Surprise Sneaux!

Guys, it snowed all day Friday, December 8th. The weather people had said it wouldn't accumulate and once again Mother Nature proved them really, really wrong. It finally ended around three or four. Fortunately, the powers that be told all us state workers to stay home so we didn't have a repeat of Snowstorm Jack 2008. Unfortunately, the power went out around 7 am and it hasn't been restored yet (when I started writing this around 9am 12/09/17). My uncle has a generator and that's where I'm charging the phone and laptop. My house has natural gas for the stove and a heater in the living room, so I can cook and stay warm.

However, listening to the desktop computer's battery beep for hours and losing the internet (which was more a problem for the phone) makes me want to get a whole house generator. That's probably a 2019 or 2020 goal.

The tree behind my uncle's tractor: I have never seen steam from tree bark like that but all the trees were doing it Saturday morning. Power restored 4:10pm on December 9th. That wasn't a long wait at all.

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The BookWorm

Not Time to Build an Ark Yet

This was not supposed to be my next free weekend.

Why do I bother making plans some times? I was supposed to go to Lafayette this weekend, but that was planned before Mother Nature unleashed severe weather to cause flash flooding and regular flooding on us. The paying job sent us home early Thursday and told us not to come in Friday, I canceled my plans for the weekend and treated myself to a normal bedtime. Meaning I set up Brain.fm on my cell phone and tried to go to sleep.

Only for the flash flood warnings from the National Weather Service to keep interrupting the program. Don't get me wrong, overall I like the warnings and think they are an excellent idea, but not when I'm trying to sleep. Not only did the emergency signal wake me up most of the time, it also just stopped the Brain.fm music. When my regular Friday alarms went off, I still had half of the eight-hour session to go.

Most of the major rain happened overnight and the system didn't stall over us like it did Texas and north Louisiana. The bad news is all the rain that north Louisiana got has to come down through us. Places that usually don't flood flooded this time and the rivers have just gotten started.

Unfortunately, I found leaks in my new roof. I called my roofers, but they're all flooded in too. They'll probably reach me Monday or Tuesday.

The rain eased up and I hit the yard to see how bad the water is around me. These two pictures show how high the creek and Natalbany River are behind the house. It's hard to see through the undergrowth, but the water is right there.

I had to rake out the ditch before I hiked down to see how bad the bridge was. It counted as my workout today. The black mounds are the leaves and pine straw that I pulled out of the water's way.

After that was done, I hiked down to the high water blocking the bridge and chatted with my neighbors down there and the DOTD worker and State Trooper that also swung by to check on us. The neighbors had used their vehicles to block their driveways because stupid motorists keep driving until it's obvious they can't go any further and then they peel out trying to turn around. That's bad enough, but they always fly down Pumpkin Center Road like it's the Interstate. Even with weather like this, even with knowing everything is flooding.

The water wraps around the back of the yellow house until it ends up across the street from my house.

My parents kept their weekend plans so now I have to take care of Mom's chickens. My dryer died last weekend, so that's going to make doing laundry interesting if it keeps raining. I need to pick up a few supplies and I hope I can reach a store tomorrow. And then I get to concentrate on Zy's Universe and the computer upgrades I need to do all day.

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The BookWorm

Back Bedroom Rehab Project Progress 3

I took a long break before I got back to the back bedroom rehab this weekend. In between posts, my new actual smartphone arrived so I took pictures with it. These were taken after cleaning everything off the ceiling and vacuuming the debris off the floor but before taking off the wall sheet rock. So you can see why I put the paneling up in the first place.

Here's some shots of the termite damage I found on the ceiling.

Started ripping sheet rock off at the door and found a few surprises. Surprise number one, the boards lifting the sheet rock off the flat pine boards. Surprise number two, was there a door into the kitchen? This piece of wood doesn't match the pine boards surrounding it and at the floor the 2"x2" that the sheet rock rested on is missing just at the spot. I questioned the parental units and neither one of them remembered a door or heard about a door. Surprise number three, an old termite nest in the corner.

Moved onto the back wall and that's where the termites had a subdivision. According to my parents, my great-grandmother had an issue with termites when she lived in my house that was treated and never had another issue. She died when I was eleven, so this damage is decades old. Luckily, the termites didn't want to eat the pine boards so yeah, I don't have to rebuild stuff holding up the roof. But they did eat off the paper-backing of the sheet rock, so the only thing holding this stuff together was the paint. It crumbles as soon as I pull it down.

I yanked out the spray foam repair I had made because a squirrel was pulling out all the insulation and found they had a back door into the room. I blocked it with cardboard for now until I can buy some wood to patch it properly.

Once I cleaned the back wall of sheet rock and termite dirt, I realized that I had planned to put my sewing machine against this one when I move back in. There's no electricity there. The only outlets in the room are the one under the window and one someone put in the light fixture. If you can tell from the photo, it looks like the fixture should hold three bulbs but only has two. The third prong ends in an outlet; never seen that before. I'd rather not have multiple extension cords, so I need to add more outlets. The sheet rock had been put flat on the back wall without any spacers and had been given a funky angle where the ceiling met the wall. New idea: put up a new wall in front of the outer back wall to get rid of that angle and to give me room for the electric. Plus I can add insulation against the back wall that nothing will want to build a nest in.

The last wall proved interesting. The window trim had been installed properly on top of the sheet rock, which surprised the hell out of me. I managed to get off without damaging it. The spacers behind the sheet rock turned out to be 2"x4"s. And there was this lizard creature that wasn't having any luck running away and hiding from my destruction of its hiding places. But I got it off before full dark. At this point the lack of interior insulation wasn't surprising me; the back bedroom and kitchen were never constructed with the same care as the rest of the house. See the visible gold between the pine boards?

That is the back of the aluminum siding that covers my house. The exterior of a house is supposed to be wrapped in a vapor barrier or some kind of moisture protection. I was thinking tar paper, given how long the siding has been up. No such luck.

So insulation of some type all around the room is now added to the rehab project. Since I have a lot of weekends already planned with things that are not the rehab project, I'm guesstimating my finish time for the end of April. Depending on how much supplies cost.

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The BookWorm

Back Bedroom Rehab Project Progress 2

I didn't keep great notes or photos for the work I did in January. I do remember doing an Internet search to learn that once paneling warps there is no way to flatten it back out. All of it was covered in mildew, so yanking out was the way to go. I started with the sheet rock on the ceiling and got what was left up there down.

And then the camera started being a butt again, so I didn't take any pictures of tearing off the paneling. But I found old termite damage on the ceiling, so the scope of the project expanded. The rest of the sheet rock need to come down so I can see if there is any structural damage to the wood holding up the roof.

Plenty of nasty stuff hit the floor, so I borrowed my parents' shop vac for the duration. Oh boy, I'm going to be so spoiled going back to the regular vacuum cleaner. I'm so tempted to clean the whole house with the shop vac.

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The BookWorm

Back Bedroom Rehab Project Progress 1

I finally went down the aisles in Lowe's. Sheet rock is my cheapest option compared to everything else. So the plan currently is sheet rock on the walls, Styrofoam ceiling tiles, press-and-stick tiles on the floor, and paint what needs painting.

Everything that usually lives in the back bedroom has been stacked into the living room and the hall. Luckily my house was originally built as a double-shotgun, so the four original rooms have multiple doors to the other rooms. I left myself a path through the living room to my bedroom door. Actually, the living room photos are missing one element. I first hung up the clothes I'm not wearing on the shower curtain pipe, but that lasted until I needed to shower. I borrowed a closet-on-wheels from Mom and squeezed it into the living room. The only things I left in the back bedroom was the extra mattress and box springs, which blocked the closet doorway.

The furniture I didn't want to drag too far ended up in the hallway blocking my bedroom door there, but the path is clear to the bathroom and back bedroom.

Once everything was out of the way, I took the Closetmaid shelving system down after taking plenty of pictures and measurements so I can put it back up in the same configuration. It works well in the room. The plastic-coated wire shelves went to the back porch so I can scrub the mildew off when the weather warms up enough for the job.

Remember when I said the mattress and box springs were blocking the closet doorway? The doorway is taller and Mustard climbed up them and got stuck in the closet last night. The only other way out of that closet is over the wall between it and the bathroom's closet that doesn't reach the ceiling. While there's nothing in the back bedroom closet for Mustard to hurt—I'm tearing it out to enlarge the bathroom so I never got used to using it as storage—I do store lots in the bathroom closet.

Mustard decided that my hands, the towel, and the broom were all evil enemies that must die while he had the high ground. I got him down without major blood loss and remembered I have an extra door, currently stored in one of the sheds. Went to bed planning to pull it out and use it to plug the closet doorway.

The next morning I figured out how to get everybody to leave me alone while I'm working on this project: get up early in the morning, find the door at the rear of the shed, and pull it out without taking out anything else all by myself. Trust me, I didn't want the help and the aura I put out compelled everyone to leave me alone.

The door needed scrubbing once I got it out in the sunlight. It was warm enough to not turn my hands into bleached-icicles and the mildew died. While the door dried, I trimmed the spray foam snot off the siding wall. I still need to clean off spots where it dribbled with some acetone, but that can wait for later.

I thought I'd have to hang the door but it didn't fit well enough to hang by the hinges. Propping it in the doorway blocked the top above the mattresses. WIN!

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The BookWorm

Front Porch Makeover

Front Porch Makeover, a set on Flickr.

First attempt at doing this, so I hope it works.