February 12, 2017

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 12, 2016, nothing romantic on the farm.
Five years ago today: February 12, 2012, it’s recycled.
Nine years ago today: February 12, 2008, a generic day.
Random years ago today: February 12, 2014, my first Monsanto ban.

MORNING
           Did you ever notice how hard it is to get a weather report on the radio when you actually want one? Finally, I found one but I had to listen to SRN news to get it. You have to admire the degree to which the produces of that broadcast are able to do what they are told. This is the era of demonize North Korea, who bring it upon themselves by crashing WWII era rockets into the nearby ocean. And the middle class is fleeing Venezuela. What, all 200 of them? I grabbed a second coffee and listened to this pseudo-news and the following program. Looks like I have clear weather till Wednesday, so let’s get underway.

           Me? Listen to an outdoors program on the radio? Why not, it’s a lazy Sunday, and I have some chocolate caramel brownies left over. But not for long. And this show was like listening to a couple of inbred Bubbas, we are talking maybe a fourth grade level. Unbelievable thick-headed mouth-breathers going on about fishing lures and how old their dogs were. I had to listen to the whole show. To make sure it wasn’t some kind of sick, cruel joke. Yet, in the end, I still could not be sure.

           Here’s what I found, a nest of string bubble levels. Kind of pretty, actually. This technology, in my opinion, works better than the lasers. Both tools require you to constantly go back to check whether they’ve been thrown off kilter, but with the plastic level, setup time is minimal and the batteries never go dead. Instead, I used the laser just to find the obvious high spot on the northwest side of the main wing. If I’d known what I was doing, I would have done this first last August or September. That’s if I’d known, thanks to nobody for helping me out on this one.
           An hour later, there is no high spot. The string lines reveal except for that same minor slope, the perimeter of the building is level. But a quick glance underneath shows the opposite. The joists are plainly bowed upward in the middle, same as the bedroom when we took up the old floor. Retreat, regroup. I see several possibilities, the more obvious are that the center of the house has somehow risen, but that defies gravity. Or the siding was put on after the house had visible problems. But these are rush conclusions and I need more evidence.

           In the meanwhile, we know the east wing main bedroom is almost level. To gain experience with the jack, I say continue with that section since it adjoins the bathroom. As soon as that part is stabilized, I want to launch right into the new bathroom. The financing is in place to make it the most nicely finished spot in the house. Because every woman I’ve ever known likes such a thing. Go figure. The siding around back may also be more recent than the frame, so another reason for starting there is if the siding does warp when the foundation is level, I can salvage the pieces for my nice new sun room.
           At noon, I paused. The heat is making yard work uncomfy, so I’m moving it indoors. Here’s a good representative shot of the working conditions, showing two custom blocks in place (middle and right) and a third piece being fitted on the left. This system of pre-cut blocks works fairly well. I can match almost any gap to within 1/4 inch, which is overkill on this project. It is over 90°F, time to work on the interior. Might as well, that floor is not going anywhere in the next 20 years now. When the sun room goes in none of this hard work will be visible.

Picture of the day.
Card Sound, 1959.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

NOON
           As always, I can’t find the jack handle for my small hydraulic. Isn’t that how it always works, they’ve never devised a convenient holder for the jack handle so it does get lost in the shed. I’ll find it, but only when I don’t need it. Back on the interior floor, I got a pleasant shock—the joists I placed lined up matched almost perfectly on the inside, shown here. I hadn’t planned that, so it is more the result of accurate measurements two months ago than pure coincidence. Here’s your Vivitar, showing the results. Vivitar, the camera that will not focus at arm’s length.

           I’m replacing the plywood on the floor, creating the final (hopefully) work needed except for the interior finish I eventually decide on. Now that the wall is level, maybe I’ll move that useless north window to the east, which I’ve wanted to do for six months. The window frames, fyi, continued to stay square even when the building had settled. Not so for the doors and the kitchen drawers, but their turn is coming.

           Working along, I recalled back when I was a kid watching a carpenter. That’s back when I though carpentry was something everybody learned. He told us that old story about the guy who was stealing gas and got a drop of the fuel from the siphon hose into his lungs. Has anyone else heard that tale from the trailer court? He goes on to say the gas slowly began to eat away at his lungs. Scared the daylights out of us kids.
           Oh, he said, they put him in the hospital and tried to cut away the bad parts of his lungs, but it kept coming back over and over. And when he was 35 he died. Now, is this an urban legend? Was he just trying to scare us? If it’s true, why aren’t all the gas thieves in LA dead by now? Anyway, I had that memory, I wonder if it’s legit? Anybody?

           I got into the pit and reattached the joist hangers, messy work when the joists are already in place. Next I ran the chicken wire for the insulation, what a nifty mini-luxury that is. Folks, it gets cold here in the winter, and unlike south Florida, the floor gets ice cold. Then you step onto the insulated area of the bedroom and it’s so nice. The whole floor is not insulated yet as I had to finish those last six joists after the sill plate was leveled. In fact, you can seen in the photo I’m pointing to a joist with no hanger. Before I began, that sill plate was nearly two inches lower than the joist. By the hot part of the afternoon, I mercifully ran out of chicken wire, so I get to take a break and head to the lumberyard. After my siesta, of course.

One-Liner of the Day:
“Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarfs aren’t happy.”
NIGHT
           Carrying on after dark, I decided to see how far I’d get with the subfloor. Here’s some scenes that should remind you of last autumn. It’s the process of insulating the floor. Put in a bed of chicken wire, staple in the R-13, and you have a pad that is cool in the summer, warm in the winter. JZ says it isn’t worth the hassle but for what, a hundred bucks or so, I had to know. And I like it. This sequence shows the final strip of wire going in, then the insulated joists, and finally the plywood subfloor.

           At first I thought to carry on a few more hours, but just two hours into this little section and it’s pie and coffee time. There are two stretches of day to work without sweating or shivering, so I’m anxious to get this floor sealed up so I can work inside when it gets rough out there. I usually don’t saw or hammer before 9:00 AM so that really leaves the late afternoons as prime outdoor work hours. It’s a treat to walk on that floor now, it feels obviously level and it is not as spongy as before. And, it is dead silent unless you really clomp along.
           We’ll see some apparent quiet times for a while. I have to run in two more outlets, one of the exterior. Until then, there is no power in the sheds. As for moving the windows, I’ll have to work extra slow there, I can’t afford to make any mistakes with those, and parts of the frames are showing their age. Blog rules get evoked for the next topic, the rule that I am bound to report anything unusual if it is top event of the day. Here’s something that could not have happened.

           Milk has not been on my diet for years. I keep a box of powdered in the cupboard for baking and such. If I do drink it, I add sugar and vanilla, with a little of that malt powder. I can’t stand the taste of powdered milk any more than the next guy, or the next kid. Today I got an immense craving for cold milk and I made up a quart in the blender. I forgot to add the flavorings and it was unbelievable. I drank a glass of the raw mixture—and I sort of liked it. The trick is to not expect it to taste like milk
I could not believe myself, so I poured a second glass. Same thing.

ADDENDUM
           Whoa, what’s this about the newly approved drug for muscular dystrophy? It’s been around since the 70s as an import. The treatment is not a cure. Neither is the price: $89,000/pill. Makes you wish for the old days when Shkreli was only after $750 each. Why no outcry? Why no public demonization of the company owner? That’s easy. This time it wasn’t an insurance company outsider. Of course, I’m sure the big media has picked up the story, but this blog remains a lot of people’s primary source of what filters through to a non-addict like me. What you read here is not liberal half-truths and it isn’t quoted from some Internet “rabbit hole of self-reinforcing disinformation”.

           How about this stat? The Chinese last year, 2016, purchases $26 billion in American real estate, a good chunk of it in California. Yeah, for a quick getaway. Anyway, if think having that kind of money in America takes connections, try it in still-Communist China. There were no figures on the number of houses involved, but let’s round it off to 10,000. That is, let’s arbitrarily say, if more than 10,000 Chinese housebuyers burst upon the scene in your state, somebody would notice and say something.

           That would mean each house sold added an average of $260,000 to the benchmark prices of the surrounding communities, and that’s all outside money you have no access to. (In a sense, now you know how the Palestinians might have felt in 1946. Even if it is only 10,000 houses, that is a small city. ) And you are wondering why local house prices are still going up when the recession is entering its 11th year? You ask how the media can barrage us with daily news of economic recovery, but you still can’t get a mortgage in the smelly west end? Why you still spend an hour every day commuting to the nearest job and you haven’t had a raise since Obamacare was hatched?
           The news source neglected to say how many Americans, if any, bought residences in China. But you can bet if they did, the government would immediately look into it. There’s a reason people who get visas to the USA never want to go back where they come from. Ever.


Last Laugh
(Meanwhile, in Paris . . .)

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