Weekend Update
Nov. 23rd, 2020 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helwenA variety of things happened, too many for me to remember them all, although I'm going to try. More Fitzw than me yesterday though, as 3 hours of sleep isn't enough for doing some sorts of things. *sigh* In general I'm getting more than that finally, but seems like several decent nights always gets followed up by a bad one.
Trying again to have Lavendar plants spend the winter outdoors. Previous attempt they all died and I _think_ it's because of the winds we sometimes get in the winter and spring, and the reduced snow cover. So I've built low brick walls around them and we'll see how that goes.
Fitzw put on the last course of shingle on the blue shed's side roof - just needs the flashing put on but it's raining today. He built a cover for the drain hole for the sump pump, too. We've had a plastic trash can lid over it so we don't fall into the hole but now we can actually walk through the space instead of around it - yay!
He also cut to length a piece of wood scrap I found and attached it to the inner side of the basement door. I found the coat hooks and he put some of those up, and now we have a better place for all the short dusting-related things.
We went to the local hardware store to see if they still had mailbox posts with postholder but they were out and suggested Cummington Supply. Unfortunately they were out as well, but Fitzw placed an order with them for other building supplies.
***
Z and V had winterized their trailer by putting foam board around the base to keep winter winds from coming underneath it and ripping away part of the heat envelope when they're here, but some of the tape didn't work well enough. The corner we had them move the trailer to is more sheltered than the field but we can get some weird patterns when it's really gusting. We had to retrieve a couple of pieces last month that had gotten blown way down the road, and yesterday I finally put them back in place, plus re-did another piece that was thinking of leaving. Those are all now wedged into place with weighty objects on both sides of the boards.
Insulating the base of buildings isn't a bad idea, as long as you have decent drainage anyway - don't want to trap moisture after all. Fitz's dad had gotten hold of a lot of super dense wool material -- it was much thicker than coat wool so I'm thinking maybe it was some kind of underlayment? Anyway, before the foundation was improved, in the fall he would tack it onto the house and wrap the bottom few feet with it - made a big difference. Myself, when I was renting our old family home in Noho, bagged loads of leaves and put them against the foundation of the house in the midsection. It was a strange house that had been build piecemeal, and had two basements connected by a crawl space. That crawl space was nothing but trouble, with insufficient protection for the pipes...
Our Holyoke house wouldn't have tolerated those treatments, but I realized we had a draft issue between the foundation and the wall sills for the house walls. For that we came up with a fencing wire/wire coathanger system, where we took 2-foot lengths of batting insulation and put half over the meeting place and half against the underside of the floor and held them in place with the wires, between the joists. But I digress!
****
Other Stuff
H:
- Finished crushing the eggshells and put them in a container
- Finished crushing the kale and put them in a container
- Broke up soil in low raised beds and leveled out ground for two longer rows for next year
- Progress on masks
- Finished repairing beaded purse #nonewsewmo
- Repaired broken strand of fringe on beaded barrette #nonewsewmo
- Sewed some more beads on Evil Queen capelet. Well, it started out being for an Evil Queen costume and it's too pretty to leave unfinished, whether it becomes a capelet for that or not. #nonewsewmo
- Dug in two pavers in the greenhouse. There will be more.
- Boxed up felt and other materials and put on porch
- Framed piece of old wallpaper from Fitzw's childhood bedroom
- Broke down one of the folding tables in the living room
- Worked on cleaning the upstairs bathroom (had a few spare minutes to throw that way)
- Swept the kitchen and laundry/pantry
- Washed some dishes and also some more Gatorade bottles, freed up a couple of cardboard trays for carrying the bottles
- Scanned some of T's art for her
- Played LotRo because why not?
F:
- Disassembled more old computers to go to the dump. Yes, the memory bits are still here, awaiting destruction
- Plastic-bagged the bags of cement to use next year
- Dug out a bunch of sunchokes
- Moved a desk to the trailer for winter storage
- Gathered and took recyclables to the transfer point
- Gathered and took trash to transfer point
Trying again to have Lavendar plants spend the winter outdoors. Previous attempt they all died and I _think_ it's because of the winds we sometimes get in the winter and spring, and the reduced snow cover. So I've built low brick walls around them and we'll see how that goes.
Fitzw put on the last course of shingle on the blue shed's side roof - just needs the flashing put on but it's raining today. He built a cover for the drain hole for the sump pump, too. We've had a plastic trash can lid over it so we don't fall into the hole but now we can actually walk through the space instead of around it - yay!
He also cut to length a piece of wood scrap I found and attached it to the inner side of the basement door. I found the coat hooks and he put some of those up, and now we have a better place for all the short dusting-related things.
We went to the local hardware store to see if they still had mailbox posts with postholder but they were out and suggested Cummington Supply. Unfortunately they were out as well, but Fitzw placed an order with them for other building supplies.
***
Z and V had winterized their trailer by putting foam board around the base to keep winter winds from coming underneath it and ripping away part of the heat envelope when they're here, but some of the tape didn't work well enough. The corner we had them move the trailer to is more sheltered than the field but we can get some weird patterns when it's really gusting. We had to retrieve a couple of pieces last month that had gotten blown way down the road, and yesterday I finally put them back in place, plus re-did another piece that was thinking of leaving. Those are all now wedged into place with weighty objects on both sides of the boards.
Insulating the base of buildings isn't a bad idea, as long as you have decent drainage anyway - don't want to trap moisture after all. Fitz's dad had gotten hold of a lot of super dense wool material -- it was much thicker than coat wool so I'm thinking maybe it was some kind of underlayment? Anyway, before the foundation was improved, in the fall he would tack it onto the house and wrap the bottom few feet with it - made a big difference. Myself, when I was renting our old family home in Noho, bagged loads of leaves and put them against the foundation of the house in the midsection. It was a strange house that had been build piecemeal, and had two basements connected by a crawl space. That crawl space was nothing but trouble, with insufficient protection for the pipes...
Our Holyoke house wouldn't have tolerated those treatments, but I realized we had a draft issue between the foundation and the wall sills for the house walls. For that we came up with a fencing wire/wire coathanger system, where we took 2-foot lengths of batting insulation and put half over the meeting place and half against the underside of the floor and held them in place with the wires, between the joists. But I digress!
****
Other Stuff
H:
- Finished crushing the eggshells and put them in a container
- Finished crushing the kale and put them in a container
- Broke up soil in low raised beds and leveled out ground for two longer rows for next year
- Progress on masks
- Finished repairing beaded purse #nonewsewmo
- Repaired broken strand of fringe on beaded barrette #nonewsewmo
- Sewed some more beads on Evil Queen capelet. Well, it started out being for an Evil Queen costume and it's too pretty to leave unfinished, whether it becomes a capelet for that or not. #nonewsewmo
- Dug in two pavers in the greenhouse. There will be more.
- Boxed up felt and other materials and put on porch
- Framed piece of old wallpaper from Fitzw's childhood bedroom
- Broke down one of the folding tables in the living room
- Worked on cleaning the upstairs bathroom (had a few spare minutes to throw that way)
- Swept the kitchen and laundry/pantry
- Washed some dishes and also some more Gatorade bottles, freed up a couple of cardboard trays for carrying the bottles
- Scanned some of T's art for her
- Played LotRo because why not?
F:
- Disassembled more old computers to go to the dump. Yes, the memory bits are still here, awaiting destruction
- Plastic-bagged the bags of cement to use next year
- Dug out a bunch of sunchokes
- Moved a desk to the trailer for winter storage
- Gathered and took recyclables to the transfer point
- Gathered and took trash to transfer point
no subject
Date: 2020-11-23 08:30 pm (UTC)That is a lot accomplished.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-23 10:26 pm (UTC)Today probably makes up for it -- we did some shopping and that's pretty much it so far.