Bezabor: Big Max Junior, Bryce Canyon, a wedding…

Wednesday, 11/30/05-

I had another dental-related appointment today, this one with the periodontist. Looks like I’m in for some more fun. In last week’s routine dental cleaning, the hygienist noticed I have a problem at the base of one tooth. Though I’m not feeling pain or sensitivity, a follow-up x-ray revealed an underlying pocket of infection and that led to today’s exam by a specialist. My options are to have gum surgery with bone graft in an attempt to save the tooth or to have it extracted and replaced by a dental implant. Ain’t life grand?
In the afternoon I re-routed the washer drain pipe I had installed last week.

Tuesday, 11/29/05-

I’ve had a cold or mild flu for more than a week now and was pretty much able to just continue working along as normal until today. But this morning I felt much worse so I went back to bed and slept a few hours and then spent the rest of the day in my chair watching television and doing some internet research via my laptop. Not a very productive day.

Monday, 11/28/05-

With colder weather approaching we wanted to get on with buying and installing a small shed to house our radial-arm saw so we don’t have to keep it in the basement. The saw is great to have but it takes up a lot of room and makes quite a mess as it covers everything with sawdust. This has been another one of those long-standing ‘someday’ issues, i.e., figuring out how to have our saw and use it without making such a mess throughout the basement. We considered a dust-collection system but realized that there really isn’t enough room for the saw in the basement anyway. So our solution is to put a small shed on the edge of our patio to house the saw. For smaller items, the saw can be left in the shed. For larger items, we will roll it out of the shed onto the patio. We think our use of the saw is infrequent enough that this approach will work.
We found a shed that seems to fit the bill at Home Depot. It’s a resin shed called a Big Max Junior from Rubbermaid. I researched it on the internet, reading all the reviews I could find (most were on Epinions.com) and I read through the assembly manual on the Rubbermaid site until convinced that it would both do the job and we could handle the assembly.
Our first problem was finding one in stock. Our local Home Depot had the full-size model (7 x 7) on display and had a sign with the Big Max Junior price but didn’t have any in stock. Labashi struck out at the next Home Depot she called but then found several in stock at other regional Home Depot stores. We picked the store in Mechanicsburg since it was a little closer than the others.
At the Home Depot, we had another problem--- the Lawn and Garden guy, Ed, couldn’t find any of the four units which were supposed to be in stock. But as we were helping look around for them, we noticed what appeared to be a dis-assembled one on a cart and pointed it out to him to let him know exactly what we were all looking for. He then said he could sell us that one cheap if we didn’t mind taking one that may or may not have all the parts. The story on this one was that it was a new one but had been left out in the rain in its cardboard box and the rain had ruined the box. Someone had put the contents of the box on a cart some time ago and by now it appeared that everything wasn’t there. The bag containing the instructions-manual small parts, for instance, had a hole in it and there didn’t appear to be any screws or bolts with the shed. Ed said we could call Rubbermaid about any missing parts and they would probably give them to us. That seemed pretty “iffy” but on the other hand the $398 shed was being offered to us for $125.
Because I had read the assembly manual, I knew there was a full parts list in it so while Ed went looking for the other units, Labashi and I inventoried everything on the cart. It turned out the only things missing were the screws and bolts… and the parts list specified them exactly--- 24 each #14 x 1 pan-head screws, 2 each ¼ x ½ pan-head bolts plus washers and nuts for these two bolts. So we agreed to buy the shed at a savings (with taxes) of $289.38 on a $398 shed. Good deal!
We were so anxious to get the deal locked in that we went straight to checkout and didn’t even look for the screws and bolts until after checking out and loading the shed in our van. Then we went to the demo model and I took out a screw (and put it back) to be sure I knew what they should look like. We found the bolts, washers, and nuts but for some reason the #14 x 1 screws rack was empty. But we got them a few minutes later at Lowe’s. Total expenditure for the missing parts: nine dollars.
We took the shed home and started assembly at 1530. By 1700 we had it complete and had the saw in it. What a GREAT day this one turned out to be!

Sunday, 11/27/05-
We spent the night at a Comfort Inn near my nephew’s wedding reception. We had breakfast with my brother and family and then decided to head home by lunch time—I didn’t want to pass my cold/flu on to anyone.
That afternoon we visited friends who had invited us for dinner and to see a slide show presented by a friend of theirs who is a photographer for Bryce Canyon National Park. Dinner and dinner conversation was great and the slide show had the best images of Bryce we’ve ever seen. It was fascinating to listen to the story behind each slide, to be able to ask questions, and to see photos of secret places in Bryce and other parks in southern Utah.
Our new friend had started as a volunteer who had been invited to work on developing a web site for Bryce Canyon and after two years as a volunteer had spent this past summer as a paid ranger there and is headed back out for the winter. What an interesting, talented, committed guy.

Saturday, 11/26/05-
Today we attended my nephew’s wedding and I have to say it was one of my favorite weddings ever. In the wedding ceremony the pastor did some interesting things--- he read the marriage license out loud, for instance. He had the bride and groom turn and look into the faces of the congregation. He reminded them that we (the congregation) had gathered because we care about them and want to offer our support, both now and in the future, even in times of trouble (a good reminder for us too!).
The reception was also a good one—well thought out and wonderfully executed. Everywhere were small touches that made it special and told us what creative, caring people they are. What a proud day for all involved.

Friday, 11/25/05 –
I more or less took it easy today, given that it was the day after Thanksgiving. I spent much of the day on the internet, researching solutions to various problems we still have outstanding from our basement adventure. I’ve still not found the right dehumidifier and I’m looking for just the right lawn shed, etc, etc. But no physical labor today—I’m retired, after all.

Bezabor: Painting floor, balancing walk, dehumidifier woes, washer/dryer relocation…

Thursday, 11/24/05 –

We finished up the washer/dryer installation today in the morning and then drove to my brother’s home for Thanksgiving dinner in the afternoon.
We had our first snow of the season overnight. We just had a very light covering of snow and by 1000 or so it was gone. But it’s windy and cold today—temps in the low 30’s and winds blowing 20-30… a good day to be inside enjoying a Thanksgiving meal!

Wednesday, 11/23/05 –

I had another dental appointment today so didn’t get into the basement until 1400 or so. The main thing we accomplished was to extend the washer drain about eight feet laterally and add a trap.

Tuesday- 11/22/05 –

Today we brought the washer and dryer back into the basement. Once again, we thought it’s time to make some improvements. We decided to move both the washer and dryer about five feet and facing in a different direction. Where before they blocked access to the water heater, washer faucets, and sewer down-pipe areas, moving them would both open up that access as well as provide a less-cramped workspace. These moves would mean that we would have to do some plumbing work to move the washer-drain connection, we’d have to extend the washer-intake hoses, and we’d have to come up with a completely new routing of the dryer vent pipe.

So today was mostly taken up by figuring out what to do, researching the limitations on re-routing the vent and drain pipes, and buying the parts needed. By day’s end we had the washer in place and leveled and most of the dryer-vent piping done.

Monday, 11/21/05 –

I had a dental appointment in the morning. Labashi painted the second coat of paint on the basement floor and that has turned out well. The underlying red paint covered up fine and we’re very happy with the results.

We returned a dehumidifier we had bought last week. It was Whirlpool’s most powerful model and I thought we should be safe to buy a major brand like that but this unit had multiple problems. First, the unit is supposed to work down to 44 degrees F but it iced up almost immediately even though it was in a 60-degree room. I contacted Whirlpool Customer Service by phone and they said it should not do that and I should contact a local dealer to service the unit under warranty. Later I checked it and it had de-iced so I thought maybe it worked in cycles of freezing and defrosting so I sent an email to Whirlpool support but again was just advised to call someone in. I don’t think Whirlpool Customer Service in either instance had a clue….they were just following a checklist.
I found two other problems. The Low Fan setting causes the unit to become even noisier than the High Fan setting and the humidistat apparently didn’t work—the unit would never cycle off, even after setting the humidistat on the moistest setting and our basement hygrometer showing a reading of under 40 per cent humidity. I had no hope of getting any answers from Whirlpool so we returned the unit to Lowe’s and I’m trying to find a good source of recommendations for another brand. So far both Consumer Reports and the various sources of reviews on the web are disappointingly vague or are biased. It was also interesting to learn from the returns-desk clerk at Lowes that about 30 per cent of dehumidifier units—regardless of brand—are returned.

The whole issue of using a dehumidifier comes from our realization that our old dehumidifier really isn’t up to the job during the cooler months. In trying to use it to help dry things out after the cleanup, ours iced over immediately while the commercial unit used by the cleanup crew did not. A little web research revealed that most only work down to about 65 degrees and that was consistent with what we’ve seen. We also realized that our practice of hanging laundry in the basement means we should have a low-temp dehumidifier.


Sunday, 11/20/05 -

We needed some outdoors time so Labashi and I went for a walk at Pinchot State Park’s Beaver Creek Trail. It was a great day for a walk and we took advantage of the many fallen trees along this trail to work on our balancing skills. We started out with the larger trees and slowly graduated to smaller diameters. The point, of course, is to maintain balance and to avoid ‘dabbing’ a foot down or using nearby branches or standing trees to help maintain balance. Labashi does it well—she turns each foot out at about a 30 degree angle and walks very slowly, making tiny corrections as she goes and making it look easy. I tend to wave my arms around way too much trying to correct and am soon off the tree. We started out with trees about a foot in diameter and eventually could walk for 15 to 25 feet on trees as small as five inches in diameter without stepping off. This little game is not only fun but also a bit of a workout—we were a bit too cool as we started our walk but once we tried walking a few trees we took our jackets off.

The other thing we did to help restore our sense of balance was to step and jump from rock to rock on the trail, again trying to avoid dabbing a foot down. Some sections of Beaver Creek Trail are rocky enough that you can do stretches of up to 80-100 feet without touching the ground. This little trail game is another confidence-developer and helps when it comes time to cross a creek.
We were surprised to see slush ice on Beaver Creek. It seemed odd to see ice this early. Water normally takes quite a while to cool down in the Fall to the point where ice will form. Since our weather has been warm lately—days in the high Fifties and into the Sixties, nights mostly above freezing, it didn’t seem possible that we would have ice. It also seemed odd that it was such a nice day that there was a canoe and a kayak on the lake yet here was ice on the creek. It would have been fun to paddle our kayaks up the icy creek—I think the ice was thin and slushy enough that we could have paddled through it.
After our Beaver Creek adventure we drove over to our local Barnes and Noble store to browse through the books and do some Christmas shopping. Then we went home and watched a movie we had rented, “Born into Brothels”. This award-winner is the story of a group of children of sex-workers in the red-light district of Calcutta. An American photographer, Zana Briski, gave the children cameras and taught them how to ‘see’ with a camera. Their photographs were so striking and her commitment to the children so strong that she was able to get them into boarding schools and is financing their education via sales of the photos. See www.kidswithcameras.org for more about the movie and to see some of the photos.


Saturday, 11/19/05 –

I was ‘off’ today and took a couple of motorcycle rides—about 120 miles total. I did some errands in the morning--- picking up some plumbing supplies and shopping for another dehumidifier. After lunch I decided it was such a nice day that I just HAD to get in some more riding so I spent the afternoon sport-touring in the mountains north of Harrisburg.

Friday, 11/18/05-

I painted the concrete basement floor today using Drylok Concrete Paint. We had considered using an epoxy but the expoxies all say the concrete must be ultra-clean or the epoxy won’t stick properly. Since our floor had been painted before in one section and had carpet adhesive applied both to the painted area and to much of the remainder of the floor area, we decided we’d better not try epoxy. The painting started out well enough but I soon ran into a problem—the previous coat of paint started bleeding through. It was a deep red color and I started to see streaks of red in the sandstone color I was applying. I found the best thing was to just avoid brushing too much—which of course conflicts with the instructions for the concrete paint—it should be brushed in well. The instructions also had me thin the initial coat of paint with a pint of water per gallon of color. That made the paint very thin so it was not surprising to see that the first coat did not cover well. The initial coat took most of the gallon-and-a-pint. I had 625 square feet to do and coverage was estimated at about 500 square feet per gallon so that worked out about right. I decided I wanted to be sure the paint had plenty of time to fully dry and since application temperature was fairly low—just under 60 degrees— I thought it best to let it dry for the weekend.
The other thing that happened today was we learned the township sewer board had met and had agreed to pay the bill we had submitted for the cleaning, for a month’s storage, and for our additional cleaning/sanitization supplies. That’s good news!

Bezabor: Drylok-time...

Thursday, 11/17- Today was cleanup day to prepare for painting the floor tomorrow. It took most of the morning to use the wet/dry vacuum cleaner to pick up all the dust spread around on the floor and walls by the floor-sanding machine. The dust was so fine that it clogged up the vacuum cleaner filter and I had to stop to clean it several times. After vacuuming, I mixed up some more fast-setting cement and plugged up holes left from the partition removal and removal of the nailed-to-the-floor carpet edging. I then mopped the floor thoroughly (and with multiple water changes) and then set up our new dehumidifier and turned up the heat in the room to be sure it will be dry enough and warm enough for painting to begin tomorrow. We then went to Home Depot to pick up the custom-mixed Drylok concrete paint--- 'sandstone' in color. We've decided to see how it goes with just a painted floor for awhile. We certainly don't want to have glued-down carpet again---- not after the struggle to pull it up when wet.

Wednesday, 11/16- This morning we determined that the leak at the sewer downpipe would have to be fixed before proceeding with floor painting. The leak was coming from a tee/cleanout fitting and I decided it had been caused by a bad fit between the downpipe and tee caused by the fact that the downpipe is not as vertical as it should be. If I were to replace the tee with another one like it, I'd be lucky to get a good enough fit to avoid a leak. That would also take replacement of several other fittings and the introduction of a slip-fitting to get the pipe to the correct length. I decided I could avoid all that by installing a rubber "Quick-Ell" which is perfect for a situation like this-- just cut off the tee at the flanges, remove the tee, put the rubber ell into place and tighten down it's stainless-steel clamps. I would lose the cleanout on the other side of the tee but if I need to open up the pipe to inspect it, I could just do that by removing the rubber ell.

The big surprise happened after I sawzalled-off the tee. When I grabbed the upper section of pipe to put on the ell, the section of pipe fell off at a joint about three feet above. I can only guess that it had been improperly installed in the first place. Once I cleaned that up and re-installed it, it was simple to install the ell. Leak fixed!

We then went off to Home Depot to rent the floor sander. It's actually called a "floor maintainer" and uses 18-inch sanding disks. We rented at about 1430 so had to have it back by 1830. The actual job of sanding the floor wasn't bad. The biggest problem I had was caused by the dust mask. As soon as I put it on my glasses fogged up. I finally found a defogging cloth I use for my motorcycle helmet and that worked fairly well--- just not very long at a time. As time neared to take the sander back, I was glad to stop. I was tired and covered in a thick layer of dust. I dusted off as best I could and cleaned up the sander and got it back on time. The sander cost $26 to rent for the four hours but used $32-worth of sanding disks (five of them).

Tuesday, 11/15- We dropped off the first part of our claim to the township office for review at this week's meeting of the sewer authority. We are submitting the bill for the professional cleaning services plus the cleaning supplies we had to buy. We also went shopping for plumbing fittings to install traps for the dehumidifier drain and the washing machine drain. We went to Home Depot to check out the rental floor sanders and supplies and understand how that would work and how much it would cost. The floor sander is needed to prepare the concrete floor for painting. It's supposed to feel like medium sandpaper and some sections seem very slick, particularly where there was carpet adhesive and an old coat of paint that was under part of the carpet. After our return home, I was checking out the fit of the plumbing fittings when I noticed a small leak from the sewer downpipe that I'd have to take a look at tomorrow.

I then decided to remove a partition which formed the wall between the laundry room and hallway. We had decided years ago that we would 'someday' take it down and eliminate the too-narrow hallway. And today was a good day for it. The sawzall made quick work of the job.

Monday, 11/14- Today I painted the second coat of Drylok masonary waterproofer on the block wall of the basement. This used up the rest of the five gallons of Drylok. The square footage of the wall was 204 square feet and I painted two coats so that's 408 square feet. Coverage was estimated by the manufacturer as 50-100 sq feet per gallon; I averaged 80 sq ft per gallon for the job.

Bezabor: You gotta be kidding.... a cheese explosion! (posted from home)

Sunday, 11/13/05 - I must have spent longer awake through the night than I realized for I didn't wake until 0830. I made some instant oatmeal for breakfast and got on the road. I cruised the forest roads for a couple of hours, stopping at each of the overlooks to enjoy. Many of the forest roads were tight little double-track roads with drainage ditches on both sides so I was happy not to meet anyone coming the other way. I made my way down to the C&O Canal and stopped at Town Creek aqueduct for a short walk, then went over to Paw Paw, WV. I stopped at the Paw Paw tunnel parking lot but decided to wait until Labashi was along to go into the tunnel.... that gives me an excuse to come back.

It was only about 1200 but was clouding up fast so I decided to head home via Berkeley Springs. Labashi and I had enjoyed a soak in the public baths there last year and I thought I might have a soak but then decided it really wouldn't be much fun without her so I headed on home via back roads.

And now the weird thing. I was sitting in my chair watching some TV and having some olives (from the McConnellsburg Giant's olive bar!) and Easy Cheese on crackers. I accidently bumped the Easy Cheese can and it fell to the floor beside my chair and then rolled into the stairwell in our foyer. Upon landing, the Easy Cheese can started spurting-- strongly enough that it propelled the can backwards across the brand-new rug we just put there last week. The can emptied its entire contents onto the new rug before I could get there. Absolutely incredible-- an Easy-Cheese explosion!

Saturday, 11/12/05 - I took the weekend off to play. I took Mocha Joe to Green Ridge State Forest, near Flintstone, MD. Labashi and I had stopped there overnight years ago when returning from a vacation in West Virginia and I wanted to get a better look at this 44,000 acre forest. I had gotten a late start and didn't get to the State Forest office until 1300 so didn't want to spend a lot of time looking for a camping spot and I didn't want to just accept one at random. The nice lady at the office, Michelle, allowed me to register but not select a specific camping spot if I'd promise to call her back by cell phone by 1600 with my prospective choice of site. She told me to call before setting up, just in case someone else had selected that one in the meantime. She also gave me some hiking recommendations.

Michelle told me that the Twin Oaks trail could be combined with another trail to form a four-mile loop. That sounded about right for the remaining daylight so I headed up there, checking out the nearby campsites as I went. By the time I reached the trailhead.

My only problem was that the trail brochure said the four-mile hike would take four hours and there were only three hours of daylight left. But I've done enough hiking to know that I can pretty easily average two miles an hour hiking and I saw from the map that there was a bailout option--- about halfway through the hike the trail crossed the road I had used to reach the trailhead. If the trail was a lot tougher than anticipated I could bail early and just follow the dirt road back to Mocha Joe.

The trail was excellent. It progressed through mature oak and maples, all very open with no understory, into a transitional zone of mixed growth, through a pine plantation, through a managed-for-wildlife area, then down into a pretty little valley where I followed a streambed upstream along the bottomlands and then back up to mature oaks again. The end of the loop is the start of the Mid-State Trail into Pennsylvania; I've got to go back and do that another time. Well done, Green Ridge State Forest!

I camped in site #6 which had a nice open view of the sky and a level area big enough for Mocha Joe. I got supper going and split some firewood for a campfire as the sun set and a spectacular full moon took over. With my fire I was very comfortable as temperatures slowly dropped through through the fifities and into the forties.

By 2000 or so I was ready to go inside and I wanted to try my little Coleman catalytic heater. I had used the little Coleman years ago and had stored it away when we got the Portable Buddy heater. But the Buddy heater puts out 6000-9000 btu's and even the low setting is a little too much and on low it makes a little too much noise. So I thought the 3000-btu output of the Coleman might work. And that turned out to be the case. By bedtime the outside temp had dropped into the thirties but I was comfortable in shirtsleeves in Mocha Joe.

I woke about 0400 and saw that the moon had gone down. But I could still see the tree outlines outside. It was from starlight. Even through the tinted windows of the van I could see thousands of stars. I lay there watching for awhile before falling back asleep. The outside temp was 32 at that time and I woke an hour or so later and it had dropped to 27. But I was comfy under my sleeping bag.


Friday, 11/11/05- I spent today putting on the first coat of Drylok paint on the block wall. Before starting the actual painting, I fixed all the holes with Drylock Fast Lok, a cement-based filler. The painting went well and I used up about half of the five-gallon container of paint. I want to let this dry thoroughly between coats so will not start the second coat today. I finished up around 1400 and rode the motorcycle in to the plumbing supply to get a check valve for a pipe leading to our floor drain. We use that pipe for the dehumidifier to drain into and want to put the check-valve in place in case of another sewer backup. I've also blocked off the floor drain with a plug but am not fond of that solution in the long run. In our 24-plus years in this house we've had a washing machine malfunction and a water heater leak which were handled by the drain. Somehow I need to get a check-valve in the main sewer line.

Thursday, 11/10/05 - Today was another day of scraping carpet adhesive but I was able to finish up today. Fun, fun, fun.

Wednesday, 11/9/05 - Working on the basement today. I spent most of the day scraping up carpet adhesive left behind by the carpet removal process. I had been surprised that the wet carpet came up as easily as it did. I had simply slit the carpet into yard-wide strips using a utility knift, then used a large (about 8-inch) scraper we had bought some time ago in preparation for 'someday' replacing the carpet to cut through the foam carpet backing while lifting the carpet. But that left a fairly thick layer of adhesive on the floor.

I had found several recommendations for removing the adhesive on the internet and thought I'd try the one that made most sense to me, which was to spread a 50-50 mix of denatured alcohol and water over the adhesive and cover it with plastic for a while to allow the adhesive to soften. Then use a four-inch razor scraper (available in the ceramic tile or wallpaper section of the hardware store) to scrape up the adhesive. That actually worked fairly well. I would put down the alcohol-water mix on a section about the size of a large garbage bag and lay a heavy-duty garbage bag over it. I did four sections like this and let it sit about a half hour before starting. As I'd scrape a section and no longer need the bag, I'd put it down on a new section. Each bag-sized section took about a half hour to scrape.

Before starting the scraping job, I washed down the concrete block walls with an acid solution called Drylok Etch, to prepare for painting them with a Drylok latex paint. The treatment takes care of 'efflouresence', which looks salt crystals on the blocks. We had a few small patches of efflouresence, each only six inches or so across but while I was at it, I might as well do all the blocks. The acid had a pretty strong smell and would cause me to cough sometimes but I set up several fans to keep the air moving so it wasn't bad. The alternative was to use muriatic acid and I'm sure that would have been much worse. After washing down the walls I went back and sprayed them thoroughly with water from the hose and mopped that all up before turning to the scraping job.

Bezabor: Work, work, work--- (and some play) (posted from home)

Since last report we made arrangements for a professional cleaning crew to come in and disinfect and sanitize the basement area. A crew of three people came in Friday morning and because we had EVERYthing out of the basement--- all our belongings, the washer and dryer, all the carpet, and panelling out, and the drywall, insulation panels, and furring removed to a height of 48 inches--- the cleanup job was an easy one and they were out of here in two hours. They left behind a commercial dehumidifier which has been running ever since.

The other thing that happened was that removing everything revealed an area of termite damage behind the drywall so we've also had the termite specialist in to treat both the damaged area as well as the outside wall of the house.

Also on Friday the township guys who caused the problem came by with a dump truck and in several trips hauled away all the discarded stuff in the driveway-- I was VERY glad to see my driveway again.

After six days of struggle getting things back in control, we took some time for ourselves over the weekend. I took a motorcycle ride in the morning and then loaded some stuff into Mocha Joe to be temporarily stored at my brother's house (about an hour away). After spending the afternoon there, I camped overnight at a state park part-way home. That was a GREAT idea. I was surprised to see so many campers there. The campground in that park is open year round and I've spent more than a few nights there alone or with only one or two other vehicles in the campground. But this 50-degree night there were thirty-five sites with campers registered and probably a few others like me who arrived after the office closed and used the self-registration system. This was terrific-- everybody seemed to have a big campfire on this nice (November!!) evening and it was great to hear the nearby kids enjoying themselves. After supper I sat around staring into the campfire until 2300 or so before turning in.

Sunday morning was also beautiful and I headed home, enjoying the fall colors. Labashi and I spent the afternoon planning and trying to figure out which things had to be done first. Then Monday we spent the entire day at Home Depot and Lowes, checking our options for reconstruction of the basement.

As part of our discussion on what was important to get done before the weather turns bad, we had decided we could let the basement wait a bit now that it was all cleaned up (and the dehumidifier is in there doing its job) but we needed to scrape and paint the exterior frame of our living room bay window. So Labashi got that started while I made our first run for building materials. I also had a repair job to do on part of the window frame. A small section of the exterior frame which had a brickmold shape had rotted so I replaced that section with vinyl brickmold-shaped material--- so that section won't rot again. Then we painted an undercoat layer of paint on all the exterior frame and by that time it was supper time!

Bezabor: Uh-Oh--- sewer backup....

This is just a short note to explain why the long time between posts. We returned from the American Conservation Film Festival late Saturday evening. Upon entering the house we noticed a very strong smell and when Labashi went downstairs her first step onto our rug in the basement was a squishy one. Not good!

After a short look around, it appeared that the line to the township's sewer system had backed up into our basement. We called the 24-hour number on our township's web site and by 2300 or so we had someone onsite to check it out. It turns out the township had been doing some work on a pumping station nearby on Friday and had put a block on the sewer line while they worked. This allowed sewage to drain back from homes uphill from us, eventually pushing water and raw sewage into our basement and soaking the carpet in about three-quarters of the basement.

So since Sunday we have been working to remove everything stored in the basement, pull up and remove the soaked carpet, remove the paneling, and start on removing the lower section of drywall. We have rented a storage space at a nearby storage facility and are in the process of filling it with our personal effects (those which were not contaminated). We have a long way to go but can see progress daily. At this point we have the basement cleared and the standing water out but the concrete is still damp. We have professional help coming for the disinfection step and then we need to start re-finishing the basement.