Jim Baird

Like Marc said be sure you know what you are looking for before you head down to the big box. Most of all don't ask the guy at the big box what to do or buy.

...if all you are doing is making up for that notch you are doing fine. That kind of scabbing can also be done with plywood and screws. Looks like you had plenty of room to swing a hammer down there. I have seen lots of floor joists way overnotched at their very ends that have lasted fifty years without failing.

...so who's afraid of a little color in life?

...such a historian. You should be lecturing at local design schools. (In today's parlance I should have said an historian, but I have always thought the use of an before historic is affectation. It's like bone doctors calling their practice "orthopaedics" , I guess to claim some connection to ancient Greek whatever.

I don't think it's about appeal. I think they are supposed to ward off evil spirits/influences.

Exactly my reason for pics is to see what I might not have noticed live. Often I am talking to client as I move and click, so there is a lot to be missed at the moment, but still if I manage 100 I have made a good record.

"...I occasionally visit your place, but not as regularly as I should..." Funny, I used to visit Jeff's site fairly often but since my last laptop swap I can't seem to get back onto it via pswd/login probs etc. Also likely bcse I never would put any dinero in their offering dish since I am not an AHJ and most of their membership is. You are right, Marc, about those ladder rungs.

...a new kind of celebrity. Maybe Andy Warhol was right after all. Re toilet tank shrapnel I know a potter who stumbled coming out of a shower and fell across his toilet, knocking the tank off with his falling mass. Toilets are technically made of porcelain china, and when broken against a tile floor can become a field of shards, Those shards nearly severed this man's forearm. He survived, but just barely.

Mice babies in the glove box, you could blame that on the wife's dust cloth, a cozy baby blanket. The invasion of unwanted species came during, we are fairly sure, a retreat weekend in the NC mountains where we parked the little car on some steeply sloped ground where the uphill side came really close to soil/grasses. Cabin air filter plus outside air ports we think were entry points. Cabin air is right behind glove box. Cabin air filter material was first nest.

I don't take credit for inventing the method. I think I actually learned it from youtube, but it worked very well. The species was a little mouse not a woodrat. My cats have caught some wood and field rats with seven-inch tails that could probably jump over a row of buckets. How many here have stepped on one of those glue kind of traps during an inspect?

BTW, as Marc noted a mouse can't jump high enough to escape. I caught two mice in my wife's honda that had built a nest in the glove box. Their babies tumbled out while she was sitting in traffic and reached for little duster she uses to dust the dash. I bought a shiny new slippery sided 5 gallon bucket and put it in the back seat with some oatmeal in the bottom. Took a cpl of overnight settings to catch them one at a time. I used the catch and release program, made them promise not to come back.

Years ago I inspected a little house that used gas space heaters, those notorious moisture generators, on which a contractor had laid a metal panel roof. In so doing he eliminated every bit of attic ventilation there was. The entire attic frame and deck was blackened by something related to moisture accumulation.

As you know, I hope, Mike, not every scene deserves a permanent record. BTW I think you are doing a good job of screening them so far.

...must be the New Minimalist style of decor. One room I inspected with a bad floor had an attempted concealment of bad floor by filling the room with beds.