getting sick a few days ago upended everything. it's a virus, i'm sure. maybe covid. i dunno. i'm beating it, but i've been stuffed up, exhausted, sneezing, hacking, etc. it's made it a little difficult to do things. the main crux of what i'm doing hasn't changed: (1) finish up in the laundry and bathroom, (2) do a general clean in the kitchen, bedroom and rest of the space, including the next wave of things i can do right away in as many places as possible, (3) shower well, (4) sit down in bed and finish up the writing things i was doing - cataloging and the coffee table book. but, i have been forced to reorder a few things. i got most of the panels up in the laundry and went to vacuum when i realized the shop vac was broken and making everything worse, which forced me to scrub everything down with lysol by hand and to buy some new vacuums, and which got me pretty sick. that shop vac is in the garage, now. there's a new one coming but it won't be here for a few more days. there's a fancy electric steam mop in a box and a cheap usb electric spin scrubber both ready to go. as i was sick and better off in bed, i spent quite a while shopping for cheap kitchen gadgets on amazon haul and have a bit of a pile of crap coming that will actually help me finish setting the kitchen up. i've gone into the laundry to pick up where i left off a few times but have always stopped short; i have revacummed, relysoled, made sure the panels are snug, etc several times but i haven't finished with the last little bit of paneling. the last remaining issue in there is a persistent level of blow flies. is there a dead rat in there? i can't find it. rather, i think they were coming in from behind the wall and i sealed that up. i still have to get under the clothes rack and put up paneling in the far corner that i never go to, but the paneling has succeeded in eliminating the remaining minor problems, like falling food and sporadic droppings from unknown pests (it doesn't look like roach or rodent), except the flies. i'll have to do something similar in the garage.
i've spot cleaned in the bathroom several times but there's not much more to do except maybe buy a few more gadgets.
i redid a few things in the kitchen and will likely redo them again soon. it's been mostly cleaning and caulking. there are small and big purchases coming.
but i decided yesterday morning that i ought to focus on cleaning the side entrance first rather than sealing up the rest of the laundry. i'm just curious. it made more sense to leave that there for now while i'm sick, and don't have a good vacuum, and focus instead on getting as much as i could out of the side area, as well as reclaiming boxes for the ceiling or for storage. there's a door leading to a very small 5x5 landing, and a carpeted stairwell down to a hall leading into the furnace (behind a door) or the laundry. this is a 5x10 ish tiled hallway running parallel to a carpeted stairway up and out to a narrow paved space between the houses, and a very urban feeling front entrance. i was able to get some items belonging to the previous tenant out and handed to my neighbour, some old shirts i put aside as dust covers for my electronics and a pile of boxes out, that will end up on the ceiling (amazon), or in their own rooms, if they are for purchased items. after running a dustbuster through there, the only things left in the space are some bicycles to move into the garage, some paintings left here that i haven't decided what to do with yet and the things that are supposed to be there, namely coats and hats and gloves and scarves and boots and shoes. the hallway in that space will end up being an extension of the kitchen, while the carpeted area at the bottom will be a place to sit and will probably have a computer system to work in along with some kind of small couch. my long coffee table, which i am having difficulty finding a place to put, will not fit in there, either.
after cleaning that up, i decided to get out in the front entrance and the garage to try and get some of the last bit of caulking and weatherproofing done. i was able to get silicone over most of the front entrance and also to install some plastic weatherproofing intended for doors (and that i found downstairs) at the base of the ceiling, creating a separation between the spaces to keep the second hand smoke out. i went over that with the weatherproofing tape, and sealed up some of the spaces on the inside of the entrance before deciding i should let the rest of it dry before i (1) seal over the rest of the caulking and (2) close up the larger gaps with concrete or, in some cases, rebuild some crumbling or decaying parts of the concrete floor with fresh rock.
it's very warm in there because there's an a/c exhausting into the space that i'm going to....i'm going to ignore it. the heat's not bad in the room. it's technically a sun room for growing plants or enjoying sunlight and is quite cool at the bottom of the stairs (20s) and immensely hot (high 40s) at the top of it. i am intending on growing food and maybe some low potency marijuana for occasional use in there. i have almost completely given up on legal pot; it's too strong, it's no fun. you can't find low thc marijuana. the right answer is probably just growing a little myself in my sun room, with some tomatoes and red peppers and dill weed and whatever else. the high heat is actually potentially great for growing. i'm just going to put a shelf up with a bucket to catch the moisture (which i don't want) and shrug off the heat. the reality is that the thing is already on the brink. the water bucket is already full of rust. it will be broken in another month anyways. it's exposing the landlord as somebody my dad would have described as having "more money than brains". but i don't want to start a fight over something that has no real effect on me, other than the annoyance of dumping a bucket of water every other day. my rent is cheap enough as it is; i don't need to ask for it lower. in fact, my income just went up again this month, and i'm not convinced he's gong to raise the rent at all. i don't know who this guy is, but he seems to have a lot of cash and a lot of property and isn't being a landlord for profit but rather to advance certain social aims. he's probably losing money upstairs and doesn't seem to care. he may come from old money originating in eastern iran or western india/pakistan. i don't know. at all. but working in the 40+ degree heat knocked me out and ihad to fall asleep for a few hours. i decided to wait until the morning to finish what i was doing.
the reality is that this is a very, very nice basement apartment that has been taken very, very poor care of for a very, very long time and i rented for a song and i'm the one doing most of the work in cleaning and fixing it. everything's got holes and leaks and is crumbling apart, so so much of it is about caulking, and redoing concrete and doing plumbing work upstairs (i'm not doing that). there are people smoking awful things upstairs and i currently want to block them out rather than fight with them, because i don't want to move again (this place is awesome, except the smoking and the rats), so i'm putting a lot of effort into building up the ceilings. most of what i'm doing right now has to do with (1) putting heat and vapour barriers up in the bedroom, laundry, kitchen and some other rooms, (2) just cleaning. still. and (3) fixing leaks in the garage so i can set it up and move things in there, which will let me really clear the last pile of things out of the main space. we've had drought conditions most of the summer, and for the last few weeks, since i fixed up the holes to the garage. we're finally getting some rain this morning that i can use to test to see if what i did really worked.
at the start of the summer, in may, i went out on the other side of the house and cleaned all of the garbage out from my windows. there's three windows, spaced a good ways from each other, along the side, hidden behind a fence that goes into my neighbours' long driveway. there's no reason to go in there, and the fence provides almost complete privacy and a buffer between my space and their behaviour. in fact, it's ideal. i was hoping that cleaning the garbage up would let the plants grow in and it has. there are small trees and bushes, weeds of various types, wild flowers blooming and vines coming up on the fence, even. this was almost completely dead under piles of garbage left by my neighbours a few months ago, so this is just year one. i'm hoping it really grows into a nice little rainforest right outside my window, and provides me with an excellent source of fresh oxygen. if i can't get rid of the dirty smokers, something like a garden outside your window is one way to mitigate. as it's now grown in quite a bit, i'm trying to make it a habit of getting the windows open in the morning, to let the fresh oxygen in. thank you, my green-blooded friends. i'm noticing it today a little more with the rain and because i'm sick.
so i want to finish plugging up holes in the garage, as a priority for today, and try to get some things out of there, and then some other things out of here and into there. after tidying up a little further, i hope i'm feeling better and can get back to focusing on finishing up in the laundry, and doing the broad level of cleaning, before getting in the shower and then focusing on the typing.
once the garage is entirely plugged up and secured, and the ceilings are sealed up as well, i have a number of things to move in there and/or set up. that's a key inflection point in finishing this up.