thoughtfulAll of this metal duct-work was laying about unconnected. Lisa figures there's something useful that we can do with it.
The under-floor joists were in worse shape than we thought, and at least one of the previous owners knew it. The contractors removed the most rotted-out boards, including this one, which you can see has some metal straps around it where someone tried to patch around the joist cracking. This is not the same cracked joist that the house inspector found; it's another one. Things were Not Good under that floor. No wonder the floor tiles were cracked.
Also visible in this photo is the last of the firewood that Lisa and I moved to the "Dog Run" slab on Sunday.
The contractor suggests that Lisa try to salvage one of these railroad ties that was piled under the house in an attempt to shore it up and use it to scratch-build a model of the water tower that used to stand at the Fernley train depot across the street from the house. That, he says, would be highly appropriate because he thinks some of the wood here is itself salvaged from when SP tore down the water tower.
Lisa has already re-used some of these boards, using them to build a small ready storage area for firewood on the front porch.
You can't burn this stuff in the fireplace, of course, particularly not the creosote-treated railroad ties. Some of the boards are so full of nails that they're useless. Lisa has been carefully sawing the larger pieces into smaller ones with a hand saw and disposing of the material slowly in the regular weekly trash pickup.