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restoring rotten wooden structures
Friday, July 11 2008
With the gutters in place above the basement guestroom's slab, I turned my attention to restoring the rotten wooden structures at the bottom of the sliding doors to that slab. I already ripped out all the rotten wood I could, and this made room for a new plank I wanted to insert beneath the door assembly but over the slab so that it would provide a rainwater diversion and keep water from getting between the house and the slab. To get this plank to fit, I had to sculpt out a hollow beneath it to accommodate a place where the bluestone veneer of the slab reached up into an inconvenient peak. For a variety of reasons, the plank had to hover more than a quarter inch over the slab, and to support it, I mixed up some dark-tinted Portland cement to inject into the gap. Into this cement, I screwed in a few short screws through the plank to secure it at the slope I'd achieved by piling three rocks on top of it. Hopefully, after the cement sets, the screws will keep the plank from springing back into the horizontal plane it prefers.
This evening Gretchen and I went to Penny and David's house for pizza and beer, the first time we'd ever done it elsewhere since we resurrected this weekly ritual from our college days. In keeping with known dietary parameters, the pizza was vegan, but David went and fetched the parmesan at one point. David wasn't drinking alcohol because his gout has been flaring up since a recent vacation in Portugal. The pizza was a little oily but delicious nonetheless. We dined out on the deck, and the mosquitos didn't attack us until we were done eating.
In addition to our dogs Sally and Eleanor, Gretchen and I had brought our transportable elderly cat Marie (mostly known as "the Baby"). When she wasn't exploring the new environment, she could mostly be found sitting in laps, particularly mine.
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