One year ago today: October 11, 2016, on arranging grits.
Five years ago today: October 11, 2012, the last 10 women I dated.
Nine years ago today: October 11, 2008, between 625 and 650.
Random years ago today: October 11, 2014, I’ll keep the batbike.
Ah, what a blessing, a nice cool morning. And you want a progress report. It’s bad news but nothing we can’t handle. The windows and interior doors mainly lined up again, but that problem fancy front door, it has never worked right. This time it is jammed by the deadbolt, lending to my suspicion that at least the front of the house was jimmied and re-sided after the problem had gotten out of hand. Now when I straighten it, pieces won’t go back into place.
If the weather stays workable, I plan to go around the entire perimeter of the house and build up a berm just under the foundation. It doesn’t make sense how these boards got wet, but I do know many older Florida cottages have very limited overhang on the eaves. It was a hurricane precaution. Bird lovers, now that I’m in the front room more often, I catch the birdfeeder before it goes dry, so don’t worry, your northern Cardinals are constantly on patrol. I can hear them, boy can I hear them when the feeder is empty.
I’m strapped to find you more good news today. Oh, I got something, it’s weak, but this blog does not distinguish merit when it comes to ideas that work. My heavy duty work jeans, the ones that got so bad that two consecutive washings still left them so unsightly I’d have to change to go buy materials. Having enough of that, I bought a bottle of “Shout”, the spray, poured it in a pail and soaked the jeans overnight, then in with the regular laundry. Ta-dah! They came back clean and soft to the touch.
Here’s the stapler, in spanking new condition. It is held together with e-clips, making it tricky to repair at all. As for the warped and rotten door stoop underparts, I’ll give it the robot club treatment. Sit down and think the repair through until something less than obvious becomes a solution. Right how, it would be no fun at all to rip out the bad parts and replace them in place. No way, I’ll take ten coffee breaks before I’ll concede this as a brute force situation.
The Queen of Egypt, 1939.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Noonish, and take a closer look at the damage. This is the part of the house least protected from wet weather, which could explain the rot. Notice how the door jamb has separated from the stoop. There should be another picture around here showing how the door warped in place when the floor was leveled. The latch is well away from the jamb and the deadbolt is jammed solid. It may be what is holding the door in place right now. Now we get to the thinking part.
Without committing, the plan I have is to not repair this rotten wood. Instead, a foot back inside the building, install a complete new set of concrete blocks and a new sill plate. Then, once the floor is level along that course, remove or repair the rotted wood at my leisure. You can see one of the joist ends, each of those would be bolstered with a sister joist. This worked well in the other part of the same flooring.
I haven’t priced out this approach, but the amount of labor doing it any other way doesn’t make sense. My goal is first to have a level floor, and next to have a solid place to affix the joist ledger board for the future porch. Tell you what, I will go get some concrete blocks today and fit them in place. I do not know how deep the blocks go for the existing foundation, but my guess is three deep. I’ll use the 30-ton to squeeze the first or bottom block down as far as possible, using the weight of the house for ballast.
Let me think what to do. I want that flooring up today but can’t do the job myself. Say, you want to earn $30 for three hours gronk labor? I’ll pay you that. And I’d like the contact information for those yuppie puppies who Guatemalan movie and returned home to “just outside New York”. Maybe they’d like to shoot my upcoming documentary, “The Electric Chain Saw as a Medium Duty Demolition Tool”. (Yes, I’m aware of the punctuation error, it is a blog staple, and it works better than the one up above.)
“I answered ‘no’ because
it is shorter than ‘yes’.”
~lazy jerk at the DMV.
That’s if for today. Here is the section of floor torn up to reveal the three offending joists. Actually, it is not the joists, but that dry-rotted sill plate. You can actually see how much it is bowed on the joist to the left. It is just in front of that sill plate that I plan to run a new set of concrete block piers and augment this section of floor back up to permanent level in my lifetime. Not shown, but examination reveals somebody else tried to replace that sill because the ends of all three joists are notched. If he was that lazy, chances are he used untreated lumber, which would explain the rot in this one particular section.
Alaine called from North Port. They took a U-haul out a week ago which makes them partly moved in. Hey, they go a lotta lotta stuff. She’s got no local transportation yet. That’s precisely the reason I was frenetic until I got the red scooter up here. You cannot realistically live in Florida without access to a vehicle. The conglomerates have crowded out all but a few corner stores and markets. It’s an upscale neighborhood but I’m still not keen on her being there alone, so I told her please call if anything goes wrong. I can be there in one hour, as opposed to over two hours from Miami if the traffic is light. That makes me the closest family.
Nor did the jam session with the Hippie happen. He talks of distances of 60 miles like a jaunt, and out on the prairies, that would be. But if you think my lumber is moldy and disintegrating, you should go look at the Florida infrastructure. It’s the land of the paving contractor kickback and the $236 new vehicle registration fee. Funny how that works, so let’s take a second look.
Remember my background with the phone company? When they privatized and unbundled the work, it was a shock to see what the hourly rates calculated out to. $136 per half hour (in 1995 money). This is similar to the situation in Florida, where the DMV was permitted to operate as a virtual monopoly for 80 years. When they were finally required to switch to a user-pay system, well doggone, the way they were used to doing business, it really did cost $236 to file a piece of paper. Them sumbitches ain’t lyin’.
Here’s some trivia. It is illegal in the US of A to sell wine that has the word “zombie” in the label. That’s from Reader’s Digest, so don’t quote me on it. There was an item that slayed me, this yahoo gets caught driving alone in the HOV lane. He puts up a defense that I found hilariously novel. Since he had some articles of incorporation on the seat beside him, and the law of the land says that a corporation is a person, ergo he was not alone. Ha, but the courts lack this brand of humor and he was fined something like $248.
ADDENDUM
Here’s something you can take to the bank. I’ve insulated my rooms as they came into use. I guess the cost to be $130 per room in materials, not counting the attic. My average electric bill is maybe $85 per month for my whole cabin. But I only keep one room permanently air-conditioned. This is why I also opt for wall-mounted air conditioners. Easy to turn off when nobody is present.
My criticism of central A/C has always been the same—it is difficult to control the amount cost per area because there is no reliable data. Unlike the lights, few people turn off the A/C when they leave a room. Having lived near the equator in hotels that had no A/C, I learned that a good simple fan can provide the same comfort at around 1/7th the cost.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
