What To Do During A Covid Quarantine?

Well well well, what do you know. Steve and I both have Covid!  We have been so very careful, but this Delta variant has worked its way into our bodies. Fortunately, we both have been vaxxed so it has given us just mild symptoms with the vaccine protection. I fortunately qualified for an immediate Regeneron monoclonal antibody infusion. Within 48 hours I was feeling pretty good, mostly back up to snuff. We still have some slight symptoms yet that come and go. We are treating with over the counter meds, mainly Mucinex D and Tylenol.  We are quarantining for 14 days. Our wonderful son-in-law has been keeping us stocked up and supplied with what we need from the store. 

Since we are basically "trapped" here at home, which is a perfect time to get another thing done on our house projects, right? 

It is finally time to put the second window to good use. If you recall, earlier this spring Steve managed to find two of these windows on Facebook Marketplace. A contractor had evidently mis-measured and they weren't the correct ones for someone's cabin. But they used them for six weeks until the new windows came in. So technically they were used, but they were like brand new. We pick them both up and installed one of them in the corner nook in the kitchen this past spring. Now it's time to install the other one.  It is 6 feet wide and 4 feet high.

Where you might ask? On this last section of wall that we have not finished the siding yet. This is exactly why we didn't finish putting on the siding. With my magic little glowing yellow finger on my cell phone, I managed to draw in this beautiful window right into place. How perfect is that? Well, not really perfect. But you get the idea. It's the same type of window that we put over on the side of that breakfast nook to the right.

Here is my magical glowing yellow finger drawing it now on the inside. This is our master bedroom on the wall facing to the east. We don't get much daylight in the room at all. We only have one regular window on the side of the bed to the south. So this big expanse of glass is really going to add to the room. Plus, we will have more cross-ventilation with the little windows that open on each side of the large picture pane.

This is the view that we're going to be able to see (approximately) from that window. This is taken from the bathroom window. So it's going to be a beautiful view out at night with the backyard illuminated from the flag pole lights, or in the morning as the sun comes up in the East.

At the same time, because we're going to be tearing apart the room and making a mess, we are also going to add new drywall to the ceiling. The patched up ceiling configuration still has the support boards from the original two closets before the bedroom was enlarged. There are also the holes from the old light fixtures before all of the electrical was updated. Time to get rid of all of that and have a new smooth ceiling. Then we will put my leaded glass light fixture back up again.

Steve got started yesterday making plans and figuring his lists of things we have on hand in the garage to do this project.  We are glad we are prepared with all of the stuff to do this project.  Armed with his laser level, he drew the lines on the wall where he would be cutting the plaster and lathe from the inside out. Not only does he have to cut out a 6 ft wide by 4 ft high section for the window, he has to cut an additional 12 inches above all of the way across, for the big header and the side support studs.

This morning we were both feeling pretty well so it was time to get to it. Steve started with removing the 11 inch tall mop boards along that wall. They were put in with huge long nails a hundred plus years ago. Fortunately, he was able to get them off in their entirety so they can be reused again once we are finished with the wall.

Look at that beautiful clear yellow pine. These boards are from a long time ago and you don't see that type of wood being used for a basic mop board in a house anymore. Steve admired the grain as we carried it out to keep it safe and sound until it's time to install it back into place.

Next we both donned our N95 respirator masks and safety glasses. Using his electric oscillating tool, he worked his way across the horizontal line through the old plaster and lathe.  I picked up stuff, moved cords out of the way, and covered the bed with a sheet of plastic. 

Last month, we picked up an extremely fine filtered Shop-Vac, it's made for actually cleaning ashes out of fireplaces. While Steve used the Sawzall on the two vertical sections of plaster, I held the nozzle of the special shop vac to keep down the dust. We also had a large fan blowing outwards through the open window in the bedroom. Our goal was to keep the dust down, so we didn't have to seal everything up and prevent it from getting in the rest of the house.

 

It worked very well 

and the dust was kept to a minimum.

Now it was time to start peeling off the plaster. I could feel the excitement of HGTV shows when they shout DEMO DAY!!!! Bit by bit, we pulled off the chunks of plaster. It even had horse hair mixed in as a bonding agent.

It actually had wallpaper behind it too. There were two layers of wallpaper underneath and a couple layers of paint. I had the little pry bar and Steve had the larger pry bar to reach up higher. We filled up a tote at a time and carried it out immediately, rather than letting a pile up too much on the floor. We kept an old carpet along the wall that could help protect the hardwood flooring. It was easy to just take that rug outdoors and shake it out from time to time.

After we started peeling off the inside plaster wall and the lathe wood, we could see the inner layer called "wall pugging".  We knew this was already there when we worked on installing the new electrical on the house. This is the type of construction that was used on European homes back in the late 1800's and early 1900's and also by immigrant settlers here in our country. The purpose of pugging is to create an extra layer of wall between the inner and outer walls. This allows an additional air chamber to flow up to the attic and allows the house to cool with air movement in the summer.  The opposite effect is obtained in the winter, as it creates an extra barrier pocket of air, rather than the inner wall getting cold by contact directly to the outside. Old houses never have insulation in them. They were heated by wood and that was usually free.

The smooth white plaster inner wall

called "wall pugging"

Basically, it's a wall within a wall, with air spaces on each side of it. 

During this process, I happened to look down... and saw a piece of paper float out of the wall! It appears to have been the detailed figuring and ciphering of someone who was building this house over a hundred years ago! How amazing is that? It had all different calculations and some figures about costs and figuring out square footage ect.! 

On the backside it appeared to be calculations of how many board feet to get out of logs and maybe some lumber calculations. Perhaps the person building this home was swapping some trees out with somebody down at the lumber mill? Maybe he was figuring out how much wood was still needed to complete the job? We will never know. In the meantime, I preserved it in a plastic page protector for now. It will go in the scrapbook.

Back to the wall pugging. Steve started removing it and it was coming out pretty easily. He would crack away the layer of extra plaster and then pull away the vertical strips of lathe that was holding it into place. I grabbed each section of wood and stacked them in a tall trash can so they wouldn't scratch the hardwood floor. You can see the wide boards of the outside wall in the background.

Here's a little video segment I shot to explain the wall pugging:

That was enough work for today. We cleaned up and put away the tools. I Swiffer'ed around and took care of all of the extra dust. I pulled the plastic off the bed, so we can still sleep in the room tonight.  It may get down in the low 50s tonight, so we will have to kick on the furnace a bit.  When we get around to doing the sheetrock and plaster on the ceiling, we will remove the bed completely, and sleep out in the motorhome in the driveway. 

 Let's see what we can accomplish tomorrow.