Last time I checked in with y’all, I’d done a third of the sweeping-up in the attic. It took me two hours. 

To date, I’ve swept up another 25% or so of the roofing debris and have managed to get most of the rest of it into piles. That, and the other stuff I’ve done (listed below), has taken me another four hours. Four hours.

When I start to get on myself about how far behind we are on Craphome things, I’ll try to remember just sweeping up someone else’s mess will wind up taking me almost a full eight hours. Of course it’s rough to find time to do that shit. It’s harder still when the mess is in a room you aren’t really using, and even worse if the room is as large as our attic.

Anyway. The featured photo on this post is from a week ago…it doesn’t show all of the progress so far, but it’s close enough to give you a good idea. Here are some of the other things I’ve done up there since last time:

• Assembled a short concrete-block shelf to hold some of the materials we’ll need fairly regular access to (like tools and heaters).
• Began dividing the attic storage into zones (until now we’d just set things down wherever, so of course we can never find anything when we do want it) and started organizing the boxes that are up tehre.
• Started clearing out the second floor master bathroom, which has been a storage closet for the past five years, and moved a bunch of stuff that was in there up to the attic.
• Started clearing out the second floor kitchen, which has been a storage space for the past three and a half years, and moved a small number of boxes and supplies we don’t often use to the attic.

I’m still slowly getting rid of the roofing debris. We don’t have any contractors’ bags left and even heavy duty kitchen bags can only be filled about halfway before they start to tear, so getting it all bagged has been pretty slow going.  We are taking a small loan to handle some Craphome tasks this summer and I’ve been trying not to go to any DIY stores until we have the check in hand, so I’ll be working with the heavy duty kitchen bags for another couple of weeks.

For now, here’s what’s on deck:

• Keep clearing out the downstairs by moving supplies we won’t use this summer upstairs
• Continue organizing the attic.
• Install the roll of insulation we still haven’t used.
• Take care of the freestanding closet.

Yeah, that closet’s going to be a job in itself and that’s even if I don’t bother to paint.  It has some water damage and a bit of mold growth from the time the roof was leaking. The mold seems to have died off since we fixed the roof, but it can’t hurt to give it a once-over with a couple of spray bottles’ worth of mold killer. I used to use a weak bleach solution, but if you miss even a tiny bit of that stuff during the rinsing portion you risk breathing in superfine bleach dust a few days later and believe me that is not a thing I would willingly do twice.

Once the mold killer treatment is done I’ll wipe everything down, give the closet a quick, light sanding, and seal the wood with a nice cedar oil. The closet is made of cedar, and you can just barely catch the last of the wood’s natural scent if you stand inside. It’s possible just sanding it will bring the aroma back, but the wood needs to be sealed anyway so we might as well take care of that this year.