Remodeling Break

Last weekend, I interrupted my regularly scheduled work on the house with a trip to Hastings, Nebraska.

My older brother, who has always loved Porsches, has decided to indulge his midlife crisis by racing a perfectly good, quite expensive car around in circles with other people afflicted by the same excess of money and a need for speed.

He invited us to come watch him race in Hastings this past weekend.  When you start racing, they put an X on the back of your car; sort of a 'Student Driver' sign for race drivers.  You get to take the X off after you've successfully completed four races without incident.  He'd completed two races last year, this set was to be the one where he graduated.

Curious to get a taste of a Porsche club driver's life, the kids (Kate and the baby are here) and I piled into the car and made the six hour drive after work last Friday night.

We got to the track in time on Saturday morning to watch his first practice run.  I was catching up on the latest family news with his wife and kinda-sorta watching him drive when the cars on the track all came to a halt.  You could see smoke off at the far end of the track - right about where Michael had been driving.

We watched anxiously for his car to pull off with the others, but didn't see it.  We COULD see the white roof of the car that was burning; the same color as his car.  Since the waiting ambulance didn't take off, we weren't panicked, but at the same time...

Sure enough, when his car came off the track, it was on the back of a tow truck.  Once off the track, they pulled it over to the side and doused it with water good to make sure the fire was out.  It turns out he'd taken a turn wrong, run onto the grass, got a load of alfalfa stuck under the car and the heat of the engine set fire to the hay.

I was quite sad.  We'd driven a long ways to see him reach for a dream, only to see it go up in smoke.  Little did I know.  They brought the car back to his spot, and within a few minutes he had all four tires off.  He and Joe climbed under the car to pull out all the packed grass; his wife wiped the extinguisher residue off the exterior.  By the time his first race started 90 minutes later, the car was ready to go.  I was impressed.

A couple of hours later, he had his two races tucked safely under his belt.  Relaxing in the condo after the event, he was tired, but obviously high on his well-earned achievement.  Yea, Michael!

(I'm SO glad we took the time to make the trip...)

Squirrels: 2

So, Joe and I sat down last night and constructed a squirrel exclusion door.  An exclusion door is a steel wire gizmo with a spring-loaded door, designed to allow the squirrels to exit from their penthouse suites, but not to re-enter.  Kind of a low-tech bouncer.  

I measured, Joe cut.  I climbed the ladder and did the fine-tuning on the bending.  I screwed our creation into place, and went to bed secure that I was one up on the little buggers.

This afternoon, I climbed out of my car and startled a squirrel who was hanging out on a portion of the roof where I don't normally see the nefarious pests.  He jumped, ran up the roof, and disappeared.  I stepped back a bit to see where he'd gone, and sure enough, they've made a matching hole on the north end of the house.  He was peering over the edge at me, as if to try to figure out if I'd seen where he'd gone to hide.

Back to the hardware store I go...

However, I'm not spending all of my time chasing squirrels.  Last weekend, I had a great time tearing down the walls in the kitchen.  

I found some more bad karma cooties lurking in the ceiling.  I'd suspected the bath faucets almost had to be leaking, but hadn't been worrying a whole lot about it since there wasn't any water coming through in the kitchen below.  When I got into the ceiling, I found the water hadn't been leaking because they'd green-rocked the area under the leak.  (Green-rock is a mold and water resistant type of sheetrock.)  In two layers.  The leak wasn't bad enough to come through both layers, but there was enough water to foster a healthy layer of black mold up there.  The kitchen smells much better with the cooties banished to the trash pile in the back yard.

I also got the main electrical line moved this week, from the back of the house to a new mast on the garage.  (It's buried between the garage and the house.)  The framing is moving along, and while there's still a ways to go, it's getting to where you can see the bones of the shape of the new space.  The amount of work to be done between where we are and the finished rooms is a bit overwhelming to think about, so I'm trying to focus on one step at a time.  It will get there eventually if I keep chipping away at it.

Kind of like the squirrels, chipping away at my eaves.

grrrr.

Squirrels: 1

squirrel taunting cats

The other day, I woke to the unwelcome sound of squirrels in the eaves.  again.

I cussed a bit, then went outside to see what I could see.  Sure enough, the little varmints had managed to get back into the eave I'd blocked off earlier this year.  This time, there are four of them.  Young ones, which is probably why they were initially able to worm into the hole.

I wasn't sure why the coyote urine had stopped working, but figured it out later in the day when I saw some green plastic when I was cleaning the gutter.  They'd managed to get the packet out of the pocket, and tossed it over the side, where it landed in the gutter.

I can hear it now.

"Look guys, what a great fixer-upper!"
"Yeah, but what's that smell?  It's awful!"
"It's coming from this pile over here.  Let me just get rid of it, and we'll have ourselves a great place to live."
heave.  ho.
"See?  The stench is clearing out already.  It'll be just perfect for us in no time!"

Back to Google.  No, you can't poison them - they REALLY smell bad if they die in the walls.  I can't shoot them, we're within city limits, and besides, I'd probably just take out a window or two.  Searching further, I found some designs for one-way squirrel doors.  I picked up the materials this last weekend, and plan to build me one this week, and try it this weekend.

Wish me luck...

No Good Words

my new kitchen island

When he heard I was working on my kitchen, my friend Ron offered to build my kitchen cabinets for me.  We've been friends for some 20-odd years.  He's helped me on projects before, and is the one who taught me how to sweat copper plumbing.

I was more than happy to accept his offer; I've seen his work before.  He got started on the cabinets last fall, before he and his wife went to Arizona for the winter.  He called me in late March, letting me know they were headed for Missouri.

I sent him a message a week or so later, letting him know my construction project is finally progressing, and to see how he was.  I didn't get a reply, which was unusual for him  I waited a week or so, then sent another message.  This time I got a reply that started:  Janice, this is Marilyn...

I knew it couldn't be good news and it wasn't.

Ron is dying of cancer.  I went down to his place to see him.  In just over a month, he's gone from healthy to a constant morphine drip.  He won't be alive much longer.

I am so glad I went.  He's not able to say much, and the drugs muddle his thinking, but we were able to talk some.  I told him this really sucks.  I let him know again that he will always be my hero.  I let him know I was grateful for his help and friendship over the years.  We gave each other a big hug, and cried on each other's shoulders.

But my words felt so inadequate.  What words should I have used to say goodbye when I knew it was likely to be the last time I will see him?  I still don't know.  I can only hope he understood the language of my tears.

Another Goodbye

I didn't know I still cared.  It's not like I left the church where she was choir director mad at her, it was another issue entirely.  Yet, when I left, there was some unfinished business.  It never sat quite right with me, but I also never tried to set things right.  Neither did she.

So when I heard last week that she was in the hospital with an infection, then that she had died on Good Friday, the depth of my tears surprised me.

She was a good teacher; she taught me how to cantor.  I remember when I first met her, at a workshop she led some twenty years ago.  Along with the technical aspects of singing and welcoming the congregation to sing with you, she asked, "Why do we gather as church?"  After gathering our answers, she offered her own view:  We come to share our stories.  The stories of Jesus and Moses, woven into the stories of our own lives.

I've come to believe she was right.

And so I gathered with a whole bunch of people yesterday at church.  My tears flowed freely as her nineteen year-old daughter spoke of what her mother meant to her.  I was sitting at an angle to her family - every time I looked across the church at young Christina, trying so hard to be brave and strong and to (unsuccessfully) stop her tears, I cried again.  For her and for myself in much the same place so many years ago.  Her story mingled with the readings, meshed with my own story, and I cried for her in the years to come, when her mother won't be there to guide her through the rough spots.

But her mother was a good woman.  She laid a strong foundation for Christina and her brother to build the rest of their lives upon, and they still have their dad.  He will be there for them and together, they will heal.

Beatrice Santner, rest in Peace.

Two Hour Project

see my floating wall???

I am wildly unrealistic when it comes to guesstimating how long it'll take to complete the projects I do around the house.

My brother, I'm sure, remembers well the time I asked him to swap out the back door for me.  "How hard can it be?", I think.  "Door out, door in.", I think.  "Two, three hours tops!", I think.

I was so wrong.  He pulled out the old, rotting door - and a good portion of the back wall around it was rotted out, too.  It took him the better part of a week to put the corner of the house back together.  (He did a good job - it was sound when he finished...)

So, I should have known, when I started to replace the siding on the back of the garage today, that the project would take more than the afternoon I had allotted for it.  Sure enough, we were pulling off the rotten siding, and when Joe pulled off one panel, the entire section of wall moved with it.  There's nothing securing the bottom of the wall.  nothing.

I suspected something was wrong.  The inside of the garage was freshly sheetrocked when I bought the house.  I saw the sag on the ceiling line on the back of the garage.  Old, repaired damage, I thought.  I was half right.  It was old damage.

We THINK that at some point, many years ago, someone hit the back wall of the building with enough force to knock the wall off the sill plate.  (It's been known to happen...)  If you line up on the wall, you can see where it leans out at the bottom.  In the intervening years, everyone just ignored or covered up the damage.  Even old oak rots out when it's been in contact with the dirt long enough.

We caught the problem in time, i.e. before the roof caved in.  My two-hour project now involves tearing out the finished walls on the inside of the garage, jacking up the roofline, installing a new sill plate, sistering the existing joints to get around the rotted bottoms, and tying the whole thing back together.

THEN, I can go back outside and put the new siding up.

"Two hour project.", thought I.   **sigh**

ObamaCare: 1

I must admit, having heard any number of health insurance cancellation horror stories, I've been a tentative supporter of Obamacare (AKA the Affordable Care Act) since first hearing about it.  The idea that people would no longer be left out in the cold, unable to purchase any form of affordable insurance, intrigued me.  (Me, I'm OK.  I am one of the few with retirement health insurance.  at least for now.)

Now it does more than intrigue me.  It has a near and dear face attached to the abstract arguments.

I have a longtime good friend who's never had health insurance in the 20+ years I've known her.  She is self-employed, in general good health, but with a pre-existing condition or two, and has never been able to afford the premiums for an individual policy.

This past fall, once Obamacare became a reality, she was able to purchase her first worthwhile policy ever.  Once it took effect, her brother prodded her into going in for a screening colonoscopy.

What she thought would be a routine screening turned into a clip-and-snip operation that took well over an hour.  She needs to get repeat scans every three months for the next year.

Thanks to her health insurance, the scans won't bankrupt her.
Thanks to her health insurance, she has a fighting chance.  They told her that if she'd have waited another year to do the screening, it would have been too late to do anything about the growths.

Obamacare has saved her life.

Dirt Piles

The weather warmed up, and the foundation contractor showed up as promised.

Fortunately, I was off work last week on vacation, and was able to be around to watch them dig and to answer questions.

It's been quite the process.  They started last Tuesday, and would have finished up today except that the weather turned cold and snowy and the concrete companies wouldn't deliver any mud.  It's exciting, after the long, cold winter, to see progress.  (The last piece that needs to go in is the foundation around the crawl space under the kitchen addition.  The slab for the garage, the rebuilt front steps and the side of the house next to the drive are all finished.)

First, they dug out the trench footing for the garage addition.  It's 18" wide and 3' deep.  If you could get a semi into my back yard, it could safely park on it, I'm sure.  Yes, it's overkill, but it's what was required for me to get my permits, so overkill it is.  At least I'm sure it'll all stay put.

After that, they dug the big hole next to the house for the addition and laid the forms for the footing.  That was fun to watch - though I must admit I jumped back from my vantage point at the back door a time or two when it looked like he was about to drive through the wall.

After all the hoopla I've heard about nightmare inspectors coming by, I have to say I've been pleasantly surprised by that part of the process.  You call, they come by within the next two hours.  As long as you've more-or-less followed the plan (and we have), they sign off on the work, and you're good to go.

It's been a little dusty, a lot muddy.  The contractor showed up at noon, hung-over, the second day of the project, and was obnoxious to work with to boot.  (If I hadn't had such trouble getting someone in here, I'd probably have fired him - how unprofessional!)  Fortunately for him, the guys actually doing the labor were here on time and good to work with.  Also fortunately for him, it was just the one day, and he was fine to work with the rest of the time, or I might have fired him anyhow.

I've had some second thoughts and had to take some deep breaths and go back through my (still good) reasons for buying this house and taking on this mess before my stomach would quiet down.

The framing will start next week.  I like and trust the contractor who'll be doing that part of the project.  He's a rare gem, and I know my stomach will be happier with this next piece.

It's spring!

Getting Started

Spring is here and the contractor has returned with the robins.

And just in time.  Friday night, as we were toasting garlic bread in the oven, the handle on the door pulled off.  It made it quite a challenge to finish the bread since the door tried to pull itself in half when we opened it (and there was no way to reattach the handle until the oven was cooled down).  But we persevered and managed to finish cooking without the door completely falling off.  It was close...

I met with the contractor on Wednesday morning.  The job is going to be a challenge for him and his crew.  The drive is narrow, too narrow for any kind of a tandem-axle truck.  The current slope of the backyard goes towards the foundation, which means the grade needs to be changed.  The top of the current foundation is just an inch or two above the dirt, and current code requires at least a six-inch gap between the top of the foundation and the surrounding soil.  But I'm confident he's up to the job.  He's supposed to be here next week to do the digging and pour the concrete.

It's exciting to see progress after the long months of waiting!

Yesterday was 70 and sunny, and Joe and I spent much of the afternoon doing some final prep work.  He took the concrete front steps apart, I removed the rotting trim boards on the garage.  (he muttered something about an imbalance of labor, but I pretended not to hear him.)

I am SO ready for this project to start...

Spring!

OK, it's not quite spring yet.

But the robins are back!

When I was a little girl growing up in Minnesota, my mother watched eagerly for their return each spring.  She'd peer out the window searching for signs of them coming north from their winter break in warmer climes, and was always thrilled when she first spotted them.

I picked up her custom somewhere in there.  Come late February (they arrive here in Missouri sooner than they ever got up to Minnesota.  Makes sense if you think about it at all...) I start watching for their arrival.  When I catch my first glimpse of an orange breast, my heart lifts.  I remember my mother's smile and know mine matches hers from so long ago; winter's days are just about over.

Joe and I have been taking regular walks through the park this winter.  Once the weather turned last fall, all the people went home and we've pretty much had the park to ourselves.  I think I'll probably miss the quiet on our walks once the weather turns in another week or two (though the people-watching will greatly improve, so perhaps it won't be so bad).
 
Last night, it was well after sunset when we were out walking.  As we turned the last corner for home, the branches of the tree we were approaching were silhouetted in the streetlight, and I thought I saw buds on them.  I stopped and pulled one close for a better look, and sure enough the buds are swelling.  Give them just a few warm days and they will be bursting out in their spring song of green.

See, winter only SEEMS like it lasts forever.  Spring comes.