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Another bad corner

This year there has been plenty of blueberries, and the season is not yet over. I've been picking a nice amount of blueberries from the forest right next to my yard. Today I spent couple of hours gathering the berries and storing them in a freezer. After that I decided to continue with the house renovation work.

Seen from the outside, the log walls are in a good enough condition. There is just this one corner; for a length of 30 cm one of the logs is completely destroyed, and the logs above and under that one have suffered some damage, too. Well, I decided that to properly fix the corner, I'd better inspect it from the inside as well. And that corner has a kitchen cupboard. So the cupboard has to go.

Tearing down the cupboard was a rather straight forward project. And actually it felt pretty good to finally get rid of the old cupboard; some of the structures had an old sticky layer of grease and dust. The cupboard turned into a heap of scrap wood. Since the timber has been indoors for years, it is pretty dry - which makes it perfect firewood for cooking coffee and for heating up the sauna. Behind the cupboard, inside a layer of thermal insulation there were two plastic tubes containing electric cables. And on the floor under the cupboard I found a hole dug by rodents. I kept on tearing down old materials, until I got the inside of the log wall exposed. I took a close-up picture so you can see that not only is there a piece of wall completely missing, but some other logs are also letting the daylight in.

Well, again I have put myself in this kind of a situation: having a hole in the wall is not a problem in the summer. But this summer won't last for long, so I'd better get the corner fixed before the days get chilly. Yet there is no need to rush with it. So, I think that for the coming days I'll just continue with removing the old materials of the interior walls. Doing such a simple work is good time to let my thoughts simmer a bit - I often find that plans and ideas need some time just being processed by themselves. And, eventually, I will feel ready to make a clear decision on how exactly to fix the corner. Now, when I can inspect the damaged area both from the outside and from the inside, I can take a look at it every now and then, and mentally testing my ideas like "if that is there, and then I do like this, then how would it affect that other thing which needs to be done..." Since I don't have years of experience with renovating old houses, I need a lot of this kind of thought process.

I'm hungry, my skin feels itchy because of all the dust, and I'm happy with this kind of simple life. I'll go outdoors to cook a freshly harvested zucchini. And to have a sauna.

This kitchen cupboard is a mostly harmless place
This kitchen cupboard is a mostly harmless place
The cupboard removed, exposing the log wall
The cupboard removed, exposing the log wall
Another bad corner
Another bad corner
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Ah, rodents.... I don't usually have much trouble with mice... I used to have two cats in the house to deal with them. But one of them died, so I guess the one that is left can't keep up with the mice!

So last night at about 3am, I had a mouse running around my house, with the cat tear-assing after it. You know how they are when they are in hot pursuit, claws digging into the floor, rip-rip-rip-rip-rip as they gallop around chasing the mouse, running into things, making a tremendous noise.

But I didn't want to scold Ms. Kitty, because well, it's her job to eat the mice, right? So I pulled a pillow over my head and tried to sleep through it.

But then the mouse jumped onto my big toe, and I bolted up and hollered and tried to punch it, but just ended up punching myself in the foot. D: And then of course Mr. Kitty leapt up after the mouse, claws extended, and sunk them into my foot. So I hollered even louder and went outside and slept in the bed of my pickup truck for the rest of the night. >:O

So hopefully when I get home from work today, Ms. Kitty will have the offensive rodent in her belly, and I will get some sleep tonight. :3

Uh oh =) It is always good to have somewhere to retreat to, in case the usual sleeping place turns into a battlefield.

I think human - cat interspecies co-operation is beneficial for both. (Although, sometimes I ponder if it could be possible to tame an ermine - they seem to be super warriors when it comes to hunting mice.)

Hmmm, I often wonder if the cat belongs to me, or if I belong to the cat. =:O

So hey man, how are your corner repairs going? I am curious to see how you fix it.

Assuming that I don't have to work a bunch of overtime today, I am hoping to get started on digging out under my house finally. Not something that I want to do, but I suppose it has to be done. I am still not sure if I will get it done before winter, though. D:

It is going to be rough. I was trying to figure out a way to take part of the wall apart so that I could pull a mini-excavator inside. But I'd just end up ruining something, so I will dig it by hand and dump the dirt out the window in 5 gallon buckets into a wheel barrow...... It is going to be a lot of digging, lol.

Ah, it was Monday evening when I tore down the cupboard. Tuesday and Wednesday I've been working for money, picking berries and thinking about details of repairing the corner. I wish to get it done at the weekend, so let's see =)

Several years ago, when I rebuilt the floor of the smaller room, I also had to remove a lot of soil. Since the window was already removed, I just dumped all the soil out through the window hole - which made a rather big heap of soil next to the house. But that way I got the urgent work done as quick as possible. Later on that autumn I hauled the soil away with a wheel barrow.

I guess something like that needs to be done with the floor of the main room, as well. But if possible, I try to leave it for the next summer...

Yeah.... I think it is easiest to dig with the floor out... I had borrowed a big long hoe-scoop-thing from work (we use it to scoop out the bottoms of the holes for the telephone poles), thinking that I could get way back under there with that and pull all of the dirt back, but it was very inefficient.... I am going to just dig out the whole underneath of the house to make a 1m crawlspace everywhere and line it with plastic sheeting, so I will have a decent space to work in when I start pulling wires and such under the house. And I'll have to fill in all of the holes in the foundation and the skirting to keep the animals from coming under and tearing it all up again......... Damn groundhogs, lol.

Hehe! We don't have anything like groundhogs in Finland. Badgers might dig a hole under an abandoned building, but they always stay away from areas where there is regular human activity.

Well, I hope it is all sandy soil underneath your house - having to manually remove rocks and stones is a lot of work. But dry sand is easy enough to remove with just a shovel.

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