I Get The Blues When It Rains

I had been on a pretty good roll there for a while, but Friday's rain really threw me for a loop. I had no idea it was coming until noon the day before, so I didn't really have time to plan for it. I just had enough time to prime the east casing, as I have mentioned.

I had enough tasks to do in the garage to keep me busy on Friday, and if that had been the end of the rain, I could have picked up right where I left off the next day. But even though it didn't rain on Saturday, I couldn't do anything I had planned, because it's quite likely to rain again on Sunday. So I had to come up with a new plan if I wanted to keep moving the ball forward.

There remains one major cosmetic reconstruction to do on the south side, and so I turned my attention to it: the divot cut in the belt course when the old floor heater was installed.

I like to call it Furnace Gap, because it makes me laugh, and when I'm laughing, my head's not in the oven. You know, when I first started painting the house, I looked up at Furnace Gap and thought it was huge, much too huge to fill in with WoodEpox alone. I envisioned either splicing in some wood and puttying it in, or making a mold from another part of the belt course and casting it in. But I didn't give any truly serious thought about the problem until today, when I was forced to do so.

So I gave it a good look from the ground for the first time in months, and after all I've been through in the rehabilitation of this side of the house, suddenly it looked rather small.

I climbed up the ladder to give it a close look.

Yep, it's really not so big, after all. I realized that there was really no problem in just patching it up with WoodEpox, if I sunk a few screws in the sides and pushed the putty into that gap between the trim pieces so there was a physical connection between the epoxy mass and the surrounding wood. Still, it would be rather a slow job doing it completely freehand.

I started to think of how I might apply the idea I used with the sills of clamping a guide to aid my puttying. There was no good place to clamp on the belt course, but I could hold the guide in place with screws on each side. Then the old idea of casting came to mind, and suddenly I had a minor inspiration. I took some measurements of Furnace Gap and its environs, rummaged around in my scrap wood pile, and soon I had this:

Now all I have to do is coat these guides with mold release agent, screw them in place, then press the epoxy in this ad hoc mold from underneath, and half the work will be done. Doing the bottom part freehand will be simple enough. I'd already be well on my way by now, if it weren't for the coming rain.

So here I sit, still stymied despite my best efforts. But at least I moved the ball forward a little today.

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