Exit, Pursued by a Bear

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googlesightseeing.com

duct tape

Good for all that ails you. Case in point: a power sander is an amazing tool for working with plaster (see below) but produces preposterous amounts of dust. Solution: take the little bag off the sander, tape the hose of a shop-vac to the vent, turn both tools on, and let rip. Noisy, but not much mess.

Outbound commute tweaked

I've started turning off Broadview to go right past the front door of the Don Jail, joining the Gerrard bike lane, then joining the River St. bike lane all the way down to King. Distance about the same as before, about 3.7k, according to favoriterun.com:

eavestroughs

One of the mysteries of doing a removation like this is figuring out the relationship between various trades and the home-repair marketplace. In some cases, people compete for your business - in others, we apparently have to compete for their services. We've been trying to figure out why (in each case), without a lot of success.

Which brings us to the Eavestrough Problem (which comes up every time it rains). We can't seem to book eavestrough people, whatever we do - they blow us off, or don't show up for the estimate, or book a time to start work and don't show up - it goes on.

Now, the basic problem (the back gutter floods and pours over the edge) is pretty simple: the drainpipe for the rear gutter system is higher than the gutter, showing that the system was installed by someone whose understanding of gravity was limited enough that he possibly shouldn't have been on a roof. One pretty straightforward solution would be to move the drain further down in the system, which I'd like to think it isn't beyond my abilities to do.

So the question is: Eavestrough repair: How hard can it be? Amazon, for once, has no offerings at all. Thoughts, experiences, suggestions, cautionary tales? Bring 'em on.

random-orbit sander

We've spent a fair amount of money at Home Depot recently, but so far at least (I think) to good effect. Case in point: a mid-price random-orbit sander I bought for woodworking. Some experiments showed that it wasn't necessarily all that easier than sanding wood by hand, but this week it has turned out to be the miracle tool for drywalling. Dust everywhere, of course, but that's just the cost of doing business.