Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   what I found in the wall
Sunday, January 29 2017
While Gretchen was off selling books in Woodstock, I worked intermittently on opening up the wall around the window in Gretchen's library that will eventually be replaced by a pair of french doors (that massive unit delivered yesterday). I was hoping the window had been framed out beneath an unnecessarily-wide header, but when I opened the wall, I found that I would have no such luck. To achieve the necessary width, the jack studs on either side of the window will need to be removed and the king studs beyond them will have to become jack studs. Beyond those, I'll have to install new king studs. As for the header, the existing one consists of two sistered two by tens, but they will be useless as a header once the jacks beneath them are removed. Because the studs are all two by sixes, there is actually enough room beside the existing header for another, longer two by ten. On its own, that should be enough to work as a header, particularly if I brace the old now-dangling header with metal brackets on either end. The only other major issue with the door installation is the existence of a duplex outlet beneath the old window. Not only does this supply power, but the box it is in serves as a junction box for a daisy-chain of electrical outlets. Somehow the elctricity would have to get around the door so it could supply outlets on the south side of the room. Happily, there is actually enough spare room beside the new header plank to route an electrical wire. This is fortunate because there is no other place for the wire to run inside the wall.
As always, I found a place to dispose of the removed drywall scraps here on the property. Since the ground is frozen, the drywall will have to wait until warmer weather before it can be covered with dirt and not constitute something that might make an Indian cry.
I could be wrong about this, but it's become an article of faith with me: drywall and concrete both make for great soil additives, particularly in places (such as this) that are low in calcium salts. Drywall is mostly hydrated calcium sulphate and concrete is mostly hyrdrated calcium carbonate. How do I know the rock here is low in calcium salts? Easy: the predominant land mollusc here is the slug, not the snail. If there were enough calcium salts in the soil, snails would be at an advantage, since their shells protect them against predation and desiccation. Snail shells were everywhere around my childhood home in the limestone-rich Shenandoah Valley. Here, though, I've found only about a dozen snail shells over a timespan of more than 14 years, and they were probably in pockets that freakishly had concentrations of calcium carbonate (a large skeleton, say, or the foundation of a building).
While I'd opened the wall around the window from the interior, I was sure to leave all the insulation in place and didn't do anything to disturb the house's envelope. January is a bad time to go ripping a hole to the outdoors through a wall without an immediate way to close it back in.


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