Journal Entry
This was one of those very good days... few and far between, they are.
Tyler and I got a lot done, almost getting the floor completed. We stopped working because of darkness and hunger.
The following is probably going to bore people; however, that's one of my talents, and I won't hide it under a basket...
Tyler and I got a pretty early start, considering who we are... we got out to Lowes a little after 10:00... and we hit our first snag. I was kinda planning on getting credit from Lowes, but I turned in my application and was turned down. They said that they'd let me know why in ten days or so... not that it really matters.
So I had to curtail my purchases for today, getting only the lumber for the flooring and a new saw blade. I'd been using my old one for about five years, and I'd cut a lot of wood with it and it still seemed sharp... but when I replaced it, I found out that it wasn't. The new blade cut some hard old pine boards like they were butter...
So we loaded up 19 2X8X12s in the back of the Toyota, and it still did pretty good. When we got home, we decided to eat, then start working.
However, after we got done eating, we sat and looked at each other... neither of us really wanted to get up and get started. So we argued over who was the lazier, him or me. We decided that we tied. We furthermore decided that if we needed to kick each other's asses to get us going that we would do that. Or maybe not...
We did get up and start working. I found my chalk line and we marked the southern end of the garage where we were going to put the joists. Fortunately, Tyler noticed that the floors were not going to be even... I'd miscalculated where the original floor was.
Then we started putting the joists down. And then I noticed that the joists were much closer together than I'd planned. It seems that the builders of this old house hadn't really understood that things should be build on 18-inch centers... most of the uprights in the north wall were kinda 16-inchs on center, except where they weren't. Then I looked at the roof supports... supposed to be 24-inches on center. They are anywhere from 18 to 32 inches. The builders were either drunk or stupid, I guess.
Well, I'll make it work out. We did get the floor joists in OK, only one mess-up that Tyler noticed after we thought we were all done... we placed the final two joists 1/4 inch higher than the rest.
So, we started getting the hardware off of the doors and laying them down. We're not going to secure them yet, I still have some more work to do underneath, mostly the ductwork. We got five doors stripped, and the place is really starting to look like a room now.
We quit about 19:30, it was getting dark and we were both worn out. It's been quite a while since I've used many of the muscles that I used today, and I know that I'll really feel it tomorrow...
Tomorrow we will finish covering the floor, then we'll go get two of the three windows that we'll need. And the ductwork materials, and probably a roll of 12-3 wire.
My hands are sore, my grip in my right hand is almost non-existent. I hammered a lot of nails today, and took a lot out, too. I had to teach Tyler how to hammer a nail in... I forgot that I hadn't done that yet. Kinda fun, teaching kids stuff.
More tomorrow...