CSI Roscommon

Sparks is not on site on Monday 13th, having a job to do up in Dublin, but he leaves Mum and Dad with a good job to do. They have to spray all the available wood now left in the house for woodworm; rafters, wall plates, lintels, joists, floorboards and any other kind of framing or plank left visible after all the destruction of the last few weeks. This will involve 5 gallons of nasty chemical which are liberally labelled "Harmful to the Environment", Death to Fish, Kills 99 percent of all known life forms and so on. They must tog up in disposable paper overalls , safety goggles and dust/spray masks like forensic examiners from "Crime Scene Investigations".

We, the dogs are included in the "environment" so for the duration of the spraying we are squared away into the caravan and not allowed out. Mum does all the downstairs and shoulder height stuff which can be reached by the nice long wand on the knapsack sprayer. Dad gets to go up the ladder and probe up into the rafters and the roof ridge. The overalls, gloves and dust masks get ruined with the spray. One of the tins is the version with green dye instead of the clear, diesel-coloured oil. The rubber fronts of the fairly cheap gloves bubble up and go all soft when hit by the spray, leaving them looking when discarded' like warty green toads. This all ends up on the bonfire heap. Because Dad has some juice left after all the indoor wood was wet with the stuff, and the pile of tinder wood was well infested and a bit too close to the house for comfort, Dad gave that a good spray over too.

A messy job, but worth doing.
Deefer

Wedges and Green Goo

Four more pictures from last week just to fill in a bit of detail.

1) The low-tech wedge arrangement used to push all the floor boards up tight to each other before they were nailed down. An off cut of wood is cut through at an angle to make 2 wedges. This is nailed down to the joists just 'off-shore' of the new boards. A 2nd chunk of wood is placed between butting up to the new boards. The wedge is then driven in between the offcut and the new board, forcing these to tighten up to the ones you are kneeling on, which are already nailed down. No gaps!

2) This is the view north from the caravan. It will also therefore be the view from Mum's proposed kitchen-garden when we've finished wrecking the place and turned it back from building site into Garden-of-Eden. Our land finishes at the hawthorn hedge. The rest of the farm (the 10 acres or so we didn't buy) runs down the slope to the stream and back up a bit into the peat-cutting bogs you can see here. In the distance are some forestry and then the town of Ballaghaderreen, with low hills beyond that, by which time you're into Counties Mayo and Sligo. This is the view we want to keep clear in our gardening and 'borrow from' for our views as if we owned the place. This field is going to be our mixed fruit orchard with or without hot and cold running chickens and lambs, but we will leave an 'avenue' un-planted so that we can see this view.

3)Last thing Friday Sparks started to build stud walling on the main bedroom side of the hall. He would like to point out that the drunken looking upright on the left of the picture is not actually fixed in place yet. He does not want anyone to get the idea he can't do verticals.

4)...and finally a picture of the green goo with which we have protected the ends of our new joists. This is wood preservative, so we guess some kind of kill-all-known-germs stuff which kills woodworm and prevents re-attack but is dyed green just so you can see where you have painted it on. You larrup it on fairly thick especially on the grain ends.

But that's enough writing for one weekend. More from me next Friday or Saturday.
Deefs