Entry #6
July 24, 2023 — 5:15 PM
Settled into a loop today: list, measure, correct, clean. Coffee on the back step while the sun got into the brick. Legal pad on the counter, pencil behind my ear, square and block plane laid out like cutlery. Humidity sat on the rooms like a wet coat, but the light was good and I started.
Finished a few nagging items. Replaced the frayed sash cord on the south bedroom window; the weight thumped true in the pocket and the rail holds where I set it. Packed out the upstairs hall plaster where the keying had let go—scratch, brown, then a thin coat, feathered to the existing. Reset the loose stair tread with construction adhesive and screws sunk just shy of proud; the nosing feels honest underfoot now. Rehung the pantry shelf with proper anchors instead of those plastic butterflies. Pulled and squared an outlet in the dining room; foam gasket behind the plate to kill the little edge draft.
Plenty still waiting. Bathroom fan needs to be cut in and ducted; no sense painting that ceiling until the steam has somewhere to go. The porch screens are more hole than mesh. Attic hatch doesn’t seat right, and I can see daylight between joist and lid. The kitchen tile near the back door has hairlines that will turn into a trip if I don’t address it. I should get someone qualified to look at the knob-and-tube I found in the crawl of the front parlor wall, even if it’s dead. The chimney flashing is suspect where it kisses the clapboard; I can smell wet wood along that inside corner after a storm.
The east bedroom door was my morning victory and my afternoon irritation. It had been binding hard at the strike-side head, so I planed the top edge, three or four fine passes until the reveal was even. I chalked the stop, swung the leaf a few times, no rub. The hinges got a shim of paper under the top leaf and longer screws into the stud—pulled tight, no wobble. By noon it would close with that soft cotton sound old doors have when they finally agree.
At three, coming up with a trash bag, it dragged again. Same corner. I could hear the low scuff before I felt it. Heat in the hall had kicked up, and the door skin had that faint sweet-sour smell of old shellac waking under friction. The long screw in the top hinge gave me a quarter turn and stopped like the threads had found old tunnel again. I marked the fresh rub with pencil; the line landed exactly where the old, buried scuff had been under the paint—ten coats down, it seems. I checked the jamb with the level: plumb enough to pass. Wood moves. Houses rack. The stile might be cupping a hair with the air this thick. Nothing exotic. Still, I don’t love doing the same work twice in one day.
Under the top hinge, where paint hadn’t reached once, there’s a faint pencil “E.B.” in a hand I don’t recognize. East Bedroom, most likely—carpenter shorthand so a door comes back to its own room after finishing. Makes sense. I left it.
Routine is good. It keeps the edges clean. But this house pushes back in small ways—nothing dramatic, just a quiet insistence. When I correct, it waits, then remembers where it used to be and leans that way again. It seems to remember its worst habits.
— Thomas Hale