More adventures in home-ownership
Dec. 17th, 2005 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarahmichelefMemo to the people who lived here before:
Paint is not the way to repair rotted wood.
Our efforts to seal up the house continue apace (got the November gas bill today - and believe me, there were sailors who were embarrassed to hear me talking when I saw it). Today's trip to Lowe's resulted in more weatherstripping for the doors (we did a bunch of it the other night - 1950s-era weatherstripping is scary, scary stuff) and some caulk for windows/doors/etc.
This evening we finished weatherstripping the doors in the entryway (garage door, back door, and coat closet door (since the coat closet has the mailbox, which is open to the outside), weatherstripped the basement garage door (which involved coming up with a new way to lock that door, since weatherstripping rendered the lock unusable), and puttied/caulked the window with the rotted wood. I'll need to do some more puttying, and I haven't sanded it yet so it looks like crap, but there's a hell of a lot less air coming through that GIANT HOLE IN OUR HOUSE now.
And then we fixed the vacuum cleaner. We knew that it had either jumped a belt or broken a belt a while ago (it had suction but the brush didn't turn), but hadn't gotten around to opening it up to see which it was. M took the bottom plate off and established that the belt had just jumped one of its anchors, but he wasn't able to get his fingers in there to put it back on. I, however, could. So, y'know, go us! We fixed it! Which is good, since TRex is getting more and more interested in picking up everything that she can see and putting it in her mouth. And she can pick up really tiny things now - stupid small motor skills.
Paint is not the way to repair rotted wood.
Our efforts to seal up the house continue apace (got the November gas bill today - and believe me, there were sailors who were embarrassed to hear me talking when I saw it). Today's trip to Lowe's resulted in more weatherstripping for the doors (we did a bunch of it the other night - 1950s-era weatherstripping is scary, scary stuff) and some caulk for windows/doors/etc.
This evening we finished weatherstripping the doors in the entryway (garage door, back door, and coat closet door (since the coat closet has the mailbox, which is open to the outside), weatherstripped the basement garage door (which involved coming up with a new way to lock that door, since weatherstripping rendered the lock unusable), and puttied/caulked the window with the rotted wood. I'll need to do some more puttying, and I haven't sanded it yet so it looks like crap, but there's a hell of a lot less air coming through that GIANT HOLE IN OUR HOUSE now.
And then we fixed the vacuum cleaner. We knew that it had either jumped a belt or broken a belt a while ago (it had suction but the brush didn't turn), but hadn't gotten around to opening it up to see which it was. M took the bottom plate off and established that the belt had just jumped one of its anchors, but he wasn't able to get his fingers in there to put it back on. I, however, could. So, y'know, go us! We fixed it! Which is good, since TRex is getting more and more interested in picking up everything that she can see and putting it in her mouth. And she can pick up really tiny things now - stupid small motor skills.
