Huge Success

The Supervisor was forlorn at being kept away from all the delicious goo spread on the living room floor. Shortly after this photo, he was released from kitty prison on his own recognizance. Hopefully dry DAP presents no feline health concerns.

Since I'm out of DAP and hate going to Home Despot on the weekends, I decided to start on the hallway. I hoped to be goo-ready by the end of the weekend, but I'm only about a third of the way done.


So far I am giddy with happiness over the performance of Springs the Younger. First of all, it uses a quarter of a sheet of sand paper instead of one sixth as Springs the Elder did. This makes dividing the sheets of sandpaper approximately one billion times easier, as I no longer need to math while wielding scissors, which is inadvisable at the best of times. Plus, six is not a pretty number. Four is just a couple of twos, and as any Neal Stephenson will tell you, twos are to the computer age as sea water is to Hemo the Magnificent. The larger surface area also makes working on the edges of the hallway much quicker.

Although the addition of the shop vac hose and cord detracts from the maneuverability of the sander (I feel a little like I'm being attacked by a kraken at any given time), it's a small price to pay for less dust in my everything.

The very best thing about Springs the Younger is this magical black plate. While the caveman-ready pictographs accompanying the sander clearly show that I should use it, they didn't really explain why. This made me tempted to skip this step, which would have been a huge mistake. I thought at first that the plate was just a protective cover... you know, so I didn't accidentally rough anything up when I threw the sander in my purse.



It is not. It is a triumph. When its put over the sander with sand paper on it, it leaves behind magical portals. These portals transport the sanding dust directly into the waiting belly of Stanley the Shop Vac.

 

 

I'd guess that the magical portals get about 90% of the dust that would otherwise have gone onto the floor or into the air. I'm so enchanted with this system that I looked for belt sanders that have a similar vacuum-adapter set up. If you are embarking on a project like this and in the market for a sander, I can't recommend this enough. I am confident that what this technology on a belt sander would have saved me in cleaning products (I'm looking at you, Swiffer) would have paid for the slightly higher sander price if I hadn't gotten mine as a loaner. I'm guessing the maneuverability issue would be even less noticeable on a belt sander, as they're already unruly. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its Goo Time!

 

Today was again F-ing Hot, also humid. Yesterday was the same, but I managed to finish the first 30 hours of sanding in the living room. Today I decided to take advantage of the heat to wash down some of the dust and let it dry.

 

 

This may have been a mistake, since the water may make the wood swell and need more sanding, but it sounded way more fun than starting to sand the hallway. I wiped the whole thing down with a wet sponge (in the style of Bob) and left the Supervisor in charge of watching it dry while I watched Judge Judy with the other cat.

 

Once the Supervisor pronounced it dry enough to roll around on, it was time to start the filling process. I decided to start off filling the larger holes with DAP and save Bondo for the giant gaps. The gaps between pieces here are larger than they have been in any other area of the house, so its going to take a lot.

 

The Supervisor forgot that goo-time means he gets locked downstairs, as he has a tendency to taste anything new. I once discovered him making horrible faces as he licked wet paint from the side of a paint can. It looked like it tasted awful, but he wouldn't stop licking. I had to chase him down to give him a bath, and it doesn't seem to have phased him at all, he still licks everything. It was especially funny, because my mother once took me to work with her when she was teaching pre-school and I watched her go through the exact same thing with a child that had Down's syndrome and kept eating all the paints.  I'm thrilled that my cat can match wits with a disabled pre-schooler.

 

A can and a half of DAP got me through a bit less than half of the floor, not counting the cracks. There is one piece that I think is likely related to the psychocrazy pitted part of the stairs that took a bunch of reconstruction. I think I'm going to be going through a ton of Bondo and DAP on this one. I have suspicions that the carpenter who worked on this section of the floor may have been wearing cleats, based on all the giant holes. Fortunately its warm enough to leave the windows open to air out the smell of chemical death.

Back to the grind

The Supervisor has been taking a break while he waited for me to finish school and get back to work. He has made a fine nest of dropclothes and he thanks you for admiring it.

My semester crashed and burned this week, culminating in an exam for which I was completely unprepared thanks to the instructors who hadn't bothered correctly updating material. It was a disappointing introduction to my term break. This means that although I ended on a down note, I'm done with exams until some time in August and can spend some time on other things.

Since my favourite playmates are off killing zombies, fighting gravity, surveying for siliclastic ore and engaging in global thermonuclear warfare, I suddenly find myself with tons of time to work on the living room floor.

I've decided to do two passes of each 40 and 80 grit, and probably roughly a million of 120. This may be overkill, but it makes it fairly easy to figure out how much time I'll be spending sanding. I've broken the hallway and living room up into 5 sections, I can sand roughly one section an hour, so it'll be about 30-32 hours worth of work until I'm ready to start filling gaps (after 2 passes of 120), and then probably another 30 after that, since once the gaps are filled I can't use the belt sander. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get it done by the end of June. I miss having a living room, the Supervisor misses having a couch, and I'd love to try out the new AC, which is currently still under wraps.

And now, says the Supervisor, "GET BACK TO WORK!! WHY IS THIS CAULK HERE!! I AM HUNGRY!! PUT FOOD IN MY MOUTH!! MY MOUTH IS THE PART MAKING NOISE!! WHERE FOOD GOES!! I LIKE TRACY JORDAN!!"

Heat Avoidance

 

I normally use Internet Exploder to update my blog because I've got all sorts of stuff in FireFox that keeps nastiness from running on my computer, which also keeps Blogger's site from working correctly. Since the Department of Homeland Security (and anyone else with a brain) had been recommending avoiding IE until it was patched, I'm a bit behind in posting, so you get a bunch at once again... Blame Microsoft.

 

At the end of April, we had two 80+ degree days. That is hot. Super Fucking hot, in fact. I wanted to work on the floors, but hot and sandy sounded too Saharan to me, so I decided to hide downstairs and do some sewing. (Yes, I forgot that this meant turning on the iron. No, this did not do much to alleviate the heat.)

 

I don't have the space right now to cut out anything complex, so I wound up making some scarves out of scraps I had sitting around, which I will possibly take on my trip. These are those scarves:

 



I don't know if I'll actually wear any of them, they all seem pretty busy for my normal clothing tastes, but if anything can break me of the all-black, its Hula Girls, bats, Cheshire cats and yummy sushi.

I also made some rag curlers, though I vastly over-estimated the amount of fabric to use for them and wound up having to do a second round in which I cut them in quarters. I don't care, it kept me out of the Sahara.

Also, drinks served in buckets are phenomenal for beating the heat.

In Which Surgery is Performed and a Patient is Lost

Springs, my palm sander has been acting up lately. His on/off switch stopped working correctly sometime around midway through the downstairs hallway. While I was working on the dining room and stairs, I managed to get him to work, usually after a few minutes and judicious application of the Fonzie technique (aka hitting it and trying to look cool while making random vowel noises).

 

As of today, Springs has given up the ghost. I tried the "on" position of the switch, and nothing. Then I tried "off" and it sputtered and turned on. I managed to do the edges of about half the room before I needed to switch sand paper. I decided that rather than risk the switch not working, I'd just plug and unplug. This, as it turns out, was not especially easy... it takes two hands to plug something into an extension cord, and one hand to hold the sander to keep it from going bonkers all over. Needless to say, the Supervisor was not interested in assisting.

 

The switch is covered by thin rubber, which has torn over the years and there seemed to be a lot of dust inside, which I thought might be keeping the switch from working properly. I had no other choice, but to scrub in, don my mask, and attempt a surgical intervention.

 

The patient was prepped using some canned air. No anesthesia was available, but I did laugh hysterically imagining Springs screaming "no disassemble!" as I approached with the screwdriver. They say laughter is the best anesthesia, right?

 

 

Once the top of his skull was removed, and the inner workings were revealed they were thoroughly vacuumed and air-sprayed out. I mostly took pictures so that I could remember what went where when I was reassembling.

 

I got the switch out, and cleaned it off with alcohol. I cleaned out the rubber covering too. The switch still had trouble moving, even when it was clean, which didn't seem like a good sign.

 

I took a look at the wiring to the switch, only to find that it had charred its protective foam covering. I suspect it has a short and needs soldering. I don't have the materials to fix this, so I put Springs back together again.

 

The operation was not a success. This shouldn't be a surprise, I have never been able to remove the Charlie Horse without causing an ear-splitting buzz. When Springs was back together, he still wouldn't turn on and off. After a consulting call to Science Doctor Dad, I made a trip to Home Despot and picked out a replacement.

 

The new palm sander covers more area, and joy-of-joys, hooks directly up to Stanley for dust removal. This is amazing. I am thrilled with this strange new beast, not just because it reminds me of a Pushmi-Pullyu, but because it will do wonders for keeping dust down when I'm sanding the filler. I had to test it out, even though it was 9PM and I knew it might wake the neighbour's baby. I'm sure they'll understand.

 

Springs is dead! Long live (the new) Springs!



Dust Prevention

I really want to try to keep down the dust that gets into the kitchen as I dust the hallway. To that end, I decided to hang plastic from the ceiling in at least a token effort to keep it out. I don't know how effective it will be, but it seems like it'll beat having nothing blocking it off at least. I've also covered as much as I can with drop cloths, but it's hard to live without a kitchen so they keep getting moved.

 

 

The net result of this is that my house looks like the scene in ET after the alien is discovered. Or maybe a scene from Dexter. Take your pick, either way its creepy. The plastic makes a lot of noise in the wind and sounds like waves crashing. I've had dreams about tsunamis ever since I started.

 

 

The Supervisor, who is normally fearless, hates the plastic. He's completely terrified of it. Every time it crinkles and cracks he tears out of the room. This is especially entertaining as his food is located on the other side of it. He knows how to push it aside and get to his food, but he is occasionally still freaked out by it. It's mean, but I'm kinda happy he's getting some exercise.

 

On the other hand, the Other Cat, who normally refuses to leave my bedroom, has been lured out to the kitchen by the noise. He loves plastic, which he prefers to think of as a light snack. I have to hide any plastics that make their way into the bedroom, otherwise I tend to find them in the glitterbox after they've experienced an amazing journey through the interior of one Felis Catus.

 

 

Upstairs Hallway

Because I really didn't learn my lesson by doing the stairs and the dining room at the same time, I decided to pull up the carpet in the kitchen hallway at the same time I did the living room. This is the last carpet left on this floor, and unless I decide to redo the computer room floor, it may be the last floor I paint.

 

I'm skeptical about doing just this hallway and not the whole kitchen, because I think once the floor is painted the ugly-ass linoleum will look even worse.

 

IF I only do the hallway, then the only furniture I need to move is the kitchen table. If I decide to go whole hog, its going to be a much bigger project, which will involve cutting and tearing up the particle board underneath the linoleum and moving the fridge and stove to do it.

 

Zulu is really only concerned with where his scratching post and food will be relocated. The scratching post is sometimes used as food, he tends to scratch off small pieces of cardboard and eat them, because he's ALWAYS hungry, and everyone can tell he is wasting away for lack of kibble.

 

And heres what it looks like without carpet and table from either end. It's not too exciting yet, but hopefully it will be soon!