bloke wrote:Gypsum wall board...OK...It's sandwiched with cardboard, and sealed away with paint...but what sort of paint? My walls are (nearly 100%) "natural" (wood), but are sealed with...what...?? How long before paint/stain/varnish fumes subside? How friggin' nasty-@$$ is any carpet? How much longer would I live were I to stay outdoors all the time...??...or in a hole dug into the side of a hill...??
My beef with these materials isn't mainly about health issues. Though I wouldn't be surprised.
But honestly, it's mainly just that it's trash. It's a material with no inherent value. I mean it has the functional virtue that it holds its shape under moderate stress and it doesn't burn, but it's ugly the day it comes out of the factory and has nowhere to go but down from there. We build our houses out of scabby 2x4s, glass wool insulation, cover it up with gypsum wallboard and then, for looks, paint it all with latex paint. (Asphalt shingles and chipboard siding on the outside, of course, plus more paint.) Then eventually it's off to the landfill with it all. "Houses made of ticky-tack."
We are lucky to have fir floors, and in probably over a century of hard use they've got scratches and dents galore, but since the beauty of this material isn't merely superficial, a scratch doesn't destroy it. In what was evidently some kind of utility room ages ago, when I removed the later carpet and paint, and sanded the wood and sealed it with a good penetrating finish, the scarred and stained old fir is even more beautiful.
I remember my Mom talking about when sheet rock was introduced and everyone viewing it as "crap"...
...and I also recall that my friend's Dad (a few blocks away) built their entire (nice/brick) house framed on 12" centers.
If you've ever pulled timbers out of an old house, you notice two things:
- A 2x4 was closer to 2" x 4" than they are today. - Those timbers are the only ones that you'll encounter (other than today's pressure-"treated lumber") which is that dense.
bloke wrote:If you've ever pulled timbers out of an old house, you notice two things:
- A 2x4 was closer to 2" x 4" than they are today. - Those timbers are the only ones that you'll encounter (other than today's pressure-"treated lumber") which is that dense.
The joists in our original framing are century old stuff, ca. 1 7/8 x 5 3/4, milled pretty rough with sharp corners, and I wouldn't try to drive a nail into it, without drilling a hole first. By today's standards, it was naturally very good lumber to start with. We can still get fine old growth Douglas fir, but it's a limited resource now and goes to people who really care about wood (notably the Japanese.) But the boards from a century ago are much harder, I guess something that happens with age. From what I've read about southern longleaf pine, it starts out harder than Douglas fir.
My mother's family homestead (former dairy farm - about two miles from the shore of Lake Michigan...about halfway between Sheboygan and Manitowoc) was a two-story log house which was framed around the logs (plastered inside / siding outside). The window sills of that house (built by my ancestors) are ...t-h-i-c-k. I believe they were determined to be able to stay warm in the winter.
The huge old dairy barn still stands on the property. The current owners have made sure the roof stays good, and have built a "building within a building" (nice workshop with only a "ceiling", but no "roof") inside that barn (using the large, non-heated, breezy areas for storage of equipment, etc.
The lake shore properties up there are now very expensive (Milwaukee weekender homes), but "back in the day", that land was considered worthless, because it was too sandy to farm.
Biggs wrote:I returned Sunday from two weeks in Cuba. It was...not boring. Can anyone condense the last two weeks of TubeNet into a single post for me?
"cimbasso/tuba shipping/more Chinese shilling/sheet rock/way too many posts by bloke"
Biggs wrote:I returned Sunday from two weeks in Cuba. It was...not boring. Can anyone condense the last two weeks of TubeNet into a single post for me?
"cimbasso/tuba shipping/more Chinese shilling/sheet rock/way too many posts by bloke"
Biggs wrote:I returned Sunday from two weeks in Cuba. It was...not boring. Can anyone condense the last two weeks of TubeNet into a single post for me?
"cimbasso/tuba shipping/more Chinese shilling/sheet rock/way too many posts by bloke"
Don't have/don't do/no thanks/completely ignorant of/always worth catching up on
On one of my monthly turns through the largest of the local thrift stores, I was able to grab a copy of "The Dark Knight" for a buck. Having just watched it, all I can say is I am very, VERY disturbed. Heath ledger was SO GOOD that I actually felt a great deal of compassion for him. No wonder he got an Academy Award, and I can see why he couldn't get out of the fugue state that the character sucked him into. This is not your father's Batman.
Chuck"who HATES movie theaters with a passion and will watch the good ones at home where the floors aren't sticky, the Diet Coke is affordable, and the pause switch is a plus when one needs a break"Jackson
