While cutting the upstairs walls from the gator board I suffered a bad injury in my shoulder. My arm was already injured from bumping it into a piece of furniture with a sharp corner and hand cutting the gatorboard with a utility knife was too much for my rotator cuff on top of the other injury.
I couldn’t build/cut for 6 months while I was healing right when the pandemic started. My doctor, through Kaiser Permanente, was not helpful over Zoom and only sent me neck stretching exercises. Really? Not helpful. Maryland pushes group insurance for individual health plans so it is difficult to get good insurance/doctors these days. Because I couldn’t get efficient medical care during this time, I did my own research and started strengthening exercises for the muscles that were injured. I thought I was doing the right thing by not using my arm after the injury, but it turns out that could have led to a much more serious ‘frozen’ muscle situation!
It took about a year and I can now reach my arm all the way up and about 95% behind me again! Anyway, the point I wanted to make is to use an electric saw to cut the gator board! It has a very tough plaster coating on either side of the foam board and cutting by hand can result in an injury over time.
Back to the cottage…I glued down craft sticks for the floor and installed the door trim. The piece of wood you see in the hall is just there to put pressure on the trim as it dries so it wouldn’t warp.
There is a nice effect happening in the plaster (spackling paste) in the kitchen. It makes the house look old. Pay attention to these little accidents, sometimes they can really add something special to your build. This is one of the reasons I love building. I like the unexpected moments that happen during the process.
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