Every few years at FAR Manor, one of the A/C units begins a horribly loud rumbling. The first time this happened, the wife called an HVAC dude to see what was W0RnG!one… turned out a mouse had hopped into the squirrel cage and got centrifuged to death.
The same thing happened again, not two weeks ago. An adult mouse weighs maybe 2/3 ounce on average, and that tiny bit of weight in the A/C motor can shake the whole freeking manor! Talk about leverage…
We've run out of money, and the wife continued to complain about the noise, so I got Mason to come upstairs with me on Saturday afternoon as the gofer. I had hoped the A/C fan was horizontal, and would let me easily remove any obstruction or imbalance… but no. It's vertical. I had Mason fetch me a mirror, but realized I could use my phone (with flash on) to see what and where I needed to grope with my gloved hand.
Rubber gloves highly recommended
After a couple attempts, I removed the imbalance and dropped it into a garbage bag before putting everything back together. And lo and behold, no more shaking or rumbling.
Ew. Major ew. But dealing with the (increasingly infrequent, thank God) Charlie accidents is little better. I hope Mason is learning how to fix things on his own, too. He has grandiose ideas of how he and his friends are going to live in style, but any money you save on a service call is available for fun stuff.
EDIT: And you can dang well bet, I treated myself to a bowl of Extreme Moose Tracks after that. I deserved it.
Ah, Friday. The day you come downstairs after wrapping up reports and shutting down the work laptop for the weekend. Two days of rest, relaxation…
And then you see the contents of the kitchen cabinets, usually under the sink, sitting in a big box on the floor. “The dishwasher is leaking,” the wife said.
That didn’t really make sense to me. There’s a cabinet wall between the cabinet and the dishwasher. If it was the dishwasher leaking, wouldn’t it be coming out in front of the dishwasher? But if the cabinet was wet, it was either the drain line leaking, or the water intake line.
So I got my electric lantern to light up the whole intersection of Under and Sink. Wife started the dishwasher, which happened to be on the drain cycle… and water started shooting out the hole where the drain line went through!
“So what is it?” she asked.
“Most likely, the drain line itself has a hole in it,” I ventured. “But if the drain is at the top of the dishwasher, it could be loose there and shooting water across the drain line.” Which didn’t really sound plausible to me, but it’s unusual for a problem at FAR Manor to actually be the first idea I have.
But unusual doesn’t mean never.
When a drain line looks like this, it’s time to replace it.
So this morning, I dug up the info about the dishwasher, in case it mattered, then disconnected the intake and drain lines under the sink so we could pull the dishwasher out. As with most things at FAR Manor, it fought until we found the little tabs just behind the tile, holding it in. Pushing down with a screwdriver let them clear the tile and we dragged the body of the dishwasher into the sun LED light of the kitchen. The drain line went all the way down and under the dishwasher. Wife suggested I look under the front, and I found the line coming out a front-facing outlet and curling back. (She was hitting on all cylinders with the ideas this afternoon.)
With drain line and model number in hand, I rolled to Home Despot. Charlie insisted on coming along, and took several micro-naps on the way there and back. Turns out dishwasher drain lines are universal, so I got one and a can of wasp&hornet bomb (more on that shortly). We needed groceries, but Charlie was ready to go home and looked it.
I had some trouble reaching the under-sink drain connection, because the original drain line had an elbow that shortened the turnaround. I had just enough. If I have to pull the dishwasher out again for any reason, I’ll grab a hole saw and put a lower hole in for the drain line—that should give a good foot of slack. The wife wondered if we could put something around the drain line to prevent future wear-through, so we took the piece of rubber we had to cut off the dishwasher end (the universal line has step-down sizes, you cut to the size you need) and slipped it over the other end and pushed it into the hole. Maybe that will keep it happy.
A crude attempt at not having to do this again
So we ran an empty load… and water started coming out from under the dishwasher. Looking underneath, I could see it was shooting out the drain connection at the dishwasher. I replaced the clip-type hose clamp with a worm gear-type, and that (and a few towels) took care of the problem.
Groceries have been got, and the kitchen floor is still dry, so it appears we have saved ourselves a crap-ton of money on a plumber. Getting on and off the floor is a pain at my age, but at least I can do it.
Now that it was dark, it was time to save a crap-ton of money on an exterminator (they quoted us $225 for this job). Hornets built a large nest above a gable window, and I had to get up on a ladder for even a nominal “27' jet spray” to reach it. I hope it worked, but even with a flashlight trained on the target, I’m not sure the spray reached it. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. If not, I’ll get the extension ladder and get a lot closer than I’d really like. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
I had a busy weekend, but a good chunk of it was the busy stuff I wanted to handle (for a change).
One of the things at FAR Manor that had languished for a long time was the deck out back. The Boy had put up the framework for the railings, and was planning to finish it out, but… things happened. “They” say there are three ways to get things done:
Do it yourself.
Pay someone else to do it.
Tell your kids to NOT do it.
Mason, if told to not do something that smacks of work, will have a rare moment of obedience. Daughter Dearest isn’t exactly the construction type, Charlie is willing but not able just yet, so Number Three didn’t apply. I really wasn’t keen on paying someone to do something I could do in an afternoon or two, so cross off Number Two.
I made a shopping list, punched it into the Home Despot app, and told them I’d come pick it up. When the “It’s ready!” text come in, I loaded Mason and Charlie into M.O. the B.B. and we clattered off to the retail district. As I was tying down the load, I realized something important: instead of 10 2x2s and one 1x4, they gave me eleven 1x4s! I went back inside and let them know what happened, and they sent someone out with the right lumber.
One of the things that inspired me to get this done, was the wife finding a palm nailer on the deck. I had no clue what it was, and looked up the brand and model number online. It’s an air-driven nail gun, but it drives regular nails and bangs them down like someone wielding a hammer at 4x speed. I had no clue such a thing existed, before it appeared at FAR Manor. Cut a picket to size, get it into the right place, line the nail up on the top rail, and let fly with the nailer. Then toenail the bottom into place.
I made quick work of the pickets, but there are large gaps—I have a slide and small climbing wall coming off the deck. My clever thought was to put doors, or gates, across those openings, so they can be used or closed off when AJ is out there.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any commercial gates that size, and the one I need at the top of the stairs would cost a lot more than what I would need to build one. So I started envisioning what a gate might look like—it would need crossbars, so I could attach hinges, but be light enough to not sag under its own weight. After a little finagling, this is what I came up with:
This particular gate closes off the slide. A few feet to its left, I need to set up double gates for the climbing wall. Oncoming rain and darkness worked against me, and this was the only gate I was able to finish and mount before I was through. Of course, I’d forgotten to put latches in my order, so that’s something I’ll have to tackle next weekend.
Sunday, after church, we decided to run out to get lunch. Culver’s is intelligent, and hasn’t opened their inside dining area yet, and we’re fine with that. We went through the drive-thru, got what we wanted, then decamped to a nearby bank parking lot where we parked in the shade and rolled down windows. That’s how we’ve rolled during the pandemic, so far, and it’s gonna be soooooo weird to eat inside with other people around.
But I digress. The wife wanted to get some fencing fixed, but I wanted to get some cheese started. Fortunately, after heating the milk and adding rennet, it has to sit for a while. So I put the lid on the pot, and said “Let’s get that fencing dealt with.”
Returning from the fencing work, I had a look at the pot. The recipe said the cheese would set in 90 minutes, but it hadn’t even started. I decided to leave it, to let the rennet work a little longer, and hoped for the best. My rennet has been around for a long time, and maybe it’s starting to wheeze. The original recipe used liquid rennet, and I’m going to get some for my next attempt.
Quejio Fresco
I’ve made soft cheese before, especially using homogenized and pasteurized milk, and it’s far easier to get good results using raw milk. But, you work with what you can get. Anyway, after four or five hours, the milk finally set up. I cut up the curds, spooned them into the mold, and let it start draining. I had to separate it into two batches at first, because (even starting with only two quarts of milk) it wouldn’t all fit into the mold. After about half an hour, enough whey had drained out that I could consolidate the two batches.
I used a recipe for quejio fresco this time. I’ve made Neufchatel before, and I think I like this one better. One idea I hit upon, was to put the cheese mold on a splatter screen (a screen you usually put over a frying pan, to keep bacon from exacting revenge upon its cook) over a large bowl, as a draining system. This worked very well, because you don’t have to constantly pour the whey out (and if you want to use the whey for ricotta or some other recipe, it’s an easy catch). You can see the splatter screen’s pattern on top of the cheese.
After unwrapping the cheesecloth, and shrugging at the lopsided appearance, I took it out to show the wife. AJ was in her lap, and immediately gave me the “eat” sign. AJ sort of grazes her way through the day when she’s at FAR Manor, usually eating something. Anyway, I cut a sliver off one side, and brought it out. AJ scarfed it right down.
Later in the evening, I spread some on a rosemary cracker (it’s soft and spreadable) and gave it to the wife. After requesting seconds, she said, “This is really good. Good thing I’m going to be out and about tomorrow.” So both the youngest and oldest girlies in the manor approved of my efforts! In the Azores, where this cheese originated, they often have it for breakfast on crusty bread. I’m going to put some on toast in the morning.
I’m slowly getting back into the mix. I should tackle taxes next. :P
Mason was out of school, this last week, and I’ve decided to try taking days off when he’s off—just in case we get the chance to do something together. But I had a week, and there was no rain forecast for the first half of it, so I decided to try getting as much stuff done outdoors as possible. I had seriously considered taking the Starflyer down to the pond for the first half of the week, but realized it would clash hard with all the stuff I wanted to deal with.
First, this year I wanted to have a container garden (mostly). The farm has plenty of plastic tubs laying around, the containers for minerals given to the moofers. There are several places in the back yard where dirt piled up against trees, and much of it is loamy stuff with some clay deposits. I dug out enough to fill four tubs, drilled drain holes in the tubs, and stuck container-friendly tomato plants in them. A late frost whacked them pretty hard (despite our covering them with plastic sheets and leaving buckets of water underneath as heat sources), so I got replacements and stuck the frostbit ones in the ground… along with two jalapeño plants. The bottom shoots, that were covered in mulch, survived the frost. Maybe if this happens again, I’ll just pile mulch over the plants as well. Or, I’ll just wait for that first April frost next year.
Buried treasure
Next, I tackled The Boy’s old car (a black Integra, which inspired the name for the Blackuras, a street racing gang that draws Blink’s attention). The left rear brake caliper was stuck, and the car had sat in its spot for several months. When I put it there, the stuck tire picked up a piece of gravel, and you can still see the arcing “chalk” mark it left behind. So I bled some brake fluid out of the caliper, and tried prying it apart with heavy-duty screwdrivers and a prybar, without luck. What worked was smacking the moving part of the caliper with a hammer until it loosened up. After cleaning it out, and finding some interesting stuff (including a portable charger) I moved it to the new equipment yard and made a mental note to replace that caliper. Like my old Civic, the floor of the trunk is rusted through, so some Dremel and pop-rivet work is in my future. I hope I can get Mason interested in fixing it up a bit, then when he’s old enough to drive I’ll give him the car. (Although he’ll probably want my Miata instead.)
Good as new!
With the car out of the way, there was plenty of room to roll out the worn out washer and dryer that we replaced earlier this year. But first, the landscaping trailer the wife had bought some years back needed some serious electrical work. The plug was gone completely, both taillights were smashed, and so were two of the four marker lights. Fortunately, Tractor Supply had me covered. A $25 kit included taillights, two marker lights, a license plate mount, and the entire wiring harness—in other words, everything I needed for the electrical part. The marker lights were stud-mount, which meant I had to drill a 1/4" hole in between the old mounting holes. Since I live in the South, I learned that WD-40 works quite well as a cutting oil. I spent much of Monday afternoon hacking on the trailer. Once I finished the road (driver’s) side, the curb (passenger) side went pretty quickly. I plugged it into the farm truck, and realized the reason I wasn’t getting taillights was because the truck had a broken wire. The kit included some splices, and I didn’t need two of them, so I used one to fix that.
Tuesday, we loaded the washer and dryer onto the trailer, plus the furnace we replaced last year and a lawn mower with a bent crankshaft (I hit a small stump… it’s FAR Manor, why are you surprised?), plus the aluminum cans we’d let pile up for years, and took it all to the scrapyard. Mason and Dizzle rode along, and had great fun launching the lawn mower off the edge of the concrete. The only snag we hit was when they went to cut the check—it turns out that The Boy (who shared my first name, although he mostly went by his first middle name) had brought loads to the scrapyard. When they said, “Lawrence?” I assumed the wife had used my name for whatever reason. But she had been there as well, so I had them re-cut the check in her name. It all goes into the same accounts, after all. So we returned to the Manor, $41 richer (and more importantly, less crap laying around). They promised to set me up with my own account, next time.
But the trailer was not quite finished. It has a mesh ramp, that doubles as a parachute when towing it. When it was new, it had spring-loaded pins that would hold the ramp up for traveling, but they broke. Bobcat just flopped the ramp onto the trailer when empty, and used rope to hold it up when loaded. I used ratchet straps, but I really wanted it to be properly functional. Back to Tractor Supply… I found some long 1/2" pins that would do the job. To get everything back into alignment, I used a four-pound maul (the flat end) to bang things into place. Yes, percussive maintenance is a valid way of fixing certain issues, and quite satisfying. It was even more satisfying to have two such opportunities in one week. “This is how we fix problems at FAR Manor!” (Or as one of my college friends was fond of saying, “Don’t force it, get a bigger hammer.”)
By Wednesday, I was pretty stiff. Monday had included soccer practice, even though Mason’s team had two weekends off, and the head coach (I'm the asst. coach this season) knows exactly what motivates his players: a scrimmage. Last season, we did a series of scrimmages against the parents, and the parents pwn3d them because they weren’t passing. Something must have clicked between last season and this one, because they’re mostly holding their own now. They’re passing better, and are 1-1 vs. the parents and 2-1 vs. the real teams. (They were like 1-7-1 last season, and never beat the parents, so this is already a huge improvement.) To toot my own horn, I took the assistant-coach position so I could advocate (guilt-free) for more passing drills… I’ve observed that, at least at this level, the team with the better passing game wins at least 85% of the time. The head coach came up with some drills that emphasize passing, and it has helped a lot.
Mason’s team has practice on Mondays and Thursdays, and we were planning a parent-team scrimmage. I was slightly less stiff, but there was still a lingering muscle pull in my right leg (just under my butt). Monday, I pulled the left side, but slightly less. I joked about needing a butt replacement, but mostly held up my end. Of the three who played goalie on our side, I was the only one who didn’t let a ball get past (OK, that was mostly luck). Now the rain was supposed to come in by Thursday, but retreated to Friday except for an occasional sprinkle.
But when Friday came around, the rain retreated again. Now I have to admit, Charlie thought this was wonderful. It meant he could spend more time outside, and we did some “throw disc” long after I figured it would be far too wet. I didn't do much, but that helped a lot with the stiffness issues.
Yesterday morning, our friends came by with more chicken. Last time, we got six. We gave two to Daughter Dearest and Sizzle, two more to the preacher (who returned one smoked, yum), and the others went into the freezer. This time, they brought about two dozen. Since this was a freebie, and there was no way we could deal with that much, the wife started making phone calls while we broke out the vacuum sealer. She hit upon a great idea, to stuff a couple of them in the Instant Pot and then de-bone them. I found some suggestions online, and we bagged up the rest for both us and several others. We had chicken casserole for supper, and at least two more chicken-based meals bagged and frozen. Meanwhile, I have to figure out where I put my beer-can chicken stand. I used it once, and it turned out very well.
The rain finally arrived, and pretty much went all day. I had planned for more rain days, and a few improvements to the homemade worker’s paradise, but there was one I knew I could tackle: I wanted a shelf above the coffee station, to keep things that didn't need to be on the table all the time. I’d found some shelf brackets a few weeks prior, and a wrecked bookshelf provided the actual shelving. A nail head poking out of the paint told me where one stud was, and I measured to find the others. I had to run across to the detached garage, during (of course) one of the heavier rain periods, to grab a pack of wood screws. I had to reposition brackets a couple of times—I think the studs weren’t placed evenly—but eventually all the screws found something to bite. I only had to take off and flip one bracket, that I’d put on the wrong way.
A little yard work today wrapped things up. I went after the smaller (diameter) stumps that dot the back yard; I focused on those because they’re not so easy to see. Some I sawed out, some we dug up, several got the loppers. There are a couple dozen larger stumps, but they’re easy to spot and shouldn’t give a lawn mower a fatal surprise. If next weekend cooperates, I’ll rent a stump grinder and have at 'em.
So, back to work tomorrow. I’ll probably spend most of Monday weeding emails.
Life on a farm—or FAR Manor—is a constant hack-fest. Sometimes, heavy equipment is required (and at other times, the heavy equipment is the subject).
A few weeks ago, I talked about the yard expansion (and roof work). The driveway loop/guest parking/equipment yard was most of what the wife wanted… except for one little thing. There had been a gigantic white pine, almost straight out from the front door. The same lightning strike that fried our light switches (and DSL box), 3.5 years ago, also nailed that tree. It was still green, but dying from the top down. So, while Bobcat was working general mayhem on the scrub and other flora, I finally relented and had him drop the big pine.
All well and good, and I rented a stump grinder to level it out, but Bobcat “forgot” to deal with the roots. Several of them were as big around as a decent-sized tree in their own right, and made humps in the driving area. This did not please the wife at all, and she complained about it off and on pretty much all the time. Finally, I realized that she actually wanted a solution, not just a gripe-fest.
“Maybe we can dig up the roots and pull them out with a tractor,” I suggested at last. She dismissed the idea at first (it was my idea, after all), but then warmed up to it. And so, a semi-dry evening found me outside with a shovel and a crowbar, loosening dirt around the offending roots and tossing it out of the way, until we had room to slip a chain underneath.
Up-rooting
It has been raining a lot in the last week, and more was on the way (and more yet is to come). But the wife went and got a tractor, and I dragged the chain out of the big garage. We started with a smaller, “practice” root, only as big around as my upper arm. I used a chainsaw to disconnect it from the stump, then wrapped the chain around it and hooked it to the tractor. Hoist… and up it came!
Now for the main event… um, nope. I couldn’t get the chain to stay around the bigger root, because there was a small branch diving deeper into the ground right where I’d cut it loose. I dug around it, then chainsaw’ed the branch away (but left about an inch to help keep the chain in place).
As the root started coming up, the rain started coming down. We got the thing out of the ground, I slid the chain toward the middle, and then raked a mat of dirt and gravel off it. Finally, she carried it out of the way.
The rain got close to being a downpour, and the wife put the tractor in high gear to get it back to its dry garage as I bolted inside and hit my head with a hair dryer.
Root has been got
So we got root, at least part of it. There's another one, almost this big, still attached to the stump. If we get a few dry hours, I’ll get that one dug out and cut away. At that point, we might be able to pull up the rest the stump with the tractor.
Too bad it’s pine… it would have been great firewood.
One of the reasons I didn’t want to buy the house that became FAR Manor, I thought the roof was pretty sketchy-looking. It was obviously uneven above The Boy’s room. But somehow, it held up all this time and never sprang a leak.
It's metal, man.
But the pandemic let me dump all the money we had been spending on restaurants into savings, along with what I’d been throwing in to cover insurance and property taxes (or any incidental one-time expenses), and it added up. Back in spring, an older guy came by and asked to lease the garden area where the mother-in-law once held court. Wife said “don’t pay us, just give us some of the produce.” That worked out well, but his son runs a roofing company. He came by in December, and gave us an estimate. I had enough in savings to cover it, so I gave it the go-ahead. Last week, it finally happened. I’m not sure how much the wife will like it when it starts raining acorns in the fall, but (as usual) we’ll burn that bridge after we cross it. But hey, the color matches the gazebo!
Not shown: the new chimney cap. The old one lost its covering on one of the many windstorms a while back. I took it down, and riveted new sheet metal on it, but another windstorm did for the repair as well. The new one looks a lot more substantial.
But even before that… I’ve mentioned Bobcat. He came around to help the wife with farm work, then brought his namesake and (under the wife’s direction) began clearing trees around the front of the place, to make a driveway loop. FAR Manor’s driveway has always been tricky to negotiate, especially with larger vehicles, and even more so with the Starflyer parked in front of the detached garage. He ended up clearing all the trees and brush from around front. Delivery vans have a much easier time getting in and out of here now—especially since it’s an equipment yard as much as a driveway loop.
Front (pano view)
Then he said, “Hey, while I’m here, you want a larger back yard?” In for a round, in for an octagon, as Bailar the Blue might say. Bobcat made it spacious enough that I decided to order another disc golf goal (and I probably could have made room for a fourth). He also planted grass, but didn’t get the sticks up and didn’t smooth out the ground before sowing. It’ll be a bumpy ride on the mower for a while.
Rear (pano view)
Charlie enjoys tramping around the expanded yard, and especially likes dragging a wagon or riding (or pushing) a tricycle around the driveway loop.
Plenty more parking… too bad we’re not having many visitors these days.
Ever since we put the gazebo up in the front yard, the old backyard retreat has languished. The fire bowl in the table rotted out, and I’ve procrastinated on rebuilding it. The cushions on the chairs got kind of grotty, and somehow a table (sans top) made its way down there. The rubber tiles were still mostly in place, although a few got scattered out.
But summer + two boys + a pandemic that will probably last through next year got me thinking. We had a small (6') inflatable pool from last year laying around… it had been put up wet, but it still held air and water. We cleaned it up as best as we could and put it on the sidewalk out front (level spots around Sector 706 in general, and FAR Manor in particular, are hard to come by).
All well and good for the kids, but what about the parents? Some poking around Amazon turned up several candidates. So… where would we put it? We need something mostly level.
Oh. The old retreat. But I didn’t want to just drop the pool on the bare ground… the soil around here grows rocks, and I figure it wouldn’t take long for a sharp rock to punch a hole in the floor. The elder sister in law had an above-ground pool at her old place, and fire ants chewed through the floor when the rocks wouldn’t do the job, so “slap directly on ground” was right out.
My first thought was to build a low deck, but I calculated the pool would weigh about 5 tons. I overengineered a deck at our old place, but I don’t know if even it would have supported that much weight. We then considered pouring several inches of sand into the space, or even concrete, to get a flat surface. Given the location, there would be a lot of grunt work involved with concrete: we would have to either carry 100 bags down there, mix it and pour it, or find a concrete company who could maneuver a truck up the driveway and send the slop down a chute. Seeing as I simultaneously tweaked my back and horked my (supposedly good) knee last week*, ironically while bailing water out of the small pool, paying to have someone else do the grunt work would have been the best idea.
Finally, we decided it would be best to smooth out what we have now, cover the Envirotiles with a tarp to protect the pool from ant attacks, and cover it with a pergola.
Patio area, cleared. (Phase 1)
So I took the boys down to the patio Sunday afternoon, and we got everything moved out. Charlie did his best to help, picking up a plastic chair and dragging tiles over to our stacking area. Mason was less enthusiastic, but did a lot of the work. I raked out remaining debris, and tried to level out high spots. I sprayed the whole area with Roundup to discourage plants from trying to slip between the tiles… but, as it turned out, most of the growth was in composted leaves that hadn’t been swept away in a long time.
Given the pandemic, large pools are going for a premium. We ordered a round 10' pool (with filter) for $300, and the same pool was going for $100 pre-pandemic. But even at COVID prices, the pool itself is the least costly part of this project.
The pergola, at $1600, is actually the priciest component. Wayfair is now telling us it won’t be delivered until August (after saying it was in stock when the wife ordered it), but August is when we'll need it most.
The boys laid tiles.
And did a pretty good job of it.
Next step: smoothing out the dirt. Nine years of rain, frost, erosion, and roots had lifted some spots and sank others (most of the sinking was along the south edge, where things do drop off). Last month, Mason and I replaced the rotten fascia boards across the front of the detached garage. One of the original boards was still good, for most of its 16-foot length, and it’s nice and straight.
We dragged it across the dirt to catch high spots, and I scraped them down with a shovel and tossed the dirt into low spots. It’s not perfect, but more effort won’t be worth the return. I swept dirt off the tiles, handed them to Charlie, and he carried them to Mason, who put them in place. Both of them were a big help—but of course, both of them want the pool going!
With the tiles down, I put the tools back in the garage and got out the leaf blower. There were leaves around the margins, and dirt on the tiles (kicked up when I frisbee’d a few tiles down to Mason).
Just add tarp (and pool… and yes, water). (Phase 2)
At this point, we just need to get a 10x10 foot tarp to lay over the tiles, then we’ll be ready to put the pool in place and start filling it. I estimated we’ll need about 1400 gallons to fill the thing—in other words, we won’t be able to fill it all at once. I’m thinking about tapping the downspout on the rain gutters, running a flex-pipe down to the pool, and catching any debris with screening… or seeing if bulk water delivery is reasonable.
I figure we’ll be able to use it through September this year, and all summer next year. Once the pandemic is over, we’ll still have the option of not driving 15 (or 40) miles to go to a pool.
Stay tuned for the completed project!
Are you restructuring your yard for an extended shelter-in-place? Comments, as always, are open!
*Both back and knee are around 90% of full-function right now, which is a dangerous zone. Just because they’ve subsided to a low-level ache, instead of stabby OUCH pain at random (all too short) intervals, doesn’t mean you can safely hoist 60lb bags of concrete at will… even if you think you can. My back is letting me know I was pushing my luck just cleaning off tiles this evening.
Planet Georgia's sorry excuse for a governor partially lifted the shelter-in-place, starting today. That’s going to have consequences in late May, for sure. Nevertheless, we got an email from work that said, in effect, “yeah, we know, keep working at home.”
Things I needed to set up a workspace arrived this week, and I found some other necessities in the garage. So after I sent my reports this afternoon, I got to work. After clearing the space, I vacuumed the (horrid) carpet.
We’ve been using The Boy’s old room for storage for a while. Clearing out a corner wasn’t all that difficult, but lighting has always been an issue. The house is a Cape Cod, and the only window in each upstairs bedroom is in the gable. I ordered a 4-foot LED fixture and power cord, and mounted it on the sloped part of the ceiling. Plugging it in yielded plenty of light, enough for most of the rest of the room. I used an old wire shelf hanger hook to keep the cord up against the wall.
Now for the furnishings. Daughter Dearest’s old office chair was sitting in that corner, and I found an old typing desk in the detached garage. Of course, it was all the way to the back, and covered in stuff (including lots of dust and grime). Fortunately, it was light enough for me to lift and carry by myself, and I hucked it across the driveway before wiping it down. I really need to hit the metal parts with a wire brush and repaint it, but that can wait. With the desk mostly cleaned up, I hucked it up the stairs and dropped it in place. I grabbed the bag of gear (dock, keyboard, mouse) that I got from the office back when they first told us to not come in, and took that upstairs. To my delight, there was also a power strip that I’d forgotten about. Finally, the laptop and my second monitor went on up to make the final connections.
Another garage find—a big monthly planner whiteboard—was the last piece. We have a little container of picture hanger hooks, and there was a length of wire as well. I put it together, and there was already in a screw in the wall at just the right height. Incidentally, it covers a bunch of marks, so it wins twice.
It’s not quite done yet, even if it’s usable as a workspace in its present state. I plan to put some hooks under the front of the desk to neaten up the cabling, for starters.
Longer term, the wife wants to replace all the carpeting in the room and paint the walls. When that happens, I plan to use whiteboard paint at least in that corner. Maybe I’ll replace the cord with house wiring, to get it out of the way.
Come Monday, I’ll be a lot more comfortable about turning video on for our many conference calls than I have been in the past. I could also put pithy messages like “Approvals needed ASAP” on the whiteboard behind me, to enhance my presence.
Back before Christmas, Panda was at the manor, and backed up his big truck to turn around…
BAM
I was working at home that morning, and ran out to see what had happened. To be honest, the only surprise was that it hadn’t happened years ago. FAR Manor has a treacherous driveway. Someone, and it turned out to be Panda, finally hit the garage door.
You really couldn’t see any problem from the outside, and you had to be looking for it to see it from the inside. One of the panels was pushed in. “I’ll come by tomorrow and put it back in,” Panda assured me.
But he didn’t.
After he left, I hit the lift button. The Orange Crate was parked in there, and I would need it. The garage door went up, but made one h3|| of a racket, squealing like a Republican who had been confronted with its lies. I told the wife about it, and we agreed to leave the door open until we could get someone to deal with it.
So the holidays went by, and a brief Winter #2 came around. The garage door isn’t awesome insulation, but it’s a lot better than nothing (especially when it’s windy, which is typical of Planet Georgia’s five winters). The wife dug around, and found the number of the guy who had installed our replacement garage door opener (that I got from Freecycle). He said he could come by on Thursday, and I agreed to work at home that day.
Gotta love maintenance windows… I had an urgent bathroom appointment, and somehow I missed hearing him come up, but heard him leave. Thinking he had arrived, I forced an early finish and ran out to the garage. All there was, was a sticker saying he had come by.
Since I had to move my cube at work on Friday, there was no opportunity to work at home then. Wife figured she would hang out, and arranged a second-chance visit… and he never showed up.
Sunday afternoon rolled around, and I realized the garage door was still in the same shape it had been. After confirming that the garage door guy never showed up Friday, I decided to tackle the issue myself.
First, I backed Moby Yo (the great white minivan) out. If I got the door down, and it wouldn’t go back up, at least we wouldn’t have a trapped vehicle. Then I hit the button. It wailed, stalled, and went back up. Maybe I’d been overly cautious, but at least I had room to work. I got a stepladder, hammer, and wood block, and got pounding.
Back in place… mostly.
After dorking around, I was able to get the door down. I attacked the panel in earnest, pushing it out and banging the framework down enough to get it back into place.
I didn’t address the bent metal beams, but hoped I’d straightened things out enough to get it going. Hitting the button was encouraging… the door went up without drama. Down, it howled and stopped again.
“Huh,” I thought. I know the definition of insanity is trying the same thing and expecting a different result, but I hit the button again anyway. This time, the door went down like nothing had ever happened. There’s a reason I call this place the free-range insane asylum.
Given that Spring #3 seems to be really wet and not all that cold, we might not restart the firebox until the end of the week. We’ve had plenty of the “cool/warm and wet” part of Planet Georgia winters, but only (so far) brief spates of the other part, “cold and dry.” More will come, and at least now we can put the garage door down to keep the worst of it out.
But we have wood on the rack, and a little more in the shelter. Maybe I’ll get a chance to cut more firewood in the weekends ahead. Winter is coming… and going, through March anyway. Dry weekend days, and we’ve been lucky to get one for two the last few, means tackling those maintenance issues while you can.
Ever since they painted some of the walls at work with it, I’ve wanted to get some of that dry-erase paint and cover a couple of Mason’s walls with it. The problem is, his walls (and most of the walls in FAR Manor, for that matter) are paneling… aka Norwegian Wood.
My second thought was “hey, I think we have a piece of sheetrock in the garage. I could mount that and paint it.” As it turned out, I didn’t have any sheetrock in the garage… but there was this piece of shower stall board, about 4' x 4'. I scribbled a corner with a dry-erase marker, left it overnight, and found it erased just fine the next day. I wanted to find some framing boards, with a notch cut into one side, but had no luck. I ended up buying four 6' pieces of 1x4, figuring I could rabbit out a notch with the table saw.
This was back in the spring. Then I had knee surgery, and was pretty much sidelined for the summer. But old surgical wounds heal, given time, and the whiteboard-to-be was taking up space in the garage. As were the boards.
With a little time, I got on it last weekend. First step was to notch the boards. The table saw did the job, once the fence was in the right place. I cut the groove into each board, then flipped them sideways and cut off the strip of wood. A nearby chisel got drafted to finish out the notches.
Next up, the whiteboard had to be trimmed. I had planned for 48" square exactly, but somehow ended up with 48"x47¾". No problem, I hadn't trimmed the boards yet. I use the miter saw to cut 45° angles.
With all the parts ready, I grabbed the drill battery out of the charger and got to work. It went fairly quickly; I put up the bottom board, using a level to get it straight. Then I slid the whiteboard into the notch, added the side and top framing (bonking things straight with the hammer), and screwed it all up down. The final touch was a piece of angle-aluminum, once used as a hanger for 1/2" videotape cases (old pro stuff), now a place for his markers.
Mason was pleased, but… “What can I use it for?”
“Anything,” I replied. “Draw pictures, write down stuff you want to get done, do math problems—”
“Yeah!” he exclaimed, and proceeded to cover it with multiplication tables.
I still need to get him a set of colored markers and an eraser. He’s making do with the one marker we have an a paper towel for now.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. June and July (so far) have featured thunderstorms pretty much every day. It finally happened Wednesday evening, between 4 and 6 pm, while nobody was home but the dogs. While we were out shopping, Daughter Dearest texted me a picture of the light switches in the foyer, next to the front door:
Blew the ends right off the plate!
She followed up with The DSL box got fried. Or it's not on at all. I had her check the computers and all was well there. Mine’s on a UPS, so is the TV and the DSL box. The phone line, though, doesn't have a surge protector. So… after thanking God the manor didn’t burn down1 and the computers were OK, the wife and I discussed what else we needed to check before calling the insurance company.
Insurance was pretty copacetic about the situation… probably because we have a $1000 deductible. They said my idea of having the wiring inspected was a good one, and said to just keep a list of our expenses. Besides the exploding switches, we checked things out and discovered:
Everything connected to a phone line, including the lines themselves, got clobbered (more on that shortly)
The TV signal amp was fried
We thought the Wii had lost video, but it turned out to be the VCR it was connected through
One of the garage door electric eyes is blinded, so we can’t close the garage
The funny thing was, the clock-radio in our bedroom was still keeping time—that means the power didn’t go down for even a fraction of a second. Considering the damage could have been a lot more extensive, I’d say we got off pretty light. Mason (and me, to a lesser extent) was jonesing for Internet access, so I turned on my phone’s personal hotspot and started making a dent in our rollover data.
Thursday morning, I grabbed tools (and an old landline phone I keep for testing) and went out to the network interface box (aka the NID). We had no dialtone inside, as I rather expected, and didn’t have dialtone at the test jack, either. BUT, we had dialtone at the second test jack. I promptly moved all the connections down, but that didn’t help. Armed with some data, I called Windstream (aka Windbeans) and gave them my findings. They promised to have someone out here before a week from Friday. Um… this is a business line, guys? We kind of need this connection to function? “It should be earlier than that.” I’m going to ask them for a 25% reduction on the bill for the month, since they can’t be bothered to get anyone out here for a freekin’ week. If they balk, I’ll see what the PSC has to say. I measured along the walls and came up with an estimate of 14 feet from the NID to my window… meaning a 20-foot phone cord would reach my desk.
We got through the weekend. I continually reminded Mason, no Youtube, no Netflix, and he complained but complied. Still, between us, we chewed through 1GB pretty much daily. I turned off automatic updates to prevent surprises. But I kept thinking about that second line that was giving dialtone…
Monday finally arrived. I took Charlie to daycare, then learned that Mal*Wart no longer carries anything having to do with landlines (you would think, with so much of their clientele coming from the edges of civilization, they would try to help out). Fortunately, Home Depot seems to understand, and I happily bought a 25-foot phone cord from them. This I ran from the NID’s test jack, into the window in front of my computer, and onto my desk. I plugged in the phone and got dialtone, yay! Then, just out of curiosity, I called my cellphone. I don’t recognize this number. I called it back, just to see if anyone out there would answer. My test phone rang, but nobody else answered. Something obviously melted in a pedestal upstream.
Still, desperate times call for desperate measures. I scrounged up the old DSL modem we used before Windbeans gave us one with built-in Wi-Fi, plugged it in, and it connected. Then I found the Linksys router Mom gave me a while ago, and hooked it up. With my computer next to the router, I used Ethernet cables. Let the tablet users share the Wi-Fi, right?
With a temporary DSL lashup in place by Monday afternoon, the electrician showed up Monday evening. Two of the switches had exploded. The third, amazingly, still worked, but he replaced them all. The insulation on one wire was melted, but barely enough to expose the wire, so he wrapped it up. Three new switches and a plate, I wiped up the soot, and he pronounced the wiring otherwise OK.
We still have a few things to fix to get back to completely normal here, but we’re good to go otherwise. I just want to be here to see the look on the phone tech’s face when (s)he realizes we have access to a phone line we shouldn’t. On the other hand, they really need to get people out here sooner, and take care of their plant a little better.
1I don’t want FAR Manor to burn down… just the mortgage.
Back at the manor for a couple of days, but I’ll be heading out this morning.
While I was at Mom’s the last couple of weeks, we kept in touch using both the phone and FaceTime. One day, the wife said, “The dryer’s stopped working. It runs, but it doesn’t get the clothes dry. I think the heating element is fried.”
“Have you checked the dryer vent and the ducts?” I asked.
“No, but that’s not the problem, the clothes aren’t getting hot.”
Whatever, I thought, but agreed to have a look when I got home. I didn’t actually get to it until yesterday, but that’s pretty typical. I pulled the dryer back, got the vacuum, and got up an inch of dust behind and under the dryer, then checked the exhaust. It was clear, as was the duct, and I started thinking the wife might have gotten one right.
But as often happens around here, I got yanked off that project to take care of something she wanted done―namely, replacing the furnace filters up in the attic. We have washable filters, so I pulled them out and she agreed to hose them off while I got a nut driver and took the back of the dryer off. But before I found the nut driver, I got interrupted again: “I need a pair of needle-nose pliers,” she called. Figuring she found something in the filter that she couldn’t get hold of, I started looking for them. But before I found them, she called again: “put a Phillips bit on the drill and bring it!”
I couldn’t find the drill, because Daughter Dearest has it down at her place. I grabbed a regular old hand-powered screwdriver and went to her. Turned out she looked up at the dryer vent while hosing off the filter, and took a peek inside. There was about six inches (15cm) of fiber & lint clogging up the vent. We pulled that out, I threw a load in the dryer, and it’s working again.
Troubleshooting 101: check the easy stuff first. Even if it doesn’t fix the problem right away, it doesn’t take long to check. You might not need a new computer, just clean up the old one. Word might not be the problem―strike that, it usually is, the easy fix is using something else. The noise on the phone line might be fixable by tightening the screws at the network interface box. Save yourself a lot of grief and expense, and check the easy stuff first. You can bet a professional repair person will.
I started this project last fall, but only now have I finished it.
As you may recall, there was a steep slope between the driveway and the back yard. A couple summers ago, I dug out the eroded pathway and replaced it with concrete-block steps (hosing my left shoulder in the process). I haven’t quite gotten around to filling in the holes just yet, but now I’m a step (pun intended) closer.
Between the steps and the garage was a steep bank about four feet high. It was clay and gravelly rock, supporting nothing but weeds and debris. I long fantasized about digging it out and putting in a planter, and decided to dedicate it to strawberries because Mason does love to pick himself a snack. So last fall, I dug out the bank, throwing the dirt into large (20 gallon?) buckets that once held mineral lick for the in-laws’ cattle and covering them. I poured a concrete footing and built up the sidewalls with concrete blocks. And that’s pretty much where it remained through winter and early spring, because cold weather and mortar mix don’t play well together.
The top really isn’t that uneven… the driveway slopes.
But the weather finally warmed up, and it stopped raining for a little while, and I tackled what I thought was the final step: building the front wall with all the rocks I’d picked up and saved for the job. Trowel, bucket, mortar mix, water, rocks… I spent a pleasant afternoon finding stones that fit the next mark, slathering them with mortar, trying to remember why I thought it fit that way, repeat. I used some shale I’d dug up to make the top a little flatter. I used some old bricks to cover the tops of the concrete blocks. Ta-daaaa!
Now we have a hole!
Done! Or so I thought. The Boy pulled up just as I finished. “Looks nice,” he said, which was good because he’s been doing similar work lately. “But you need to put some bricks behind the rock wall with some rebar so the dirt doesn’t push the wall out.” Fortunately, I had some extra concrete blocks handy, and two 8-foot lengths of rebar laying around. I stacked the bricks, drove the rebar through the holes to hold them in place, and left it all there so the mortar could finish setting up.
The rebar that sticks up gets pounded down…
After a week of warm weather (and rain on the back end), I figured it was time to fill it in. I dragged the buckets over and started shoveling until they were light enough to lift, then dumped the rest in. To my surprise, I had just enough dirt to fill the thing about 6 inches below the top—I thought I’d have plenty of dirt left over. I left it this way for another week to allow the incoming rains to settle the dirt.
Just before dumping the garden soil in. Plants ho!
Another surprise: the dirt didn’t settle all that much. Three huge bags of garden soil topped it off nicely. It’s ready for the strawberry plants!
Spring #3 has been pretty wet so far. All the rain melted the snow in a hurry, and it’s supposed to be sunny and 70°F Sunday and Monday. If we’re going to get a Winter #4, it had better hurry up because the calendar’s running out.
As you may recall, Winter #3 left us with a rather large mess on our hands. I was glad to put the generator away, though I do need to dump some Sta-Bil in the tank and run it long enough to get into the carb. But the first order of business last weekend was to deal with the downed trees above the mailbox:
Snap, crackle, pop
I had planned to get outside with a chainsaw as soon as I could on Saturday. I was stuck inside with Mason, but The Boy pretty much took over.
Let the cleanup begin…
The process was fairly simple, but rather physical: trim branches off the fallen ends, toss them on the truck, then cut lengths for the fire pit and load them separately. Finally, cut down the trunks and cut them up. He finished the job up Sunday morning while I was at church.
Lookin’ good!
The only downside is, now you can see the manor from the road. I guess I’ll have to plant some holly or boxwoods along that edge. The big upside is, the persimmon tree (to the left behind the holly bush) is no longer shaded by the pines. Maybe Mason will have some more fruit to munch on this fall.
I was working at home Thursday morning, minding my own business, when:
KA-RASSHHHHH
My first thought was, “OMG, +E.J Hobbs just had something fall on him!” and was out of my seat and halfway up the stairs in a heartbeat.
“I’m OK,” he said. “I was just in here shaving…”
Mirror, mirror, on the floor,
Why’d you have to fall down for?
“It just came off the wall,” he said. If you look at the picture, you’ll see five black spots where the mirror was. They’re some kind of caulk, dried up and hard and not sticky at all. A line of silicone caulk at the bottom of the mirror, where it contacted the vanity, was the only thing holding it in place. No clips or anything else. Just another example of why FAR Manor was a bad idea.
“Oh well,” the wife said. “We” (that is, she and Daughter Dearest) “were talking about repainting the bathroom anyway. We also need to do something about the lighting.”
She had bought Daughter Dearest a mirror with a white frame a while back, that she isn’t using, and it’s just big enough to cover the black spots (the wallpaper underneath is dissolved, so chipping it off won’t solve anything). I found a cardboard box in the garage, and EJ used that to collect the shards. Since it’s a 3-day weekend in the US, maybe I’ll be able to hang the mirror today or tomorrow.
The few minor issues with my new-to-me Miata are electrical. The driver-side power window isn’t working, and Solar installed a manual crank. This is a common workaround among Miata enthusiasts, as the replacement parts for the power windows can run several hundred smackers. Since the passenger-side power window works, this is something I can live with for a while.
What I can’t abide is the lousy stereo. It’s original equipment (1992), an AM/FM radio with a cassette player. Just for grins, I stuck a tape in it earlier this week, and now it won’t come out. Worse, the left channel was gone. I put it down to a blown speaker in the driver-side door, especially since I wired a spare (home) stereo speaker box into the connector and got sound. So, it was off to Best Buy for a pair of Pioneer speakers. One of the “fun” parts of this replacement was that the Miata’s speaker mount uses three screws, and the new speakers came with four slots. With a workbench clear enough to use (yay!), I used one of the existing holes and marked the places for the other two. A few minutes with a Dremel, and I had the slots I needed.
Since the Miata uses a plug connector for the speakers, I drilled the rivet out of the old speakers and clipped enough wire to insert in the holes that the new speakers provided. A little quality time with a soldering gun, then a screwdriver, and I was done. Except that I still didn’t have a left channel. What…ever. A day or two later, I pulled the left-side speaker, and found that I hadn’t done a good job with one of the wires. More soldering, put it back in, and now both sides have sound! I’m still going to replace that head-unit, though. I’ve wanted a stereo with aux-in (or better yet, USB-in) for some time now. All it takes is money, right?
The Boy will have a hard time
borrowing this one
One of the drawbacks of the ceiling fan in Mason’s room has always been that it had no light. I looked at attaching a light once, some time back, but it didn’t work out. So earlier this week, Daughter Dearest bought a ceiling fan with an attached light. I got on it last night. It wasn’t exactly a “no problem” swap, but it wasn’t all that difficult once I got all the tools together. I’m (re)learning that keeping at one of these projects will let me finish it sooner than I might think. I put the old fan (with detached blades) in the box and sat it in the living room.
So today, the wife says, “you need to get that fan out of the living room.” It took me two seconds to decide where I wanted it, and about 20 minutes to put it up. (Mason helped by carrying the detached blades out to the garage for me.) I nailed a 2x4 across two rafters, used four screws to attach the hanger, and it doesn’t get much easier. I didn’t feel like dorking with splicing into one of the nearby light fixtures, so I got a 3-wire cord I’d clipped off some dead appliance in the past, and spliced it in. Run to an extension cord, plug it in, and away it goes. There was an initial blast of heat, as it flushed out what was up in the rafters, but it was soon moving ambient air around. So… if you’re ever wondering how to dispose of a working ceiling fan, putting it up in the garage seems to be a pretty good idea. Yes, it clears one of the light fixtures by about 3 inches.
And I leave you with a Mason pic (that is, a pic by Mason). He asked to take some pictures yesterday morning, and got a good one of EJ snoozing (or pretending to) on the futon.
FAR Manor has an attached two-car garage, and a detached three-car garage. With all that garage space, we are able to park: one minivan and two motorcycles.
How the fiber hath fallen…
To add to the “fun,” the detached garage (or “Carriage House” in FAR Future) has insulation in the ceiling… or rather, had. It pretty much all fell down over the last year or so. With all the junk in there, including stuff that Jam asked us to store and has pretty much forgotten about, there hasn't been room to maneuver ladders around as needed to put it back up.
But… if I have to replace my Civic soon, I’ll want some garage space. And so, once more unto the breach! The detached garage has a single-car door, and a two-car door. The Boy has his band stuff in the two-car section, so I figured it would be easier to clear the other side. I removed: a riding lawn mower, The Boy’s 1970-vintage dirt bike, a chipper-shredder, a go-kart, a Mantis tiller, boxes, junk, more junk, and more junk. We about filled a pickup truck (red, not white) with trash… including some of the un-repairable insulation.
Lifting up the fallen…
With the battlefield mostly clear, I got to work. Up the stepladder to tack up the insulation near the wall and the middle, then up the ladder to tack it at the peak. Some of the paper had gone bad, and I had these little metal rods to hold them up… until I ran out.
But, up in the attic/crawlspace (which was intolerably hot until I put a small fan up there to circulate the air), is a veritable lumber yard of stuff left by the previous owners and their own projects. The most helpful thing I found was long strips of wood, about 2" wide, and I tacked them up about halfway to support the insulation. This helped a lot, and I managed to finish the back half before supper. I tacked up another long strip on the front half to get a head start on that.
Let's hope it stays now.
So… this afternoon, after a couple false starts, I was off and running. I was hoping that I could tack up the bottom half all the way across, then climb into the crawlspace to finish the top half, but it didn’t quite work out that way.
But, with much upping and downing on the ladders, and another strip near the top of the front half to hold up some of the rattier insulation, I managed to get it done.
And now, it’s time to take my itchy self to bed. I get to rest at the office all week!
As I’ve mentioned before, the landscaping around FAR Manor is largely invasive, and aggressively so. But it’s not limited to the plants that were planted by former occupants; the native flora is pretty enthusiastic as well.
So, native or exotic, the plants start springing up in places where they’re not wanted. Left alone long enough, they’ll take over completely. Since Saturday was the first really nice weekend day in a long time, I spent the morning cutting firewood from a big deadfall. Then, I spent a pleasant afternoon outside, laying waste to holly and pine trees that were growing where they didn’t need to grow. Those about as big around as my thumb (or smaller), I yanked out of the ground. Up to quarter-size or so, the loppers did for them. Beyond that, it was up to the handsaw. (The chainsaw I reserved for trees roughly 3 inches across or more. A handsaw is actually more convenient for smaller stuff.)
The photo shows a partially-cleared stand near the back corner of the house. I laid waste to all the little pines here, then moved along the side of the house and cleared the path from the driveway to the propane tank. There was also much activity on the opposite corner, where trees were growing right up next to the detached garage, and there are several very tall trees (two cypresses and a holly) that needed lower branches trimmed back. And pines. Pines everywhere. After a timber company cleared them out about six years ago, they tried to spring right back up. Actually, they have, everywhere we haven’t kept them cleared out.
I can hope that next weekend will be equally pleasant. I’m actually taking today off, but only because Daughter Dearest is going in for gall bladder removal. Someone has to watch Mason.
Speaking of Mason, I need to post more of his ad hoc photography soon.
I always thought FAR Manor was a rotten deal from the get-go. Of course, my opinion means nothing; I’m just the one paying the mortgage. But when I saw the rotten soffit and trim above the back porch, I knew I couldn’t ignore it anymore. This was above a little decklet off the back porch, so I could do half the work on a stepladder on the deck itself, and the extension ladder off to the side let me reach the other half. It had been there for a while, but a warm and dry spring weekend meant I had the opportunity to do something about it.
So, after taking certain measurements yesterday morning, I scrounged around and found a sheet of 1/4" plywood (amazing!). The 1x8 trim boards needed a trip to Home Despot when we went that way for lunch, anyway. Now, I embarked on my favorite part of these repairs: taking implements of destruction to FAR Manor. The white trim board was only rotten on the end, but I found it was split in the middle, and my enthusiastic crowbar work finished it off. Thinking the plywood would also be rotten only on the end, I figured to cut it off halfway back… but when I misjudged the length, and cut too much, I found it was rotten along the edge almost all the way up, anyway. So more crowbar work was applied, and down it came.
Distraction
During the up-and-down that goes with measuring, getting tools, running back to grab the thing I forgot, that loose step finally… got really loose. This was an annoying distraction, one I hoped I’d have time to deal with after the main event. I’ve always been one to take steps two at a time when I can, so I just stepped over it.
So… the rotten wood was ended, but the nails lingered. More crowbar work, hooray! Fortunately, the underlying wood was okay; it was the just the outer layer that needed replacing.
Then the fun begins: measure twice, cut once, curse when it doesn’t fit, and cut again. Hoping to avoid doing this again in a few years, I found some primer and slapped a coat on the backsides and edges of the replacement pieces. This took me to “it’s getting dark” time, so I knocked off for the day.
All you need is paint…
After church, lunch, and Mason’s nap, I was able to finish the job this afternoon. I drove in the last nails, and went to get the paint. Now one of the cosmic rules of FAR Manor is: things are supposed to be in one place, but they’re usually in three. And that was the case here. The paint is supposed to be in the basement—and some of it was (including the primer coat from yesterday). The ones I needed were in both the attached garage and the detached garage. But I found the paint, found a roller (I used a brush for the primer), and had at it. The new paint doesn’t quite match the existing surrounding pieces, but I figure that’s because it was still wet. I’ll have a look tomorrow.
My enthusiastic crowbar work had split trim up above the replacement, and I had to climb onto the roof to address that part. Using the stepladder, I put the tools up on the roof, then took the extension ladder around to the garage where it’s easier to climb up. I cleaned off the screen over the chimney while I was up there, then sawed off the broken parts and pieced them together. It’s ugly, but it’ll do until I can carve up a proper replacement.
Finally, with all that taken care of, I got the drill and some screws, and took care of the step. I do need to pressure-wash and repaint them, and if it’s nice next weekend, I might get to it.
The wife then recruited me to help with feeding the cows (and other things that somehow never get mentioned until I’m in the truck), and that took us to dusk. So that was a weekend at FAR Manor—at least it was shot to hell in the way I wanted it shot to hell for a change.
