Scrape, Sand, Filter

I've been subconsciously filtering home renovation work out of my brain lately, but now that we're adding a piano downstairs, I've got a month to get our new guestroom/den finished. Unfortunately, it happens to be the room formerly boasting corkboard and carpet-square covered walls. This weekend, I finished scraping and sanding the walls in preparation for this week's forthcoming TSP wash to be followed by plaster skimcoating. I even managed to scrape the 'popcorn effect' off the ceiling and sanded off most of the remaining thick dust. (That'll be fun to wash...) More on that as it develops.

 

And speaking of filters... Down in the basement, I put a new air filter in the HVAC. Normally, this would be a 2-minute job, but this fancy eco-filter is surrounded by a special plastic grid that I had to cut and customize to fit, unlike the premade cardboard ones. Now, however, all I have to do is brush it down every month, rather than replace it. So that's a flat $20 payment that should cover at least 6 years, instead of quarterly $10 payments ($20 vs $240), which makes it well worth the minor hassle of putting the thing together. Not to mention the two dozen filers I'd be dumping in the landfill... (Yes, this one is plastic, but that can be recycled.) If you're interesting in cutting down on your filter costs, you might want to give this one a try.