(no subject)

[whispercricket]

There doesn't seem to be anywhere around Boston (at least not near Woburn) where you can buy a Sawzall blade after 8pm on a Sunday night. I've not missed Meijers more since I was in college.


Yesterday, I cleared out a quarter of the library while arawen installed the sub-ceiling over the are in the attic where we may someday want to raise the stairway ceiling. Then we partitioned off that section of the library with 2 mil plastic and painter's tape and arawen went after the moldy section of ceiling (and the area around it needed to make up a square patch) with drill, hammer, and sawzall.

It seems that whoever made our addition in the late 50's / early 60's did it right, because they put up rock lath / gypsum lath with plaster over it. This makes a nice, hard (*very*), soundproof wall / ceiling, nicer than plain drywall and easier to install than older types of plaster. It's also a pain to cut down because it dulls drills and saws very quickly. Thus, needing more sawzall blades (and not getting them, so we're not quite done). I figured that this was not the project for me to learn how to use a sawzall properly, so I'll help more with the actual repair and cleaning.

The mold seems to have grown down the wall / along the rafters a little, but the black stuff seems to have been limited to the plaster / board itself, which is good, because I think most of the possibly toxic stuff is black. Bleach will be used in any case, and I can finally get around to bleaching the downstairs bathroom's studs as well.

I'm considering finding out how much it would cost to get someone in to patch for us, since I'd really like to put up rock lath / finish plaster (supposedly blue board can stand in for rock lath, since its paper cover is similar in texture to that of rock lath, but I am not sure) but plastering on the ceiling supposedly is an acquired art. However, it's very similar to masonry, which we've definitely done enough of recently, so maybe we can do it okay. At least we didn't run into older plaster, and at least it's in a corner that will have bookcases to the ceiling, so if we screw up, it shouldn't be that obvious (hopefully).

We somehow managed to disable one of the outlets in the library as well during demolition, but it doesn't look like the wires were cut, and our live wire tester says that the outlet is getting power. It's very strange.


Tonight we must get the bathroom fan swapped over, because the electrician is coming on Tuesday night. I guess we'll see if we can get him to take a quick look at why the outlet died also. After that, we just need to finish working on the library ceiling and I need to wrangle the contractors for the range hood / bathroom ceiling and insulation. Oh, and clean out the washer and dryer so that we have laundry again.


On a completely different subject, we've finished with Dai-Guard, which was much better than I expected (comic, but in a very earnest way with lots of character development and some social / military commentary), and started Nadesico, which so far is comic in a much sillier way. I'm not sure how much I like it in general, but I like it better than Irresponsible Captain Tylor so far (reminds me of it but the main characters aren't as annoying), so I'm giving it a chance. (I'm just not too happy about "I'm the captain of a spaceship, so I'm going to be completely insane about this boy at inappropriate times!" - at least she's been a competent ditz so far, and the boy is okay. I like the blue pigtailed computer girl, but all she's really done so far is echo my thoughts by calling people "baka" from the sidelines.)

We also watched the first disc of Witch Hunter Robin on Saturday, which I like much better subbed than dubbed (normal for me). All I have of that one is the first disc right now (got it because I wanted the soundtrack, which was only available with the LE box), so now I want to pick up the Bandai boxset of that as well as .hack//sign.

Comments

[keshwyn]

I wondered if that was sheetrock or not...

I think our Home Depot - the one just across 93 from Yorq, that owns our souls - is open until 10, but that may be a seasonal thing. At least over the summer, they're open until 10 every night. :}

[whispercricket]

Ahh - the Home Depot in Reading is open until 10pm every night except for Sunday night, when it's open until 8. I guess we should have gone south instead of north.