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07/24/2006: "the return of the janitor seeds"
Back in highschool, I had developed a strange story/theory about janitors. (You know, back when I was young and stupid and janitors were a non-human sub-class of society.) I'd always see the custodians pushing their ultra-wide dry mops around, pushing a handful of green granular stuff in front of them. I decided that they were janitor seeds, and that in the off-hours they would sprout new janitors that would then push more seeds around and perpetuate their species. I got truly strange looks each time I recounted the story - complete with conspiritous, emphatic hush tones.
Well, everything's come full circle... I recently purchased my own 5kg box of "janitor seeds" for my basement.
The basement is coming along wonderfully. A couple of weeks ago our neighbour finished the mudding and sanding that he was doing for us, so then the ball came back into my court. The first task was to tackle the literal mounds of dust that were to be found all around the room. Enter the janitor seeds.
What I'm talking about is sweeping compound. Essentially, it's a base material that is impregnated with oil (or other dust-reducing compound). You put some on the ground, sweep it around, and instead of kicking up all the fine dust, the dust sticks to the compound, and then you throw it out. Of course, drywall dust is pretty fine stuff, hence my purchase of 5kg of the stuff. After a lot of sweeping, vacuuming, sweeping, re-sweeping, and re-vacuuming, I've gone through nearly half of the compound, and the floor is clean. Now I have some left over for tackling sweeping out the garage, which is always a dusty task.
Meanwhile, I've vacuumed the walls and ceiling (lots of dust was sticking to the drywall, so I had to suck it off before I could start priming), and have my first two cans of primer on. That equates to one full coat, and a second coat on two of the walls. That'll all roller work, I haven't done any edges or corners yet, or anything too small for a full-width roller. I'll buy two more cans, get the second coat on, and then get all the detail work done.
We have our colours picked out, we have the flooring and the underlay, so it's really just a matter of how much time I can put towards painting that is limiting how close we are from moving our stuff into the basement. Thanks, in part, to the Janitor Seeds.
