Defective floortiles Sunday, 02-Jan-22 22:10:23 CET

Jens Folk Music Playlist 1 Tuesday, 11-Jan-22 21:32:43 CET

Monday, 03-Jan-22 21:31:37 CET

Main bedroom painted

Our bedroom is painted. We got the defective PVC tiles replaced.

Monday 3 January 2022

I did not start blogging until later in the week. That is perhaps why this blog post will feel a bit different than you are used to lately. On Saturday morning, I started blogging about the week, about time!

The reason for this is that I have been working on a project that I call "Jens Folk Music Playlist 1," and that has become a large project. I only have that much spare time, so I have to choose what to do. I made a playlist on music.youtube.com, and then I wrote about the songs, the artists, the albums in a document. It became 38 pages long! It has been enjoyable to write on. I thought I could publish it on Monday or Tuesday, but since I introduced new features in the blog system in the playlist text, I now need to reprogram the blog system to make those features possible. It is anchor point links that I will start supporting.

So what happened in the house? This week my wife was having a week off. I worked as usual. We went to the new house over the day. I sat working in the living room of the new house. My wife worked on preparing our bedroom for painting.

It was warm in the house. The startup program of the heating system was running. It will be interesting to see how the house feels when we can adjust the temperature to our liking.

Tuesday 4 January

Today we went to the new house, and my wife continued working on the bedroom. She also worked on plastering the northeast bedroom. I worked for my employer but from our new living room. I sat in front of the big doors.

Our plumber came to our new house and applied the kit to the first floor's washing room. With this, his tasks in our house are done until we are ready to get the ventilation system installed. That will happen after we get the stairs in place.

We could borrow his scaffold for a long time; he would let us know if he needed it.

It has been great to work with our plumber, but I am also excited to get the house for ourselves. But we are not there yet.

We did not hear anything from the PVC people. My wife had no confidence that we would hear anything from them anytime soon. I was not worried at all.

Wednesday 5 January

This is my half-day off day. So also this Wednesday. Usually, my wife has a day off on Wednesdays, so she continues on her tasks in the bedrooms as she used to do.

After lunch, we drove to the recycling center and emptied our little blue carriage from the garbage. The recycling center is still open. The recycling center is not doing any click-and-collect, haha.

Then we went to the hardware store and picked up more machine plaster (MP75) and top finish plaster.

Today the PVC shop called us and informed us about their plan to finish our floor.

1. First, he needed a photo of the batch number.
2. Then they would come tomorrow Thursday and pick up the defective floor packages.
3. On Saturday they will deliver the new floor parts.
4. Next week Wednesday, they will come and glue the floor.

Sounds like a tight plan.

I started working on the staircase lining today, i.e., the wood beams still need to be covered with gypsum. Since the floor will be glued on Wednesday, I will need to have the staircase lining finished by then. That will be possible. We want the PVC all the way out to the edge of the vertical walls of the stairway.

It was feeling hard to get working again, though. My wife had her plan going, but I had to start something new. She had her issues too, but she was already going.

I got a gypsum plate moved in from the container for the staircase project. We still got a couple of spare plates lying. I cut a plate and had it fit. Then came the part I have been so curious about, how to fasten the gypsum in the anhydrite layer. I looked up photos of how the pipes lie and concluded it would work. The thick grid is ten centimeters. That means I have enough space for a screw in from the side.

I had to take out the drill hammer that I rarely used in this house. I used it many times in the old house because it is made of concrete. I just started drilling, and the machine said "POF," and the breaker was released. That was annoying and also scary. In fact, it was so scary I thought I would just throw the thing away and buy a new one. I stood there with the machine in my hand and could feel the weight of it. It was not good to say farewell to this just yet. I tried another time, and the breaker did not release again, but there was a POF again. The drill got a direction switch. I thought that if I turned that switch back and forth a couple of times, it would perhaps get the contact surfaces "activated" again. It worked! I drilled four holes and could fasten the plate properly to cover the beam between the floors. It meets up with the ceiling of the first floor.

Then it was time for the next plate. It extends the wall over the beams in the staircase. It turned out that it would be too thick. The beam was just slightly outside the wall. I decided on plastering this part. It will become a thick layer of plaster that will line up perfectly with the wall below.

But there was not enough time to work on that this afternoon. Plastering was for another day.

Thursday 6 January

This was the first anniversary day of the insurrection at the Capitol in Washington. I just reread what I wrote on 6 January 2021. It feels like some of the hope I hoped for has not come true. The dark forces are still strong. The constant stream of lies has indeed dried out. I no longer need to see the face of Mr. Trump, the former resident of the White House. Those are all fantastic things, but I had thought that it was possible to bring in the insurrectionists a little quicker to trial. We will see.

This was a regular workday, but I worked from our new house. It is a bit of echo in the living room. When I call people, they find that disturbing. We will need to address that at some point. It will help put furniture in the room, but that is later.

The defective PVC was picked up. So much work to get this floor done. The packages are so heavy I can only carry one per time. It does not help that the packages were opened, making them more challenging to carry. The person who came to pick up the PVC had not realized all this. I was feeling bad for him, so I helped him. I could have him procrastinate and go back and forth with packages the rest of the afternoon, which had irritated me more. So I helped him so I could get rid of him quicker.

I plastered the next surface of the staircase. It went better than I had thought.

Today we got the message that the option for an apartment for our son that we heard about last Thursday was much further away into the future. Oh well, it was a great feeling for a week.

This evening we brought our little blue car trailer to our old home. Then we will bring with us a little fridge tomorrow morning.

Friday 7 January

Now we got a fridge in the new house! With this we can keep food and beverages cold, it is getting better and better!

This was a regular workday for me. We are amid another lockdown, and people are encouraged to work from home. I decided to take a week off next week. Then we will turn the roles around, that I got a week off work in the house and my wife will work for her employer from the new house.

I had to finish running projects at work today to get things ready for my holiday week. My wife was painting our bedroom. This was a bit exciting because she was using a roller, and she is mainly used to using a paintbrush. We learn new things all the time while working in the house.

Today was the last day of the startup program of the heating system. I set the temperature at 19 degrees. We will see how that feels tomorrow.

Saturday 8 January

In the morning, I could not notice any lower temperature.

Today I thought that the PVC people would arrive really early, like the first time they arrived. That did not happen. In the afternoon the bus arrives. It was the same person as earlier this week.

I helped him again.

I got a little discouraged by that the new planks were also crooked. The person who came with the new PVC drove back to the shop and promised to discuss the situation with his manager. The manager called back and assured me that all would be fine on Wednesday. I have no idea. I suppose we will see on Wednesday.

It was raining a lot today. My wife was plastering the bathroom ceiling on the first floor, and I was not especially busy today. I could not remove the stairs and finish my task just before someone brought 26 packages of PVC.

In the afternoon, the temperature had got down a bit, so we thought it would be nice to try out the woodstove. The last time we had the stove on was last winter. Back then, it was the only means of heating the house. Keeping the temperature above the freezing point was essential to avoid breaking the water system. We learned that the house was well isolated last winter. It feels excellent to have a decent fall-back heating system not relying on computers, water, and electricity.

When my wife was done on the first floor, I saw a good moment to remove the top section of the temporary stairs to plaster the remaining lining of the beams in the staircase. I filled it up to create an even surface to mount gypsum plates. Tomorrow when it is cured, I can put up the gypsum plates and put back the top section of the staircase. It is much more logical to do this at the end of the day so that the curing occurs when we are not in the new house.

There was just one minor issue. I had connected the light from an outlet on the first floor, then removed the stairs to the first floor. I had to climb via the scaffold to access the first floor. It worked!

Then we went home. I cooked dinner, and after that, I worked on programming the blog system again. I introduced anchor links in the system; it is possible to make anchors within a document and link to the anchors. This is a handy feature in longer documents. The playlist document is 38 pages, and I am linking back and forth in the document. I am also linking in the blog posts to things that have happened earlier. Until now, I could only link to the page; I would like to link to the exact heading inside the page in the future. For that to happen, I need to do a lot of things. One step at a time.

Sunday 9 January

It appeared as if it were going to rain endlessly in the morning. That is good because the drinking water and groundwater supply need to be filled up. Later it cleared up, and we even got a bit of sun today.

My first task was to finish the gypsum lining, which is required before putting back the top part of the temporary staircase. I photographed the situation before, but I forgot to take a picture of the final result.

The beams got metal brackets here, and these brackets got screws that stick out a little too much. I decided to sink the holes to give the screw heads a lower profile.

I learned that one of the screws was actually broken in the process. I replaced that.

 

 

With the screws properly sunken, I could prepare a gypsum plate. It had to have space for the metal brackets. One on each side.

I feared the most anchoring the gypsum to the anhydrite. To do that, I had to drill holes and obviously avoid drilling through the heating system's pipes. Another fear I had was breaking off a big chunk of anhydrite while drilling. It all went well! Plugs in the holes and then screws through the holes. It worked, fantastic.

Then I put back the upper part of the temporary stairs, and with that, my wife could continue working on the northeast bedroom.

I went out to the sheep and raked the hard surface around the feeding rack. This is a part of our driveway where we decided the sheep would stay over the winter. They spread the hay around the hayrack and walk on it, poop and pee in it. It is mulching and not very pleasant for the sheep. I scooped it up and placed it on the compost. My wife wants to use this stuff around the berry bushes. It is loaded with nutrients, and a thick layer of this will hold weeds away.

Hannah and Bea were afraid of the rake and the fork. Selma had no problems with my tools. She came and stood close to me. That was rather inconvenient at times, but she is sweet. It was one of the first times I got some love from Selma. Hannah usually comes to me and wants to be cuddled but not this time. Bea and Hannah were skeptical of my activities.

Here ends this week's blog. My wife had a week off. I worked from the new house, and that was great. She painted our bedroom, and we got the defective PVC tiles replaced. The new PVC tiles are also a bit crooked. Will that be a problem?