I just have not been able to get online lately. I guess it's just that hectic time of year.
Anyhow, a couple of weekends ago we continued where we left off - hanging ceiling drywall. The part of the ceiling that used to be the sun porch was finished, as you know, but that left the rest of the room. Hanging that drywall meant getting rid of some 2x4s beneath the second beam we put in, so it was time for what we like to call "surgical demo." We use that term to describe when we need to destroy something without destroying everything else around it. Enter the handsaw and chisels.
So about this same time, we'd been dealing with the rat. Considering its leavings, we figured it was only one. We had put all our food in the kitchen in plastic containers, and so the rat wasn't a problem yet, but we knew it could become a problem and we needed to take care of it. We weren't sure what the best way to kill it was, and so we put out both traps an poison. A couple days later, the traps still hadn't sprung. That was Friday, since we got the implements of rodent murder on a Wednesday.
That brings us back to Saturday, when we were doing our surgical demo. We'd been whacking on things, and stuff was falling down from the ceiling onto the floor. We'd been walking through the little passageway between the den and the laundry room/entryway all day, and then, suddenly, something was in the middle of the floor. It was a rat. A large, gray, fuzzy rat. It didn't look anything like the slick, glossy brown rat I had seen poking around outside our house over the summer.
The rat just lay on the floor. Its eyes were still shiny, and it was awfully fuzzy and cute. When we poked it, it didn't move. And so the poor thing died. It wasn't even stiff when I picked it up to take it outside, so it must have been pretty recently dead. We felt sad, but there wasn't much else we could have done. Poor rat. I hope it didn't suffer much.
Anyway, Sunday some friends came over to help us hang more ceiling drywall. It was the first time they had been over, and they were VERY helpful. We got most of it hung.
Because our room is so nice now, and we're actually hanging out in it, we decided to get a Christmas tree. So now we have a festive rat hole. It's almost like a home. Except that everything's still crappy. But I can finally see how it will slowly get better.
This past weekend, we finished up the ceiling drywall and confirmed the location of the Solatubes. It's gonna be good! Maybe if we're lucky we'll get all the drywall up by the first of the year.
We have pics on the camera, but I haven't really had time to download them, and when I might have had a second, I was too lazy. So if I post at all between now and 2008, I'll post those pics.
If I don't post, Happy Holidays from us at the Rat Hole!
