Watcha doing?

[RabbiKnife]

Much worse places to be...

Very nice

Stop by Ghiradelli's and get a hot chocolate...

[IMINXTC]

Code: [Select]

Much worse places to be...

Very nice

Stop by Ghiradelli's and get a hot chocolate...

Will do!

[tango]

Wishing I could find the person who extended my house and bang their head against something very solid.

I needed to remove a base board from a stairwell. Simple job, right? Well, about that. This thing was nailed into place, using construction grade screws, many of which were tucked under the stairs themselves, so that I had to dismantle much of the top part of the staircase to get at them. Then I found there were more nails that were somehow banged into place from behind the base board. I don't see any way it's physically possible to bang a nail that size in through such a confined space, but somehow it was done.

So far what I've had to do is remove four stairs, chisel away some of the support for the stairs, and use a variety of tools to access, extract and pull nails out in an assortment of confined spaces. The last few nails came face to face with a metal cutting blade in my oscillating tool.

Now, after many hours of fighting with it and the liberal application of sweat and expletives (thankfully minimal blood so far) the piece of baseboard is removed. Now I hope it will fit back in place when the drywall people are done. For good measure I need to sand and refinish all the steps, because they've gotten pretty well scuffed up in the last 100 years. It looks like they are made of very old red oak so I'd rather salvage them and refinish them, then dump them and replace them with modern wood which is usually inferior.

I think from here all I need is a little bit of tidying up work and I'll be ready to talk to a drywaller.

[teddyv]

This is from last week:
Gold mine near Smithers officially opens - The Smithers Interior News https://share.google/SClPdm8iugzgYvJg1

That is yours truly wearing the hard hat in the first photo.

[RabbiKnife]

I hope they give you free samples...

[Cloudwalker]

Wishing I could find the person who extended my house and bang their head against something very solid.

I needed to remove a base board from a stairwell. Simple job, right? Well, about that. This thing was nailed into place, using construction grade screws, many of which were tucked under the stairs themselves, so that I had to dismantle much of the top part of the staircase to get at them. Then I found there were more nails that were somehow banged into place from behind the base board. I don't see any way it's physically possible to bang a nail that size in through such a confined space, but somehow it was done.

So far what I've had to do is remove four stairs, chisel away some of the support for the stairs, and use a variety of tools to access, extract and pull nails out in an assortment of confined spaces. The last few nails came face to face with a metal cutting blade in my oscillating tool.

Now, after many hours of fighting with it and the liberal application of sweat and expletives (thankfully minimal blood so far) the piece of baseboard is removed. Now I hope it will fit back in place when the drywall people are done. For good measure I need to sand and refinish all the steps, because they've gotten pretty well scuffed up in the last 100 years. It looks like they are made of very old red oak so I'd rather salvage them and refinish them, then dump them and replace them with modern wood which is usually inferior.

I think from here all I need is a little bit of tidying up work and I'll be ready to talk to a drywaller.

I suspect more than just a "liberal application of expletives."  I certainly would be.

[tango]

Limited work yesterday - we had dinner guests and my wife wanted to clean the house a bit, which meant dusty footprints would be frowned upon.

I did some sanding work on one of the steps I removed. It's a bit worn, which isn't surprising after nearly 100 years. I ran an orbital sander over it which made almost no difference, then I tried a belt sander that got a lot of the crud off but it's very slow going. I might feed it to my planer to strip it back to bare wood and then restain it.

The key thing about having the baseboard removed beside the steps is that I can easily remove the very top step and level it. It was slightly off level, not enough to be a major problem but enough to annoy my eyes, so I want to lift it and fix whatever is underneath it. It also means I can put a bit of extra support in there, and a couple of heavier screws that will hold it in place but tuck under the baseboard so they won't be jarring on the eye.

Once that's done I'll look at getting the new section of floor lacquered.

[tango]

Trying to figure the best way to level my top step is proving tedious. I was all set to put a shim underneath it but it seemed like a shim so thin would fail at some point, and then I'd be right back where I started. So I decided to take the vertical section of the stair off and reposition it. But it's in a rather sorry state (it is nearly 100 years old) so I figured I'd refinish it. Cue lots of frustration trying to remove stain and shellac that has been there for a century. One sanding belt gummed up in no time flat, and much annoyance with a hand scraper. But now it's mostly cleaned up, so I can sand it (with a fresh belt), then stain and lacquer it, then figure just where I need to position it so it can properly support the very top step.

Then I can put the rest of the stairs back together again and move on to the next piece of framing work and moving stuff out of the way.

[Cloudwalker]

Had an appointment with a pain specialist because of the pain I'm having in my right leg.  He asked if I had had X-rays or an MRI done, which my primary care had done when I went to her about it.  He ordered an epidural for me.

[Athanasius]

I've started to get more involved with some groups of Christians, because you know, Hebrews 10.25.

You know what? One can only handle so many "is it sin?" questions before concluding that Christians can be the most pathetic and annoying people on the planet. What do I do, guys? "is it a sin?" "Is listening to instrumental music not written by a Christian a sin?", "is eating a sandwich not prepared by your wife a sin?", "is turning on the TV and seeing a Nirvana music video a sin?" "Is asking is it a sin, a sin?" "is it a lack of faith to walk to the fridge?"

I think I'm going to tell Paul he clearly wasn't writing for the 21st century.

[tango]

Making some progress on the house project. I took a few steps away and they are now sanded and stained. I've been holding off on lacquering them because they need three coats, 6-8 hours apart, and fitting that in the same day without stinking the place with the VOCs when we have company coming has proven tricky.

I've got a drywaller scheduled to put drywall on the walls, a window fitter scheduled to replace two old windows that don't quite fit properly, and then I can have my air conditioning man run another duct to feed one bedroom and install a wall unit in the other.

The way things are going I'm going to have two finished rooms and three finished closets within a couple of months. I've also figured the way forward to get some space downstairs ready. I had hoped to have some of the downstairs space done before Christmas but that's going to be a tall order from here (not least because getting a drywaller in takes time), but hopefully things will keep moving forward now.

The next steps after the drywalling is done is to scrape/sand and finish floors, and hang doors. I may need to make doors to match the olde worlde doors we have in the rest of the house, but may also be able to reuse some of the existing doors.

[Fenris]

You know what? One can only handle so many "is it sin?" questions before concluding that Christians can be the most pathetic and annoying people on the planet. What do I do, guys? "is it a sin?"

[RabbiKnife]

I've started to get more involved with some groups of Christians, because you know, Hebrews 10.25.

You know what? One can only handle so many "is it sin?" questions before concluding that Christians can be the most pathetic and annoying people on the planet. What do I do, guys? "is it a sin?" "Is listening to instrumental music not written by a Christian a sin?", "is eating a sandwich not prepared by your wife a sin?", "is turning on the TV and seeing a Nirvana music video a sin?" "Is asking is it a sin, a sin?" "is it a lack of faith to walk to the fridge?"

I think I'm going to tell Paul he clearly wasn't writing for the 21st century.

If I get there first, I'll tell him you asked.

I think I know his answer.  "Dude, did you bother to even read that letter I wrote to my buds in Rome?  You know, over toward the last page or so.  When I was dealing with their obscene obsession with what kind of deli meat to buy?"  I told them if they do ANYTHING without faith, then its missing the mark for them.

However, I'm still not convinced that putting bread down your blouse and pretending to be a toaster can be done in faith.

[Fenris]

They sound more legalistic than the Jews, who after all are following a book of legal rules.

[RabbiKnife]

They sound more legalistic than the Jews, who after all are following a book of legal rules.

The church in Rome had more than a little bit of an issue with creating God in their own image.
Don't think they ever fully got over it.