After the demolition was complete, and the windows in, we could get on with the drywall work. We pulled down the insulation we found here and there in the ceiling. We’ll re-use it somewhere else. Once the room was enclosed, we performed our leaf blower insulation trick on the ceiling to really accomplish something anti-BTU-ish. The ceiling is low in there, so it was a breeze. I didn’t even have to stand on a stolen milk crate.

That bank of drawers you see on the right in the last photo is my chop saw stand. All of my tools are going to have to move to another corner of the basement. I’m not doing as much woodworking as I used to, so I can make do with a smaller work area. The table saw used to be located in the middle of the room, so I could push 14-foot boards through it. If I never push another 14-foot board through anything, it’ll be too soon. Besides, even in the smaller workshop, if you position the table saw properly, you can open a window and still cut a 12-foot board.

Of course this was the scene of a crime. It was where the original electrical service panel once hung. If you’ve never worked in a wooden electrical panel before, I can tell you it’s a treat. I cut the modern-ish circuit that fed the knob and tube wires in the box. That was the end of the last of the overhead lights everywhere upstairs, but c’est la guerre. Once it was dead, there was no more live knob and tube wires in the house.

That wooden box was built like Masada. It was lined with asbestos, so we couldn’t just whack at it, either. I put on enough NIOSH mask to avoid mesothelioma, and then pried the whole thing apart gently, while spritzing it with water to keep any dust from flying around. The pieces went straight into heavy double bags, got zipped, and I exhaled again. When I was a kid, my friends and I used to dive to the bottom of swimming pools and hold on to the drain grate in the bottom and see who could stay down there the longest. I was young and full of vim. Now I’m not young and the vim needle isn’t on empty or anything, but it’s not topped off, either. But I do declare I held my breath for an hour and a half this time. New record.

Well, we slapped in some partitions and screwed up some drywall, among other things, and got the white cubes of suds rollicking again. I found four turned table legs I made somewhere back in the mists of time, and attached them to each other with some aprons, and plopped a tabletop I glued up fifteen years ago and never used. But we’re back in business boys and girls, which is the important part. The laundromat ain’t for us.

We tried the local laundromat back when we suffered our infamous Geyser of Excrement episode. Or more accurately, Mrs. Cottage was forced to try it. She informed me that the clientele at the local sudsorama was like People of Walmart, if you distilled them in casks of methamphetamine and garden soil first. Only the bottle redemption center can compete with it. People will wash anything in a laundromat. It’s not their machine so they don’t care much about what happens when you need to use the washer they just used to rinse out their horse blankets and car floor mats. Gasoline soaked clothing seems to be another favorite in our area. My wife was unsure whether everyone who used the machines before her worked at a 7-11, or dabbled in arson, or both, but they sure did splash around in the stuff. So our washer and dryer could only be out of service for a few hours, because I like being married and stuff.

Everyone who reads my blog should go out and buy a ramshackle place of their own, and fix it up and live in it. I heartily recommend it. I also heartily recommend that you take the day to day operation of the household seriously, and plan ahead like this. There’s subfloor under the washer and dryer, and drains, and a working GFCI plug, and a light overhead, and a trash barrel, and a table of some sort to put the baskets on. Little things like that mean a lot in these situations. And you won’t smell like gasoline. Unless you want to, I mean. I cast no aspersions. Gasoline smells better than Brut cologne, and burns about the same as Hai Karate.

[To be continued]