Our long-awaited return

The War Department and her friends were nagging me earlier today about posting something again, and I reminded them that I will not, under any circumstances, be manipulated or told what to do, and that telling me to write a new post was exactly what they should do if they never wanted me to post again.

So I'm double crossing them, and writing a new post! Ha!

Preeetttyyy sure I'm still being manipulated here, but whatever. You get a new post out of this, so shut up.

Where were we? Before Hallowe'en? Christ, forget it. I'll never get caught up at this rate. Well, I'll try, but I'm going to miss a lot of shit anyway. Like I said before, with this blog, you get what you pay for.

Right, so the only thing we've been working on so far has been the sunroom. Well, there was that absolutely DISASTROUS interlude with the shed, but we don't talk about that around here. Not anymore. (Sssh. Don't mention the shed. You don't want to know.)

So the first thing we had to do with the sunroom was fork over a whole shitload of money to our contractor to replace all the worn out glass in the roof and to rebuild the rotten structure. (Remember?) We were hoping to replace the sliding glass doors on both sides at the same time, but given that we were already paying a shitload of money and the doors were TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS EACH, we decided to just try to clean up and do some maintenance to the existing ones instead.

Which means that I'm relatively proud to say that none of the work in the following pictures was done by us, save for the labour we put into making the money to give to the contractor in the first place.

Before he started, the thing was a bit of a mess. The outside didn't look TOO bad, aside from the plastic stapled to one side in a futile attempt to keep out the worst of the weather:

The inside, however, told another story, especially once we'd taken down all the old drywall:

Boy, THAT was fun to take to the dump! Not!

At least it let us see how bad the mold really was - turns out it was pretty bad, on both sides, no less:

Not really visible in those pictures: the fact that all of the windows that comprised the roof were toast, and therefore also comprised the lion's share of the costs. Oh, and lest I forget to mention, OF COURSE they were a non-standard size and had to be fabricated specifically for us.

On the plus side, our contractor was great and did nice work. When the glass company screwed up and sent two incorrectly sized panels and he had to patch over the roof for a week until the correct ones could be made up and shipped out, I think he was more disappointed than we were. Oh, and he showed up on time when he said he would, and came in exactly on quote. No, you can't have him. He's OURS. (And he doesn't do tiling anyway. So nyaah.)

Here's some visual evidence of his leet skills; first, removing the mold and rotten timber, and restructuring the corners and framing:

And then cladding and papering the outside:

And then wrapped the whole thing in Hardiboard and trim, with the capping and flashing installed so that the water would run OFF the damn ends of the boards, and not INTO the inside of the wall. Something I would LOVE to show you, but apparently Blogger is having trouble processing all these images, so it'll have to wait until next time.

Anyway, it's possible that we MIGHT have been able to do the same stuff he did, but there's no way it would have turned out as nice, and it would have taken us six months just to do the framing. Some things are better left to the professionals... But, you'll be happy to know, we didn't pay him to finish the inside, That, dear readers, we did ourselves, and that's what I'm sure every one comes here to read about. Or, at least laughs the most at.

But we'll save that for next time as well. For now, I thought I'd welcome everyone back to what I'm sure is the most popular feature of them all on this blog...

The Injury Report

So I'm building another shelf for the War Department's office, right? It's not as huge and impressive as the last one, but it's pretty finicky and requires some bracing on the inside (it's hollow - you'll see it when I'm done, promise). Anyway, I've got the top and sides attached okay, but I've got to get some nailing edges installed to attached the bottom.

So I'm holding a little jig I made to be sure I get the right depth along with the bracing piece in one hand, and nailing through the front (and into the brace) with the finish nailer. Everything's going great, right up until the second last piece, when I don't QUITE have the nailer at the right angle, and... well, you guessed it.

I attached the brace not only to the shelf, but quite neatly to the forefinger of my left hand.

Which hurt a lot. Not as much as it did when I sliced off the tip of the same finger oh, about four years ago. Good to know the sensation's returned in that fingertip, but still...

Ouch.