A Quiet Improvement

Oh grey water, keep on flowin’
Planet Georgia moon, won’t you keep on shinin’ on me…

As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had some issues with the septic system (we’ve had to have it pumped a couple times since then). A few months ago, it occurred to me that if we could divert the non-toilet drains into an irrigation system, we could take a lot of non-essential load off the septic system and, if not solving the problem entirely, at least put off replacing the field lines. My father-in-law and I put in the field lines at our old place; it wasn’t too difficult but he no longer has a backhoe — so it’ll be a multi-thousand dollar fix now.

Since the in-laws have a handyman living & working on the farm at the moment, Mrs. Fetched’s mom decided to jump into the project with both feet… or at least toss the handyman into it. It was the work of a morning for him to punch a hole in the foundation, run a 2-inch pipe through it, and divert the kitchen and laundry room drains. I consider the job half-done — ideally, I’d like to divert everything but the toilets — but this may be all we can do practically.

This project may have also decided for me where I’ll locate the forest garden. I like the idea of using water twice, especially if we’re going to have more drought… which doesn’t seem likely at the moment, but you never can tell. I also like the idea that being less wasteful could save us some money (like with the fireplace insert). There’s still a little more work to do once I’ve figured out where the water will go, a bit of ditch-digging and pipe-laying… nothing I haven’t done before.

Inserting an Insert, The Grand Finale

The big day arrived at last. We wanted to make it as easy as possible, so we had moved stuff out of the way, including removing the door between the kitchen and living room.

We scooped out the ash as much as possible, and pulled out the grate (which got cleaned off and will be used as a wood rack).


It occurred to me to brush down the sides and top of the fireplace. This yielded a rather large quantity of black soot, more than I’d expected, but I just pulled the cover off the ash hole and swept it all in there. Then I vacuumed in the corners.


At this point, Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest headed off to an extended “check us out” weekend at a nearby college. I stayed on target and tackled the glass doors. It turned out to be held on by two clamps inside the fireplace; loosen two bolts and the whole thing came right out. I sat it outside to scrub the soot off the glass and get it out of the way.

Of course, with the doors out of the way, I was clear to get more soot and ash out of the fireplace. This I did, and followed it up with one more vacuum run to get it all cleaned up.


George’s son Roland showed up first. We chatted, waiting for George… and waiting… and waiting. Finally, Roland figured he was looking for the drill that Roland already had, and took off to look for him. I remembered that I needed hardware, and took the opportunity to scare up some screws. I also measured the door into the living room (29-1/2") and then the insert — and learned that the only way we’d get through was to tilt it on its back and bring it in sideways. Sometimes, delays are a good thing.

Roland showed up with his dad in tow, and the festoovities began. They tipped the insert up onto the dolly, while I scared up a piece of plywood so we wouldn’t have to carry it up the steps. I had to grab from the top and pull, while they pushed from the bottom, but it came in fairly easily.

We had laid down blankets and throw rugs in the living room to make sure the floor would be OK. It rolled right into place.

George and Roland managed to pick the insert up without damaging themselves and pushed it into place. George wasn’t sure there would be enough front-to-back clearance to get the insert all the way in, and was telling me about some workarounds they could do if necessary. But they ended up having to pull it back out a little bit — there was plenty of clearance.

With the insert in position, they attached the trim panel and centered it up. We tossed a couple pieces of paper and a small cardboard box in side and Roland lit it. The smoke went straight up the chimney, just like it was supposed to. George was concerned that some of the smoke might make its way to the front and seep out through the mortar joints in the brick, but that wasn’t a problem.

And that concludes the latest improvement at FAR Manor, minus any little details that might come up. George suggested that if we get smoke out the mortar joints, there’s some stuff at Home Despot to seal that up. It’s a fairly nice day right now, so I’ll light it up this evening and try it out.

Inserting an Insert, Part 2

When the weekend comes, use Rust-Oleum
— Ad jingle from the '60s

The sun was shining, a beautiful beginning to the weekend. After a slow morning, taking our time dragging around, I grabbed the spray can and a roll of masking tape, and got to work.

Being in a hurry to get started, I elected to start painting on the side(s) that didn’t have any labelling to worry about. That took all of five or ten minutes, then I had to put down the spray can (my fingertip was already black) and pick up the masking tape.


After masking off the labels here and there, I got at it. After painstakingly attempting to fold a round piece of paper to mask the decorative ceramic thing on the door, I realized that two bendable tabs held it on. [DUHHH ← me.] I painted the door and finished the insert… by this time, the paint can was getting pretty light but no problems.

With the insert painted, I went back to the drill and attacked the trim panel. This turned out to be slightly more difficult than I’d anticipated: I had to lift the edges up off the driveway to get to them. But perseverance paid off in the end, and I hung it up and hit it with the spray can. The spray began to stutter about 3/4 of the way through, but I (barely) managed to get it done before all I got was a hissss.

The instructions on the can say to wait “less than one hour, or more than 48 hours between coats.” I got the new can today, but I’ll wait until tomorrow to finish it up. I think there's a couple of places that need to be smoothed off first anyway.

Inserting an Insert, Part 1.1

After an evening using the big drill with a 3" wire wheel, I figured there had to be something bigger that would let me get the job done faster. After some evening errands Sunday night, I swung by Home Despot. Although it was 7:53, the girl at the door told me they were closed (they nominally close at 8) and wouldn’t let me in. Fine: if Home Despot doesn’t want my business, there’s a Lowe’s near my office.

So on the way home from work, I picked up a 6" wire wheel and a 3" cone wheel for the odd corners, strapped them to the back of the bike, and headed home. The 6-incher made a huge difference; I got the top, back, and right side done in the same amount of time it took to do the left side with the old 3" wheel. That left the hardest part, the front — that iron filigree work was a bear to work around and through.

Somewhere along the line, I plugged in the blower and hit the switch. It came on, with a bit of a groan but got going after it remembered what to do. I still have to de-rust the trim panel and, but it’s flat so I don’t expect much problem there.

Tomorrow is probably going to be a down-day, with choir practice eating up the evening, but I’m still holding out the possibility that we’ll install it this weekend.

Inserting an Insert, Part 1 [UPDATED]

Some friends of ours decommissioned an Earth Stove fireplace insert some time back, and had it sitting under their porch ever since. When they learned we were talking about getting one, they were only to glad to give us that one. Of course, there were the minor details about getting it delivered (as it’s several hundred pounds of steel and firebrick) to the manor, and what kind of shape it was in. The Boy has been disappearing all weekend for most weekends, and then I managed to hose my knee. But then their sons showed up: J and his older brother, a skinny Marine home on leave; they devised a roller system with some PVC pipe (which you can see under the insert) and rolled it on his truck and then off into our detached garage.

I had a little time yesterday, and the anti-inflammatories have done a pretty good job (my knee still aches but it’s only annoying), so I spent half an hour getting stuff together. Wire brush, dust mask (plenty of those around, thanks to the chicken houses), jacket, gloves… and the camera, of course.

I opened it up to find several inches of ash still inside the thing. I guess I can’t complain about a freebie though; but I could (and did) scoop it out and toss it in The Boy’s firepit.

With the initial preparations out of the way, I took wire brush in hand and got to work. The rust on the box is actually pretty light, except toward the bottom — I think a lot of what came off was dirt. I’ll probably go over it with some medium sandpaper, just to make sure, but I’m already half-done with the initial phase of the project (Phase 2 = painting, Phase 3 = installation).

There are two possible wrinkles that I need to be aware of. First is the blower; they told me it worked when they plugged it in a year ago, but it’s been sitting in a non-climate controlled area since then. So I’m going to pull that unit out and have a look at it before plugging it in. Second is Mrs. Fetched… she’s not sure she wants black. Rust-Oleum has several colors of high-heat paint; I have some black paint (put to good use painting an old grill & a motorcycle tank), but she’s not sure she wants black. She certainly doesn’t want green, though. There’s a “copper” color, which might be interesting… I might use it on the trim panel and maybe the door & hood if nothing else. But I have a little time to make those decisions.

UPDATE: I has a drill. They use large DeWalt drills in the chicken house as winch motors; like anything in the chicken house, they develop problems. The thing I like about them is that they are built to be repairable, and Mrs. Fetched brings them to me to repair. I happened to have a couple drills in the queue; I tried one and it shot fire out the back. I snagged the brushes out of a “parts” drill, added some gear oil to the gearbox to quiet down the shrieking, and it run fine. I put the wire brush on it and got to work. The drill is heavy as all get-out, but never even got warm and it took nearly all the rust off that the hand brush missed. The insert is much more black than rust color now, at least on the side I did.

Must be Deer Season

Someone nearby is getting rid of his ammo, at 9pm no less. Almost sounds like Baghdad out there.

I started hunting up rock for the patio this afternoon. I found several rocks of a good size & shape (flat, a couple inches thick, small enough to handle) and several huge chunks. I guess I’ll have to borrow a tractor from the in-laws to get them up to the backyard. One of them will need the tractor just to unearth — I figure it has to weigh close to 500 lbs all by itself. I'll have to bust those big ones up, but if I can split them properly I might not need any more rock.

And if I do, finding rock on Planet Georgia is like finding water in a lake.

A Weekend Roundup

Earlier in the week, The Register coughed up a rather interesting article. I had a good laugh, then was inspired (if that’s the word) to write a poem on the subject. I decided that Asimov’s might print it, so I let it sit for a few days, made a few tweaks, and got it in the mail (before I lost my nerve). On the way back from the post office, it occurred to me that I ought to revamp the Crash and Burn story for a wider audience, and send that in too. I’ll tackle that this week. If nothing else, I’ll have a rejection letter or two I can tack to the wall in Studio FAR and give the finger to each time I go in there to write.

The septic tank is starting to get full again. At least it went almost a year this time. Mrs. Fetched is going to call the kaka-pumper tomorrow. I’m thinking of re-routing all the non-toilet drains to a garden area… we can use the water twice and that should take the load off the septic tank. Seeing how much cut basil and other herbs cost in the supermarket, a small herb farm might be a pretty decent way to put some of our acreage to use.

With more rain coming in tomorrow, and possibly staying on through most of the week (hooraayyyyyy!!!) I figured I’d better put new wiper blades on the Civic. Then I got tired of looking at the dangling windshield washers, which broke off when The Boy put it in a ditch last year, and got some new ones. Of course, I snapped off a stem when bolting it down, so I took them off and exchanged them this afternoon. Actually, I like the new ones better anyway. Finally, I got the idle adjusted (it was way too low). So now I’m ready to drive in the rain.

The homebrew is starting to mature. Maybe another week. But I need alcohol now…

UPDATES: I can’t believe I forgot these.

This video (“Slam” by Pendulum) was one of the funniest things I saw all week. The music is wicked good too, if you like drum&bass. The album is on iTunes, so if I can’t find it at the store I’ll be grabbing this one for sure.

The in-laws have a muscadine vine that climbs really high. Like 12 feet. I grabbed their big stepladder & got a gallon or so. They have red & white ones growing together; the white ones are little sweeter but the reds are more numerous and have a bit more complex flavor. Muscadines are like the sunflower seeds of fruit: you do a lot of spitting (skins are tough and bitter, and they have seeds) so it’s definitely an outdoor snack. I spent a little quality time out front distributing seeds and skins around the edge of the dropoff to the road.

Trim work, in a nutshell

Working under the “picture’s worth a thousand words” theory, I threw together a little composite image of the current FAR Manor maintenance project to show you what I’m up to. From left to right, you can see: trim with peeling paint, trim that’s been partially scraped, and finally re-painted trim. The latter needs another coat, in my opinion. This is just the part above the garage; I haven't even started on the part above our bedroom (which needs to be replaced, not repainted).

Using a ladder means the work is going pretty slow at the moment. I scrape what I can reach, then paint it. I ran out of time before finishing the paint part; with any luck, I can get a little time in through the week and try to finish this weekend. I might try laying on the roof, reaching over, and scraping that way — it might be less hassle than the ladder, but it will probably not be very comfortable.

Scaffolding. I need scaffolding. Actually, I don’t need the scaffolding until Saturday. Right now, I sure could go for a beer. Too bad I’m out.

Oddments

Bits of this & that from the last week, that didn’t get into any other post…

When we came back earlier in the week to drop off Big V and toss chickens, I found that The Boy had swiped two bottles of beer. They had only been in the bottle for a couple of days, so I’m sure they were pretty raw (and not much alcohol content either). I’d kind of hoped they would give him a bellyache, but he told me today that they were pretty good and not flat. I’m still going to put off drinking any for a month.

After the wedding yesterday, I came out to Barge Vader to find Daughter Dearest waiting. Even with the windows down, it was still fairly warm in there, so I dug out the keys to open the sunroof. “It’s just because I’m so hot,” DD joked deadpan. “Yeah, I see steam coming out of that little vent there,” I said. Her dress did a good job of covering the decotellage, but had a small opening (I suppose to push the “naughty” button).

“Maybe not,” she said, “but the groom got a good long look as he went by. I don’t think she [our friend, the bride] noticed, though.” Or maybe she did: she smeared him good with the cake downstairs.

I discovered that the (push) lawn mower is pretty well toast: J must have hit a stump or huge rock last time he mowed. He didn’t bend the blade, he bent the shaft. You could say it had the shaft, but doesn’t have it anymore. I also discovered today, that the riding mower has no brakes — makes for an exciting trip down the driveway to mow along the road. I also had to adjust the belt tensioner to get the mower blades to turn. Good thing I got the weed-eater going yesterday, because there’s no way I was going to try riding that beast in the ditch.

I got bored this afternoon and jumped on the motorcycle, using the need to look at new lawn mowers and pick up a how-to for laying patio stone as excuses. I’d just as soon get a reel mower as a replacement, but Home Despot has none. Plenty of online sources, though, all of which think the brands they carry are the best. The Sunlawn line is a bit more expensive than the others, but tend to be a bit lighter (not sure that’s all good or not) and have optional baggers.

Some text-spam scammer has been dinging us for $20/month on our cellphone bill. AT&T is going to fix this, or it’s going to cost them a lot more than $40 (two months). I’ll just turn the phone off, toss it in a drawer, and toss the bills in the trash while getting the PSC and FCC involved.

Cleaning up the grounds, I learned a little bit about the litterbugs that frequent the road passing FAR Manor. They like to eat mostly at Dairy Queen, but Zaxby’s and McDonald’s are also popular. They drink primarily lite beer, but Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Diet Dr. Pepper, and fast food drinks are all represented as well. They smoke a little, and shop at Wal-Mart (of course) — the empty plastic bag was actually a welcome find, but only because I had filled the one bag I’d brought with me. Spammers, of course, are a sub-species of litterbug; neither one has any respect for other people’s property. Or, judging by their diets, their own health either. I’d like to find the morons who thought tossing glass bottles would be a good idea.

Korean baseball is, shall we say, a little strange. The link showed up in my email this week.

Hooray! (uh, wait a minute…)

Technically, I’m still on vacation, although we had to check out yesterday morning. With the girlies off to the beauty shop to prep themselves for a wedding (and DD for a hotsy-totsy birthday party tonight), I was basically left to my own devices and decided this would be a good time to look at the weed-eater. It hasn’t been running for a while, and you can see why.

A quick motorcycle trip into town and back, plus $1.07 for the fuel line, plus a few minutes to put it all together (it took maybe as much time as the ride in and back), and the weed-eater is working again. Now I don’t have to listen to Mrs. Fetched making noises about buying a new one… although it does mean I have to find another excuse for not doing the weed-eating. On the other hand, I’ve been wanting to clear the path to the compost heap myself. Plus, I took a very windy back road home, and the bike was thrilled to whip through the curves.

I might tackle the trim next weekend, especially if the weather is as pleasant as it has been today. Mrs. Fetched suggested I borrow her mom’s pressure washer to knock the peeling paint off; if it won’t force water under the shingles or something similarly ugly, that would beat scraping it off by hand.

All I Want Is To Be In the Light

Those 300w halogen light-sticks really light up the driveway at night. Before I started TFM, and for a while afterward, the kids (ours and not-ours) used to play basketball at night (you can see where the goal used to be; Lobster tore it down in a drunken rampage that I neglected to write about at the time) and the light is quite handy for nighttime excursions to the detached garage or Studio FAR.

A couple of weeks ago, the bulb went the way of all bulbs… and since it’s about 15 feet off the ground, it’s not exactly a job one wants to tackle at night. But yesterday afternoon, I was sitting here by myself — me home from the yard sale, Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest doing the tax-free shopping day thing — and after catching up on a few blogs, I figured this was as good a time as any to take care of that business. So:

How do you change a light bulb at FAR Manor?

1) Get the extension ladder out of the cellar, clearing spider webs along the way.

2) Climb up and attempt to remove the glass.

3) Climb down, get a screwdriver, climb back up to (carefully!) pry the glass off the rubber seal. Remove glass and bulb, climb down.

4) Clean the haze off the glass.

5) Climb up with a new bulb (in a paper towel so you didn’t get skin oil on it) and install it.

6) Climb down, get the (now clean) glass, climb up, and snap the glass-holders into place.

7) Climb down & put the ladder away.

For those of you who were counting: yes, four trips up & down the ladder.

You might have noticed that the white trim needs to be scraped and painted. It’s pretty much the same all across the manor. But that can wait for cooler weather.

By the Numbers

Some random numerical thoughts…

Chance of rain today (forecast): 30%
Amount of dry pavement on the way home: 20%
Number of times I patted myself on the back for remembering the rain suit: 1
Cost to fill the motorcycle gas tank: $5.50
Chance of rain tomorrow: 30%
Hours The Boy’s girlfriend has spent at FAR Manor since Friday evening: 50
Hours on the road for Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest this weekend: 20
Days until The Boy gets rid of the ankle bracelet: 7
Days until The Boy gets an involuntary TB01: 8
Days it took to finish the floor: 18
Boxes of flooring left over: 2
Days before my vacation starts: 18
Days of vacation I wish I had: ∞

What’s got your number? or what numbers got you?

(Upper) Floored: The Final Frontier

After a nice afternoon at the resort, I stuck a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven and called it supper. As I didn’t have anything more pressing going on, I then decided to go ahead and finish up the floor. It took maybe an hour or so, and only hit one snag: I thought I would be able to slip the (thinned out) strips under the trim around the door, but it didn’t quite work that way. I ended up pulling the trim out at the bottom, and that gave me the necessary clearance. After feeding the last piece to the table saw, I put them back and got the camera.

Pictures? Ha. This occasion deserves a video! (10MB AVI) The bandwidth-challenged might prefer the thumbnail page instead.

I’ll leave it to the females to select (and preferably install) floor molding.

(Upper) Floored: Approaching the Finish Line

As it turns out, Nothing Happened yesterday. We ended up watching a couple of movies (Flushed Away and Syriana) and that was pretty much it. The glue supply was getting low; we called Big V since she was at Home Depot, but she was at a different store than the one we usually go to and they didn’t have it in stock. Oh well.

Daughter Dearest and I went up this afternoon and used up the rest of the glue, putting down one entire row and two pieces of another before the glue ran out completely. Looks like we’ll get some glue tonight (and Mrs. Fetched will look at floor molding while we’re there) and finish up tomorrow.

If you look at the picture (as usual, click to enlarge), you might notice that the strip on the left is shrinking a little more than perspective would account for. Due to the non-squareness of the room, we hit the gable a little crooked (it’s tapered too) and had to finagle the sides. That's what table saws are for.

(Upper) Floored: Laying it Down

Last time we went upstairs, the floor was ready for us to commence. And last night, Mrs. Fetched and I did just that, laying down two boxes worth.

Amazingly enough, Daughter Dearest didn’t see fit to come up and help us out in any possible way… I just can’t imagine her not wanting to make sure it got finished as quickly as possible.

Naturally, we have a few angles and corners, and that’s where the circular saw comes in. We had to slice about half an inch off the side of the board in that protruding corner in front of the closet door. I’m not really looking forward to the gable part; with our luck, we’ll have to slice off both sides. But if we can average two boxes a night, we should have it done in about a week.

UPDATE: I came home last night to find that Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest had been busy through the day. It’s almost halfway done now!

Upper Floored: Preparation (H)

In between me buying a new motorcycle and looking about 50 years into the future, we’ve been working on putting down wood flooring in Daughter Dearest’s bedroom. We’d done the hallway before — we know what to do now, it should be a breeze, right? Rip up the carpet and glue down the new floor….

Of course, any job at FAR Manor is going to turn into a complete hairball.

First, we found a mixture of plywood and particle board under the carpet. And that’s not all: I’m not sure exactly what those spots are, but they look like blood. It wouldn’t surprise me that FAR Manor was causing pain even while it was being built.

The instructions for the new flooring specially say that it can’t be put down over particle board. To make things even more “interesting,” there was a pretty significant sag in the middle of the floor, almost two inches (no, I’m not exaggerating). I looked at Mrs. Fetched and said, “I was right about this place.” (While she was going completely berserk, and driving me berserk wanting to buy this place, I saw its many flaws and described it as a pig in a poke. Like any data that doesn’t fit the previously-made decision, she ignored it. At the time.)

We got two opinions on what to do. Our carpenter friend, who advised us on the last floor job, said it would be fine to just glue (and possibly nail) the strips to the floor as it was. A second person, who would be the one to do the work, said it had to be straightened out — we could either jack it up from the ground floor (yeah right) or put some shims between the sub-floor and the plywood that would eventually be the substrate for the wood floor. Cosmic Rule of the Universe Number One: given two choices, Mrs. Fetched is always going to pick the most complicated option. If I don’t fall in line immediately, she’ll besiege me with whines, nags, dire predictions, until I throw my hands up and say some variation of “Do what you want — you’re going to anyway.” Of course it’s not an issue to her: she’s not the one doing the actual work.

In a vain attempt to get some peace, I had The Boy help me measure the sag and mark some spots. I figured I could partially even it out, enough to satisfy Mrs. Fetched’s mania for complicating things. I wasn’t having much luck, and she called in the people who caused all the commotion. Upon inspecting the floor, they informed us that there was a layer of plywood under the top layer, and if we could crowbar it out it would save them some time. Well… taking a crowbar to FAR Manor is a pleasure surpassed by very few things, and one of those is taking a crowbar to the chicken houses. J (the son of our carpenter friend) has been our extra resident for a couple of months now; he tends to be quiet and helpful so he doesn’t get quite the coverage of M.A.E. or Lobster. We spent a happy evening of echar la casa por la ventana (literally, not the Hispanic idiom for a wild party) because the particle board came up in pieces and we could toss the small- and medium-size pieces down to the front yard instead of carrying them. In fact, Mrs. Fetched caught me singing some happy 80s tune, and wondered why I wasn’t mad anymore. How quickly we forget. :-P

Somewhere in there, Mrs. Fetched got one of the farm trucks, and we finished up by loading up the fragged particle board. I got a perfect action shot of J tossing a big chunk on the first attempt.

That got us through the long weekend. Last night, Mrs. Fetched and I cut 1/4-inch plywood to lay down over the new floor (the guy who did the work said it would be best if we did). I was hoping to come home to find it already nailed down, but Cosmic Rule of the Universe Number Two says: if I don’t do it around here, it doesn’t get done. Taking a hammer to FAR Manor is less satisfying than a crowbar, but it’ll do in a pinch.

Tomorrow, we get to glue down the floor… since it’s Daughter Dearest’s room, she gets to help. A lot.

Home 0wn3rsh1p – a Thought Experiment

James Kunstler’s column today is the sort of thing that brings FAR Manor to mind. Not so much the state of architecture, nor even the shoddy build quality of most homes today.

My first thought upon reading it was that the real failure isn't architecture — or even construction — so much as people collectively have a “busted give-a-damn.” But then I thought about it a little further. Owning — or rather, being 0wn3d by — FAR Manor has taught me that two things are required to maintain a home: 1) money; 2) time (and improving a home requires the same, just more of it… lots more). Anyone who marketed any part of a house as “maintenance free” should have been summarily drawn and quartered, but that's another story. This tale is going to be a thought experiment that will perhaps illuminate the current situation.

Let’s look at Joe and Jane Average. They bought a tract house back when Joe had a decent manufacturing job and Jane was working part-time as a bookkeeper. Like most people these days, they bought something a little more expensive than they should have, but figured they could sell it in a few years for a tidy profit. Then comes the perfect storm: the decent job went to China, the local housing market cratered with the job market, and a birth-control failure led to a couple of unexpected kids. Joe’s “lucky” — he’s working a couple of so-called part-time jobs, six and a half days a week at crap wages, that bring in about 3/4 of what he used to make on a 40-hour shift. Jane still has her bookkeeping work, but she hasn’t had a raise in three years and is mostly tied up minding the kids.

Instead of owning the house, the house now 0wns them. They tried selling it, but the few offers they got for it weren’t enough to cover the mortgage, so they’re stuck. Fortunately, they were smart enough to nail down a decent fixed rate before things went to hell; most of their acquaintances with creative financing got foreclosed on last year, and most everyone else is looking at that reset and sighing in resignation. What Joe and Jane are bringing in would be enough, except for the credit cards. They ran up some plastic debt back when things were looking good; they bought a few luxury items and figured they’d have plenty of time to pay them off. Then the clock ran out and left them hanging — everything not going into living expenses is now barely keeping them abreast of the credit cards.

So the siding's starting to look a bit grungy, and it’s even coming loose in a couple of places. The fake-wood trim needs to be repainted, and the front door frame is dry-rotting at the bottom. The living room carpet is, to put it nicely, shot. Joe has little experience with construction or carpentry work, Jane none at all — they could do some maintenance, but neither one has much time or any energy to do so much as paint the trim.

They’re holding on by their fingernails, folks. They nearly got burned by a debt consolidation “service” that was saturating the radio with ads last year, which turned out to be little more than a scam — there may be legit ones out there, but they don’t trust any of them now. They looked into bankruptcy, but Bush-league made sure that door was slammed in their faces. Their few friends are in worse shape than themselves. The car is starting to make a weird noise (the second one got sold a few months ago, just before it went to pieces; they used the money to pay their property taxes). The bright spot is that they should be getting a few hundred bucks back on their taxes, which will go to fix the car.

Is it any wonder that people aren’t maintaining their houses?

Compared to Joe, I’m far better off. My job hasn’t been outsourced (yet), and I have (if Mrs. Fetched allows) a little time on weekends to fix steps or work on a wood floor. FAR Manor, as I’ve found by pulling up carpet, is far from quality construction (and I give Mrs. Fetched hell about buying this place every time, you betcha)… but it’s mostly maintainable. I can manage a few of the things that need to be fixed, and the few things I want to do.

The Averages might have a way out, though — now the thought experiment begets a thought experiment within itself. Jane’s bookkeeping skills have saved their bacon, so far; she set up a budget and has managed their money the way a skilled kayaker negotiates a Class V rapids. One mistake, or the submerged rock of an unexpected expense, could spell disaster; but so far so good. She made a little extra money this spring doing taxes — a local tax preparer was swamped with complex (i.e. expensive) returns, and farmed out many of the 1040A and EZ jobs to her. A little of the money treated the family to dinner at a cheap Mexican restaurant; the rest went to a credit card payment, opening up a little breathing room.

But I digress. One day, one of her neighbors sees Jane playing in the front yard with her kids. She just landed a job at a big-box store, nothing to brag about but it will help to supplement what her husband Frank makes doing odd jobs. Would Jane watch her kids (close to Jane’s in age) in the afternoon? She couldn’t pay anything right away, but —

“I have a better idea,” says Jane. That afternoon, Frank brings the kids over. While the kids get to know each other, he tacks up the loose siding and pressure washes the whole house. The next day, he paints over the trim. The house is looking better already. Joe gets home and silently picks up the trash in the yard before collapsing with a beer in front of a TV he suddenly can’t stand to watch.

That weekend, the two families get together and have a cookout during the few afternoon hours that Joe has free. Frank says he can replace the front door, frame and all, with a better one that he bought for a job (that fell through) some time back. Joe offers to trade the lumber he’d bought for a deck, back when he had a life, and the deal is struck on the spot. “I’ll keep an eye out for some carpet for your living room, too,” Frank says. “If there’s no hurry, I can probably get a roll-end for nothing or next to it.”

At his jobs, Joe gives Frank’s name to co-workers — there are always things that need to be done, and people willing to pay someone else to do them. Jane starts getting money instead of barter for the day care work, and takes in one more kid (all she feels comfortable handling). Slowly, almost reluctantly, the credit card debt gets whittled down. Jane manages to squirrel away a few hundred bucks for emergencies; the car will need new tires sooner or later and gas prices are only getting worse. Joe and a co-worker start car pooling to split the expenses.

The Averages are nowhere near out of the woods yet; a major sickness or accident could put them under in a heartbeat. They have put their house back on the market; it’s the nicest one on the street now. But as tempting as it is, I can’t in good conscious pull a deus ex machina and give them an offer that would pay off all their debts with enough left over for a deposit on an affordable apartment.

In the end, it’s not completely their fault that they bought the Endless Growth line; it seemed true for so long. But they are slowly bartering their way into (what they hope is) a better future.

Steppin’ Out

The steps leaving the porch out back have been in a state of disrepair for some time now. Daughter Dearest nearly hurt herself when the top step gave way on her one day, as she was carrying the litter box out to dump. Since then, she’s been taking the big step down to the second one, and recently told us that it was starting to get loose too. Mrs. Fetched suggested that I take care of it, since I had the supplies ready for some time, and so I did (after resting up from a bike ride).

This is the end of the second step. You can see it's a little rotted-out, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the top step and I deemed this one salvageable. I cut a new tread for the top step.


The support pieces on the top two steps were split pretty badly, so I replaced them. The original ones had been painted, but not until everything was put together. I went ahead and painted them first, using some leftover paint from the gable job. Here, the top support is still getting leveled up before nailing it in.


While trekking to and fro to grab tools and other necessities, I noticed that the blackberries are opening up. We have vines scattered around the yard; if we get a normal amount of rain we’ll have some goodies for 4th of July.


Of course, the newly-painted step was much brighter than the rest of the steps, so I brushed off the dirt and painted everything to match up.

The deck above is a postage stamp, but the railing needed to be scraped and re-painted as well. The deck itself had never been painted, so I guess I’ll tackle all that next.


More work than strictly necessary, but with any luck I’ll never have to do it again.

Cam This Thing

Coming in from work Tuesday, I hit the garage door opener, and saw the door twitch and stop. Figuring I just didn’t hold the button down long enough, I did it again and this time it worked.

Then it turned out to be the last time. After that, it would move an inch or so one way or the other, then stop.

Mrs. Fetched took it better than usual; inconvenience usually puts her in a foul mood. She seemed to enjoy the sight of Daughter Dearest and her boyfriend holding up the door as she backed Barge Vader in & out of the garage, though. But she told me (on several occasions) where to find the manual for the opener, and asked me to fix it (if possible) before they got back from Savannah.

With she, Daughter Dearest, and Barge Vader safely out of the way, I got the ladder and had a look while the boyfriend pushed the button. It quickly became apparent that a bumper (attached to the chain) was in the wrong place. The arm that connects the door to the mechanism was pushing alarmingly far, so I figured something had jumped the track somewhere. Getting out the manual, this is what I found:



The “down limit cam” (circled in the above drawing, in the position where it should have been) was instead all the way around the pulley, where the red X is. Figuring the “up limit cam” was similarly shifted, I had the boyfriend hoist the garage door so I could measure the amount of necessary travel. I moved the cams where I thought they should be and tried again.

This time, the door stopped going up about two feet short. That cam was in the right place to begin with, it seems. After a few iterations, I got the cams in the right place and drove my car back inside for the night.

If only paying off the mortgage were so easy.

Outdoor life

A brief quiz: if a gutter looks like this, is it time to replace it?

Top view:


Bottom view:

It's amazing how much crud can accumulate in a rain gutter over a year; this is what I found after cleaning it out.

We got to sleep late this morning — Mrs. Fetched has been doing a fair bit of that since the chickens went to the store, which is good because she needs some rest — but the rest of the day has been busy. I was blowing & raking leaves in the front yard (it's easier to use the blower to get them out from under the hedges, but faster to rake them once they're in the yard), boggling at how many there were, when I finally ran out of extension cord. I’d been planning to run the generator anyway, so I went to the detached garage to get it.

It wasn’t there.

I looked again — there’s a lot of debris in there and it could have been buried — but it still wasn’t there. Mrs. Fetched grabbed her smellphone and started calling numbers in her Received list until she found someone who was with The Boy. He tried telling us that we had helped him load it onto a truck and take it to the place he’d stayed the last two summers! WRONG — we wouldn’t have sent anything over there that we hoped to ever see again.

We jumped into Barge Vader and rode over there. The lady of the house was home, and we asked her about it. “Oh, it was here but it was stolen off the back of Tony’s truck.” Whoever Tony is, and why was it on the back of his truck in the first place, and why didn’t she report it stolen? More likely that she pawned it for drugs or defense attorneys.

So The Boy is toast around here. Mrs. Fetched was ready to confiscate his large guitar amp, but he’d gotten in the house (idiot me left the ladder out at the outbuilding, where I took the above pictures) and picked it up already. We did grab the one (best) guitar he left here though. But if he expects to set foot in this house (legally) again, he’s going to start doing things our way. More likely, he will live elsewhere until he ends up in jail.