Monday November 15, 2004

Demolition Man

When we moved into our house five years ago, there were certain things that needed changing right away. The pink carpet throughout the bottom floor had to go, as well as the baby blue carpet upstairs. The previous owners refused to give us a flooring allowance, I guess they loved it or were colorblind. As soon as possible, we repainted and refloored as much as we could afford at any one time. The only original flooring left in the house is in the upstairs bathrooms and the utility room. And the day of reckoning will soon be at hand for them as well. Two bathrooms retain their original wallpaper; wallpapering the kitchen was an experience not soon forgotten or forgiven. And only the stairwell has escaped the roller.

But this isn't a story about carpeting or painting...

The Shed (aka Rat Hilton)

Our backyard isn't gigantic by most measures, but the dogs like it and there are some nice trees with good shade (very important when you consider Texas summers). The previous owners left behind a shed that at first blush seemed perfectly servicable. And so it was. Gardening tools and supplies all fit handily in it. I was honestly excited about it. We could keep lawn stuff in it and not in the garage ( where presumably the cars would go, oh how wrong I was about that ). Well, the shed turned out to be the most swingingest place in all of Rat Town. My most vivid memories of "Yuck!" are finding out what happens when you store something in the shed that rats might think is yummy, in this case a bag of grass seed. The rats shredded the bag and then proceeded to poop everywhere ( is grass seed a laxative? ). So after the fine feast, the rats decided that it would be a fine place to live and raise their young. I imagine a little rat Moses leading his rat clan through some sort of rat desert, one day finding our shed and saying to his rat people "Lo! I deliver unto you the place that was foretold! The SHED of PLENTY!".

The Great Rat War

Wanting to be a responsible homeowner, I launched an early offensive to throw the rats off balance and begin winning the hearts and minds of my neighbors. I tried all sorts of different bait and poison. But the rats were eating so well on other stuff that I only managed to kill off the dumb ones. I tried live trapping them, but mostly I caught rabbits, opposums, racoons and the occasional cat. I combed the shelves of the local farmer's co-op, looking for something that would end the rat menance. Nothing worked. My favorite rat remedy was the big sheet of super sticky paper, essentially fly paper for rats. I put this down in the likely areas one evening and barely surpressed my anticipatory chuckles of glee. Those rats would get stuck in the paper and finally I would begin making in-roads in reclaiming my shed. The next day when I came home from work to inspect the mayhem I had wrought upon the rats, I found instead that my dogs had stumbled into it and managed to get their paws glued to their heads. Note to self: dogs not so smart, rats smart.

Rats Win

So, I gave up. The rats won and the shed became a premier rat resort destination and I stopped storing things in the shed that I cared about. The shed spiraled into decline; the paint flaked and it began to rot. Of course, the rats loved it even more.

Ratageddon

Unbeknownst to me, the neighbors had inadvertantly implemented their own anti-rat campaign. It seems that Mrs. Neighbor had a soft spot for kitty cats, and decided to feed one of the feral population. Cats can't seem to keep a good thing to themselves, and before you could say "Meow" Mrs. Neighbor was running a tuna kitchen for every down on their luck feral cat in town ( or so it seemed ). But the tuna ran out (as it inevitably always does ), and the mob of ravenous beasts tuned into their latent instincts. They heard that tiny cat voice inside themselves that said "Kill everything you can find that's smaller than you and eat it." It turns out that canabalism among felines isn't as rare as you might think. They also managed to deplete the neighborhood supply of birds, although for some reason we still have tons of big stupid morning doves. Maybe the doves are smarter than I thought, or the cats were more descriminating. After the inital orgy of cat carnage, the city moved in and "relocated" a great deal of these cats to "greener pastures". Apparantly some kill-joy alerted the authorities that there were far too many cats rampaging in myour neck of the woods. The remainder of cats moved on, like some great ravening herd of cat locust. And the shed? It looked like the morning after of a giant rat party.

The New Shed Style

Like the great Eye of Sauron, my wife turns her attention to various parts of the house and environs which she deems not up to par and this leads to a list of honey-do's which I must dutifully ignore for as long as humanly possible. It's her fault really, she insisted that we leave out the "Obey" clause in our wedding vows and I take that sort of thing very seriously. Last spring, the shed came under her baleful glare and she decreed that a New Shed must be found. And found it was. We put down some cash and set a tenative delivery date of September. It will be glorious! All metal construction with a pest proof 30 year warrantied fully treated wood platform base. Alaskalite translucent panels to transmit light into the spacious 10x12 foot interior graced with 2x4 studs, ready and willing to accept whatever sort of shelving or storage devices you might imagine. And tall! No more ducking to go in and out of the shed, I could stand tall and proud walking into my new shed. Of course there's a catch. The old shed must go.

Shed-Be-Gone

Last week, I received a phone call from the company supplying our new shed. The shed was ready for delivery and would Monday, November 15th at 10am be good for me? I paniced and said "Sure." What I really meant to say was, "I'd like to reschedule for next week to give me some time to get rid of the old shed." But you always think of those clever things just after you've hung up the phone. So this weekend, after procastinating more than half of a year, I tore down the shed. I had some help, my yard man offerred up his services as well as his very large trailer to move the ex-shed to the dump. We started promptly at 9am on Saturday morning, which was cold and grey. I fully expected the leaden skies to unleash a torrent of Noahianic proportions at any time.

We worked quickly, removing first the outer rotted skin of the shed. With the bones of the shed exposed, my yard man trotted out his secret demolition weapon: the Eight Pound Sledge. Now I'm not really up to speed on my demolition tools, so I did not understand the true wonder that is the Eight Pound Sledge until I took it up and swung it for the first time. Holy Crap! Four or five good swings at the four corners and the shed was ready to come down. IMPRESSIVE! With only part of the roof still intact, I pushed the shed over into a corner with little effort. It landed with a resounding "crash" and we swiftly dismembered the mouldering carcass. Ok, it took about 2 and half hours to get it all tore down and stowed on the trailer. A short drive to the nearest dump and another 20 minutes saw the shed stored for future generations of cultural anthropologists to find and dissect with stunning inaccuracy: "We think this structure was utilized by primative suburban dwellers in strange ritualistic events involving rats,cats and perhaps grass seed. Our best guess involves weekly fertility rites in the summer where the clan's primary acolyte would tend the lawn in hopes of gaining prestige in the community, conferring all manner of honor upon their clan."

Or it might be spot on.

Aftermath: Delivery Day

So today is November 15th, and yesterday I spent quality time in the backyard making sure that the chainlink fence facing the street ( we live on a corner ) was ready to be taken down. The plan was for the truck to drive up onto the lawn and drop the shed in-place. Of course the chainlink fence would impeed its' progress, so it had to come down. It turns out that it is pretty easy to disassemble a chainlink fence, as long as there isn't a giant array of creeping Morning Glory vines on it. Which ours did, past tense. I think they were an insideous plot by my wife, and not just "pretty" as she claims.

So, this morning I awake refreshed and rejuvanated with the sure knowledge that the new shed would be delivered today and thus begin a new era of prosperity in the backyard. That was, until I realized it was raining... still. Did I mention that it rained most of the weekend and all of the aforementioned toil occurred while being sodden? And cold?

The shed-angels call and say that they aren't going to deliver today since the truck will tear up my yard and possibly get stuck.

No shed today.

Maybe.. maybe. Maybe shed tomorrow. If the rain lets up.

-ejo

(2004-11-15 14:49:49.0) Permalink

Monday July 19, 2004

Laminate Floors, Mitre Saws and Caulk

Over the Fourth of July shutdown, my wife badgered me into cleaning out the bedroom that serves as my office/machine room at home and replacing the icky carpet with Pergo. This room has lain fallow for many years and I'd grown used to the game trails that had to be navigated in order to get to the various important parts of the room, but my wife thought it needed attention. She has been watching the myriad of shows on TLC which show the miraclous transformation of a room within the confines of a one hour TV show. "It will be fun and easy", she said! "Besides, you don't want to just sit around and play SOCOM 2 for a week straight do you"?

The Purge

First order of business was to get rid of the years of cruft and dead machines that had accumulated. Turns out there 5 computers in there I hadn't turned on in a very long time: A Macintosh Powerbook 140 (still working), a NeXT Turbo Monochrome Cube ( the first comptuer I truly lusted after ), a Pentium Compaq icky thing that ran my wife's website, a SPARC ELC that reminded me of my time at school, and a dot.bomb cast-off PC that I never got around to refurbing. Austin has a super-cool Goodwill that accepts computer hardware, so that's where all the old hardware went. So that was one pick-up truck load of stuff gone out of the room.

Preparation P

After moving everything I was going to keep into the guest bedroom, I started the hard work. After ripping out the carpet, pad, baseboards and ceiling fan I went to Home Depot and dropped the customary wad of cash on paint and a new ceiling fan. Never miss an opportunity to paint is the mantra of a home owner, and I never paint without my Wagner Paint Mate. It is simple to use, precise and very easy to clean. Home Depot was having a sale on Behr paint, so I went with that. Three coats later, I wasn't particularly pleased with Behr but at least the painting was done. Blue semi-gloss on top of an off-white semi-gloss should have only taken two coats IMHO.

Pergo's Law

This room is the third room I've installed Pergo in, so I was feeling pretty confident. The first room was at my father-in-law's house under his experienced instruction, and the second room was my wife's office. Both times there was a error in the calculation of how many boxes of Pergo would be required to do the job. This time I was determined to get it right, but it was not to be. My careful calculations neglected to take into account some unavoidable wastage, and so I was off by the traditional one box. This leads to my formulation of Pergo's Law: However many boxes of Pergo you think the job will take, add one. The floor took a day to install up to the last course, and I finished it the next day after another trip to Lowes for the last box.

Finishing It Up

With the walls painted, a new spiffy ceiling fan and the floor in the room has a whole new vibe. I'm pretty happy with it and can't wait to put it all back together. Unfortunately, there is the small matter of the baseboards. I broke the second wall of baseboards when taking them off, so I was going to replace them instead of putting the old ones back up. Another trip to Home Depot nets pre-primed baseboards and a gallon of Valspar white paint. The weather was relatively nice, so I set up saw horses on the back patio and painted the baseboards in the shade. This being the last day of vacation, I decided to hold off until the next weekend to install the baseboards. Fast forward two weeks and the job still isn't done. I'm worried about the carpentry skills required to do the job passably and spend time reading about installing baseboards and draw out an extensive plan of all the cuts required. So this weekend I screw up my courage and get to work.

Two Things I Learned While Installing Baseboards

I lost the plan I had so carefully constructed, but I retained the overall idea of what need to happen. I set up the mitre saw, constructed a jig to stand the work off of the fence so I could cut all the way thru baseboards, and brought in a saw horse to help hold the 8' boards while I was working on the ends. And went to work. Fast forward 5 hours and I'm looking at a room with baseboards which appear to have been installed by a four-year old. My wife looked in and told me that if she'd hired me to do this work, she'd tell me to do it over again. I told her to get out. The first thing I learned was: I am a poor carpenter. I have the patience, but I'm not very good at measuring things consistently with a tape measure.

  "I've cut this board three times and it's still too short".
    - Every amateur carpenter since the dawn of woodworking.

The second thing I learned was: Caulk covers a multitude of sins. I started caulking the tops of the baseboards and filling gaps in corner joints and scarf joints and the appearance improved immensely. This time the wife said she'd probably let the job go, but wouldn't hire me again. She's a tough boss. After filling nail holes and painting, I began the slow arduous task of filling that room with crap again. I wish I'd taken before and after pictures.

-ejo (2004-07-19 09:10:13.0) Permalink Comments [3]