Anybody done any construction?

[Morella]

My house is on a slab. The inside was sheet rock and then there was fiberglass between the studs, then some kind of wood, some thin styrofoam, and aluminum siding.

Since my central air fucks up like clockwork every time the temperature reaches 104 degrees, I decided to put an extra air conditioner in to cool the computers and home theatre in the middle of the day.

I decided to put the bottom at 16", because if you know me, you know that I am not going to lift it any higher than that. So I got my laser level and tape measure, and started my cut. I made a hand-sized hole to be sure that there weren't any wires in there. What I found, though, was that there were weeds in the insulation. Did the bonehead who put the extension on this house build it so that it hangs over the slab?

All I know to do is put down poison for weeds and bugs, staple the aluminum siding to the wood, and caulk around both sides of the air conditioner. Any other ideas, aside from burning down the house and blaming it on the weeds in my insulation?

Maybe run the weedeater more often. I don't know.

[hotroddwayne]

Morella, I almost teased you when you did the thread on "mr. Crane" to invent a lawn mower next... but spared you until now since an overgrown yard is creeping under your siding & spreading through the exterior wall. Around here home additions are typically to level off the ground, dig a footer, dump in some gravel to level off in preperation for laying block up to the desired height to build a floor & walls on. Weeds & ivy will seek out anything to cling to & grow under... especially where you are to get out of the sun.
so FIRST... mow your lawn, keep it mowed, & mix up some "kill everything" spray & do your foundation every couple months. My building I live in is 40' x 360' approximately & I keep everything killed back about 8" from the foundation.
Here's why I almost teased you before... girl you got to mow sometimes!

[Morella]

Yes, you are right about cutting the grass, although this is a man's job, and even the man is here, he does not do it Her spends his time playing on the computer. I see a typo back there, but I am not in the mood to correct it.

It was impossible to trim to the slab, though, because the siding was installed so that it hung out at the bottom. It is not secured to the wood with anything, except in this one spot under the air conditioner and to the corner of the house. If this were a humid state, there would be a roach colony in there.

Yes, I did finish installing it, except for some trimming and the rest of the caulking, then the usual patch on the wall where I ended up starting exactly 1" from the power line and had to move the hole. I really should get one of those power cord finders. I taped it up with package tape, for the moment.

I haven't been this tired in a long time. When it gets too hot for the central air to work, I will vacuum the glass wool insulation, and pieces of weeds, from the floor, and turn on the new unit. There was no vent register placed in the extension when it was added, so the extra 8000 BTU was really needed anyway. There is a fireplace over there, so I think that I can say that it is living space, with cooling and heat, when I sell the house.

This is what 90 minutes of work does to me. I can barely breathe, just sit here and drink water. I don't know how the Disability people could be able to say that I could still do "shit work", but they will probably do it and make me appeal it.

Ironically, it is the leakage from the swamp cooler dripping off of the roof that caused those big thick weeds to grow in the spot, and we are in the middle of a heat wave with rain every night, so it will not go away unless I keep cutting them. I am ready to throw the the cooler off of the roof and patch the duct end. That is the kind of crap that I bought a big weedeater for. Don't ever buy a small weedeater...they're not Scotch...they're crrrrrrap!

I wrote this same reply last night, and I woke up with my keys on the keyboard, the whole window full of Y's, and about a hundred copies of Windows Explorer open. I do that sometimes.

-denise