(no subject)

[randomdreams]

Friday evening I stopped by altamira16's house to meet Trish Zornio, who is running (along with a sea of others) to unseat Cory Gardner as one of our state senators. Trish is 36, has a PhD in neurobiology, teaches at CU, and is ferociously smart. She has an aggressive agenda, focused on science- and evidence-based policies, particularly concentrating on environmental and inequality issues.
Here she is, sitting under a LEGO Saturn V model, talking.


Sunset for elusis:

I posted a video of this on youtube, because there was a ferocious wind so the clouds were scudding across the sky.

Subaru says THIS IS SO A PARKING SPOT.


Buddha's Hand is in stock at H-Mart.


Every year for like fifteen years, my family has, for christmas, traded gift cards to a big local independent gift store, and then shortly after christmas, we all go, buy a bunch of books, go out to brunch afterwards, and show off our books and talk about why we got them, and make promises to share them when we're done reading them. Those promises often go unfulfilled, but oh well.
We had lunch this year in the restaurant that's adjacent to the bookstore, in what was the lobby of the old theater. We bought heavily off the a la carte menu, including two orders of compassion for a better world, but no orders for hope & a hug, because my family doesn't hug.


I have a house problem. The lower story of the house is concrete. More specifically, the garage is concrete: floor, walls, and ceiling. The ceiling slab was poured too thin, so water can migrate through the concrete to the rebar, rusting it, and as the rust swells the concrete breaks loose.

When I first noticed this, I started calling places that advertised concrete repair.
There are three types of concrete repair people locally: people who fix broken sidewalks, people who fix broken retaining walls and landscaping, and people who fix broken foundations. None of them have a clue how to deal with this, so I suspect I need to call a place that does old house restoration, and get them to find a subcontractor who does this.
My guess is they need to cut out the rebar, drill in a whole bunch of new holes and place rebar studs in those holes, then repour the middle part of this about 2" thicker, extending down into where the framing for the garage door is. I think there's plenty of room for that. Then I need to keep the concrete sealed so water can't get in.

Comments

[elusis]

Nice sunset.

Sorry about your garage.

[randomdreams]

Well, I don't like it anyway. Maybe I'll just saw it off.

[elusis]

I was wondering if demo/rebuild is an option?

[randomdreams]

Possibly, but the concrete is poured continuous with the foundation, and resealing that so water doesn't build up on the flat surface and then run down into the crack, freeze, and evict the new garage, is going to be a challenge.

[corvi]

Uuuuuugh, we're repairing our garage right now too and it's an ever-expanding money pit. Hope yours goes better.

Also, yay impossible burger!

[randomdreams]

I think a home is a roof over a hole into which you throw money...

[amaebi]

Wow, the garage concrete problem looks like a bugger. :(

Buddha's hand, though! The shape of my Monday is changed.

[randomdreams]

Yeah, that picture was for you.

[amaebi]

Yay! But I won't after all go there today, as driving is yucky.

[amaebi]

I finally got there on Wednesday and triumphantly bought two Buddha's hands. I suppose it's a good thing that the stock for sale was much diminished....

[sistawendy]

On the one hand, good luck with the politicking! Trish sounds cool.

On the other, fie upon the house issues. Those look expensive to fix.

[altamira16]

I think Trish is in her early 30s and does not have a Ph.D., but all the rest is correct.

[randomdreams]

I calculated her age based on math from her (fairly terrible) bio on her website. While she is self-assured, she could stand a professional copy editor, or even a reasonably good amateur one.

[altamira16]

I think that she is 33. She was wondering if people were going to give her flack for being in her thirties and not having children.

[twoeleven]

That doesn't look like a fun repair. :(

So, stupid question time: would it be cheaper just to rip the whole ceiling slab off and have a new one poured properly? My hazy understanding about rehab'ing buildings is that sometimes brute force is the answer.

I have a couple of friends who gave up trying to rewire their 1920's era houses piecewise, and resorted to tearing it all out and starting over to bring it up to modern code/usefulness. My brother had to do something similar for one wing of his house that wasn't properly grounded.

[randomdreams]

I did that with both the electrical and plumbing on the previous house: brand new right back to the entrance.

It's possible. If the slab were repoured about 5cm thicker, it would have rebar correctly located. As above, I'm worried about how well that would seal against the side of the house.

[fontosaurus]

She should move that Saturn V away from the window. UV turns those white Lego bricks a horrible, drink-more-water piss yellow.

[randomdreams]

I think it'll get moved at some point: it's too delicate to stay there. With that said, that particular window doesn't get a lot of sunlight.

I have a bunch of legos from 1972. You'd think they were supposed to be yellow.

[altamira16]

I was asking a friend about his unusual concrete house, and he said that the terradome folks out of Independence Missouri came and poured his house, but that is not very useful for this problem.