiling.

Another interesting thing we learned about drywall is that the stuff they sell at Home Depot sucks. I think the name brand is Sheetrock, and they call it that because naming it Shitrock would be a dead giveaway. I don't know what exactly they do differently, but the paper tears more easily, the gypsum itself seems crumbly and mushy, and it never seems to snap in a clean line. The stuff from Rona, on the other hand, feels more rigid (making it easier to carry)and has much sturdier paper for the same price. The moral of the story is to buy ProRoc drywall from Rona: it has the official Don and Amy's Basement Reno Seal of Approval^TM.

And finally, before we get to the pictures, we learned one other important thing about drywall: it's a lot damn harder to put up than it looks on TV. You'd think it's just a matter of propping the board up against the wall and chucking in a few screws, but lemme tell ya, Jack, that ain't it. That ain't it at all.

Okay, sure, maybe it IS that easy if you're working in a room with square walls, an even floor, and a number of windows, plugs, and light fixtures that doesn't exceed the gross domestic product figure of several small European countries. In our basement, however, every single piece needs to be trimmed, cut, scored, blasphemed, measured, tossed out, sworn at, scored, cut, holed, fitted, trimmed, re-holed, tested, cursed at, and then finally screwed in place (accompanied, of course, by the requisite swearing).

Here's how it looked on Sunday night, after two days of work:



Yes, two days. It takes FOREVER... Oh, and not included in that picture was the bathroom ceiling, which we managed to finish with the much appreciated help of Clamb (who needs to work on his swearing a little if he's going to fit in on our job site).

I took these two last night, after another four hours of effort over two evenings:





Did I mention it takes FOREVER?

And yes, there ARE two colors of drywall. The stuff from Home Depot even LOOKS greyer and uglier and just plain crappy.

Oh, and just because it's been a while, it's another edition of everyone's favorite feature

The Injury Report

Strictly speaking, this particular injury didn't happen while working in the basement, but was probably a direct result of being really tired after a full day of drywalling.

I have five splotches on the back of my left hand: two rather large, and three smaller ones. They look kind of like liver spots, but they're quite red, rather than the usual brown.

The source of said spots? Well, let's just say that when you're searing a nice piece of halibut in a pan of hot oil and butter, make sure that when you go to turn it over, you're flipping it AWAY from you.

That's some free advice from me to you, right there. And yes, you get what you pay for.






.
* Ha ha. It's a pun. Get it?
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Happy New Year!

I know, I know, I know. It's been almost... holy shit, a MONTH?!?!

Uh, oops.

Heh, I really meant to post before Christmas and mention that we were taking a little hiatus from renovations until after the holidays, but what with the trip to Toronto, the running around shopping, and everything else (more on the everything else in a bit), I just plum forgot.

Sorry.

At any rate, after we ran into something of an issue with the height of the toilet flange and the proposed subfloor in the bathroom, we decided to take a hiatus from renovations until after the holidays, what with the trip to Toronto ... well, you know.

The long and the short of it is that we don't have any progress on the basement to show you, but I do have updates on the condition of the fingers! (Yes, I said fingers...)

First up, here's what my finger looked like about the time we decided to give it all a rest until the New Year:



Kinda gross, but definitely better, wouldn't you say?

And here's what it looks like as of, oh, about an hour ago:



It's coming along nicely, though I have a lump of scar tissue right at the tip that makes it feel like everything I touch has a tomato seed stuck on it.

And here's what Amy's finger looks like as of Wednesday, December 19th.

Happy New Year, everybody. Regular updates should resume shortly.
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Tis the season to be ducting

Kind of a shame to waste a "tis the season to be..." title on such a teeny little post, but there you go. It's early, and the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet.

After spending FAR too much time running around in search of the right components, we finally managed to finish all of the ductwork downstairs, with the exception of the hole in the cold air return which I'm not going to cut until just before we put up the drywall.

And yes, I even have an update on my finger. Don't worry, though - I'll hide the picture this time.


There were conflicting reports (according to the War Department) about how to best connect a bathroom fan. We knew we wanted aluminum ducting, as galvanized would rust from the moisture, but we thought we had to have 5" and couldn't find any 5" aluminum anywhere. We also thought that flexible pipe was a no-no, both because of the reduced diameter, and - according to certain Internet sources - was noisier.

So I looked at the instructions that came with the fan.

And here's the result:



We have a flexible piece of aluminum duct (4") running directly off the fan and connecting to a long, straight line of 4" aluminum duct that gears up to a 5" vent to the outside:





It's pretty much the only way we could make it work. Hopefully the people that wrote the fan instructions weren't just making it up as they went along. Not that I know anything about writing instructions with limited knowledge, oh no.

Anyway, short post today because the War Department wants blueberry pancakes for breakfast and guess who has to make them?

The Injury Report

That's right, the guy with THIS.


Mmmmm. Tasty.
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Let the healing begin

First and foremost, I uploaded the pictures for the last post all over again, so everyone should be able to see the progress and the gore equally well.

Other commitments (and a sense of sheer laziness) kept us from accomplishing as much as we wanted on the basement this weekend (meaning that no, the sub-floor is not finished).

On the plus side, we did get to enjoy a hot tub, a couple of nice bottles of red wine (not all at once), and the company of kitties other than our own. Oh, and a Wii, too. That was cool.

But we did do a little bit of honest work, and I took a new picture of my finger, so this isn't necessarily a post you can just skip over.

You know, if you actually cared about any of the crap I write here.

The War Department got to experience the sheer joy beauty awesomeness crappitude of Steve's hammer drill (oh, and Steve, thanks again for lending it to us ... um, still) as it was a little too awkward for me to manage with my injured finger. I'm happy to report that Amy likes Tapcons - oh, about as much as I do, really.

Which is to say, not at all.

But the floor is sure starting to look good, eh?



Yes, as evidenced by the picture above, we haven't quite got all the Tapcons in place just yet, nor have we started on the bathroom, but we did pick up the aluminum ducting we needed for the bathroom fan and enough foam insulation to finish the floor.

What? We can only make so many trips to Rona in one day, you know...

Moving on, it's time for an update on

The Injury Report

My finger is healing nicely, thank you. But seeing as how everyone showed such an interest in my deformity, I thought the least I could do would be to offer you an update on its progress.

Without further ado...



Not so gangrenous now, eh Mikey?

You're still all a bunch of ghouls.
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Electrical update

The electricians came back yesterday to finish up and get ready for the rough-in inspection which, I'm happy to say, went off without a hitch.

According to the War Department, who was working from home to keep the kitties company while strange people tromped around our house, the only comment the inspector made was that we should be keeping our building permit in a plastic bag. Which is funny because she took the papers OUT of the plastic bag to give to the electrician to give to the inspector.

But we've learned not to question the wisdom of the inspectors, and our electrician managed to restrain from bursting out laughing, so we have officially passed the first electrical inspection! Yay! (We celebrated by putting down some more sub-floor. Oh yeah. Fun never stops.)

Full warning: this post is picture heavy.

I have to admit that it's kind of hard to capture the awesomeness that is our revamped electrical system in the basement. I think the best I can do is to just post some pictures of various parts and components and hope that the whole becomes more than the sum. Or something like that. I was never very good at math.

First up, here's the electrical panel, after they moved it to the right about four or five inches, and cleaned up a lot of the surrounding wire:



Sadly, I don't really have an establishing shot of what it looked like before but trust me: that's a vast improvement.

Here are some of the newly installed bathroom bits, in no particular order.

Our new fan:





Our new wall heater:



The wall switches (lights, fan, and thermostat):



It's all so neat and tidy, and secure, and really well done. (I have every confidence that the War Department could have done 90% of that herself, but it would have taken her a whole lot longer!)

And lest you think that we've been hiring out ALL the work, here's the current status of the subfloor:



As you can see, we've got the foam down into the corner, and just - heh, like there's anything "just" about it - have to lay the plywood down over top. Weekend work!

Well, that's about it... what's that? You want to see a picture of my finger? Well, all right...

But I'm not posting it out here in the open. You have to WANT to see it. Like, really WANT to see it.

If you REALLY WANT to experience the gruesomeness, all up close and personal like, in LARGE, living colour, click this link.

That was taken when I took the band-aids off last night, after five days. Yes, it hurt. A lot.


Ghouls. All a ya.
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Ouch. Holy f-ing ouch.

Rather than bring you all up to date on the progress we've made this weekend, I thought instead that I'd offer an extra, full length edition of everybody's favorite feature...

The Injury Report

The reason I'm doing this, of course is because we didn't MAKE any progress on the basement yesterday, but spent most of the day dealing with an injury. We'd only just gotten started when it happened, so yesterday wasn't terrifically productive. I think we'd managed to clean up all the sawdust and bits of wire the electricians had left, and had just started laying down foam for the sub-floor.

Warning: if you're really squeamish, you may not want to read the next paragraph. Just skip to the funny bits later. (Don't worry - I didn't take any pictures.)


I was cutting down a piece of rigid foam insulation to put on the floor of the closet, in preparation for covering it all up with a piece of plywood. I was using a metal square, holding it down against the foam with my left hand, and running a utility knife along the edge of the square to make a nice clean cut. Well, I guess I wasn't really paying enough attention, because my finger was overlapping the edge of the square by just a bit, and the knife pretty much sheared off a piece of my left index finger - right through the fingernail and everything.

Right away, it was pretty clear that I'd be needing medical attention for this one, and possibly some stitches. Of course, we knew that the emergency rooms at local hospitals would be insane on Saturdays and wouldn't have much time for a relatively minor wound like mine, so we figured the clinic was a safer bet. I couldn't do much, what with holding a piece of gory gauze tight around my finger, so the War Department got the truck all set and we headed up to the medical clinic at Cook and Quadra.

Well, they're closed on Saturdays (of course - why wouldn't they be?) so we headed up to the medical clinic at Broadmead instead. According to the sign on the door, they were closing at 1:00 today (it was about 1:20 at this point) due to "unforeseen circumstances" (read, "staffing problems"), but they had helpfully listed two nearby places one could seek medical attention. Victoria General was one of them, however, and we were determined that the ER would be a last resort. So we headed back across the highway to the clinic at Royal Oak Shopping Centre.

Keep in mind of course, that every time we got in or out of the truck, Amy had to fasten or unfasten my seatbelt and open and close my door for me. Not to mention that every bump in the road sent spikes of pain shooting through my hand. This was not an enjoyable weekend drive, by any means.

But we made it to the clinic at Royal Oak, and they also had a helpful sign on the door, this one indicating that they close at 1:00 on Saturdays. Not just this Saturday, though. All of them.

This was about the point that I invented new and exciting ways to use the word "fuck". I think I may have startled a couple of nearby blue-hairs with several of those new uses, though they may have been more shocked by the fact that Amy was also engaging in my etymological pursuits.

We were desperately aware that the emergency room was becoming our only option, so we stopped at a pay phone and Amy called a doctor friend of ours to ask for suggestions. He was actually willing to treat the injury himself, but didn't have the right supplies. He suggested that we go to the clinic in Esquimalt instead - assuring us that it was open until 4:00 - and confirmed that if we headed to the ER, we'd be in for close to a five hour wait.

So we trundled all the way across town to the Esquimalt clinic and pulled in to the completely empty parking lot with a deep sense of trepidation. To our surprise, the lot was empty because there were no patients waiting, and within three minutes of walking in the door, I was in the doctor's office.

Now, I can assure you that cutting off a sizable chunk of my finger was very, very painful. You can take my word for it. But I can also assure you that cutting off a piece of my finger was a minor annoyance compared to getting treatment for it.

He started by unwinding the blood-soaked gauze that I'd been clenching around my finger for the past hour or so.

That hurt quite a bit, but not as much as it hurt when he started dabbing gently at the wound to clear up some of the blood.

And of course, that didn't hurt nearly as much as when he squirted some local anesthetic over it.

While he was waiting for the anesthetic to kick in (it didn't), he told me about my options. Because a sizable chunk of flesh was missing, it was going to be difficult to give me any stitches, even if he went through the fingernail (a treatment he described as "rather painful").

Instead, he opted to use a pressure bandage of sorts to keep my finger tight up against my nail until the skin could start to regrow. First, however, he had to stop the bleeding. This meant dumping some freezing agent over my finger.

I thought the anesthetic was painful, but when he put the freezing stuff on, I think I saw Jesus for a second.

Then he cauterized the blood vessels with some silver nitrate, and I thought I WAS Jesus.

Then he loosened the tourniquet, and I knew that he was the devil and I was in hell.

Man, that hurt. Holy shit, that hurt like a son of a bitch. I can't believe how much that hurt. And this was after he'd numbed it.

So then he wrapped it up tight in a couple of butterfly band-aids, gave me some free samples of synthetic codeine (woo hoo!), and sent me on my way. I spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the couch holding my finger at an uncomfortable angle, and feeling sorry for myself. Amy cleaned up the basement and at one point brought me a little piece of finger with its bit of fingernail still attached. It was pretty weird, but we elected not to take a picture (you're welcome).

Anyway, it's taken me almost an hour to type this. Ironically, the part of my body I injured requires the one letter on the keyboard I have the most trouble with right now.

FFFFFFFinger.

Ouch.
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It's almost a real room!

With my back feeling better (or close enough), it was time to return to what is fast becoming the theme of October: framing! I'm already thinking that my costume for Hallowe'en will most likely consist of a couple of two-by-fours lashed to my arms and a Chippendale calender hanging from a tack in my forehead. If anyone asks, I'm a studded wall. Har har.

Anyway, tonight was actually somewhat productive, and I have the pictures to prove it!

When last we visited the corner of the basement by the electrical panel, I had just finished laying down the footers for the wall that will eventually form the back of the closet, and separate the workshop from the office. Tonight I started to install the studs for that wall; here's my progress so far, from a couple of angles:





It's kind of tricky to build that wall, largely because there's nothing there to attach the top plate to. That large clump of wires will be running through a bulkhead at the top of the wall, and the angle of the ductwork there (that's the main trunk line for the furnace) means I have to leave some room at the top - not that there are any floor joists in the vicinity anyway. Most of the structural strength for that wall is going to come from the studs that form the side wall and front of the closet - which I haven't quite got to yet. We still need to figure out where the bulkhead for the vent stack (visible on the side of the bathroom wall in the second shot above) is going to go, and where we have to install the cold air return - which might have to go into the bulkhead anyway.

I'm not planning on doing the bracing in that wall any time soon, either - it's the shortest distance between the saw and the work bench, and I'm really not looking forward to having to go the long way around every time I put something down and can't find it again.

Oh, but I did manage to get rid of some old wires that were just hanging there in the way:



That little chore wasn't without its cost however...

The Injury Report

(This is quickly becoming a far TOO regular feature on this blog...)

• When I was removing that green wire, the very end of it caught on a nail in the wood, and when I gave it a good tug, popped free and stabbed me right in the lower lip. It didn't draw blood, and I don't think it left a mark, but lemme tell ya - that hurt. A lot.


• The wood of our joists and support beams is very old and very, very dense. In the course of trying to remove a particularly obstinate staple, a very brave screwdriver gave its life for the cause:
  
  
  
  The worst part? That was the War Department's screwdriver and now I have to buy a new one. Sigh.

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Me and my aching back

So, something of a mixed bag of results this weekend. On one hand, the framing continues, and the outside is coming together nicely, but on the other, well, that's why I have a feature called the Injury Report, isn't it?

First up, the War Department managed to find a project that not only makes for a good picture (well, the best picture my crappy-ass camera can manage), but makes for a better picture than MY project! I hope this doesn't start a trend. After all, if I'm going to be writing all the posts, I want all the glory. (True story: when I sat down to post this, I asked Amy, "How come I have to write all the posts?" Her response, "Because you like that shit." So there you have it.)

While I toiled in the basement putting up studs and using the hammer drill and hurting myself, Amy decided to take advantage of some mild, sunny October weather to put the fence back together. She had saved most of the uprights when we took the fence down, so it was just a matter of cutting a couple of two-by-fours to the right length (which I, having ready access to the chop saw, did for her), and reattaching the boards.



Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Of course, what you can't tell from that angle is that the replaced section is all nice and straight, and the other half of the fence is all crazy tilted and askew, making for a rather odd view when looked at from the side. But that's a job for another day...

As mentioned, I was down in the basement doing some building of my own. The first few studs - the last ones on the Dread Wall of Pink - went up pretty quickly, with only a little fiddling around the electrical panel:



After some consulting and brainstorming with the War Department, I laid down the footers that will form the back wall of the closet:



Amazingly enough, the tapcons went in for all seven of those holes as smooth as you please. The only problem was when I went to stand up afterward...

The Injury Report

• The muscles in my lower back have siezed up right proper like. It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch when I try and lift anything (like a cat or a piece of two-by-four), and has improved only slightly since yesterday afternoon when it first happened. As you can well imagine, this has somewhat limited my usefulness today. Okay, it's completely limited my usefulness today.

That's it for me. I'm going to go lie down again. Gingerly.
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Insert Thanksgiving- & framing-related pun here

I tried to think of a good title, I really did. Somehow, "Happy Framesgiving" and "Frappy Thamesgiving" and "Thanksframing Gifts" and even "Sir Frames-a-lot" just didn't seem to give it the special oomph I know everyone expects from me, so I'll leave it up to you to make your own joke. (Give me a break - I'm tired. And full of turkey. Actually, I'm tired BECAUSE I'm full of turkey. And because I did a lot of framing today. You didn't think I was just trying to combine Thanksgiving and Framing because I felt like a challenge did you?)

That's right, after more than a week of enforced idleness thanks to the Top Brass' visit (not that I couldn't use the break), it was back into the trenches and full speed ahead this morning. While the War Department puttered around outside "winterizing" the barbecue, summer furniture, and assorted lawn care equipment, I belted on my tool belt and set to framing. (Once again, I got the job that makes for better pictures.)

The first thing I did was finish putting up the studs on the other side of the doorway opening that I started a little more than a week ago. You can now kinda see where the door between my office and the laundry room will be:



(Ignore the supervisor kitty - he's not really inspecting anything, he's just hoping I forgot to close the basement window.)

Once that was done, I could start on the hard part - framing around the support post. It's a little hard to explain, so I'll just show a few pictures of the finished product, and try to describe what it is you're looking at here.



That's a picture of the wall just inside the doorway. The big, window-like opening on this side of the wall will be a built-in bookcase - eventually. The studs behind that opening are actually part of the bathroom wall, coming down on the other side of the support beam.

Here's another picture of the same thing, looking back towards the office door:



And the same corner from the other side, with the bathroom door (or the opening where the door will be eventually) visible on the right:



And finally, just because it was a damn tricky bit of framing, and I'm kind of proud of the job I did, here's a close up of the corner detail:



Oh, and if the more observant among you are wondering why the top plate on the office side of the new wall didn't go all the way to the floor joists, it's because we're putting a bulkhead on that side in which to run all the wires:



(God damn it, my camera sucks.)

Of course, the REALLY observant among you are wondering how I managed to do all this work and still cook a turkey. Well, I made the big turkey dinner yesterday, which is why there was no update for your Monday morning. As for my impending turkey-induced lack of consciousness? Two words, my friends: LEFT OVERS.

Oh, and before I go sleep off this turkey coma, it's time for another edition of everyone's favorite feature...

The Injury Report

• I have two small scrapes on the back of my right thumb. Normally, this wouldn't be noteworthy, but... oh, nevermind. I was going to say that they really hurt when I put on the rubber gloves to clean out the cat box, but ... meh. It's not that bad. I just didn't want to be left out.


• Amy has an ingrown toenail, and she had all these freaky red blotches on her foot. She cleaned it out with hydrogen peroxide and put some Polysporin on it, though, and it doesn't look nearly as cool any more.

That's it for me. I'm off to bed, where I intend to groan myself to sleep on my huge, turkey-filled belly.

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More gravel than you can shake a shovel at

Who knew gravel could be so heavy? PICTURE-heavy, that is... heh heh heh. Small joke there.

Very small.

Anyway, gravel day has come and gone, and I would have to classify it as a complete success. We didn't get all of the dirt back, but we did get the gravel in and the landscape fabric down in all three remaining holes. I also managed to take lots of pictures, so fair warning: there are more picture of holes (and gravel) in this post than you probably really wanted to see all at once.

So, I started off the morning with a trip to, of course, the gravel yard, where I picked up a half-yard of 3/4" drain rock. For those of you who don't know, this is what a half-yard of gravel looks like:



It doesn't really look THAT impressive, I know, but that's still enough weight to make the truck's mudflaps scrape when going around corners or over any bumps.

Anyway, I started with the hole in the driveway, figuring that the sooner we filled that in, the less chance there was of someone falling into it. (I have no idea how that hasn't already happened. Probably because we haven't exactly encouraged visitors over the past few months...)

Here's what it looked like with the greater part of a half-yard of gravel in it:



And of course, with a little landscape fabric on top to keep the crappy-ass clay that passes for soil around here from mixing with that nice clean gravel:



It took another trip to the gravel yard to get enough to fill in the hole on the west side too, but we got that all ready for dirt before we broke for lunch:




Just for reference's sake, the TOP of the perimeter drain is 18" below the top of the gravel.

Finally, the piece de resistance (you'll have to imagine the proper accents over the vowels in that - I'm too lazy to look up the HTML); the big trench in the backyard. Before we get to that, however, let's look at some random factoids:

• In all, it took six trips to the gravel yard (for those of you that have trouble with math, that's three yards of gravel).


• Each half-yard of gravel cost $22.04 (including tax).


• We just willfully buried a hundred and thirty-two dollars and twenty-four cents in our yard. Kinda like pirates burying their treasure. But not really.(If you want it, good luck digging it up.)


• We saved $45 in delivery charges. Woo hoo.

Anyway, here's a bunch of pictures of the long hole. I really like the way that rubberized sealant set up, by the way. It's very cool stuff.






Oh, and as a very special treat, it's time for a brief edition of everyone's favorite recurring feature...

The Injury Report:

• I have a pair of nasty scrapes on the underside of my left arm where one of the handles of the wheelbarrow gouged me when I was trying to flinch away from a wasp (actually, it might have been a butterfly, I don't remember exactly), and did this funky little half-step dance move while letting go of one handle and pushing the other away or something. Hard to describe. Well, hard to visualize, and I'm still not sure how the handle of the wheelbarrow managed to scrape me in the spot that it did, but there you are...

Anyway, we're taking today off to do some shopping, chores, and other stuff. We've earned it.


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