I took the day off Friday to try to catch up on some work, including starting a new project that I have been thinking about doing for quite some time.

Following my typical pattern, I have several old ones waiting in line. At least I did simultaneously fix my bathroom’s leaky faucet and do a little work on the dripping tub, although it doesn’t want to be cooperative. I’ll put that somewhere on my list for later. So does that mean I’m catching up or getting further behind? Maybe I’m just catching up on getting behind.

I started being concerned about my dining room and living room ceiling, which features a mock exposed beam design and a raised ceiling, when I was installing a ceiling fan. The ceiling is about 12 feet high on one side and about eight feet on the other. While putting in the fan, I had to trace down a wire and realized that the ceiling was not insulated. The rest of the house is well insulated, but that one room was somehow overlooked. I was told that the room that I now use for a living room once housed a porch. That might account for the lack of insulation, but who knows?

At any rate, I started that job on Friday morning, cutting out the existing ceiling and installing insulation and covering it all with new Sheetrock. I hired a fellow to help me that has been doing that type of work for years, but doesn’t usually hold a job for more than a little while. I can’t imagine why anyone would fire him. He’s always late, he leaves early, he takes breaks every half hour to smoke and he likes to drink if given half a chance. Other than that, he’s the perfect worker. At least his finished product, albeit sometimes slow in coming, is of high quality. Since I am not exactly used to holding half-inch sheetrock over my head for hours at a time, I can tell you that I didn’t mind him taking breaks at all and I was more than happy to see him leave early.

My work started long before he arrived. After getting off work Thursday, I helped a family remove a tree from their backyard that had fallen in the recent storms. They then helped me by giving me the firewood. I hope I can get at least half of the dozen or so short bed pickup loads I’ll need this winter cut by early fall. So far, I have three. With the tree loaded on the truck and night falling, I headed back home to move everything out of my dining room — the same room as the living room but on the far end.

Of course, the wood stove remained in place due to its weight. In fact, I don’t think I ever want to move it again.

The help showed up around 10:30 or so for the work day that was slated to begin at 9 a.m., but that was fine by me, since I had a few errands I needed to run anyway, including one to get my saw sharpened and another to pick up some building materials.

Once the saw hit the ceiling board, some kind of a composite material, I could see that I had made a mistake in not sealing off the rest of the house. Thick dust from the saw was filling the air and drifting everywhere. After the initial stupidity, I closed off most of the places air could go, opened the door to the outside and sealed off the other side of the room with a tarp.

The room is divided into three sections and two of them were mostly insulated by around 5 p.m. that day and had most of the rough drywall installed.

We finished up the rest of the insulation drywall the following day and then the mud and tape process began. I’m hoping to get at least the first two-thirds painted and finished before I start with the last third of the room, which houses the television and the sectional couch. They don’t like dust.

While my hired hand was working on the ceiling, I had to finish cutting up the firewood. It had been put on the truck in big pieces due to the shortage of time, few of which had been cut into the right size for the stove.

After that was done, I had to start splitting it with my old friend the maul. At least I had a shady spot under the pines to work. Since it was maple, it all went pretty well. I had another work assignment Saturday evening, leaving me amply ready to rest on Sunday.

Since my German Pink tomatoes just came in on the vine, I might spend more time in the garden with a salt shaker and a pocket knife. I might eat myself sick, but it’s likely worth the effort. It must be, I do it every year.

Get more tongue in cheek commentary this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

Email: allnews@ls.net