Scrapped

[kevin_standlee]

When the contractor's workers fixed the mess under the kitchen floor, they removed a lot of junk. Some of it Lisa has thrown away. The rest is currently piled up awaiting either disposal or reuse.

All of this metal duct-work was laying about unconnected. Lisa figures there's something useful that we can do with it.

The under-floor joists were in worse shape than we thought, and at least one of the previous owners knew it. The contractors removed the most rotted-out boards, including this one, which you can see has some metal straps around it where someone tried to patch around the joist cracking. This is not the same cracked joist that the house inspector found; it's another one. Things were Not Good under that floor. No wonder the floor tiles were cracked.

Also visible in this photo is the last of the firewood that Lisa and I moved to the "Dog Run" slab on Sunday.

The contractor suggests that Lisa try to salvage one of these railroad ties that was piled under the house in an attempt to shore it up and use it to scratch-build a model of the water tower that used to stand at the Fernley train depot across the street from the house. That, he says, would be highly appropriate because he thinks some of the wood here is itself salvaged from when SP tore down the water tower.

Lisa has already re-used some of these boards, using them to build a small ready storage area for firewood on the front porch.

You can't burn this stuff in the fireplace, of course, particularly not the creosote-treated railroad ties. Some of the boards are so full of nails that they're useless. Lisa has been carefully sawing the larger pieces into smaller ones with a hand saw and disposing of the material slowly in the regular weekly trash pickup.

Comments

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

It's sad seeing the ties (or sleepers as we call them) in the pile. Here they go for about $50 each for landscaping and are highly sought after.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

These may not be discarded. There may be places around the property where we can use them for landscaping. This was just where the workers piled up all of the stuff they pulled out from under the house.

[solarbird]

I love the water tower model idea! <3

[johno.livejournal.com]

We've got some old wood that needs deposed of.

Instead of sawing it up, I'm taking a sledgehammer to it. Breaking it down to < 3' pieces. Much faster and I figure the danger trade off of sawed nails flying about vs flying bits is about equal.

If I had power recipricating saw, it's all be no worries and I'd have the pile of old wood bits down to 2'-3' chunks in a few minutes.

I'm also breaking up a couple of old garden ponds. 3 layers of concrete. None bonded together, just lots of hammering and picking up chunks and dumping them in the trash 1 5 gallon bucket a week.

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with the use of old railroad ties for landscaping.

From when my family (parents) moved into their house in Albuquerque's North Valley (Alameda) in 1968 until I was in high school (1980-1984), we were replacing wooden fence posts every few years due to rot. Admittedly most of these posts were the same as ones sold to use as vegas, and were only getting creosote applied to the parts going underground.

Finally, my dad got a bunch of railroad ties to put up the fence on the west field - where my sister was (and still is) keeping her horses. That fence is still up with few if any posts needing replacement.

However, getting the railroad ties into holes - which had to be dug by shovel since they were much bigger than either post-hole digger could accomplish - and then nailing the top boards and fencing to them was a bit of a challenge.