Saturdays when Sarah works are kind of awesome because we are up early and i can get a ton of work done with an early start. Sarah likes to sleep in on her weekend so most Sunday’s i don’t get started until 10 am.
The first chore was to disconnect the wiring in what was left of the shed. I have a totally irrational fear that it is going to collapse and cause all sorts of problems. Once i got the circuit off (which also powers the fridge and microwave. Fridges are supposed to have a dedicated circuit since they have a big load when the compressor starts up and we are forever tripping the circuit if we have the microwave and toaster on when the fridge starts up. I can’t wait to have a properly wired kitchen. but i digress) i hauled a lamp into the shed (note to self: you left a bunch of extension cords and your worklights in the east part of the attic) and started disconnecting things. The shed had a couple of 4ft florescent fixtures, a plug, a couple of switches, and there was an old motion sensor light on the back where we parked. How hard could it be?
Once i was done in the shed i had to go into the laundry room and try and track where the wire came from. Of course i had to haul the lamp back inside, because the laundry room lights were on the same circuit. There was only one wire heading that direction and naturally it had to pass through the room under the addition. We keep this door closed and haven’t set foot in the space for over a decade because it is the stuff of nightmares. It is the stuff of the nightmares that nightmares have. I cleared a bunch of stuff from in front of the doors, whispered a short prayer (did you know that there is actually a prayer for home repair and a decade ago someone asked on Ask.com who the patron saint of home repairs is. It seems like it might be controversial) and opened the door.
Nothing jumped out at me but in the dim light from the lamp i could see a ton of rat shit. Fun! I quickly swept it away and I dragged the lamp in and was so busy looking up at the wires that it took me a few minutes to notice the rat laying to my left. If i had had the headroom i would have jumped a mile bit instead i just flinched and pulled back. It took my brain a moment to register that it was actually a mummy rat (or a rat mummy) because it was obviously quite dead and mummified. Who knows if there are others but i didn’t see any. It was right out in the open laying beside some old doors and maybe that was enough to keep the other hoards of rats away. I wonder if i blocked it in when i closed up a bunch of holes earlier this year. It did look like it had been dead for a while and we know that our neighbours have poison bait traps because we have found dead and dying rats in the yard before.
Of course the wiring couldn’t be simple so i took out the light in the little room and the switch for the light that was acting as a junction box for the shed part of the circuit (I saw no point in disconnecting the wire for the shed and leaving the rest intact when the addition is coming down and besides, i hadn’t anticipated/didn’t remember the light in the shed so had already taken the other end of the wire out of another junction box so i could turn the fridge back on) and the shelving in the laundry room to get access to everything. It was quite the production. Yes the rat is still there. I’ll deal with it later.
After lunch i cut the railings off the shed. I tried to unscrew it but with the exception of the bits connecting the corners at the top of the railings all of the screws were rusted. The only ones that came out were one side where they were screwed into house on the side of the addition and i think the threads had all rusted off. After that i happily worked at taking the siding off and loading up the trailer to go the dump in the morning.
I was pretty shot after all of that and had to prep dinner for our friends daughter, Cara, who was visiting. We have known Cara since before she was born and she is now a nurse in Victoria and was over for the weekend with a friend. It is so much fun to visit with adult children that you have seen grow up. We are so lucky.
Sunday was a lot more relaxing. I took a trip the dump and reloaded the trailer but since it was nice we took the afternoon off for a bike ride. We grabbed some GF bread and treats for Sarah and rode down to Olympic Village to catch up with Lee, Marcie, and Hiro. It is still a bit too cold to stand around in cycling clothes but it was great to see people. Sarah managed to get some garden tidying done but not as much as we had planned.
We ended the weekend reviewing the final drawings for our building permits and signing off on them for the architect!
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