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must remove underlying Wonderboard
Tuesday, July 21 2020
This morning before anyone was up, I snuck off in the Nissan Leaf to get supplies. I say snuck off, because I didn't want to complicate my outing by having to give Powerful a driving lesson or otherwise bring him along because he's feeling bored. I also didn't want Gretchen to come up with any last-second errands if she knew I was going out.
My first stop was at the brick mansion on Downs Street, where a number of small tree saplings needed to be pruned back. Most of these were tree of heaven, though there was also a maple of some sort. The most challenging sapling was one that had started beneath the porch, behind a wooden lattice that didn't look easy to remove. From there, it had grown up through a gap in the planking on the newly-surfaced porch. I'd brought a number of tools, including a Japanese pull saw. It turned out that I could just barely fit both that pull saw and my hand through the lattice, and this allowed me (uncomfortably) to saw off the sapling fairly near the ground. I also cut off the leafy sprig of ghetto palm level with the porch.
My next stop was Lowes (we're boycotting Home Depot because of the seven million dollars their founder gave to the fascist cause of Trump 2020), where I bought a number of cold chisels and grout-removing attachments for my oscillating saw and my small hand-held hammer-drill.
Back at the house, I waited until Gretchen was up and about before resuming demolition in the upstairs bathroom. Sadly, even with all my fancy new tools, I was unable to easily separate tile from Wonderboard hanging between studs. The problem was that the Wonderboard tended to flex, making it tend to disintegrate as I tried to pry tile loose from it. I somewhat succeeded in removing one tile, though a corner of it broke off in the process. But after that, it soon became obvious that the only way to remove the tile was to also remove the underlying Wonderboard. To do this, I used the diamond-blade-equipped rotary grinder to cut the grout lines deep, that is, as far as possible into the Wonderboard. After doing that, I could use brute force to pull the Wonderboard (with intact tile) right off the studs. (The few drywall screws holding the Wonderboard to the studs could be worked through the cement and fibreglass mesh by just wiggling the Wonderboard back and forth.)
This afternoon, Gretchen had Powerful drive her over to Rhinebeck so they could visit Cathy at the falafel store. Cathy recently had a hip replacement after breaking the neck of her femur, but she's healing so quickly that she's already back making falafel. When Gretchen and Powerful returned, they had a falafel sandwich for me, which I immediately ate with plenty of Isræi hot sauce.
I'd gotten a coffee at the Stewarts in Old Hurley on the way back from my Lowes errand, and after drinking that, my stomach was a bit unsettled. About an hour after eating the falafel, those feelings came back, though a bit worse. At times I experienced waves of discomfort that bordered on nausea. This forced me to lie down in the bed in the upstairs bedroom, where Gretchen (who was also feeling a little dyspepsia) was running the air conditioner.
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