Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Very little in the way of gunny stuff to blog about

I'm refinishing my bedroom floor.  So I've spent the last week or so scraping old finish off, moving furniture around so as to work section at a time.  Have that done, and friends came over and helped move the bed and such; I now live in a maze, and the bedroom echoes when you walk in.  Tomorrow should be able to rent the sander and get that done, then it'll be at least two coats of finish and a few days before can start moving stuff back up.

Scraping, you ask?  Whoever refinished it last just did a quicky job, so there were areas where the finish was coming off, and a couple that had REAL thick coats; figured that if I could clean off a lot of the thick stuff in particular I'd have a lot fewer clogged abrasive sheets to change.  It worked; in a lot of sections one you got one bit to turn loose you could pop off chips or sheets a few inches wide and long with a push or pull(found pushing worked better in many places).  Ought to speed up the sanding a lot.

Then spent Monday working on daughters' carport(after it stopped raining for a while; we finally got rain, and Ma Nature is apparently making up for the last few months in the space of a week).  Several cross-pieces on one side had rotted badly, and weren't supporting the rafters anymore.  So this involved a crossbeam, two 2x4 boards and two jacks.  Put the beam across two rafters, a 2x4 at each end on top of a jack, then carefully raise the jacks to lift the rafters and that section of roof; cleared the side pieces, let me pull screws and knock out the rotted wood, put in the new pressure-treated pieces, then lower the rafters to their proper spot and screw them & their brackets in.  Got 80% of it done; one piece I needed a saw to cut out, and I didn't think to take one; so braced those rafters with the 2x4s(NOT on jacks for this), cleaned out what of the damaged wood I could, and I'll get the last of this in a week or so.

Be it said that square- or star-drive screws are wonderful; beats hell out of phillips head screws for stuff like this.

So it'll be at least a week before I've got time to get to the range.  And right now I'm half outraged-out with the bastards in DC and Moms Wants Action Now! and all the other gun bigots and liars and hoplophobes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to collapse for a while.

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