Sometimes It's Good to Be Wrong

Tackled the attic insulation removal this afternoon and evening.  The process disabused me of a few false notions.

Starting at the back end, literally:  The knob and tube wiring I discovered yesterday is disconnected; it isn't live.  The receptacle I thought it served is wired up with standard white three-wire cable.  Nice not to have to be concerned about that.

(Incidentally, there's also a long disconnected strand of yellow three-wire cable [sorry, I should be able to remember the gauges of these things-- yellow is 12 gauge?  Or 14?  Oh, never mind!) on the back side of the knee wall; I uncovered it when I took a piece of cardboard tacked to the studs down, and happily, it's not live, either.  I think my electrician must've put that in; why didn't I have him connect it up?  I certainly could use another outlet under my work table!)

I was also wrong in thinking there was a lot of loose-fill rock wool between the batt insulation and the underside of the sheathing.  No, there was rock wool in there at one time; I could see little tufts of it stuck to the rafters and sheathing planks here and there.  But for the most part, it was gone.  So I didn't have to endure clouds of rock wool tumbling down on my head, as I'd anticipated.  True, I was encased in a hooded Tyvek coverall suit with attached booties, my face armored with an P100 anti-mold particle mask and goggles with no vents, but I hadn't fancied the prospect, all the same.

And I was wrong in thinking my roof is structured with 2x4 rafters.  No, they're 2x6s, or 1-5/8 x 5-3/4, to be exact.  The foam insulation guy was calculating on spraying on six inches, covering rafters and all, to get me to an R-value of 24, at least.  Not sure how this development will affect things.  Technically it could mean they could spray on eight inches or more, and maybe get me to the R-38 that's recommended for attics these day.  But that'd up the price beyond the just-barely-manageable figure I have from him now.

What else was I wrong about?  I was wrong in thinking that the black I was seeing on the back face of the kraft paper vapor barrior was mold.  Ha, silly me, that paper is black on the back side!  And, examining the insulation itself more closely, it's possible that the dark stuff I saw in the pink was only dirt, and not mold at all.  At least, it didn't look growy, just like dust.

Does that mean I was wrong about the whole project?  Not at all.  The batts were definitely damp that day in mid-September, and dirt is a classic place for mold to lodge in fiberglass insulation.  And with the facing paper hanging in tatters in so many places, the vapor barrier was grossly compromised.  I would rather not spend the money on this at this time, but it'll be money well-spent.

I was wrong in thinking the batts were held up solely by the lath battens that ran horizontally from rafter to rafter.  Yes, they gave some support, but mostly the pink stuff stayed put by means of staples-- lots of staples-- driven though the kraft paper wings into the rafters.  So I didn't have that stuff falling down on me, either.  Very glad to be wrong in this case.  And I was wrong in planning to roll up each batt in a piece of .5 mil plastic before I put it into the 55 gallon black bag.  I tried it once, on the first piece I took down, and the plastic got woefully out of control and simply would not stay put.  So I gave up on it and just rolled the batts in on themselves, taped them with cheap masking tape, and stuffed them in the bags.

Speaking of the bags, it's good that the insulation guy was wrong in predicting I'd end up with thirty bags of the stuff.  Nope.  Four bags of insulation and one of cardboard, small pieces of batten, and dirty dropcloths.

I've mentioned the cardboard.  It appears I was wrong in thinking that it was a pis aller employed by my POs-1 (who were, I believe, the ones who installed the pink insulation) to cover the gaps at the toe of the batts.  In the first place, the batts ran all the way down below the floor level, into the soffit space.  In the second place, it was abundantly evident that that cardboard dated from way, way before than my previous owners two back.  The cardboard lining the brick gable wall on the north end was clearly installed before the wood floor.   It was wedged between the floorboards and the brick and I had to cut it out with a utility knife. Whether it dates from the time the house was built in 1915 or so, or whether it was put in to protect the wall when the attic was finished later, I don't know.  I'm pretty sure that the room I use as my study wasn't original, as the 1916 tax assessment only lists three bedrooms.  But I saw at least one place where cardboard was used as shimming between structural members, so it's entirely possible that the house was built with a wholly-floored attic, with exposed rafters and the stairs leading up to it, and the knee walls and plaster came later.  I estimate that the room was done fairly early; pre-WWII, at least, since the trim matches what's downstairs (sans cornices) and the woodwork was originally shellacked, like the rest of the house.

Found something else curious, deeper in towards the front of the house:  There are three or four bays where the tongue-and-groove flooring doesn't go almost to the toe of the rafters, but there are wide planks of removable joinery notched in between the rafters instead.  I didn't lift any of them out the whole way, but when I shifted them I saw galvanized metal below.  Duct work?  A cold air return?  From where?  I think this would be over my dressing room, but the location is all wrong.  This really looks original.  What can it be?  Those planks will be immovable once the foam is in; will that matter?

In fact, speaking of the cardboard again, I found vestiges of heavy cardboard nailed to the underside of the rafters (which I found about impossible to remove, by the way), and I strongly suspect it was used to contain the rock wool that used to be in the roof.

On the back faces of some of this cardboard I saw evidence of water marking.  But it was dry now and I can only hope that that was from earlier leakage, like that which moved the POs-1 to remove the slate roof and put up fiberglass shingles.  (I found a piece of a slate at the eaves!).  There was also some water staining on the floor near the stub of the old kitchen chimney.  I don't say I won't give that a good scrubbing with borax, but it was dry, too.  In fact, the whole space was dry, and in some cases, too dry.  I didn't like the way pieces of wood would flake off some structural members when I was brushing them clean after the insulation was down.  I'm thinking a nice coat of spray foam will protect them, yes?

There were some things I was wrong about that I don't find so gratifying.  The Tyvek suit was a success, overall (pun!), and getting one that fit me by ordering online was the right way to go.  But I wish I'd gotten the gloves with the longer arms to them.  The 12" cuff kind I got you'd think would be long enough.  But the sleeves of my sweatshirt kept pushing them down, and they would creep out from under the elastic cuff of the suit.  I did pretty well at keeping fiberglass itchies off my skin-- except for that half inch of so at my wrists.

And despite my trying to order goggles in a "women's" size, they were still too big and conflicted with the particulate mask.  Great goggles, great mask, but my head simply isn't that big.  The two pieces of equipment got in each other's way and prevented me from having a proper seal on either.  The goggles quickly fogged up so I was working half blind, and the mask didn't sit tightly, so stuff still got up my nose and made it run.  Every three batts or so I'd have to take off the mask and blow my nose, it was so bad.  I'm still rather stopped up now.

But getting the headlamp was a fine idea; really, the only way to go, even though it barely perched on what was left of my forehead.  From the packaging I'd expected the batteries to last only five hours, but they kept going a lot longer, and are still good now.

I mentioned the 55-gallon bags.  My bright idea of throwing them out the north window once they were filled didn't turn out quite as planned.  The first one rolled off the back porch roof quite easily, but the next one landed square in the middle of the roof and stayed there. And my attempts to use the second and third to dislodge it only succeeded in creating a logjam.  So there I was, at maybe 11:00 o'clock at night, out on my porch roof trying to shove these big black trash bags down into the yard.  Still in the Tyvek suit, which wasn't the cleverest thing I've done all evening.  The booties on it give no traction whatever, so walking on the shingles was out of the question.  I had to lie on my side and kind of slither down till I could put a foot to the bags and send them over.  Of course they wouldn't go the with the first kick, and I had to creep lower and lower towards the eaves, hoping to gracious that any momentum I gave the bags wouldn't carry me over with them.  "Wrong" wouldn't've half described that!

They finally teetered on the edge of the gutter and rolled down, taking their sweet time about it.  Meanwhile, I saw that my thirteen-year-old calico cat had taken advantage of the open window from the guest bedroom to hop out onto the roof and do a little exploring of her own.  Happily, I had no compulsion to go lunging after her.  I slithered back up the way I came and called her to me once I was back on the sill.  She came, but changed her mind at the last moment and veered off.  Too bad, my girl! and I picked her up by the scruff of her neck and hauled her safely in. 

One last happy example of my being wrong:  It only took about three and a half hours to get the insulation down, rolled, bagged, and out the window.  It took the other three and a half hours to brush down the rafters and sheathing, remove stray pieces of rock wool, and clean up the floor.  One push-broom and three vacuum cleaners that took!  I think the hose of my shop vac is almost shot, which doesn't help.

Is the job done?  Well, almost.  I found there's rock wool in the soffit space, and I haven't removed it, since I'm not sure how that'll interface with the spray foam.  I want that area insulated, but somehow I don't see filling that whole space with the icynene.  I mean, won't that drive up the price, and what if I do get a chance to remove the aluminum exterior trim and the wood board underneath needs replaced?  On the other hand, does the foam have to run all the way to the gutter to prevent ice dams?  I may have to cut 1x boards and run the floor all the way to where the roof comes down.  Job for the portable circular saw, I expect.

I have the same question about the rock wool in the far southeast corner behind the lefthand closet.  There's a little triangle of space with insulation blown into it; will they foam that, or do I need to create a barrier to separate the two?

There should be no question about the old birds' nest materials in the northeast corner behind the old chimney.  It's got to go.  But somehow I didn't want to remove it out tonight.  Don't know why.  May have something to do with the kink in my shop vac house.  Maybe I want to see if there are any ornithological specimens in the mess.  But I'd rather deal with it in the daytime.

All cleaned up, barring the camera lens

Just sitting here typing this, I can feel that the room is colder than usual.  Even failing, that batt insulation did a reasonable job keeping the 3rd story warm.  Here's to the spray foam doing the job even better.

I Thought I Was Finished

Last night, I thought I was finished.  With one exception reserved,* I thought all the repairing, patching, painting, and touching up needed in my 3rd floor study was done.

The white trim, where needed, was recoated in semi-gloss latex, and any encroachments of the dark yellow hue painted over.

I'd gone around with a sponge brush and with the light yellow paint concealed the mar-marks that wouldn't scrub off on the west and north walls.

I'd pushed my utility table and my drafting table back against the wall, and carefully rehung the oak drawer unit on its brackets on the wall.

Except for the protection over the long wooden file cabinet (owing to the above-mentioned exception), the drop cloths and plastic sheets were taken away, to lie until needed, rolled up in the doorless closet in the 2nd floor hallway below.  Paint, paint trays, rollers, brushes, rags-- all or most were removed to the stairhead below, to await the trip back to the basement workshop.  The carpet was vacuumed, the work surfaces were dusted and wiped.

By this time it was rising 5:00 AM.  Yes, I repeat it, nearly five o'clock in the morning.  I hadn't been working and straightening all that time; no, more than once I'd succumbed to the lure of the computer and sat down to watch past episodes of Holmes on Homes on YouTube.  Or, more to the point of rectifying problems in my own house, I'd been researching the pros and cons of spray foam insulation, which, if I can manage the cost, may prove to be the best replacement for the moldering pink fiberglass in my attic crawl space roof.  

Why didn't I save both diversions and labor for later and go to bed?  Because it seemed necessary that the decks be cleared for the visit of the roof inspector this morning at 8:30 AM, so he could examine the length and breadth of my 3rd floor, if required, without tripping over dropcloths and paint cans.  And until the cleanup was complete, I wasn't turning in.

But by quarter to five it pretty much was, and I spared a few moments to gaze and admire my handiwork in the stairwell.

Even so, I couldn't help noticing a problem with the touch up paint on the west wall.  That light yellow was a color mix of my own, concocted when I first painted my study in 2003 from three or more Sherwin-Williams colors, I not liking any of the ones they had in stock.  The can I've been working with is an attempt at matching that was made back in January of 2009 when the drawer unit fell off the wall.  I wasn't wholly convinced by the match then, and the best I can say about it now is that at least it was enough to do the east wall and the part of the north wall contiguous to it in one whole new coat.  But the 2009 "matched" paint has a definite grayish cast not present in the 2003 original.  Usually, with the shape of the room and rarity of direct sunlight through the gable windows, the difference isn't noticeable, even at touch-up spots.  But at five o'clock this morning, just above the cabinets sitting against my west wall, I noticed it all right.  Don't know if I'd raked some unmixed bit of pigment off the bottom of the quart can, or if my brush or the wall itself wasn't clean, but those spots looked dirty.   Flat-out smudgy, grubby dirty.  As Mike Holmes would say, "Unacceptable!"

I came closer to get a better look, and that's when I saw it.  Just visible above the surface of my sewing table, insinuating its winding way up the pale yellow wall, was a crack.  A crack I hadn't noticed before.  Not a bad crack, not a wide crack, but--

I looked under the sewing table.  Oh, crappolitis!  It was a bad crack.  And in the run of things, a wide crack as well.  And it had a brother crack along with it.

Oh! Oh! Oh!  I thought I was finished with all that!  I've taken it all downstairs to put away!  And now it's back to joint compound and primer and paint and redoing the baseboard paint (which'll surely get mucked up in the process), and oh! oh! why can't I ever be done!?
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*I've decided my bookshelves and the ledge outside the attic hatch need to be redone in oil based paint.  And of course I still need to finish painting the back walls of the built-in bookcases.

No, the House Hasn't Eaten Me. Yet.

Have I been working on the house?  Yes.  Have I been working on the house as quickly as I ought to? No.

I had two doorways to patch where doors were removed, at the old entry door between the front room (former porch) and the stairhall, and at the bottom of the stairs to the third floor.  A couple weeks ago I cut old yellow pine to fit the hinge and strike mortises, planed them down, and sanded all round the casings.  They look nice, but pictures will have to wait-- I loaded them onto the other computer.

Sadly, there are no new shellacking pictures.  That's because I haven't laid on any new shellac.  I'm still cleaning up the dust mess, and the work is going very slowly.

First, because I'm changing Internet service providers and I'm dealing with the whole old-new e-mail address transition.

Second, because cleaning my Study meant more than sucking up the dust, it also meant going through my books, rearranging many, retiring some to the storage space, selecting some to give away, and even chucking a few.

And third, it's going slowly because I don't like deep cleaning the house, and I keep putting it off.  It's so much more fun to watch on-line videos that actually stream thanks to my new, faster ISP.

But as soon as I publish this post, I'm going upstairs to clean my bedroom.  The curtains and dust ruffle, which were filthy, are clean and dry down in the dryer, and until the room dust is gone and I can put them back, there's no going to bed for me tonight.

Party Time

It's festival time in my side of Beaver, Pennsylvania.

Which is to say, it's the evening before the borough's annual Large Item Pickup Day. Up and down the blocks, homeowners are bringing their discards out to the curbs, and up and down the streets wend the cars and the trucks (some with trailers), their drivers on the lookout for something great to snatch up. Up and down the sidewalks stroll the neighbors, giving sidelong looks to one another's junk, and, ever so casually, pulling out the pieces they like and making off home.

It's a hoot. I have to think that the borough trash haulers get maybe half of what is put out. The rest of it is taken by other people and reused, repurposed, and recycled.

Last year I found and rescued a wooden screen door that, with a little work, will do nicely for the back of the house. This year, I spotted some rustic-built drawers that would have made fine outdoor planter boxes and some glass shelves, one of which might have done to replace the one my kittens broke in the bedroom . . . but alas, I am not allowed to lift things that heavy and I had to let them go.

My own curbsite deposit was a disappointment to the eager recyclers. There was the box of broken plaster from my 3rd floor Study ceiling. The neighboring teenager who is helping with my dog offered to take it out to the curb for me. As long as I was getting rid of things, I gave his family the air conditioner my POs had in the Study window when I moved in; I'd thought of advertising it on CraigsList but they've been doing me such a big favor with the pets it was right I should let them have it for free. The kid had to call a friend to get the AC up to his room, and when they were done, they came back for my junk.

Anything besides the box of plaster? Yes . . . much as it breaks my heart, I asked them to take the worm-eaten rustic hickory garden seat to the curb for me.

I had such hopes for that seat! It was going to be my perch in my little oasis in the back corner of my kitchen garden, from whence I'd admire my garden when everything was done. Nobody mentioned, when I bought it five or so years ago, that the maker had failed to treat the wood and it'd start falling to pieces in a season or two.

I moved it away from the garden corner a couple of years ago, because its back was keeping light from getting to the sand cherry that I'd planted behind it. The sand cherry was moved, and died, and was replaced by a hydrangea. Don't know if I thought I'd repair the seat and put it back once the hydrangea got big enough, but the rot got ahead of me.

Then last night, the bench back gave my senior cat just the boost she needed to jump up to the top of the fence. She was crouched on the neighbors' side, on the top rail, and contemplating jumping off into their yard, when I caught her at it. Their gate was shut, and I suppose I could let her jump and waiting till they got home to get her back: she couldn't go anywhere, after all. But I panicked and picked her up. Which I shouldn't've done, since she weighs over ten pounds. Ouch, Wennie, dammit, you're heavy! Ouch, I hurt!

Taking things all together, I told the boys this evening, yeah, the rustic seat can go, too.

And judging from the way it fell apart when they were carrying it through the yard, it was time and past time. I wonder how much of it the trash haulers will take. It looked like garden waste by the time the kids got it to the curb.

Unless somebody needed some firewood?

Surveying the Battlefield

Now that all the loose plaster areas on my sloped study ceiling are secured back to the lath using the Big Wally's PlasterMagic® system, I can reflect on what I've accomplished, how I'd do it differently if I could go back and do it over, and give some highly gratuitous advice on how you can do it, too, probably with better success:

1) The day I saw the cracks (back in 2007!), if I couldn't repair it right away, I'd put up bracing to keep it from getting any worse.

2) If I didn't brace it when I first noticed the cracks, I'd certainly brace it before I drilled One Single Hole.

3) Rory B's probably got this in the directions someplace, but if you suspect a large section of ceiling plaster is losing its grip . . .

a) First find out how thick your plaster is. You can tell somewhat by feeling the "jump" your 3/16" masonry bit makes to the lath once it gets through the plaster. But if that feels like working blind, get out the big guns, like a ½" masonry bit, and drill a hole big enough for you to see.

b) Then take your 3/16" masonry drill and drill a hole maybe 3' or 4' or so away from the crack or exposed lath edge. Does it penetrate only the thickness of your plaster? Good. But don't be complacent. Drill a couple more test holes in line with it, parallel to your crack. If they're all good, move in 6" and try again. When you find your drill going in 1/8" or more past the thickness of your plaster, that's where you start.

4) Next you drill your field pattern. The directions on the conditioner bottle say that should be an 8" to 12" square grid, avoiding the spaces between the laths, of course (mark them with a pencil and try again).

(Me, I went for overkill and drilled mine at 6" x 6". May explain why I went through so much of the adhesive so fast. But my plaster is thin, only 3/8", and I wanted to avert cracking.)

5) After that (is your bracing up?), drill your edge holes, about 1½" from the crack or exposed lath, 3" o.c., which should hit every other lath if you're going perpendicular to it.

6) Note that No. 4 & No. 5 are S.O.P. for this system. And take as read the part about vacuuming out the holes, using the conditioner, squirting in the adhesive, etc., etc. But for your saggy ceiling, be sure to begin screwing in the plastic washers at the point farthest from the crack or edge. This will bring your plaster up gently and gradually and go a long way to prevent further cracking and collapse.

7) I readhered some smaller cracked pieces around the edges. This works if your plaster is thick. But at 3/8", they cracked further and look really bad. I'm hoping-trusting-praying that the final skim coat will cover them over, but right now, I feel I should've pulled them off and left a clean edge.

8) The directions say to leave the screws and washers in for 24 to 48 hours. I was paranoid and left them up for twice that long, at least. This doesn't hurt anything. Your drill will back them out just fine.

9) When you pull away or pry off the washers, some of the paint may come away with them. You can correct this when you go over the area with joint compound. But you may, like me, discover that the paint layer is very thick, very plasticky, and very loose (the plastic factor may help explain why the plaster failed in the first place). In that case, I'd carefully peel it away until you get to a place where it's good and adhered. No point in trying to achieve a nice smooth surface over loose paint.

10) About surface protection and clean up: Yes, you can wipe off drips with warm water and a sponge. You can scrap off hardened adhesive with a putty knife. But the water in your bucket will get filmy, and despite your wiping, you will end up with a shiny film on your ceiling or wall surface. This doesn't matter in your target area, since it will need repainted or repapered anyway. But for adjacent surfaces and objects . . .

a) Remove them if you can from the field of battle. Never mind if it's an annoyance and a pain. Do it.

b) For anything that can't be moved, know that newspaper or contractor's kraft paper will not suffice. The Big Wally's conditioner is made to penetrate lath and plaster. So you think it won't soak right through that paper? It certainly does, and I've got the newsprint glued to my painted wall and trim to prove it. Use intact, heavy grade plastic or plastic-backed dropcloth instead. No rips or holes allowed. And tape it continuously along its top edge, especially if you're repairing a ceiling. Otherwise, that stuff will find its way behind it and underneath, believe me.

c) If things goof up (don't they always?) and a scraper won't do to get the hardened conditioner or adhesive off, I've found that a little Ivory® soap and elbow grease on one of those green abrasive kitchen sponges works in time to get it off. Or you can use Goo-Gone® for items (like my 1950 black-with-gold-leaf Singer sewing machine) that won't bear scrubbing. Though you might try the scraper again on those.

Reflecting on Item No. 6, I used that method with the plaster remaining on the sloped part of my study ceiling, and it worked well. I did not think of doing it before that when I tackled the loose plaster on the flat part of the ceiling, continguous to the sloped ceiling failure site. I saw it cracking, too, and wanted to get it secured right away, before I started the sloped ceiling repair. I began drilling in my washers right at the cracks, with the result that the plaster went all pillowy and pitted. I didn't even get it up to the lath sufficiently and had to go back and try bringing it up again, after I'd explored further out and discovered that the sagging area was more extensive than I'd realized.

But maybe it wouldn't have mattered regardless of where I put in my first washers. When I started peeling away the loose paint in this area, I found that the plaster above it was crumbly and lacked all integrity. A strip of heavy paper joint tape was revealed, showing where some previous owner had repaired the place before. I don't see joint compound or spackle adhering to any of this crap, and even if it did, it'd be an irregular mess.

I vacuumed up the plaster mess yesterday. But when I can face this again I shall have to come back with the drop cloths and tape and demolish every last bit of bad plaster on the flat ceiling repair area, clean it all out, and replaster the gaps. I hate doing plaster overhead, but it's not as if I can't do it or haven't done it before. I have the pictures to prove I have, after all.

"When I can face this again" is the operative term. I have a house guest coming in two months and now that (please, God and Rory Brennan!) no more plaster should be falling down, I'm going to stop out of the 3rd floor plaster work to concentrate on getting the 1st and 2nd floors liveable before she comes.

I only hope there aren't any more areas of ceiling failure lurking . . . Couple days ago I buttoned up some plaster on my 1st floor hallway ceiling, around the perimeter of the stairwell, and found that the loose areas went much farther from the cracks than I had any reason to expect. Paranoia strikes deep . . . I find myself drilling exploratory holes in random places in the third floor ceiling . . . and getting nervous about rain on the roof . . . and worrying that my dog's strident barking will set up dangerous vibrations à la Memorex . . .

But then I reflect that the reason I fear plaster falling is the very reason I don't want to tear it out and put up drywall. So I'll just keep watch. And keep the Big Wally's handy.

Dust, Dust, and More Dust

This past week or two, while I've been waiting for plaster adhesive to dry or waiting for more of it to arrive from Vermont, I've also been tackling my 2nd floor hall ceiling and walls.

The holes left in the ceiling where I did the (unnecessary, as it turned out) plaster reattachment; the inverted valleys in the ceiling where the lath and plaster, while still thoroughly attached, contrived to give a disconcerting swag effect; the gouges and holes in the plaster walls formerly covered by wallpaper; the one drywall wall that the POs-1 neglected to prime before papering it-- all these had to be filled with multiple coats of spackle and sanded down.

And it had to be sanded down, because if I use a wet sponge on it, I'll wipe the spackle right out and have to start all over again.

After a bout or two of hand-sanding I discovered that my palm sander with 180-grit paper did the job better and faster and more efficiently.

But oh, the dust mess! I closed all the doors I could, but the dust is still everywhere! After an hour or more wielding the shop vac and a dust cloth, it's still everywhere! I'm surprised my computer still works, because the dust floated right up the stairs (I have no door to the third floor) and settled on everything.

I tell myself, at least I have a shop vac. What did builders ever do without them? And the 2nd floor ceiling part of the spackling and sanding is done-- that is, it's done till the sun hits it from another angle tomorrow and I see what I missed.

But how I wish I could take everything I own and just hose it down.

Yeah, and then I'd have another kind of mess to clean up.

In the Cold Light of Day

This is my backyard as it presented itself to me when I went outside this morning:
























"Where's the path?" queries my dog. "Where's the path!?"



I tried cutting as much of the fallen branch off with my loppers as I could. They're supposed to handle 1-1/2" material. I found it hard to cut through thicknesses half that. I began to wonder if my loppers were bewitched.
























No, just bowlegged, badly-adjusted, and woefully in need of sharpening. And I needed lunch.



Inside to make phone calls, to the tree surgeon and to all my friends who might have chain saws, woodchippers, etc. Got everyone's message machines, surprise, surprise. If they weren't at work, their lights were still off, or they were out in their own yards cleaning up their own debris!

Late in the afternoon, I heard my neighbor (I'll call him Jim East*) in his yard, raking up the mess from my tree. Only sporting to go try again with the loppers. I seem to have gotten better at my technique by now, such that by the time I had to change to go to choir practice, I'd removed all the leafy branches that were intruding into their yard, and a great deal of what was lying on mine.


The fence doesn't appear to be broken, just pulled apart. Once I get the tree off the section that's down, I can stabilize the post that's knocked askew and put the fence panel back up.

But that can't happen immediately. The fallen limb with its branches and sticks is bearing on that panel and the ground like a fist, but up above the limb is totally severed from the tree. It's just resting up there. If the branches on the ground aren't cut right, the whole thing could come crashng down and land wherever, like on the house or across the vegetable garden.



That doesn't mean I'll refuse the help of level-headed amateurs to get that limb down and cut up. It's a matter of taking advantage of whatever help offers itself first.

My neighbor says his dad has a chainsaw, but he's using it at his own place. Hmm, I'm willing to wait! Ditto my friend in choir whose husband has a gas-powered wood chipper. Apparently there's a waiting list for that, too.

I am so not astonished!