If you see fewer posts. . .

it's because I don't post much anymore.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Breathing Fiberglass til 3:30 am

Friday I went to work and came home early to help Sandy. She works hard and some days I think she needs Calgon to take her away. But we've been remodeling the bathroom and don't actually own any Calgon. . . .so I came home.

We drove over to a home ideas center on the south side of town and picked up a nice bathroom light fixture for about $100. Made in China. Jeez. That's another post I guess. Drove home and installed it while the boys and Annika napped. Very nice, but after having the light out for a few days, we noticed that even with the new fixture, the lighting in our bathroom kinda sucked. Sandy and I decided to install a new light fixture over the tub. I said I could wire it to come on when the fan was turned on. (Which makes sense.) At this point, we decided to get a new fan to replace the dirty/corroded/noisy one that has been in there since 1988. After the kids went to bed, I opened up attic for the first time since we bought the house in 1998. Very dusty. Lots of blown insulation. And hard to breathe.

I drove to Menards and picked out lights for the new light fixture, and picked up a light "can" and faceplate for the recessing shower light. Made my way over to the bathroom fan department and picked one out. $10 bucks. Went to pick up some dinner for Sandy and I. Panera -- closed. Erberts and Gerberts -- closed. Sandy called and I picked up a Mr. Pizza on my way home.

While Sandy finished up the Friday night cleaning ritual, listening to Delilah--who is a total one-upper in my opinion--I climbed into the attic for my night of fun. Using a hammer I ripped out the existing fan, wired the new one in place and ran extra wire over to the area over the tub a few feet away. Installing the light over the tub was very tricky because there was only about 18 inches of height in that part of the attic. It was very difficult to saw through the ceiling, and I had to come down to finish the job. I probably went up and down about 8 times doing different things. I couldn't get enough space to hammer the light can into the joists, so I had to go and get my power drill/screw driver from the garage. I was done with the wiring and install at around 3 am. I had a mask but sometimes I forgot to use it, so I breathed a lot of fiberglass. The area where I installed stuff looks like a kid was rolling in the snow. I will probably go up there with a rake and fluff it up. If that doesn't work, I'll buy some new insulation to throw up there.

I am proud to say that everything worked prefectly. The 50W lightbulb I bought wasn't powerful enough, so I bought a 75W spotlight and it works great. The lighting in the shower matches the lighting in the rest of the room. I cleaned up the room, and went to bed.

My throat was sore, so I woke up a few minutes later and swallowed a large slice of pizza, partly chewed, to get rid of some of the fiberglass irritating my throat. Slept like a baby.

(I changed the post date on this to Saturday morning. That's when I wanted to write this post.)

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