Not the end of sanding everything ever, but the end at least of sanding the repairs to the walls after the new electrical circuits. I had tried to get away with only two applications of joint compound over the mesh tape, but it just wouldn’t do. So I did a third coat.
And underneath Dawn’s window in the bedroom we did some repair as well. There had always been this one spot, since we moved in, that was just, well, soft. Like it was just drywall tape with nothing behind it or something. We were always afraid to press it or probe too hard for fear of busting through.
Well, what with the other repairs, Dawn went ahead and broke out all the bad stuff under the window. I was a little disappointed that she just went ahead and did it without me. I was curious as to what was exactly going on in there. As it turned out, all I saw was when she was done and it was a big old hole.
But after all the coats and now all the sanding, it’s all done and ready for Dawn to paint. We go to Home Depot and get little pints of paint and primer. Also at Home Depot I buy another package of 3/8″ dowels for the balusters. I’ve got nineteen balusters, so I need thirty-eight dowels, of course. So one package of twenty-seven just ain’t gonna cover it.
And while Dawn is painting I take a trip up to the roof to check for leaking. There’s a spot by the window, near where I patched, that looks like maybe some water damage. We’re not sure if it’s new or not. Maybe it’s been there since we moved in and we never noticed, although you’d think we’d notice something like that. It’s not wet or crumbling or anything, just kinda rough. It’s funny that we aren’t sure if it’s new or old.
I can’t see anywhere that there’s any way for any leakage, nothing new caused by the construction next door, the likely culprit we were thinking. While on the roof though I lean the ladder on the new third story and climb almost to that roof. I can clearly see the top of the Capitol and the Washington Monument from up there. It’s a little dangerous how I’m standing on the top rung of the ladder, though, propped as it is against the wall but also on the slight slope of the roof. I’m glad when I get down. And for once I don’t bang the ladder against the electrical wires. I’ve never been zapped, but best not to push my luck.
Roofs (rooves?) are tricky, especially when it comes to leaks. We had a leak coming through the ceiling in our living room once, and found that the spot where the water is dripping doesn’t necessarily correspond to the spot where the water is entering the roof. Those drops have a way of sliding down and across boards within the roof before they make it to where the leak shows up. Clever buggers.
We had quite the electrical sideshow in our yard this week. A particularly violent thunderstorm uprooted a hackberry tree on the next block, and it fell across the alley behind our house(s). It landed on electrical wires, and that caused a chain reaction, pulling wires and transformers from two more poles, and actually snapping our telephone pole off at the top. Wires were down in our yard and the next yard. It was the first time in my life I’ve been without electricity for 24 hours. The workers were real men, all right. They showed up with no less than three bucket trucks in our little alley, and proceeded to start from scratch. They sunk two huge new telephone poles seven feet into the ground, reattached all of the wires and added two new transformers. In the process of swinging the bucket around in the confined space, they tore our TV and internet cable down, but stuff happens. (Our phone was out for a while, too, for the triple whammy.) Still, we were able to have a candlelight dinner on our porch while we watched the repairs through the screen. It was really impressive. The wife said, “This is better than TV.”