LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

Home 'Improvement'

Insulation experiments

by 11 Comments

Tacky, tacky, tacky.

Yes, they are towels.

First, regarding my heating experiments, the parts of the house where we actually live and work are quite comfortable. Don’t ask Lloyd.

Second, I believe I covered the whole heating/insulation/plastic-over-the-windows-is-a-joke topic last year.  I had a comforter over the windows last year, and am trying towels nailed and clamped with hair clips.  Nobody sees these windows except us.  And Brad – but he doesn’t care.

Third, I am certifiably crazy.  I’ve been keeping track of our gas bills for the past three years.  Having a low heating bill has become a game, and I’m gonna win.

Fourth: Laugh all you like. It’s 11 degrees warmer on this side.

It may look cold, but it really is.

Holy smokes!

And for my mom, don’t fret.  I’m typing this at the computer and it’s much warmer where I’m sitting.

Taming the wind

by 7 Comments

It was a very strange day, what with not talking and all.  Samith came over to borrow our truck, and I think I said five sentences.  Strange.

Anyway, it was a fairly productive day.  I worked on my accreditation stuff for school, did a little housework, and taped off the downstairs guestroom.  You heard me right – tape.

Ignore that strip of whatever that’s hanging down.

This house is seventy-five years old, and the windows (at least the ones that aren’t painted shut) are drafty.  This one faces north, and today was windy, so you could really feel the wind blowing. Last year I used that rope caulk, but I didn’t like it very much.  Tape seemed easier.  I taped the edges of the storm window, then the edges of the actual window.  It was funny, because when I got to the end, I had a little wind tunnel at the lock.

It’s really windy right there.

I taped that off, stuffed some cloth around it, then hung towels over the windows in there, shut the door, then stuffed a towel under the door.  (Lloyd says, nothing says White Trash like towels stuffed everywhere.)  Yessir, there’s a lot of dead air between me and the outside.

A Day of Mystery

by 8 Comments

It was a mystery-solving day around here for the Sommerer Gang.  Where to start?

Well, every so often during the summer we would notice this one spot on the basement floor that would be a little wet.  It didn’t smell like cat pee, so we figured it was just condensation from all the humidity, and let the cats live. Last week I went to put some boxes away in the basement (by that spot), and noticed that they were wet, too.  Could it be ghosts?  It looked a lot like ectoplasm.  We put down some newspapers and waited.  Nothing happened all week.

Until today.

exhibit a

This time when we looked up, though, there was a drip!  (Last time there wasn’t.)

exhibit b

What the what the?   Using my visual-spatial powers, I deduced that it was coming from upstairs somewhere.  (I’m genius like that.) What did we find?

Aha!

The culprit!  This leaky jug was inside the front coat closet.  No wonder the stain felt a little greasy.  Rain-x is slick!  The puddle was oozing over to a crack in the floor, but we figured it only actually went down when the puddle was big enough.  Puddle would drain, leak would stop, puddle would build up – reach the crack, then drain, etc. etc.

Other mysteries solved: (mouse over the pictures for answers)

Who ate the top of Lloyd’s last piece of pizza?

Cricket. Maybe that’s why she has diarrhea.

Why was the sky on fire while Lloyd was mowing?
A controlled building burn a few streets down.

Why did Lloyd only smell animal poop when his feet were propped up while reading, but never when he walked around to find the source?

He stepped in something while mowing. We cleaned the floors.

Got any mysteries?  We’ll solve ’em.

Where’d it go?

by 8 Comments

I caved yesterday and turned the heat on.  It was 63 degrees in here, and while I’m crazy and cheap, I’m not that crazy.  So the heat is on (at 68), downstairs vents are open, upstairs vents are closed, but I can’t find the stairway curtain. (Hey, you can see the old kitchen in that post!) I had to substitute a silly old flower one for my ultra-classy white one. 🙂 Where could it be?

It’s an extra for the upstairs bathroom.

By the way, current heat check, 67.7 from here on my stool, 62.3 behind the curtain.  I knew you’d want to know.

Leak

by 12 Comments

We’ve had some torrential rain hereabouts lately, and on his way downstairs this morning, Lloyd discovered that the roof over the stairs is leaking.  I had no idea what he was working on until I came upon his contraption construction.

It’s construction should be exceedingly simple.

Why go to all that trouble?  See, the problem was that the leak was right above that post, so a bucket couldn’t be placed there.  He fixed that with a complicated structure that consisted of: four boards, four screws, an upside-down plastic box, a wastebasket, and an anvil.  I’m so amazed at his ingenuity.

Yes, that’s an anvil.

Of course, paranoid me tied the anvil down with a bathroom robe belt so it wouldn’t be dislodged by the cats and kill one of us.

The kicker?  I came home tonight and the leak had stopped, but the ceiling is soggy in other places.  Hooray.

The cleanest car ever.

by 14 Comments

Well, Lloyd wins the prize for Most Productive Saturday.  He spent seven hours cleaning the Honda, and you could perform surgery in there – it’s that clean.

car1.jpg

shiny-shiny.jpg

ca-lean.jpg

My day was less productive.  Lloyd helped me take the sticks to the burn pile, and we ran a few errands.  Back at home, I was getting the recycling rounded up and started a conversation with my neighbor.  As we talked, we heard a meowing.  Bob said, “Sharon heard that last night.  We don’t know where it’s coming from.”  Well, it was coming from the cat stuck up in their neighbor’s tree!  Poor thing – all night it had been up there!  I knocked – no answer, so with good intent I broke into their fenced yard and got the little thing out with a ladder.  (I’m just like a fireman!)  The sad part is that this barely-not-a-kitten-herself has recently given birth, because her lady bumps were pretty swollen. I spent the day trying to find her home (and her lost kittens), but no dice.  She followed me all around the block but no one knew where she was from.  She’s hanging out on our front stoop now, but she thinks Lloyd did a fine job with the car.

honda-cat.jpg