fine whine

So I managed to actually take my half-day off work today, and arrived home to find my wife already there.

Needless to say I spent pretty much the rest of the afternoon on my back.

With an electric screwdriver in my hand. You see, the exterminator had just left and he'd pointed out a particularly nasty bit of insulation and rotting wood under our kitchen in which carpenter ants and other nasties loved to nest. My task, for which I'd bought the wood long ago but never had the great motivation to fight with the table saw to cut, was to rip out the rotting wood, whatever lay beneath it (or above, depending on your perspective) and to replace it with a sturdier sheet or two of better, treated lumber.

Surprisingly it went quite smoothly. I didn't cut the sheet of plywood very straight, but what is to be expected when one is cutting a 4x8 sheet of plywood on a table saw a foot off the ground and no fence to keep the wood straight? I had rigged up some rails, of sorts, using a footstool, 2x4s and my handy-dandy ladder, but it still looked like one of those "don't ever, ever try this" safety pictures. Anyway, two cuts, one sort-of-cut to straighten the second cut, and fifty to sixty deck screws later the gaping hole under our kitchen was again plugged, this time without ants and other insect morass.

At least, that's the idea. We still need to roll some insulation down there and grout around the cracks (as I'd mentioned my cuts weren't exactly square) but I'm with a decent sense of accomplishment.

And I'll let Jessica take care of painting under there. Screwing outside laying on my back just tuckers me out.