We were up early today to travel 1/2 an hour to get to the house by 7:00 a.m. so the floor crew could get an early start. They spent a full day yesterday grinding the floors down with a slurry of who-knows-what and water. Then they bleached the floor, especially the parts of the floor that had stains from water, old walls, aluminum tracks (from the doors) and rust stains. They use bleach that is normally used in beauty salons, so it cannot be too caustic. (Of course, with all of the old ladies in Florida, maybe the strong stuff is needed...)
The floors today looked much cleaner and better than they probably have in years. The crew have cleaned and bleached some of the cracks, took out all of the nailing strips from the bedrooms, and spent time today doing the detailed hand-grinding around the toilets and along the walls. Another application of bleach went on today to further try to reduce the appearance of stains that remain. Unfortunately, the worst stain is a glue stain that snakes across the house where the old glass doors separated the living and Florida rooms. We probably will have to live with that stain, but polishing and the addition of furnishings will make it less noticeable than it does right now in a totally empty house. This IS an old house, so occasionally Gladys will show a wrinkle or two.
Rick and I spent most of the day outside removing the wooden strips under the soffit vents and reinstalling them. As we go closer to one corner of the Florida room, we began to smell the distinct odor of a rotting rat. We have not caught a rat for two days, so we thought that we had gotten them all out of the attic. We think now that we have trapped some of them in the attic especially since we came upon a tiny newborn rat that was quickly dispatched from the current world. We will continue to clear the house of the vermin so that we feel we can leave the house secure.
When we finished one section of the Florida room, I washed down the drip edge which was covered with dirt and debris from the roof. The appearance of the house improved immensely. We know a good coat of paint on the soffits would improve the appearance greatly, but at this point a good bath is the best that we can do for Gladys.
We will go back tomorrow to finish the soffit work. In taking down the screening under the soffit vents, we discovered that the Florida room roof, which is fairly flat, has almost no insulation in it. We will contact the insulation company that is coming in next week to see if we can get some insulation blown into that roof also. We know that the real savings will not come until we can replace all of the Florida room windows, but for now we need to take this one step at a time. More insulation certainly will not hurt our energy bills!
I talked to my friend Rose as she was my guardian angel today. I applied online to work at NWTC in the fall as an adjunct instructor. Rose went to campus and signed me up for the classes I would like to teach. She went beyond the call of duty, and I owe her a huge thanks. I promised her at least a home made key lime pie when we return home in August.
Rick and I learned today that we can tolerate working outdoors as long as we quit by at least 11:30 a.m. Going in and out of the air conditioning is more hard on us than just staying in the heat. Dunedin usually has a beautiful tropical breeze, and we found that sitting in the backyard in the shade while enjoying the breeze was quite tolerable even though the temperatures were in the low 90s.
No rain is in sight, and our hearts go out to all of the Florida residents who are losing their homes to the numerous wildfires around the state. Most of the fires are either south of us or are in the northeast corner of the state near Georgia. Pinellas County really is a peninsula that juts out into the Gulf of Mexico, so we are cut off from mainland fires. However, if a fire starts on the peninsula, it would spread quickly since right the county is rain-starved and thus very dry. This is supposed to be Florida's rainy season; unfortunately, the rain that the people did get brought lots of lightening which just ignited other fires. Lots and lots of rain would certainly help fight the fires, though.
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