Sunday, July 17, 2011

Blah

I noted that it's been seven days since my last post.  I really meant to post earlier in the week.  I was rocking around this house and then the rain came and I've been blah since then.

On Monday, I resolved to change the exhaust fan in the bathroom.  In the winter we discovered that the fan had been installed backwards, with the wrong type of ducting, with gaps around the box allowing excess moisture to flow into the attic and with no insulation covering it.  So, I was going to pretend I was handy for the day and fix all this stuff up.  What a cock-up that turned out to be.

  Whichever IQ 8 person that installed the fan used plastic dryer hose to hook up the fan to the outside world.  Trying to get that off was not fun as it stretches A LOT before it comes off.  I found myself laying in the fibreglass insulation stretched to my maximum trying to reach the end of the ducting with my fingertips to no avail.  This necessitated taking down the ladder (we only have one) and moving it outside and setting it back up again and trying pull the vent and it's attached hose outside.  Now, when I say I had to take down the ladder, I mean I had to collapse it.  We have one of those ladders that can be a full length ladder or a step ladder.  So, I had to collapse the legs of the ladder down, fold it up, manouver around the corners in the house and take it out back and extend it again and set it up against the house.  I did this three or four times during the course of the day.

Did I mention, that the sun came out that day for the first time in a week and it was hotter than a snake's ass in a wagon rut in that attic?  I was sweating so much when I was trying to remove the box for the fan that I couldn't see properly for the sweat in my eyes.  Did I also mention that the box was not set up on the joist, but was moved out with some poorly matched pieces of wood?  So, I had to take the box off, then move one of the pieces of wood to the other side so, the fan would still be in the same hole, then screw the wood on and the box.  Of course the drill wouldn't fit in the small space left between the wood and the joist, so I had to screw them both in by hand.  My hand was so slippery with sweat that I had trouble turning the screwdriver.  All of this by flashlight.

It turns out that a job that should have taken an hour took most of the day.  During this episode, I very nearly took a match to the house to make the solution easier.  I also cursed every one of the incompetent hacks that has worked on this house over the years to an excrutiating eternity in Hell.  I've been recovering my sanity ever since.

I should also mention that we've had about five hours of sunshine since that day. It has been rainy, grey and cool nearly everyday.  This is why I'm blah.

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