Furniture A.D.D. (and what came after it) part 2

Having the proper tools makes all the difference in the world.  Fairly cliché, but oh, so true.

When last I left you (edge of your seats, the bunch of you, for certain), I had pulled down the majority of the block.  I must say I do not recommend hammer drilling out that much mortar, particularly when not wearing any kind of filtration mask.  My nose was full of mud by the end and my lungs still feel like they’re under ground.

 Here is how it looked when I got home from work with cold chisel and sledge hammer at the ready:

Notice the fact that I didn’t move anything out of the basement (apart from some blankets and stuff which Amy had the foresight to take away before they were ruined forever).  Also note how well my records are stored.  Yes, that is the soundtrack to Shaft.  That garbage bag is full of little bits of wood, the glass from the aforementioned lightbulb and a whole bunch of what amounts to mortar gravel. 

It took me a good, solid hour of smashing blocks with the sledge and chisel to get this stuff cleared away.  I can’t even begin to imagine how long I would have been there (and how many bits I would have worn through) if I had still been doing it the old way.  The gloves you see on top of the wall there were a gift from Gramma a few years ago.  I think she gave me 5 pairs and this is the first time I’ve had occasion to use them.

 

This is where I was after that initial hour.  What you can’t see there is the 40 year old ping pong ball that was mysteriously buried in the lowest level of block.  I was impressed at how well it bounced.  There is some kind of green plastic kajigger in there, too.  No clue what it was for but it was in the same neighbourhood as the ping pong ball.  It is terribly satisfying to smash all kinds of crap out of a part of your basement that you no longer want.  All of that busted up block and the whole blocks from Sunday’s entertainment are now sitting out on our back patio in the rain, waiting for me to figure out what to do with them.  I will either crunch them up more and make some kind of path between the shrubberies (a path! a path!) or I will bury them at midnight in an unmarked grave a.k.a. they will be the drainage layer in the raised beds I plan to build in the spring.  Also I will not be doing such things at midnight because it is dark out, you see.

 

 

After I’d heaved all the garbage out with our recycling bin (which looks absolutely fabulous, let me tell you), Amy came down and helped me clean up.  I don’t think our vacuum cleaner will ever be quite the same again.   The piece of plywood from the half wall fit almost exactly into the hole in the carpet (almost as though it had been planned to do so).  I filled the cavity with more or less the entire contents of a can of Great Stuff expanding foam insulation.  It is not really intended for such things but seemed to work okay.

I checked on it this morning and did a couple of spot-fills with the foam.  Tonight after practice I will cut out the excess foam and put the end panel back on (you can see it in the above right picture).  There is a short piece of baseboard that will just about cover it exactly.  Then I can get on with the original purpose of all this, which was to move the basement furniture around for more comfortable TV watching.

the sun and moon and stars