On the Needles 4-5…

I started a new project the other day in anticipation of having a couple of days to do nothing much more than sit and knit…

 

Multnomah is another free shawl pattern from Ravelry.

I love Ravelry!

 

 

 

I am using Nuble from Araucania which is a fingering weight yarn of wool & silk.  Love the earthy colors.

Be sure and check out what others are knitting on this week at Judy L’s Patchwork Times. 

Why so much extra time to knit?  Because we are making dust around here for a couple days… Noise and dust!

Now I’ll tell you that my standard operating procedure for dust is – “Don’t write in it!”  It’s just way easier to ignore if you don’t see it… hey – you know I’m right.

But this dust yesterday… well not only could I see it but I could feel it, hear it being made, and taste it.  They were jack-hammering a hole in my basement and digging a big hole along the side of my house.  I even opened the windows and put the fans in blowing out… Thank goodness it was almost warm out.

We’ve had a very minor issue with water in one corner of the basement when it rains really hard during the wet season.  Because we have a stone foundation as well as a stone house we figured it was better to deal with it before it becomes a foundation problem.

 

They dug along the side of the house – nearest isn’t as deep as that part of the house (laundry room) is set on a slab so the footer only goes 3-4’ deep – beyond that is the part that is deeper that matches up with the basement wall.  This will all be cleaned – cemented over (parged is the technical term) – then coated and a layer of some sorta film is applied. 

 

 

 

 

Here in the basement you can see the corner wall that has moisture issues.  The door way on the right use to lead to stairs up into the laundry room which is the room set on a slab.

 

 

 

 

Those stairs are now gone as they were rotting out at the bottom from the moisture.  The bottoms 3 or 4 stairs were easy to remove… they had to work hard on all the others.

The wall behind the stairs is sloped.

 

 

 

 

 

They jackhammered the cement  to make a channel to catch any water.  The walls will have all the damaged areas removed and then everything will be parged and a sump pump put in that hole in the corner.  My husband will rebuild stairs after the sump pump and drain system is finished. 

You know for a house that was built in 1856 and completely renovated in the late 40’s (which is when the original dirt basement would have been dug out more and cemented in) – she’s not doing too bad.