We went below zero last night and are staying there until Tuesday. The forecast for the rest of the week is completely upwards with nights above zero starting on the 23rd. Let’s see if that lasts!

The Eternabond hasn’t arrived yet and it’s too cold to apply it anyway, so I’m pretty much on hold in the loft. It was super damp in there this morning with the windows covered in condensation, but five minutes with the dehumidifier solved that. I’ll have to keep leaving it on 24/7.

It snowed lightly today, so going out for plywood was out of the question (remember, I have a hatchback so I have to carry big things on the roof!). I continued work on the insulation. The styrofoam panels I have are too thick, so I have to halve them, a surprisingly tough job.

Instead of sleeping, I’ve been lying awake at night thinking about the next steps in this project. One thing that bugs me is that there aren’t many places into which I could secure the new flooring:

Everything in blue is thin paneling over insulation over thin paneling over insulation over fiberglass. That’s it! The red lines are where I have something structural into which to screw. I’ll come back to the green marks.

So, obviously, the flooring can’t be in too many pieces if I want any sort of structural integrity at all. The best thing would be to bring in one piece, but I really don’t think that would be manageable. I also won’t have anything to cut it with once I get here if I try to bring it home in one piece and concede that I need two. It’s going to have to come home in two pieces.

The green marks indicate where there is padding around the interior of the C. This padding is about a half inch taller than the floor, so I need to remove to be able to install the floor flat. I will replace the padding with some 1 1/2″ or so thick wood I found in the basement (a real Ali Baba’s cave, it seems). This will give me some additional place for screwing in the flooring so that both sections can get a bit of extra support along the interior side of the C. I’ll make sure to take pictures when I get to this point!

That leaves the sides. Intellectually I know that if the manufacturer didn’t feel the flooring needed any additional support on the sides, it mustn’t have needed it, but I’m still getting the willies since all the weight in the loft is right smack in the middle. I might get thicker plywood after all! 😀

I didn’t run the dehumidifier last night and when I went into the loft this morning there was condensation along the metal frame and some dampness at the seam. I’m definitely not closing anything off until I get more Eternabond on the exterior! I hope the tape arrives today. We’re heading into a longish sub-zero stretch, so I wouldn’t be able to apply it. We’re hovering at zero today, which is really too cold, but with a hair dryer I’d be fine.

Even with that bit of condensation I felt okay with going ahead with some reinforcing of that corner and then I started to put in insulation. I had quite a bit left of the blue styrofoam-type from a 2008 purchase and which I’ve been telling myself for two years I should throw out. It’ll be more than enough for this project! That’s a yay for my packrat tendencies!

I’ll probably go buy the paneling and plywood tomorrow. I checked out the Home Hardware here in Osoyoos and have decided not to buy from them. They are the pits! I have sung the praises of Home Hardware across the country, but this store is just terrible. For example, they sell scraps of plywood that are priced as per their amount compared to a full sheet. So, a square that’s an eighth of a full sheet would cost an eighth of a full sheet. They didn’t have any scraps of paneling, only 8’x4′ sheets that are much too huge. I asked if it would be possible to buy a quarter of it. They said no, but that they’d be happy to cut the sheet down to a quarter and keep the other three quarters to sell as scraps. In case that’s not clear, they would make me pay full price for a sheet and then sell the other three quarters for three quarters of the price of a full sheet. That sounds like stealing to me. It’s not the money that irks me, a sheet is just $10, but the money-grubbing principle. I’ll go check out the lumber store in Oliver and see how they are. Oh, and the guy at Home Hardware who wanted to do me a favour by cutting the paneling had no idea what a straight flat, 1″, reinforcement bracket is. He took me to an aisle and showed me corner braces, saying that’s all they had. I dug around and, of course, found a bunch of flat brackets, including straight, L, and T ones. Sheesh!

As an FYI, for anyone who thinks that a handsaw is a safe tool, guess again. *Owwwwwww* 😀

The loft is now bone dry! WOOHOO!

*ahem*

Until I finish doing that exterior corner in Eternabond, I’m not finalizing anything inside. Instead, I’m slowly starting to acquire materials and cutting them to fit so that once I’m sure the corner is watertight, I’ll only have some gluing, stapling, screwing, and caulking to do.

The dehumidifier and heater are so efficient that I think that if I can get a coat of primer on before noon, I’d be able to put on a coat of paint before bed, saving me a day. Suddenly, there’s an end in sight. I’m thinking that this night next week I could very well be sleeping in my bed again.

In case anyone is wondering, I got ALL the black, rotted wood out. Everything else has dried to normal wood colour and is mildew-free and solid, so I have a good foundation for the repairs. I’m so excited to move forward with this!