Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
It was COOOOOOOOOOOLD here last night.

Nothing record breaking, but by far the coldest night we've had around here this year so far.

It was pretty warm and sunny two days ago, and yesterday fooled me. When I went out on my back porch to smoke it was so sunny that it still felt warm. I didn't even realize that the high yesterday was only 22 degrees. So when I went out shopping, I wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion, and my hair still wasn't completely dry an hour after I took a shower. (Yeah... I forgot how nice it is to have your hair ready in 1 minute when it's short).

It didn't really hit me how cold it was until the wind went right through me while I was unloading my cart in the car, taking the cart back and getting back in the car. Chilled to the bone. I took off my mask and felt something hard behind my ear and almost freaked out imagining what kind of animal or something was on me until I realized that it was my frozen hair. Jeez....


Not feeling under the weather or anything, but I think I'm going to try to limit my time working in the chilly basement today just in case. I'll paint those doors and shelves, then I'll try stripping a few shelves upstairs after laying down some tarps first.

Seriously reconsidering having torn up that vinyl floor in the kitchen this early in. But still happy to have gotten it out though too.


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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Hey Jack, methylene chloride can also kill your liver. Be careful with that stuff!


Not only is inhaling the vapors not good idea, as a liquid it's also absorbed through skin, and the vapors themselves also penetrate your skin.

I'm trying to think of which kind of gloves are capable of keeping it out (butyl rubber? .... heavy duty vinyl? ...)

looks like butyl rubber/ PVA (polyvinyl alcohol)
https://us.pipglobal.com/en/selector-guides/chemical-permeation/?cid=9
3
(another website says these types of gloves should be used for one hour only and then allowed to dry for one hour before re-use)

butyl rubber 30mils thick or thicker
https://www.bencosales.com/glove-safety-cerification/

Viton
https://www.indstate.edu/sites/default/files/media/env-safety/pdfs/uta
h-ehs-glove-selection-guide.pdf

PVA or Viton
http://amo-csd.lbl.gov/downloads/Chemical%20Resistance%20of%20Gloves.p
df

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Sigh. The storm we just had was supposed to drop a ~quarter of an inch of rain in my area. Local official weather websites indicate less than and eighth of an inch of rain, as does my cachepot rain gauge.

The next storm is supposed to drop a ~third of an inch of rain.

Lady Rain, please be generous. The land, the plants, and the animals are looking to you.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

The wind giveth and the wind taketh away. Blessed be the name of the wind.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

I used to watch it to try and understand what's going on with them. And for the most part it seems like it was brain chemistry (sometimes coupled with dementia) that was clearly driving people's thoughts. Even though to them, they seemed to feel that those ideas were originating from within their mental chatter, and they felt that they were driving that bus (and not passengers).

Of the people I saw who got better, most seemed to have to struggle with hoarding in an ongoing way.

There was only 1 who seemed to have a revolution of mental state, where he clearly crossed some kind of barrier between it being normal for him, and then he looked back on it and realized how abnormal it was, because it was no longer part of his mental process.

But he was different from most. He wasn't so old he was demented. He came to hoarding rather late in life (his 50s). His wife had literally died in the hoard because fire/ EMS couldn't get to her in time and carry her out when she had a medical crisis of her chronic condition. And he sought help for himself. So, one thing or another, he was to me a clear exception.


Other than that, it's a mystery to me. Some people as I mentioned earlier were diagnosed with dementia. Some were very emotion-driven and their emotions were all over the place. But others seemed to be rational with good understanding of the world around them ... who just had this need to ... hoard. And that need was driving what COULD have been rational thoughts - I was working on a project and I'll need this later ... except looking around CLEARLY that need to hoard had led to an extreme physical outcome their (many) rationalizations couldn't justify.

(I can understand btw how people can 'fail to see' a hoard. Nobody starts a hoard with floors breaking under the weight. It starts with a pile of stuff here, then a pile of stuff there. Over time it becomes an accumulation. But by that time one has grown accustomed to it, and has trained the mind to ignore it as a problem, except for how to navigate, and how to hide it from relatives, friends, neighbors, and code enforcement. I think ignoring the overall environment and focusing down on particulars happens with many circumstances, like for instance the people who live on the trash dumps in the Philippines.)

Anyway, I came to no conclusions, and no global understanding, except it seems neurochemical, and with many different elements involved; and possible actually several different causes leading to a singular common noticeable extreme.

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It seems like a real hodge-podge of things. I don't think anybody knows for sure what kicks it off. You mentioned earlier you didn't believe it to be OCD related, but at the same time nearly every doctor on the show introduces themselves in the beginning of the episode and specifically lists OCD and other anxiety related issues as their expertise.

Jury's out on whether or not I have some level of OCD and/or bi-polar disorder. But I'm certainly not suffering from dementia yet.

I think I mentioned it before, but the hardest part of getting rid of all of it for me was just getting it out to the curb or packing it up to go to Goodwill. Well... the second hardest after cleaning up all the mouse piss and shit.

Unlike the people on the show who are faced with only 2 or 3 days to make decisions, I had the benefit of a lot of time to go through it. Not only that, but I was able to go through it all a second time a few years later and really get rid of stuff.

I can see where these people really feel overwhelmed because they had all the time in the world to do it and now they only have a weekend and 30 other pairs of hands all over their things making all the decisions.


Even now that I've got a few empty rooms in the house, tons of room in the garage, and everything has a place (when I'm not moving stuff like all the kitchen things to work on it), I know there's still more I can get rid of.

I'd say maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the things I had in the kitchen cabinets and drawers won't make a return trip. Most of my wall hangings will be ditched. Now that I've lived a few summers and I'm going through my 2nd winter since I got my clothing down to a manageable level that fits in a single closet and two dresser, I can take time to go through them again and realize that probably 1/2 of the stuff wasn't worn at all in the last year and a half. And I doubt I'd find too much that I had boxed up in the attic outside of my electronics that I'd still want to hold on to now.

When one of my old buddies came to my house for the first time around a year ago one of the first things he said to me was "boy, you're a minimalist, huh?".

I'm trying.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

I used to watch it to try and understand what's going on with them. And for the most part it seems like it was brain chemistry (sometimes coupled with dementia) that was clearly driving people's thoughts. Even though to them, they seemed to feel that those ideas were originating from within their mental chatter, and they felt that they were driving that bus (and not passengers).

Of the people I saw who got better, most seemed to have to struggle with hoarding in an ongoing way.

There was only 1 who seemed to have a revolution of mental state, where he clearly crossed some kind of barrier between it being normal for him, and then he looked back on it and realized how abnormal it was, because it was no longer part of his mental process.

But he was different from most. He wasn't so old he was demented. He came to hoarding rather late in life (his 50s). His wife had literally died in the hoard because fire/ EMS couldn't get to her in time and carry her out when she had a medical crisis of her chronic condition. And he sought help for himself. So, one thing or another, he was to me a clear exception.


Other than that, it's a mystery to me. Some people as I mentioned earlier were diagnosed with dementia. Some were very emotion-driven and their emotions were all over the place. But others seemed to be rational with good understanding of the world around them ... who just had this need to ... hoard. And that need was driving what COULD have been rational thoughts - I was working on a project and I'll need this later ... except looking around CLEARLY that need to hoard had led to an extreme physical outcome their (many) rationalizations couldn't justify.

(I can understand btw how people can 'fail to see' a hoard. Nobody starts a hoard with floors breaking under the weight. It starts with a pile of stuff here, then a pile of stuff there. Over time it becomes an accumulation. But by that time one has grown accustomed to it, and has trained the mind to ignore it as a problem, except for how to navigate, and how to hide it from relatives, friends, neighbors, and code enforcement. I think ignoring the overall environment and focusing down on particulars happens with many circumstances, like for instance the people who live on the trash dumps in the Philippines.)

Anyway, I came to no conclusions, and no global understanding, except it seems neurochemical, and with many different elements involved; and possible actually several different causes leading to a singular common noticeable extreme.

---

It seems like a real hodge-podge of things. I don't think anybody knows for sure what kicks it off. You mentioned earlier you didn't believe it to be OCD related, but at the same time nearly every doctor on the show introduces themselves in the beginning of the episode and specifically lists OCD and other anxiety related issues as their expertise.

Jury's out on whether or not I have some level of OCD and/or bi-polar disorder. But I'm certainly not suffering from dementia yet.

I think I mentioned it before, but the hardest part of getting rid of all of it for me was just getting it out to the curb or packing it up to go to Goodwill. Well... the second hardest after cleaning up all the mouse piss and shit.

Unlike the people on the show who are faced with only 2 or 3 days to make decisions, I had the benefit of a lot of time to go through it. Not only that, but I was able to go through it all a second time a few years later and really get rid of stuff.

I can see where these people really feel overwhelmed because they had all the time in the world to do it and now they only have a weekend and 30 other pairs of hands all over their things making all the decisions.


Even now that I've got a few empty rooms in the house, tons of room in the garage, and everything has a place (when I'm not moving stuff like all the kitchen things to work on it), I know there's still more I can get rid of.

I'd say maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the things I had in the kitchen cabinets and drawers won't make a return trip. Most of my wall hangings will be ditched. Now that I've lived a few summers and I'm going through my 2nd winter since I got my clothing down to a manageable level that fits in a single closet and two dresser, I can take time to go through them again and realize that probably 1/2 of the stuff wasn't worn at all in the last year and a half. And I doubt I'd find too much that I had boxed up in the attic outside of my electronics that I'd still want to hold on to now.

When one of my old buddies came to my house for the first time around a year ago one of the first things he said to me was "boy, you're a minimalist, huh?".

I'm trying.

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Since then I've have seen "Citizen Kane" (1941), winner the Oscar for Best Picture. In early scenes, Kane is accumulating art, enough for 5 museums. In the last scenes, after his death, the art is shown still in shipping crates in Kane's mansion. The movie never used the word hoarder, but it was all about Kane's psychology. Maybe more ordinary hoarders are making, at least inside their heads, extraordinary lives and enormous cleanups after death similar to Charles Foster Kane's?
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/citizen-kane-1941/critic-reviews

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
... today we will be going thru her coin "collection" (hoard) which is scattered all over the dinging room table, and see what we can do with that.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
... today we will be going thru her coin "collection" (hoard) which is scattered all over the dinging room table, and see what we can do with that.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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I'm so sorry that you're dealing with such a mess.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
... plus I need to get back with Terminix to get more details on heat treatment v tenting/fumigation.

Have you heard anything about either one, pro or con?

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SIX, just to put in my $0.02 about solvents... I was developing an x-ray method for determining lead in gasoline (involved using a bismuth internal standard and it worked fabulously; now they would prolly just use ICPMS, but I digress). Well, the instrument was in the middle of the lab, it was there for solids and filter samples and nobody had bothered too put in venting, but I was working with gasoline. Innocuous right? Just gasoline. And all went swimmingly for a week or so when I was hit with a blinding headache. Gasoline at the time contained both benzene (known human carcinogen) and hexane. And hexane specifically causes thalamic swelling, which prolly accounted for the headache.

Same thing happened when I was reorganizing the sample storage room ... we did a lot of paint analysis so we had a lot of house paints, solvents, and industrial maintenance paints. THAT time I wound up sick to my stomaches.

Methylene chloride is one of those rate chemicals that are KNOWN human carcinogens, so in addition to being acutely toxic it can have long term effects down the road.

So just be careful.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

THUGR posts about Putin so much, he must be in love.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

And doesn't NMP solvent cause heart damage?

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
It's not done snowing but we didn't get 12" last night.

Sadly, it's more than the 1" I was hoping for, but with the worst behind us it's not more than possibly 3". Looks like it missed us.... this time.




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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup.

Been great so far, but I've just damned myself by even thinking those words out loud.





You be safe when working with the chemicals too. And just keep in mind that whatever new "safe" ones that they're putting out have a pretty good chance of not being safe at all one day in retrospect.





I'm posting this picture again because I'm just as petty and narcissistic as Nilbog says I am and I need some validation, dammit.






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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

WONDERFUL!

Lady Rain was generous with her sweet rainfall at the Santa Fe Dam (nearest station to me by the foothills). Going into January we were already over 3 inches behind, and this rainfall puts January at only 3 more inches behind, but it was more than predicted.

And maybe we'll get even more rain in the next few days.


https://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we138b.php


Rain and snow is what keeps all the green green. It's how one pays for a fire-free environment. Otherwise, things dry up, then fire takes hold.

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Atmospheric River Strikes California
by Tyler Durden
Tuesday, Jan 26, 2021 - 9:45

On Tuesday, Bloomberg points out that multiple weather systems are traversing the country with high accumulating snow probabilities from the Southwest to the Northeast.
Source: Bloomberg

Today's top weather events (courtesy of Bloomberg):


California ordered evacuations in some parts as a drenching storm known as an atmospheric river is poised to dump rain and snow, potentially setting off mudslides in a state that's still recuperating from its worst-ever fire season.

Atmospheric rivers can unleash about the same amount of water that flows out of the Mississippi River's mouth. They cost an average of $1.1 billion in damages annually.

Wind gusts and 17-foot waves are further snarling port traffic in Los Angeles.

The Midwest is being pummeled by snow and areas of the Southwest, including Arizona and Utah, are in for more than a foot through tonight. The Northeast may get a sprinkling.

* * *

A narrow corridor of highly concentrated moisture in the atmosphere, otherwise known as an atmospheric river (AR), is set to strike California by mid-week, leaving lower elevations with torrential rainfall and higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada, with feet of snow.


AR will approach the Golden State by midweek. The long plume of moisture in the atmosphere stretches from the Pacific Ocean subtropic will dump much-needed rain and increase the snowpack to combat an ongoing drought in the state.

Atmospheric river set up looks more probable Wednesday - Friday as moisture values 200-400% above normal stall over Southern and Central California. With vulnerable and fire scarred landscape, threat for flooding and landslides and mountains of mountain snow! #CAwx pic.twitter.com/4FYUbi4tL8
— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) January 23, 2021

The Weather Channel reports the heaviest rain this week will be observed in Northern and Central California that will start late Tuesday and continue through Thursday. Other locations, including the Bay Area southward to Big Sur and parts of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, could see more than 3 inches of rain.



By late week, the system will shift southward toward Los Angeles and San Diego.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued flash flood watches from the northern Bay Area southward to Monterey.



NWS has also issued high wind watches from the Sacramento Valley to the Bay Area southward to around Monterey.

In elevations above 4,500 feet, especially in the northern Sierra, this region could see accumulating snowfall of 7 feet this week.



In about a week, California goes from one of the driest six-month stretches (as we noted last week) in state history to one that could potentially be very wet and snowy depending on elevations.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, yeah, I wanted to comment on this

Dear daughter: "I like the unpainted ones better."

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Grrrrrrrr.....

My step dad would probably kill me for this. He always said that painting over wood is a sin.

They were really beat up though, and the original job was just as bad as anything else that was ever done in this house. My camera is on a 10 year old not-iPad and although it takes better pictures than anything I've owned before, it still really is lousy at doing the job.

Quote:

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But I like the painted ones myself.

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Thanks for saying so, even if you don't mean it. It purely is a matter of taste. I just really like clean painted stuff a lot more than bare wood on most things in a house.

They're not painted yet though. That's just 3 layers of primer on the right one and 2 on the left one. I'm putting pure white high gloss enamel on them when I'm done with all the priming.

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When I expand the picture you're right: I can see the wood thru the paint (lower left).

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Yeah. What else the pictures fail to show is how yellow the lower left one still was. It's the only reason I put 3 coats of primer on instead of two. I want to seal all the stain/poly/lacquer in under the primer before I paint anything.

I think the doors I sanded later are faring much better and would only need two (I'll know tomorrow when the batch I just did is dry), and the stripped shelves certainly can get away with only two, but I think I'm still going to do 3 just to keep everything even now.

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NICE JOB, SIX! How do you get the paint so even?

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It's actually a process that would probably be better explained through showing rather than telling, since you really just have to develop "the feel" for it, but I can give it a shot... (I'll put it at the bottom of the post)

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Are the two painted ones after sanding?

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The bottom left one was after a second round of primer and then scuff sanding.

The bottom right one was immediately after I had applied the 3rd coat of primer after the two rounds of priming/sanding. (So no third sand yet... although they have all gotten one and are staged and protected from dust until I'm ready for the actual paint).

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Because the only way I know how to get such an even layer is spray paint.

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I'm so terrible with spray paint, and paint sprayers. You'd probably do a much better job spraying that I ever could. I love my brushes and rollers.

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Also, are you using water or oil-based?

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Just water based primer so far, and I'm using water based enamel paint for the finish coats. Busting my Purdy brush out of semi-retirement for the final paint coat for sure.

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I can see that you're a perfectionist. I'll bet your kitchen is going to look absolutely marvelous when you're done. I get the idea that the doors will be white but the boxes will be another color to contrast with the white tile (correct?) but I'm really curious: what color will you choose? I'm dying to find out.

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I don't know what color I'm doing too. I'm also dying to find out.

Quote:

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Also, I looke up the website for hosting pix. Once I strip the metadata off my pix I might post some too. But that won't be for a long while: Not until my projects are picture-worthy!

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I used to worry about that stuff, but not really anymore. If somebody wants to doxx me then they can go burn in hell for it for all I care. It's not like I'm on the run from anything like the dude who invented Norton Antivirus who got caught because of the metadata on a simple photo he took during a "secret interview".

I'd love to see your work when you're ready too.





As for how I do it, well...

After I sand everything as good as I can and clean them up, I start by painting the backs first. I paint heavy along the indent in the center (since these are all actually 5 pieces of wood glued together, trying to be as careful as I can not to get too much outside of the indent. First dip goes in heavy on the upper right and upper left corners, painted into the middle, then the excess painted down the sides. Next dip I do the same thing for the bottom corners and go up with it. Then on the 3rd/4th dips I do the rest of the sides, doing my best to fill in the "cracks" between the pieces of wood. At this point, I wipe as much off my brush in the center as I can and then go over anywhere I might have gone outside of the center to make sure it's smoothed out and there's no heavy spots I probably wouldn't get to in time when I go around the sides. After that, I use as much paint as I need to fill the center, taking care not to get back into the corners too much unless I notice any dripping happening, which I then smooth out.

This whole first part is done with me sitting, legs crossed on the floor and the bottom of the door in my lap, and so is the 2nd part.

For the 2nd part (the outside of the center), I take my 1st dip and put it up in the left corner heavy, up in the center heavy, and then use my thinned out brush to work my way out from the very edges of the outside of the center to the very ends of the door, taking care not to let any drips from the heavy splots I put down run into the center (since I'm still working on the doors vertically in my lap at this point). When I need more paint, I take them from the heavy spots, and eventually work it all in (you get a feel for how much you'll need on the brush doing this part after a few doors. Once the flat part is done, I dab the brush (which is now thin) along the sides of the door (which would be the around 1/2" on the very bottom and tops and both sides of the door, and ever so gently brush that in (so there isn't any buildup on the bare wood on the other side), then I brush straight up on the left side, straight across on the top flat part, and up on the right side (It gets a little tricky around the pocket holes by the hinges, but as long as you dab it around them when you're brush is fairly thin, you probably shouldn't have to clean it out too much, and to do that I just rub my finger on the inside and wipe it off on paper towel if any gets in there).

At this point, I lay the back on top of my paint can that has paper towels wrapped around it with rubber bands.

Then I just work my way around the bottom right side, to the bottom of the door, and then around up the left side to the top of the door, generally using the same process, only now I'm working down on the rest instead of holding it in my lap. Since I'm still sitting, I reach under and "twist" the paint can to move the piece, rather than move the piece itself. No big deal when you're starting your first coat on the first side, but even with protection on top of the cans now I don't want to rub them too much by moving the piece.



The process for the front is more or less the same, although working inside the valley in between can be quite tricky. You don't want to use too much. I had to do a LOT of sanding down drips and high spots on those 4 doors between the first 2 coats since I wasn't nearly as careful as I thought I was being. It ends up taking 10 times as long to sand out mistakes than it takes to do it right while painting.

I DO the dab on the 1/2" of the tops and bottoms and sides of the door on EVERY coat, whether it's the back or the front of the door. So with 3 layers of primer, it has six light layers of primer on it now and is super protected from dings and dents. With 2 more coats of paint going on them, the sides of all the doors will be protected with 10 thin coats and should be damn near impervious to regular use (at least, that's my theory).


You get better as you do more too. The 2nd batch of doors hardly needed any sanding at all outside of scuff sanding. Just a the tiniest bit around the edges in the back which are very easy to sand down without causing damage to your coat, being careful with a (new and hard) sanding sponge. I only had one single spot in the decorative valley in the front of 5 doors I needed to give extra attention to this time. I was blown away when sanding 5 large doors and a shelf in between coats only took me an hour today. It took almost 2 1/2 hours that first day because of how much dripping I had going on.


3 more days of priming on this current batch, then it's on to the next batch. I still have 6 shelves, 6 discs, 6 doors and 2 drawers that need primer... Then 2 coats of paint on all of them.

This is going to take a while. I've always got to be doing other things that need being done during the day, especially now since I'm getting better at this and it only took me 3 hours to scuff sand and paint this batch.









Oh... and if I had it all to do over again, I would probably just caulk the indents in both the front and back center pieces rather than fill them in with primer. 3 coats pretty much does the trick, but I think it would have made the job a lot easier just to use caulk, even though I pretty much hate caulking anything.

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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Wow.

For this year or last year?


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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Wow.

For this year or last year?


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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

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It was for 2020. It came from the US and the lady who sent it said she was getting her cards late in the mail. But the hold up with its delivery must have been at the border because the post mark says and I kid you not on this "Dec.19,2020."

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