Out of Plumb

So its not that I haven’t been working on the floor, I have and its not that I haven’t had time to write on the blog, I’ve got time, it’s just that I wanted to see how long I could stretch one sentence that says noting of any real value. The first level sanding is all done. Whoo Hoo! For the most part the floor is as level and free of Goo issues as it can be. Two spots where there is still a hump large enough to maybe need some more grinding but otherwise were are ready for bigger and better things. Now I switch to 100 grit and sand the floor the length of the boards with the grain. On the first sanding in order to flatten the floor I sanded at 35 to 45 degrees to the wood grain. On real bad spots it might be as high as 70 degrees to the grain. That leaves scratches that need to come put or they show when it is stained. After that all I have to do is all the edges with a 3M pad in a drill, harder than it sounds and go over the whole floor again with a ½ sheet sander with 150 grit, easier than it sounds. The whole mess would have been done and stained Monday except that in a town this size nothing is open on Memorial Day weekend and I was out of stain. In order to get stain we created a fictional need to go to Kalispell, where Home Depot is located. Two hour drive with a puking puppy, visit with family and friends and a two hour drive back with a much drugged but not puking puppy.
Four hours of driving for one can of stain, not particularly efficient. Add up the Diesel, time where and tear on the truck, the puppy and food and that’s a can of $100 stain. I will be decanting it into little crystal bottles and selling them off if you are interested.

I am not making this up; these are actual test questions and answers from my Senior Government final exam.

‘How many states are in the United States’; 52
‘How many states are in the United States’; 50, 51 if you count Cuba
(In all 4 got this wrong out of 18 who took the test, two 52’s, a 51 and the 50/51)
‘Serving for 8 years this man was our first president’: Jim Monroe

Now granted most of them could define bicameral and could correctly identify the brain behind Glasnost but still. Next year I plan on taking the time to teach them how many states we have.

The floor progresses slowly. I have all but one wall striped of the brown goo and about half of the room at the intermediate sanding stage. I still fight the residue every step of the way. Even with my hard learned process the paper plugs almost instantly. Holding a wire brush to the sanding drum after every pass helps but is slow and brutal on the paper. On the wire brush too for that matter. I am already planning ahead to the next trouble spot. As you can see in the picture the floor does not extend all the way to the wall. The sheetrock we put on is thinner than all of the other crap we took off. This has left us with quite a gap at the bottom. I can cut every board off and put in a filler strip, somewhat easy to do, but that will show, and it will not be running the right direction. Or I can cut off boards at random lengths and piece in strips under the wall. Depending on how random I get it would be invisible but it would require attaching the jig to the floor for every board that is to be cut. I know what I should do. I should remember that it is just a piece of crap fir floor that I have already put to much time and effort into and just do what is fastest, strip it.

The floor continues, slowly. With finals I have been unable to dedicated as I wanted to be. Its not that I am spending more time at school just that the drama quotient is always very high this time of year. You can tell a kid all term that he is not going to graduate w/o a superhuman effort on his part and he will blow it off. Tell him the same thing 4 days before they walk the stage and watch the sparks fly. All of a sudden he has been a model student all year and your out to get him, you lost all of his school work, just don’t understand the work he has done... on and on. Sure just pat him on the back and say its all right, the Marine corps will understand. What a crock. Is there any extra credit? Yah, I have your extra credit right here you lazy, cheating, mama’s boy hunk of... well as you can see my attitude is not conducive to home repair progress. Drop a tool or have some one pester me with questions while I am working and I blow. Best if I don’t take on much technical stuff right now. I was able to figure out the floor goo sequence. I have to strip and scrape once, then strip again and hit it with a wire brush. Scrub as the stripper dries out and it balls up, easy to remove with a broom. Next scrape the floor with a big Red Devil pant scraper. I then scrub with pure lacquer thinner and a stiff brush. Wipe up the mess with paper towels and repeat. Still plugs the sander but I can get a little farther first. I also don’t have to grind as much of the brown out so there is less to do. My cracks remain goo filled but with the lacquer thinner it seems to dry hard. Hardened crack goo is as good a crack filler as anything else, um I hope. I have included a random sequence of photo’s in no particular order: cat climbing out of the furnace intake the dog chased it into, dog watching the sander and a wide shot of the floor with the sander and the little wheeled cart I made to roll around and counter sink the nails I expose as I sand.

The sanding, scraping, sanding scrubbing cursing sanding continues. Progress is slow but life is a bitch. The sander and I have come to an understanding. I keep a hammer with in reach and it works normally. I have included a picture of my neighbors yard. Its the height of fashion around here. Cutsie little figures marching off into the sunset. If I were to smash them would it be vandalism or euthanasia?

I maintain around the house that I can fix anything. Its a testicle thing, some of you might not understand. Well I was able to resurrect the 'weed steed' one more time. The whole smoking, paint burning oil thing had me quite convinced that it was over but apparently not. What it had done this time was shear off the timing pin on the flywheel. Pulled the top of the motor off, aligned and taped in a new pin and presto! I fixed it again! Now my significant other takes some issue with that statement. She maintains that you if in order to start the motor you have to take the head off and tap the exhaust valve back into place each time that “fixed” is an inappropriate term. She thinks “colossal waste of time”, “money pit” and “why the hell don’t we just get a new one” are all far more descriptive of the situation. It is at this point that I must reference back to the testicle thing. Half of you are nodding your head in agreement and the other half are ignorant and simply do not comprehend the importance of such a momentous success. I was able to mow my yards and the yard of the house we are selling in record time without incident. Well except that the tire was flat, 2 spark plugs fouled out, had bearings in a mower deck pulley fail (smoked that sum bitch let me tell you!) the mower deck drive belt failed shortly after replacing the pulley (I think they might have been related...) and second gear seems to be on hiatus again. All in all 4 hours to mow 2 small lawns with a twin blade riding lawn mower is good time, at least for this mower. I tried pointing out to my wife that the cloud of smoke is an excellent mosquito repellent but she just doesn't understand these things.

Price of new spark plugs: What is this 'new' you speak of?
Price of timing pin: $1.89
Price of replacement Mower deck pulley: No idea, found it in a bucket
Price of new belt: Found in road few weeks back
The look on my wife’s face when I got it running one more time: Priceless

“Honey, where is the dog?”
“Chewing on her toy”
“Oh ok, isn't she a good girl!"
"Mmmm that's nice"
Minutes pass.
“Can you turn it up?”
“Where’s the remote?”
“I thought you had it?”
"Its not here"
Damn dog.


Started screwing down the floor. I am using these 2 1/4 inch square drive trim screws. They have worked great but I would prefer a more aggressive thread. I think these are intended for metal studs. I tried to find wood threads but the only ones I could locate were stainless and I was not going to spend that kind of money. I didn’t look very hard. The poor craftsmanship I mentioned in the last post is hard to over come. Each layer of floor is supposed to be 90 degrees to the one below it. This keeps the cracks from lining up and causing a soft spot. The genius who put this floor down didn’t do that. I can get most of the movement out but not all and that is just the way it is going to be. I only have like a gazillion screws left and it will be done. My crack goo continues to be problematic. I might have to look into renting a different machine since I can not buy the paper I need for this one locally. Its ok the beast and I have been going round and round and I am a little pissed at it. It seems to feel that the paper I do have isn’t good enough for it and would like to spit it out in small chunks with a loud and repetitive phaaaaak noise. I on the other had would prefer it didn’t do that. So far swearing at it has not fixed the problem.

Well you can see I have started sanding the floor. That is a genuine 1960’s Clark drum floor sander I affectionately call “The Beast”. Weighing in at 60+ pounds this bad boy will strip the paint from an aircraft carrier and dig a hole through flag stone, if, and this is important now, if you have the right sand paper. Load this bad boy with a 34 grit and it will sand the red out of the devil’s ass. Well the dark lord can relax because I don’t have the right sand paper. The coarsest I have is 80/100 grit. It loads up and plugs as old gooy finish softens from the friction of sanding. See those tan stripes on the sanding drum, that's the goo in the cracks sticking to the paper making it useless. This is right back where I started! That damn goo is why I went to the effort of striping the floor in the first place! What a tremendous waste of my time! Tomorrow I am going to see if I can buy the right F-ing paper and then crack goo YOUR ASS IS MINE! Lets rock little man.

I ordered a bunch of special trim screws to attach the floor better. I am trying to see if copious amounts of power tool driven hardware can overcome the limits of poor craftsmanship. It’s a quantity over quality sort of thing. They will arrive soon and I will keep you posted. I found that lacquer thinner will remove the goo from the surface but it is still down in the cracks. I don’t know about the rest of you but I hate goo in my cracks.

Well we have started on the flooring in the dining room. I must admit my enthusiasm for the whole project is at an all time low. Just tired of working I guess. Anyway this floor shouldn’t be as big a project as the last one. In this room for whatever reason the floor is only finished in a two foot wide strip around the edge. This leaves me with allot less varnish to try and remove. I decided to try and strip it this time rather than sanding it off. Takes the finish off alright, and the citrus stripper refreshes the whole house but... HOW THE HELL DO YOU REMOVE THE STRIPPER?!? It says to scrub the residue with mineral spirits but mineral spirits will not touch it. What a mess, I don’t know what is worse, plugging sanding belts or trying to get the goo up. I will post pictures. When I get it all done I'll drag out that beast of a sander and go to town. The floor in the dining room is far more un-level than the living room. I don’t know if this is because the furnace is right below or if the floor was just that bad to start with. Lots of high spots, with the boards puckering at the joints like the floor was flooded at some point. I suppose that could have happened. I know the sander will take lots of the high spots off, but I can’t be sure that this winter the floor will not shrink down and all of my high spots will now be low. If so oh well. This is kind of a marginal floor to start with. Carpet covers all. LONG LIVE CARPET!

Things have been progressing on the house they just really are not blog worthy. I have been painting, with the roller rather than spraying it. Takes longer but makes less mess and uses far less paint. I guess it might be better to have thicker paint but even with the spray gun it still needed two coats. I might roll three coats on the walls and just 2 on the ceiling. Nearly done and ready to do the floor. Now there will be some blog worthy photos. Hazy sawdust filled image of me clinging grimly to the handle of a bucking machine straight out of the lost "Lost in Space" program. If you really need to see the painting progress then open your word processor to a blank page. Now adjust your monitor so it is slightly beige, grab a handful of dog hair and sprinkle it above the monitor so the static sticks it to the screen. Yep that's my walls. The only thing your missing is an energetic puppy who uses newly painted walls for bank shots and has recently learned you don't have to stick your nose IN the paint can to find out what it is. Sneezing paint is fun!

As expected nothing on the house front this weekend except some frenzied cleaning Sunday night. Grandma’s coming by to visit after all. It’s under construction she will understand. Several amusing things at the auction but nothing worth writing about. The puppy was great, quiet the whole time in her kennel in the back of the truck. Last night she slept through without getting up to pee on or at least near the paper. Can you say milestone?

URGENT PRICK UPDATE!

Vengeance is ours sayith the Horsemen. Well the PHS student body rode down upon Thompson Falls High School this weekend leaving hellfire, damnation and a pungent smell in their wake. As befitting our mascot, the students retaliated with what they know, horse shit. (if you work with teenagers that joke is even funnier) Yes horse shit, a staple of gardeners, the ubiquitous road apple, favorite snack of any dog I’ve ever known and now a weapon of mass destruction. Some of our strapping young lads loaded up several hundred pounds of horse shit and deposited it at the front door of the T-Falls High School. An odorous monument, a statement of defiance that shouts out “hey I’m a big pile of horse shit!” Apparently the ventilation system intakes right near their so ode-de-equine-ass was pumped into every classroom on that side of the building. I’ve seen their graduating class, for some this might be the only ass they are ever going to get, better saver it boys.

On the house front I got a full coat of PVA primer on all the walls and ceiling. I don’t know if I need 2 coats of PVA or not, I will have to ask someone. I do know that it will take 2 coats of paint to look good. I doubt I will get anything done for the rest of this week. Grandma & Grandpa will be stopping by on Monday and the house is in need of a good cleaning before guests arrive. This weekend I will be working the 2nd half of that big auction. Not looking forward to that. The ladies who hired us treat the helpers like illegals with INS on the speed-dial. I hope I can handle it the day of, I decided 3 years ago that I would never again be someone’s doormat. I will not take it from a parent and I will not take it from them.

On the genital front, Plains lost its wiener yesterday. A group of strapping young lads pushed pulled and strained to move balls of stone to eradicate our stone balls. By 3:00PM yesterday it was back to the big P. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Trouble is I have numerous penis related title ideas that will never see the light of day. Sigh. Rumbles of retaliation are rampant. T-Falls traditionally kicks the ass of Plains High School in every thing, so letting them win the graduation prank war is just too much. Some of the student’s ideas I have heard include: using ‘Roundup’ ground sterilizer to poison PHS into their football field and stealing their ship’s bell and filling it with concrete, both things we have done in the past. Sad really, nothing so original as a giant penis. The staff’s idea was turn the T-Falls ‘T’ into a penis, just much smaller. Subtlety is an acquired taste.

Well sound the trumpets the texturing is done! Whoooo! I dumped another 40 pounds of mud on the walls tonight in record time. My wife is back home helping her dad for a few days, which means boys will be boys and I can work the way I want to. None of this stopping to eat crap, no ‘together time’ just work you bastard work! As with all feats of super human strength a good sound track helps immensely. I was able to crank the stereo and keep the bass high enough to rattle plates in the kitchen. While we wuz flying I notice a distinct phenomenon that might be of value to other texturites, song choice effects texture size. Animal, Beverly Hills, Every Time I Look For You, I'm Just a Kid, Stay Togeather For The Kids, Pump It and Perfect Situation all left quite large thick textures but covered wall space like a greased burrito. Animal, Pump It and Perfect Situation all have base lines that through a big subwoofer will vibrate the walls and flatten the globs out some. In the midrange was Stacy’s Mom, not to thick, not to thin but the texture was a little pretentious. Photograph, Collide, Mad World, You and Me, Far Away and New American Classic seemed to leave long wispy texture, sort of like what you would expect to see covering Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel if like someone decided to texture over it. Did that make sense? Anyway a good mix works well, wispy then hard and so on gives you a nice wall. Go ahead, download the song list and give it a try. In the photo it is thicker in the lower right and wispy above and to the left. Tomorrow I hope to give at least some of it a coat of PVA primer.











More of a wide shot:















Scandal and outrage rocked our little town today. Seems the heathens down the way in Thompson Falls snuck over and rearranged the big rock “P” that looms over the valley. They do this every year at graduation so the event was nothing new, what’s exciting is this year’s theme, a giant penis approximately 100 feet tall. I mean the art isn’t the best, it’s a little short and thick but they are all white kids so I suppose they used the example they had to hand. Quite a feat to do it in the dark, and unlike past years they even lugged a bucket of white paint up the hill to give all the boulders a fresh shiny new white coat. This means the enormous prick loomed over town all day today, glistening. I don’t expect it to last, the churches were at school bulling up a volunteer squad to blow the phallus off the mountain. Must have had some limp participation because Plains’s Dick remains unmolested tonight, erect and stoic in the fiery light of the setting sun. God Bless America. The letters to the editor should be exquisite, I will keep you posted.