Home, Sweet Home.

why we are wage slaves

Because we are coerced, through the threat of violence, every night of our lives, into paying someone else for the privilege of laying our heads down to sleep.  Because every alternative, every other option, has been made impossible or criminalized.  We cannot legally eat food, sleep, or even defecate without paying another person for the privilege of doing so or risking the penalties associated with doing so illegally. 

Sleeping [legal methods]: buying a home, condo, or other form of shelter.
            renting a home, apt, condo, etc from its owner.
            purchasing access to hotel facilities.
            securing permission from someone who already does one of the above to sleep in their shelter.                     (indirect wage slavery)
            camping (short term) on public lands where free camping is permitted.

    [illegal methods]: sleeping in a shelter (home, car, RV, warehouse, apt) or on property owned by someone             else without their permission.
            sleeping in a public place other than permitted camping area.
            sleeping in a car or other vehicle.
           
    - All long-term, legal methods of sleeping require direct or indirect (dependent on those with direct) participation in the wage economy.  All methods of sleeping not requiring participation in the wage economy have been criminalized thus forcing involuntary participation in the wage economy.  Those who refuse to voluntarily participate in the wage economy are coerced into compliance by arrest and compulsary attendance at court proceeding.  Those who refuse to voluntarily participate in the wage economy and also refuse to voluntarily participate in the "justice" system are locked up.  Those who refuse to voluntarily participate in the wage economy, the "justice" system, and who actively and physically defend themselves by refusing to submit to being locked up, are beaten, shot, and/or killed. 

    -The eventual outcome of refusal to participate in all levels of the wage economy is violence perpetrated by the state. 

(This applies to long term LIVING.  Yes, one can sleep, defacate, and eat legally without participating in the money/wage economy on a short term basis on certain public lands.    However, even public lands have occupancy limits after which one can be ticketed, fined, and/or arrested for continuing to occupy a campsite.  In addition, primitive hunting and trapping is illegal and thus hunting for food requires participation in the wage economy for the purchase of weapons and permits.  And yes, many thousands of homeless people sleep unperturbed by the "authorities" every night all over the county.  The fact remains that they are doing so illegally and at some point, if/when confronted by a law-enforement agent, they must submit or suffer the consequence.)

For entertainment, do this excercize with drinking clean water, eating nourishing food - see what you come up with. 

haz-mat monster

siding siding siding....

Siding removal begins (again)

Not having walls - it really brightens the house up.   
Notice the his and her toilets...those will be side by side in the master bath.   Pink and blue toilet seats, respectively. 
 
Just kidding. 

SAVE A SURFACE MINER - SHOOT A TREE HUGGER (spotted on a car on US-119S)

 

Or, we could band together to destroy the coal companies that are pillaging our homeland, and in so doing, save the mountains that have given both the surface miner and the tree hugger's ancestors clean water to drink, abundant food, and a breathtaking landscape for eons.   Yes, there was life (and happiness) before coal..  What will be left when the strip miner has worked himself out of a job?

the old kitchen floor comes up...

Check out the gunk in this drain line!

chimney

rot.

Found this buried in the dirt in the crawlspace after the living room floor came up.  Think the DMV still has records on this one?

I pulled up the old oak flooring in the living room.  These two perpendicular layers of pine flooring were underneath.  The upper layer was fine but the bottom layer had some serious decay.  Looks like it rotted and someone long ago just covered it up rather than removing it.   I still don't know why  it had water damage - maybe a leaky roof at some point?

These boards in the middle were so rotten that they pulled up easily by hand.

Then I discovered some major rot in framing of the enclosed porch.  Now I know why the left side of the window was sinking.   The floor joist on the left just fell over when I pulled up the last strip of flooring.

The last layer coming up... Before I replace the subfloor I'll put diagonal bracing between the floor joists to add rigidity since they're so widely spaced and add a single pier in front of the fireplace to carry the weight of the future woodstove.   While I'm at it I'll clean all the old bones and trash out of the crawlspace and put down a vapor barrier.  And of course I'll have to rebuild the rotten framing under the window. 

gone.

misc. images

The seldom seen east side of the house...
The vertical lines in the siding indicate where an addition was put on (left side) and where a porch was walled in (right).  At one time there were boards, just like the ones on the corners, that covered those gaps.  They were likely removed when the asbestos siding was installed.  

the more familiar view...

Under the front porch, showing the sandstone piers and brick infill as well as the 6x6 beams that support wall studs and floor joists. 

The original tongue and groove pine floor.  Notice how worn it is in front of the fireplace.  Several boards are worn all the way through the upper rail of their groove, exposing the tongue of the adjacent board.   I spend quite a bit of time squatting in this spot as well...warming my frozen hands by the fire.   The floor tells me that this has been a popular spot for a long time. 

house cross-sections!   shows 6x6 foundation beam, floor joist (parallel to and just behind the beam), wall stud, subfloor (original finish floor).