I saw these ads during the football games last weekend, and wondered how in the world they were approved with the words “Paid for by the US Government” in bold letters at the bottom. And nobody says anything about them. The White House claims they are public service announcements, and they were paid for with DHS funds.
As with previous Labor Days, I spent the majority of mine laboring. I started out on Saturday with a long list of tasks to tackle around the house, and by Monday afternoon I’d accomplished all of them plus a few.
After making coffee and letting Hazel out for her morning constitutional, I drove down the street to a yard sale and was happy to find a bunch of tools priced exactly where I like them: cheap. I picked up a toolbox full of name brand box-end wrenches, two pairs of dikes, and a pneumatic cutoff wheel for $20. I’ve now filled all the gaps in my wrench sets—I was short on a couple of key SAE sizes as well as the metrics, and with this haul I’ve got full sets of quality US-made tools out in the garage, in my tool bag, and in the basement, so that I don’t have to continue running around to find a second wrench.
My trucks like to mark their territory, and the Scout was getting worse at this until I replaced the power steering pump. I bought a cleaning solution from the Jungle Site which promised it would remove oil stains from asphalt. This stuff is full of enzymes that are supposed to suck up the oil and then dry into silica, leaving puddles of white dust. After brushing the residue away, I sprayed the spots with the power washer until the water ran clear. I’m pretty pleased with the results—most of the smaller spots are now invisible, but the larger ones are going to need another application.
Over the last month or two, Jen and I have been pulling up the FLOR tiles in the living room and using the pressure washer to clean them. We’ve had them for almost 20 years, and they’ve held up very well given the abuse they take on a daily basis. There’s only so much dirt and pet hair that will come up with a vacuum cleaner, even one as good as our Dyson, so it was impressive to see how much came out—and how much cleaner the tiles look—after they dried in the sun. With that success, I hung the dining room rug up on the front of the garage and pressure washed it(you will begin to notice a theme for this weekend) to try to clean that up too. Given its location and proximity to food-related accidents, it’s a miracle the rug didn’t look like abstract art, but overall I think it came out OK.
Then I used Purple Power and a mop to wash and scrub down the plastic on the outside of the greenhouse. Over the last couple of years it’s gotten really dirty from all of the tree sap, especially the side that faces the house. After working it over a couple of times I was able to get about 90% of the dirt off, and then worked my way around to the other side. With the pressure washer, I carefully blasted all of the algae and dirt off the rest of the structure, and it’s about a thousand times brighter out there now. This plastic hasn’t lasted as long as the first batch I bought in 2005, and I’m going to have to replace some sections in the spring—but it looks a hell of a lot better now.
Something that’s been bothering us for a while has been the smell of our clothes after they come out of the washing machine: they don’t smell like they’re actually clean. I did some research and then disassembled the top half of the machine, which eventually required the employment of a car jack and two sections of wood to remove the main agitator basket. When I pulled it out I found the bottom half caked with yuck, and the container in the machine was brown with dirt and sediment. Out in the driveway I used more Purple Power and the pressure washer to blast all of the parts clean, then re-assembled the machine. Jen ran an empty load with some bleach to clean out the rest of the yuck I couldn’t reach, and told me it smelled like it was finally clean.
When I poured a new concrete fitting around the basement surround, I didn’t make the second step deep enough. What had once been a narrow lip around the edge was now half as wide as the other steps, so something had to be done. I put a masonry wheel on my circular saw and was able to cut about 3″ deep all the way across, but there’s still another 5″ left before I reach the top of the step. I think I’ll have to rent a full-size masonry saw with a larger wheel in order to cut it back and level things off.
There were a number of other smaller projects sprinkled in there that I can’t remember now, but by about 4PM on Monday I was beat. We made some guacamole to go on some grilled burgers with fresh corn (EXCELLENT idea, Jen) and I spent the rest of the evening sitting on my ass.
A follow-up to my Lowe’s rant from Friday: I rented a truck from their local store (cheaper than U-Haul) at 6AM with my brother-in-law and loaded it with all the supplies unavailable in Southern Maryland. We drove south and stopped off to pick up a drywall hoist right before the bridge in Solomons, making it to the FiL’s house by 8:30. By 9 we had all the supplies loaded into the garage and got straight to demolition.
What we had to do was pull down and replace 5 sheets of drywall that had gotten water-damaged from a leaky roof. This was complicated by the fact that the garage, while much cleaner than it had been two years ago, was still full of stuff, and that the original drywall on the ceiling was hung with 4×12′ sheets. (I remember seeing 4×12′ drywall sheets years ago at an old-school lumberyard, but not anytime recently). We started in the middle and worked our way to the front, getting three and a half sheets hung by 2PM, then made a dump/lunch run. After eating—and a very well-timed ice cream sold by an honest to god ice cream truck—we got back at it and hung the final two sheets. Then we raced back over the bridge to return the drywall lift before the rental store closed, returned to FiL’s house to replace two sheets on the wall, repaired his overhead shelves, and put everything back in the garage. We hit the road at 7:15 and made it back to Lowe’s by 9:30 to return the truck.
It was a job worth doing, and my BiL was super helpful the whole day, but it absolutely wrecked me. I was pretty useless on Sunday, mainly puttering around the trucks and doing some small jobs in the garage. While the drywall hoist was absolutely the best possible thing we could have rented, all the ladder work and moving stuff from one place to another took its toll on me. I’m glad it was a three-day weekend because if I had to go back to work today, I would have been a zombie.
But the garage should be good for a contractor to come in and install an automatic door and opener, something it’s desperately needed for years now, and it will be useful for tool storage and supplies. And that will unlock the ability to get other things done inside the house, which is also desperately needed.
Given three days of time off from work and a bunch of impending deliveries approaching, I figured I’d better get off my ass and make some progress in the bathroom. What was hanging me up were the thresholds over both doorways. As I explained earlier, I needed to cover up the crappy leftover wooden thresholds from the old doorway and the tile where the installer didn’t finish it up to the edge. I’d bought two sections of oak flooring, 5.5″ wide by 4′ long and 5/8″ tall and notched them out on the edges so they’d fit inside the doorframe. I then spent about two weeks puzzling over how I’d set up the router to cut the angles, and decided I needed a cheap router table to mount everything on. Once I had that, I needed to modify the table to accept an oversized bit (the diameter of the hole in the table was about 2″ wide, and the diameter of the specialized bit I bought was about 4″).
I toyed with cutting a larger hole in the table but realized that would decrease its structural integrity, so then I found some thin scrap wood in my stash, cut a notch in the center, and clamped it to the surface of the table, effectively raising the deck up high enough to clear the edge of the bit. I dialed in the depth with a few test runs and then ran both pieces of oak through, ending up with a beautiful 60˚ slope on either side ending at an edge about an eighth of an inch high. Once those were test-fit and in place, I nailed in the casing around the front and back doors for good and sorted out the cap moulding for the back corner, where the door and window casings come together.
Then I went downstairs and started disassembling the dining room windows. We’ve got replacement windows on order, but as I’d mentioned before the vertical framing had been destroyed by the goons who covered it over in 1950.
I used my trusty oscillating saw to cut one of the sides in half, pulled it out, and cut the nails off with an angle grinder. I’d found good-quality pine at Lowe’s in nonstandard sizing, so I picked up a 2x6x8 that actually measured 2 1/8″ thick instead of 1 3/4″ and cut it down to size, then tacked it in place and made sure it was square. This went in with a minimum of fuss, so Hazel and I went back out for three more boards after a couple of hours at the pool last night.
This morning I got started cutting the other verticals out and by noon had the rest of them replaced with fresh clean wood, braced to the wall studs and ready for new windows. I might have to mill new casings for everything, but it’ll be good to have clean windows in place and insulation around everything to clean that wall up. And it’ll be even better to be able to open the front windows for cross breeze when the weather gets warm again.
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We hit the pool on the final day of the season, and it was packed when we got there. The forecast had been 40% chance of rain and cloudy, and it wound up being 88˚ and sunny so every other member had the same idea we did. I’d finished the dining room window surgery and cleaned up my mess by about 1PM, so I took the dog for a walk, grabbed a quick shower, and off we went. I didn’t actually get the chance to get in the water but it felt good to sit and relax and sip an illicit beer in the sunshine.
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There’s a dotted line of spray paint on the lawn from one of the utilities, who came and marked their wires last Friday. Hopefully BG&E will show up today to mark their lines, because the electric fencing is supposed to be installed on Wednesday. We’re technically not supposed to use it until Hazel is 6 months old, so I’m not sure what we’re going to do just yet, but it would be great for her to be able to run the length of the yard without being on a lead. It only takes her about 30 seconds to get her line tangled around a chair, the grill, the porch stairs, and another chair, but she loves to be outside in the sunshine and I’d love to let her run free. Plus, the squirrels and chipmunks would disappear for good.
I’m going to have someone come in and give us a price on clearing and paving the driveway, because now that the tree is gone that side of the house looks shittier by an order of magnitude. Nothing is going to make the garage look any better other than tearing it down and starting over, but if the driveway was actually clean and paved, it would do a lot to tidying up the curb appeal of the house. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’d been waiting for when the new garage was put in, but that’s not happening anytime soon, and I’d like to address the drainage on that side of the house as soon as possible. Ideally we’d have them put in two drains from each corner of the house to send all of the rainwater across the driveway to the slope on the other side, which should be a relatively simple trenching job. That would also keep the garage drier (currently the runoff flows down the driveway and straight into the front of the garage) and the driveway cleaner.
Then I’ve got to have someone come and give me a price for new covered gutters around the atrium. Now that that shitty tree is gone they won’t get as full of debris, but it’s a bitch to get up there and clean them, and they are the only ones that weren’t replaced when we did the roof 10 years ago.
Finn had a friend over for a playdate on Saturday so Jen and I took the opportunity to get things done around the house.
We hauled the cucumber tubs out of the greenhouse and dumped them at the edge of the yard. They were infested with whiteflies, which had disappeared since my first mention and then returned in force. I then mixed up some of the insecticidal soap and sprayed the shit out of all the remaining tomato plants. After two treatments there were hundreds of dead whiteflies laying on the edges of the tubs, so hopefully with a few more applications I can save the rest of the plants. The box fan I’d put in there died sometime back in late July so there’s been no real air movement in there, which is also bad.
We pulled a Dagma and an other Oaxaca from the big plants and a handful of black, yellow and cherry tomatoes from the others, and a lot of them found their way into our salad Saturday night. I also swapped out the green rain barrel on the platform behind the greenhouse, which has a leak somewhere, for one of the soda barrels and pumped the water from Friday’s rainstorm into it. With that and one more good rainstorm we should be able to make it through the fall without going to the hose (with the exception of our vacation, everything I’ve used in the greenhouse has been rainwater, and I’m pretty proud of that).
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Sunday we did some errands and in the afternoon I went over to Christi & Glenn’s house to help wake up their Acura, which has been slumbering in their garage since it french-kissed a Prius in 2016. They parked it in the garage because it’s in need of serious bodywork before it can be roadworthy again. Miraculously, even though the top of the radiator has been pushed back 4″ and the bumper mounts are pushed downwards 6″, it hasn’t leaked any critical fluids. I brought over a set of ramps, a siphon kit, a set of tools, and jumper cables in the Scout. First I checked all the fluids to see how it looked and found everything topped off. I pulled the battery and cleaned the cables and posts. Then we looked at siphoning the gas but were thwarted by a metal screen at the base of the fuel tank, so we jacked it up, pulled the tire off, and used a handy drain plug to empty the tank. Once the varnish was out we put about 2 gallons of good gas in it, stuck the tire back on, and hooked the battery back up. With the cables from the Scout on it, it only took two tries (I had to adjust the cable for the best connection) to fire the car right up.
We let it idle for a while, then Glenn turned it around in the driveway so that the exhaust was facing outward and pulled it back inside before the temp gauge crept up (the inlet hose to the radiator is kinked shut at a 90˚ angle from the impact). He’s thrilled and I’m happy for them to have it running again. I left him with instructions for a trickle charger and some tarps to keep the varmints off.
Labor Day was quiet for us. I woke Finn up at 7AM to go do some soccer drills on the field across the street, and we stayed out for about 40 minutes before the gnats and Finley’s bladder brought us back inside. Mama had started a pumpkin pancake assembly line so we helped her finish that and chowed on pancakes and hash browns for a hearty breakfast.
After that, we geared up for a hike in Patapsco and happened across another Scout parked at the trailhead: a yellow Scout I’ve seen around Baltimore for years. We met the owner, snapped a picture, and then descended down the trail into the park. After the second flood they had the trailhead closed off for repairs so the usual route I used to take with Rob and Matt was off limits; we followed a longer southern route that eventually linked up with the main trail I was used to and wound up at the river at the bottom. After a bathroom break we took out shoes off and cooled off in the river for a while, letting the fish nibble on our toes. Then we headed back up the trail and home into the air conditioning.
We made a quick run to Lowes for some bathroom caulk and Jen and I decided we needed a full-size plastic skeleton to sit on our front porch for Halloween, which made Finn happier than if we’d given her a barrel full of candy. Jen promptly christened him Brutus. We propped him up in the back of the Scout, and out on the road we were admonished by a fellow driver to make sure he was buckled up.
At home we relaxed for a bit and I tackled the back lawn, which was 5″ high and gone to seed. Every second row filled the bag on the mower and I’d have to stop and empty it, which took longer and made things hotter. I had sweat pouring down my face by the time I finished. Then I shot the plants in the greenhouse with more insecticidal soap to kill the whiteflies, which are now greatly diminished but have taken up residence on the tomatoes. After watering and tending to the plants I called it a day and came inside for the last time.
After cracking a cold beer we sat down and opened up a new family boardgame: Payday, which is an updated version of the game Renie and I used to play when we were Finn’s age. It’s more complicated now and doesn’t look nearly as cool as the original but we still had a lot of fun.
After dinner we busied ourselves with getting Finn ready for the first day of 4th grade. Jesus, time is flying by.
I can’t imagine a better subject for this Labor Day than an icon of Mexico from the early 1900’s, a man who fought and died for the rights of the common man to own his own land and farm it. I also can’t think of a better way to end out the Alphabet Project than to honor a revolutionary who stood up for what he believed in.
It’s 4:20 in the afternoon and I’ve just showered after working on Finn’s new fort? House? Vacation property? Think shed?) for the third time in three days. We put walls all the way around to the porch and braced them at the floor and ceiling. Yesterday we drove in to Second Chance and browsed the store to find a pair of reclaimed Andersen double-hung windows that would fit the south and west walls perfectly. Today we cut two holes in the walls and braced everything to set them in place. When that was done (and Finn was napping on the couch) I set up the compressor and sprayed the interior with white Kilz primer to clean everything up.
Now I’m sitting on the couch on the front porch, feeling the breeze blow through the windows, sipping a glass of homebrew, and feeling exhausted but content with the weekend’s accomplishments. The fort project hasn’t been free, but I’ve been able to re-use and salvage a lot of material from the prior iteration and older projects—and to have Finn hug me fiercely and tell me she loves me in the middle of a long day makes everything worthwhile.
I had a three-day weekend planned in order to complete a long-standing project on the Scout, and I learned a couple of valuable lessons during the process. Originally my plan was to gather a couple of other guys together to do a group thrash on three or four cars at the same time, figuring several people can accomplish a lot more in a short period of time than a single person in several days. The first thing I (re)learned was that I need to ground my expectations in reality and refactor exactly what I think I can accomplish; my rule of thumb with house projects has been 3 times the estimate in cost and duration. Cars don’t seem to be much different. I’d originally planned on having someone come in and soda blast the exterior, prep it for paint, and shoot color on it in a 3-day weekend, but I scaled my plans back to prepping and shooting the bedliner I’ve had stored in my basement for 2 years. The sheer scale of that project almost killed me.
Friday I got to work early and ground out a good portion of the existing paint but got slowed down by uneven surfaces and thickness. My good IH buddy Brian H showed up in the afternoon with another angle grinder and a willingness to help, and between the two of us we finished cleaning out the tub, washed it, etched it, and laid down the first coat of POR-15. We stood around and shot the breeze for a while, enjoyed some cold beer, and packed up the garage. That evening we hosted Kirsten for some drinks and conversation about her website design, and everyone fell into bed exhausted.
Saturday Will stopped over with his daughter Alina, a playmate of Finn’s, and while the girls tore the house asunder we fetched Will’s Austin Healey from its parking spot in Arbutus and got to work with grinders on the fender lips. Glenn and Christi came by not long after that, and the three of us traded beers, grinders, and conversation through the afternoon until the clouds started forming. My neighbor passed by with his shiny Corvette, and I waved him into the driveway with a cold beer. The second thing I (re)learned is that car guys are everywhere, and cars are a fantastic way to meet new people (and bring different people together). Between a rusty truck, a rusty British sportscar, a not-so-rusty Japanese import (there in spirit) and a shiny American sportscar, we all found common ground and easy conversation. As the rain started falling, we put my tent up over the Healey and Will applied rust encapsulator over the metal, finally deciding to leave it overnight instead of driving it back in the rain.
Sunday Brian T. drove over from Chestertown with his compressor, and he helped me tape the Scout up in preparation for bedliner, until we realized we couldn’t shoot it. Brian stopped over a little later to check in, and Will came by to ferry the Healey back home. It was reassuring to have so many friends offer their time and support with the project, even though we couldn’t finish it, and that’s the other thing I (re)learned all over again: I’ve got great friends, I’m blessed to share their love of old, rusty objects, and it’s hard to express how much I owe them all.
Monday morning, I’m sore, a little disappointed (I won’t be able to get the chemicals I need overnighted—they’re being shipped via UPS Ground) and my hands are chewed up, but I only spent about an hour behind a computer in three days and I accomplished more than I thought I would. There’s a feeling of satisfaction from that kind of job that’s hard to come by with my daily employment, and while I don’t think I could run an angle grinder 40 hours a week, it sure felt good to finish that part of the job.
Finally, I have to send huge public thanks go to my loving wife, who took on Finn, her job, and company for all three days while I got some ya-yas out. Thanks baby.
Hi, little one. Daddy is typing one-handed with you laying asleep across my forearm, a hold I’ve been practicing for years on the cats. It’s nice to know they’ve been handy for something, because other than the simple-minded one, they want nothing to do with you. You’ve been crashed out in my arms like a starlet after a five-day coke binge, and it’s a beautiful, wondrous thing, because Daddy needs to get a little work done, and Mama is sleeping alone for the first time since labor started.
Today was your first visit to the pediatrician, at the tender hour of 9:15, and you seemed to tolerate the exam pretty well until we had to take you out of the sleep sack. Instead of doing the bundle thing with blankets like they showed us at the hospital, you have a green fleece sack with velcro wings which are supposed to contain your arms, which you like to flap around your head like a wounded bat. You’re actually getting skilled at getting out of the sack on your own, which is why I’ve started calling you Finley Houdini; every time I turn around you’re wiggling around like the DJ told you to wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care. Ordinarily that would be fine, but your nails are long and you keep scratching your own pretty face. I’m terrified to do it, but tomorrow I have to bust out the file and remove your talons before you slice open Mama’s boob. So cool it with the jazz hands until I screw up my courage, OK?
Last night was pretty rough on us three because the milk fairy hasn’t arrived yet, and you’re getting frustrated. Bless your mama, though; she keeps at it, even though your suction is powerful enough to swallow tables, chairs, and large household appliances. She’s tired and sore but continues to offer up the tap, chewing her lip when you latch on like a feral wolf. Finn, when you’re fifteen and she won’t let you wear makeup and she just doesn’t understand and she’s the worst mother ever, I’m going to remind you of all this before I make you go apologize to her.
We have found, though, that there’s a reason “pinky” rhymes with “binky”. In the hospital, when we needed to give Mama a break, I plugged in and that seemed to comfort you; you’d happily suck the little finger on my right hand down to a nubbin. That worked great until last night, when you suddenly realized, THIS IS NOT BOOB. No amount of talking, singing, rocking, or pacing would make it better, and child, we can’t have that. I now fully understand the visceral, primal reaction parents have to a crying infant, and you didn’t even come out of my stomach.
Knowing we would spend another sleepless night unless other arrangements were made, a newborn binky was procured, boiled, and offered, and lo, the gods did weep with joy: the offer was accepted with a sigh, a yawn, and a couple hours of blessed silence.
Hang tight, kid, milk is coming.
This sunday we prevailed upon Jen’s sister and her boyfriend to help us with a little outdoor project. I’ve been wanting to get our woodpile up off the ground and split ever since we felled the tree, and we finally rented a hydraulic splitter to take care of it all this weekend.
The first thing we needed was a new cradle to store it in, so I built one out of pressure-treated lumber.
Meanwhile, Jen disassembled the old pile and got it ready for splitting.
With four people, we made pretty short work of the job. All the huge stump-sized hulks are now fireplace-sized bits, we have a full stack stored six inches off the ground, another pile stored under the porch, and we gave some to our neighbor as a show of goodwill. Addendum: According to this site, a cord of wood is 8′ x 4′ x 4′, or 128 cubic feet. The cradle I built is 12′ x 4′ x 2′, or about 96 cubic feet. Adding the pile under the porch, I’d say we split a cord of wood yesterday.
Of course, it’s hard to get manual labor without some kind of bribe, and in this case it was beer and a homemade dinner of brisket, fresh corn, mashed potatoes, cornbread, and stuffed jalapeno peppers from our garden, in front of a roaring fire. MMMM, home cooking and woodsmoke.