Hard Projects That Nobody Will Ever, Ever Appreciate

When we bought our new house the inspector listed our insulation -- attic and crawl space -- as items that didn't meet code.  We've noticed no great tendencies to lose heat in the cold, and we had SOME insulation in both places so so this was a back-burner project at best for us.  Then a couple months ago we had our roof redone, new shingles, removed obsoleted venting pipes, removed attic vents because in order to meet current code the contractor cut a "peak vent" the length of our roof peak.  This has kept our attic much cooler on hot days (which I guess(?) is supposed to be a good thing?) but the roofer also mentioned to us that our attic insulation didn't meet the new code.  Now that our attic no longer works as a heat buffer, we decided to call in an insulation contractor.

He's scheduled for Monday the 7th.

In the attic I have some cardboard boxes stored.  I'll need to move them so they can blow in new foam.  No big deal.

Underneath the house, in the crawl space, everything was made neat and tidy for our home purchase with a black plastic vapor barrier.  After the sale there were a couple of crawl space vents which I had to redo, and we had our plumbing reconfigured down there last year, and I've been tacking up some 2x6s to try to eliminate squeaks in the kitchen floor -- at some point in the house's history a dishwasher had a persistent leak, and several floorboards in the kitchen had to be replaced during the remodel, but the squeaks remained -- so the crawl space eventually got less neat & tidy.  And I noticed, crawling around down there (there's about 24" of space, but it's dry, vermin-free and relatively bug-free), that underneath the plastic was a lot of wood scraps, large rocks, pieces of concrete, and other things uncomfortable to crawl on.  So in preparation for the insulation contractor I pulled up the black plastic, removed all the poky stuff (five 55-gallon plastic bags worth), and will lay down new clean visqueen.  There was a shocking amount of broken glass underneath the plastic -- bottles, jars, mirror shards.  Yikes.

And then there's the trench.  Underneath our furnace is a trench, about 5 feet deep, 12 feet long, 5 feet wide.  Looks like it had been dug out with a backhoe during house construction in 1958.  The inspector speculated the house originally had an oil-burning furnace which needed the room underneath the house, most likely.  The dirt from this trench was piled up, in a low mound, underneath the kitchen/bathroom, a pile about 10 feet in diameter and 18" high.  In other words, this pile extended to just underneath the floor joists, making access to plumbing and -- to the point of this story -- the insulation under the floor inaccessible.

So, I told the contractor I would move the dirt pile -- which is maybe two or three yards of dirt -- back into the trench before he started.

Laying on my side.  In the dirt.  Moving a shovelful of dirt at a time from the pile, dragging it ten feet across past me to the trench, and dumping it in.

It's dusty.  It's dirty (though just good clean dirt).  And mostly, it's very uncomfortable because you can't stand up, can't even kneel.  I'm almost done now, after a week of working on it, but oh my god I'm sore.  My 65-year-old body wasn't built for laying on my side shoveling, 2-3 hours at a time.  I've gone through a dozen respirator masks.  

Luckily, I have a couple of good lights, and a radio, and I bring a water bottle and sweat rag with me, and knee pads, and a chair cushion.  But I'll be glad when this project is in the rear view mirror.

The worst part is NOBODY, not even the insulation guys, will have any idea how much work this has been.  Nobody will ever see it, or appreciate all my hard work.

Except me.

Why are you doing that?

I understand that in Washington, dwarfs work for half price. Seems like a natural.

Hey, watch it Buster.  My wife is a dwarf.

In fact I'm nuts over her.

Crawlspace is all flat and clean and vapor barriered. And boy am I tired.

Why did *I* do it? Because I'm too stupid to go down to the Home Depot parking lot and hire a couple of Mexicans. Maybe next time.

Hoo-boy. Came home from my swim this morning to the sound of water running in the kitchen, but the faucet wasn't open, the dishwasher wasn't running...

Peeked under the house and water was POURING from an apparent broken t-joint in the water line. Turned off the water supply to the house and called a plumber.

All my hard work making a clean dry workspace for the insulators: ruint.

Mopped up all the water with a couple dozen bath towels. Plumber said our water heater had blown the T&P valve, which releases pressure if the temperature or pressure gets too high. The one underneath the house wasn't even necessary, because there's another one on top of the water heater.

He removed the valve completely and capped it off. Turned the water & water heater back on. Back in business.

Another job I just did that NOBODY but me will ever appreciate.

Last week I discovered an Iranian musician who has posted a few of his tracks here-and-there on the internet, and released one album (which is great).  I like the album so much I scoured the nets for the rest of his output.  Some of it is great, some not-so-great, but all interesting.

However, on burning a CD of my finds, one track's bass-drum sound was distorted.  It's not a real drum, poorly recorded.  It's some kind of electronic drum.

And the distortion isn't from being overdriven, it's apparently DESIGNED in -- because the squiggles in the wave are after the peak, on the downhill slope.  But each one of them sounds like digital noise, or an error, which is a harsh unpleasant sound.

So I resolved to "correct" his beats.

Took a couple hours of chasing each beat in the 4:36 song, but now it sounds like a normal electronic drumbox instead of a broken one.  Maybe not his choice, but digital distortion sounds like nothing in nature and I don't like the sound of it.  Nope, not at all.