Klowns in my Koffee

There was a fierce wind that blew most of the day. It was one of those winds that makes your recycling roll down the street and the children walk at an angle. The overcast sky and the desire not to become an unsuccessful Mary Poppins kept me off the roof and further delayed the project. Tomorrow should be less windy, though colder. Chim-chim-cheree.

The fates have been good to me lately. T's notebook developed a bad solder joint beneath the graphics chip which we remedied by baking the motherboard in the kitchen oven until it reflowed. Yeah, that was my reaction to the suggestion, too, but it actually worked. Sometimes those nuts on the Internet have fallen into a successful process. Fools rush in ...

Given my almost magical luck recently in finding total strangers willing to give me expensive things, T asked if I could look for a free notebook on the various sites that I monitor. Just as I was telling him that notebooks almost never are given away like that (while the world currency appears to be saggy plaid sofas), one popped up.

We called and found that the owner was having some power issues that she had decided not to deal with. She was on her way to give it to the county recycling center when she thought she'd list it for free instead. I picked up the notebook this afternoon and we've been putting it through its paces ever since. Looks like the problem might be a flaky power cord and an older battery. The woman had replaced the notebook with a more current model. I brought her a basket of fresh vegetables and herbs from the garden. I still feel kind of guilty. We told her that it could probably be fixed easily but she seemed happy to have someone take it. I was happy to take it and also to use up some zucchini.

When we left our heroes, they had just returned from obtaining a new sheet of plywood to replace the one that had been shredded and run over by 200 vehicles on Highway 494. Plywood 2.0 had a better fate. It was primed on both sides and the edges. Since we will cover the wood soffits with raccoon-deterrent aluminum, we can't merely nail the aluminum over the wood and still have the correct air flow. The original installation has a row of vents for the entire length of the soffit. The replacement piece, in fact, snaps in on one side of the vents.

A completely airtight house is not a healthy house. One of the byproducts of a house with bad airflow is ice dams on the edges of the roof because the warm air pools in the center and causes the freezing on the periphery but doesn't channel enough heat to make it melt. (Another byproduct is a chimney that backdrafts because it can't pull outside air through the house, killing everyone with carbon monoxide. Given the choice, I'll take the ice dams.)

To make sure that the vents on the aluminum soffit are functional, it is necessary to cut openings in the old soffits. There needs to be a minimum of 1 square foot of venting for every 300 square feet of roof. We cleaned the old vents plus cut an opening between each stud line.

We fit the 8 foot panel into place and nailed it as securely as we could. We had to use screws where the gap between the soffit and the shingles was narrow since we could do that with a ratchet where a hammer wouldn't fit.

Then we cut vent holes in the existing soffit, causing that shower of walnuts and raccoon poop that we've come to expect. The additional level of difficulty with this step is that you have to hold the saber saw over your head so that whatever falls goes right into your face. (Very much like working at Porkus but somehow still better.)

Notice the strip of lathe that will be used as a center nailer for the aluminum soffit. This is needed whenever the soffit width is greater than 2 feet so that it doesn't sag in the middle. This will also keep that gap between the aluminum and the wood constant and that old airflow working for us.

Hard to see from the picture but I pried off the frieze board, the piece of 1 x 2 trim that used to sit below the soffit on the wall side. There's a dark line there now because the siding apparently used to be chocolate brown. I caulked the joint between the soffit and the wall and started to prime the fascia after scraping it. Then it started raining, so you still see it all the nasty old wood that needs to be painted. First job for tomorrow.