After a whirl wind of activity last week, I’m just feeling kinda meh. Sort of anti-climactic we really got a lot done knowing my Bride’s Dad would be staying with us for a month in the Cabana. We completely redecorated 18’s old room as a guest room, complete with fresh paint job and new furniture all of which had to be assembled. The Cabana needed work since I thought squirrels had invaded the attic and made a mess and got into some of the A/C duct work. Turns out they were not partying alone. While I was up there brining up tools and a shop vac to clean up, a 3ft long 50# raccoon got startled and scampered out of a hole at the end of the roof no larger than 5″.
That was worse than the damage I had to fix at my parents house when I had an epic party in high school while they were out of the country. And that is saying something. On a related note, I was rather amused when my brother called me a few years back to tell me that Mom was mad at him for putting a hole in the wall and covering it up with a book case. That was one problem I didn’t fix and a book case full of national geographic magazines was probably not going to be moved anytime soon. In retrospect, I was correct. Mom was only partially upset with me after i admitted the infraction since it was over 20 years ago, and I agreed to take the Nat Geos off her hands. They are sitting in a bookshelf in the cabana.
Back to those damn animals in the attic. There is feces everywhere! I have no idea what they were doing with the ductwork but some of it is literally shredded.
I have purchased 25′ of replacement 8″ duct and I need to see if I can patch the duct board for now since it seems nobody has any at this point. I still seems pretty firm and I’m sure I can shore it up internally with some metal and tape the hell out of the outside to re-seal it. Not pretty but good for a couple of months until I can get some replacement board. I have another job I want to do with duct board in my house attic to re-route some obscenely stupid installation that was done wich makes the massive empty and tall attic almost impossible to navigate. I will be moving most of it that is laying on the ceiling to be hanging from the roof. If necessary I will add insulated boards above them on the underside of the roof rafters, but as usual, that’s another project. One that will not be done before I finish Black Betty.
I have already blocked up the holes with multiple pieces of 2X8 boards which aren’t going anywhere. I feel a lot better about the attic since with a lot of the feces vaccummed up and the boxes re-arranged it is actually pleasant up there. It doesn’t hurt that the afternoons have been in the 70’s. I’m sure in summer that place will be hotter than the proverbial devils arm pit.
Well it turns out my FIL’s plans have changed and now he will be arriving a few days late, staying in the house for a few days and probably only be staying in the Cabana for a week. Well I guess the work needed to be done anyway but I would really have rather used the time to work on my Truck.
