Something is burning my nose hairs....

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been on travel for work to a little town in Virginia called Arvonia. The town is so small that there are no traffic lights or even street names. The roads are defined by number routes (i.e. VA-615). The place is so small, that the nearest hotel is about 1 hour away. I do have to admit, the traveling can be exhausting. Anyway, after several weeks of traveling, I’ve been finally able to do some work around the house.

In the last entry, I started to update my living room. I was on hold from completing the room because I had ordered some new windows. The windows came in about a week ago. I did have a minor issue that didn’t hamper the overall installation of the windows, but minor enough. Replacement windows are usually ordered custom and are measured and cut about ¼ inches smaller than a rough opening. So I measured one rough opening to be 31 ¼ inches and the other to be 31 ½ inches. So the window sizes that I ordered were 31 inches and the other to be 31 ¼ inches. Well of course you guess correctly, this bone-head flipped the numbers and installed the windows incorrectly. Basically, I had installed the 31 ¼ inch window into the 31 ¼ inch opening and the 31 inch window into the 31 ½ inch opening. So of course I didn’t realize this mistake until I was installing the second window.

While installing the first window, I was encountering some difficulty but didn’t realize my mistake until later. It was certainly a snug fit, where I had to use a hammer and a piece of wood to install the window into the rough opening. After feeling confident that the window was in place, I screwed it in place and then installed the window shade.

Pictures of the snug fit windows.

Realization of my bone-head mistake wasn’t discovered until I started to install the second window. I was doing a couple of fit checks when I made the discovery. Of course, I said a couple of loud explicative, at first. But, not to cry over spilt milk, I decided to shim the window in place. Here are the pictures of the small window.



Shimmed window with the reflection of the Redskins lossing from the Giants in the background...

After installing the windows, I decided to clean out my new tool storage area, my exercise room. I started to remove the tools and waste when I realized an odd odor in the room. Growing up, my father would always say, “Never start something new unless the last task is completed.” It is something that I try to live by. The odor was too strong. So I decided to remove the rug from the room.

Note the blue rug under the stuff

After removing the rug, I inspected the sub-floor. Most of the plywood looked pretty good, except a portion that seems to be cork-board flooring. The cork-board flooring appears to have absorbed what seems to be pet urine. So for the next couple of days, I’ll be removing and replacing that area. At least I found my smelly culprit.

Anyway, until next time, happy building…