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 few weeks ago, we had a pretty violent thunderstorm roll through our area. I don’t remember where Jen was, but I had Hazel hooched up on me like a tick on a deer as I did some budgeting and watched the trees blow sideways out the window. It wound up being more bluster than precipitation, but the sky did get that weird green color that means “Git in the storm cellar, Dorothy!”
Anyhow, a week later I was in the driveway when my neighbor walked over and told me one of the limbs from a silver maple in the back corner of our lots had fallen on her garage and knocked out her power. This tree was next to a pole holding a transformer that used to explode regularly during windstorms; after fifteen years and a final eruption of green fire and carcinogenic PCBs, BG&E finally sent a crew out to update the unit and it’s been pretty solid ever since.
The tree was almost directly in the middle of where three lots come together, as far as I can tell, but I’ve been the one maintaining it, and I had several branches over our yard pruned a few years ago. I felt bad about the neighbors’ power, and the only main branch remaining hung low and threatening over their garage, so I offered to have it cut down. Silver maples are ugly, dirty trees which grow fast and drop shit everywhere, and this one was choking the light off our greenhouse, so I’m not that upset to see it go—but the number of shade trees on our lot has been reduced dramatically over the years.
They found a service who offered to do it for half of the next lowest bid I found, so we made out OK, but I wasn’t prepared for that surprise bill. I can think of several other things I would liked to have spent that money on.
Jen found us a fun thing to do on Sunday morning: the tiny cemetery in Baltimore City famous for being where Edgar Allen Poe is buried also has a catacombs that’s open for tours. Many, many years ago, my friends and I walked downtown late at night and jumped the fence into the cemetery on the anniversary of Poe’s death. In those days that part of town was Not Safe, and nothing we said would dissuade the girls we were dating, whose idea this was. We didn’t run into any trouble, and everyone had a good time, but the graveyard felt very unfamiliar this time around.
At one time in the early 1800’s this cemetery was at the edge of the city, and most of the prominent members of Baltimore society were buried there. As the city expanded, the trustees decided to build a church up and over a number of the graves to make sure the cemetery did not get sold and developed. We learned a bunch more about early Baltimore history, including the fact that a man named Cumberland Dugan was a prosperous city father, and that the pier where the current National Aquarium sits was originally called Dugan’s Wharf.
Leaving the cemetery, I resolved to learn more about early Baltimore history (Fun fact: Patterson Park, two blocks north of my first house, was the site of Hampstead Hill, the main defensive fortification built to stop the British from burning the city) and do some digging into the Dugan family history, most of which we lost when my Dad passed. I will admit, visiting his and my grandparents’ gravesites a week ago did set this idea in my mind. I know Dad shared his information with my cousin Brad, who will be my next contact to see how far back they went. A cursory web search claims my namesake great-grandfather was actually born in Indiana, which was a big shock to me—but sounds kind of suss.
As the years have gone by, I’ve taken fewer and fewer pictures of the Catonsville parade, but I do still pick up the phone to shoot interesting things.
This year, the weather was so hot (“feels like 112˚”) there were probably 1/3 of the usual participants in the parade, and 1/2 the people normally watching. It was just miserable outside. As usual, we spent the day before preparing for it through the heat, and I was outside from about 8AM until 1:15 getting everything set up before I could run upstairs for a shower. Jen’s sister and her family were with us, and it was a low-key day, but it still took everything out of me.
As this beautiful shoebox Ford drove past, one of many classic cars, I commented to my sister-in-law that it was the one I’d want in my driveway out of all the others present. About 20 minutes later, a man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could charge his jump box from one of my outlets: it was Larry, the driver of the Ford, who told me the car had sputtered to a halt one house past ours, as the generator wasn’t charging the battery. I got him an extension cord and some water, and we stood in the shade while it started charging the box. Turns out Larry knew me from my trucks and figured I’d be the guy to ask; I didn’t recognize him because he wasn’t driving his sick blue T-bucket hot rod, which he normally has at Cars & Coffee. As I mentioned earlier, the parade ended early, so we walked up the street and were aided by four firemen who helped push the car back and into our driveway, where it cooled off under the tulip tree.
Once the jump pack was ready, I threw my tow straps into the Scout and followed Larry back to his house, where he tucked it into the garage. Along the way we saw another of the antique cars from the parade dead on the side of the road; I think it would be a huge gamble to take my trucks through a parade on such a hot day.
I think the only time any of us were outside was during the parade and its aftermath—it was just too hot to be outside. Our guests left at about 9:30, after a passing thunderstorm cooled things off a bit, and we all collapsed into bed. I had to tackle Hazel while the local pyromaniacs lit off fireworks until 11:30, and then we were able to go to sleep.
I spent the entire Juneteenth weekend at hard labor, taking advantage of unseasonably mild mid-June weather. The temperatures were in the mid-80’s but with little to no humidity, which made being outside pleasant, even if I was swinging Dad’s mattock into our rock-hard topsoil. We inherited a bunch of poorly-poured concrete sidewalks with this house, which I’ve slowly been removing over time, and this weekend I broke up and hauled out a section sitting right in front of the basement stairwell, itself a poured concrete structure set into the side of the house. During heavy rainstorms, water would over the top of the saturated grass and down the slab, which had settled backwards towards the house, up and over the edge of the stairwell and down into the basement. This was a primary cause of flooding during both of the 100-year storm events we shared with Ellicott City, requiring Jen and I to man the bilge pumps and shop-vac to bail out the house.
After knocking the slab into sections (it was only 2″ thick at its deepest) I hauled it over to the driveway and stacked it for future disposal. Then I trenched out a 8″ area around the stairwell about 14″ deep, built some plywood forms, and mixed 8 cubic yards of concrete to pour, bringing the next step up another 5″. I had to go out twice for more ready-mix, because the both internet and the instructions on the bag were completely incorrect for estimating how much I’d need. I also used the mattock to break up a section of topsoil where another area of sidewalk had been, mixed in some new lawn soil, and laid out a piece of sad-looking sod in the hopes that it will root and take. by 6PM I was beat, and after a shower I took it easy for the rest of the evening.
Saturday we were back at it, beginning the day by filling the back of the Scout full of garbage for a dump run. The County is getting squirrelly about everything, so I had to take the time to cut all of the wood down to 18″ sections, which took time. Jen and I went over to the church to break down the steel rack she’d bought to store donated food, and we continued working on the rest of the sidewalk, as well as excavating a section of lawn next to the garage for a new planter. I drank about five gallons of water and might have peed a thimbleful all day.
Sunday we got back at it, employing Finn with the mattock to finish up the sidewalk planting while Jen and I scoped out the garage planter. By about 4:00 we had the trench dug, lined with landscaping cloth, and filled with eight bags of river stones. All of this excavation yielded about six wheelbarrows full of extra dirt, so we spread it on the far side of the garage, cleaned up our tools, and went inside. Jen heated up our dinner and the girls went out to bring me back a shake for dessert, which I sipped on while laying on the couch on the front porch, a nervous dog snoozing under my feet.
This morning I’m moving slowly. My brain is foggy, and my joints are stiff. It feels good to have a lot of long-gestating projects closer to done, but that took a lot out of me.
I’ve had dreams of putting a real live deck on the back of this house ever since we moved in, but the parade of other priorities required to keep it habitable have always taken precedent. I don’t think we’re going to be doing any major traveling this year, and one of the things Jen and I have talked about is finally pulling the trigger this year. We’ve agreed on the basic shape and footprint, so I used an online deck builder to rough out what it could look like.
One of the requirements is to have a wide set of steps leading gently down to the ground, vs. the almost vertical set of ladder stairs we inherited with this house. We can’t really cover the entire back of the house without covering a hose bib and two of the remaining four windows, so we decided to go outwards and have the stairs drop down facing the garage. An area of 10′ by 15′ will give us plenty of room for a table and chairs, and a set of stairs with 8′ wide by 10″ deep treads will provide plenty of space to get up and down.
Using the deck builder and some quick-and-dirty Photoshop, I mocked up what it could look like on the back of the house.
Of course, the Lowe’s deck builder thing does an automatic calculation for the materials, and it comes out to over $11K. This is, of course, because the decking is all Trex, but we’re going to have to do some saving up before I can tackle this.
Along with getting work done on the trucks, I took care of some projects around the house, some of which were on the 2026 list.
First and foremost, Hazel got a bath. She has smelled like landfill dirt mixed with old socks in a bag of moldy Cheetos for the last two months, but I don’t like sending her out into 30˚ weather soaking wet after a bath. I took advantage of the warm weather to scrub the stink out of her fur and let her dry off in the warm sun on the back porch. I’m sure she quickly rolled around in the mud to spite me.
I pressure-washed the dirt and green algae off our front stairs, which has been bothering me since November.
I climbed out on the roof and replaced the section of aluminum siding that was blown off during the windstorms in December. The aluminum itself was AWOL until last week, when it magically appeared in the flower bed below the den, as if to say, it’s time to get me back up there, Chief.
Along with that, I pulled the rest of the fiber tiles off the attic ceiling down and stacked them by the stairs. I couldn’t bag them for removal, but that will be the next step in cleaning out that space.
The greenhouse has been straightened up for the first time in three years. My residual anger from the Caterpillar Massacre of 2022 seems to finally have subsided, and I was able to get in there and clean things out. I even put three of the bins out on the table in the center and considered buying a couple of bags of soil and some tomato seedlings just to have something growing in there again.
All of the neighbors’ leaves that have collected under our back porch are now bagged up and ready for the County to collect on Thursday morning. And there are three contractor bags full of garbage from the garage and greenhouse ready to go as well.
Monday morning: there’s about 2″ of very damp snow on the ground, and the outside temperatures are 34˚. We were supposed to have a boiler repairman come by sometime between 10 and 2 today, but as of 11:45 this morning I have heard nothing from the company. We’ve got space heaters working overtime to keep things warm, and it’s averaging about 65˚ inside, but I’d really like to have our heat back.
Update: they sent a nice plumber out to look at the system, who admitted sheepishly that he’s not an HVAC guy, and rescheduled for tomorrow morning. I don’t blame him in the least, but that’s an asshole move by the company.
I spent most of Sunday putting the final touches on a presentation I’m going to be giving at the Yale School of Management on Wednesday about data visualization for social good, an invitation I was very pleased to accept after helping teach a graduate course at MICA last semester. I’m still practicing my delivery, and after doing the talk for Jen on Sunday afternoon I wound up re-ordering a whole section. I’m hopping a train on Wednesday morning, doing the presentation that afternoon, and they’re taking me out to dinner in the evening. They put me up in a hotel overnight and I take a train back on Thursday morning. It should be a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to the experience.
[frantically returns to practice]
Thursday morning at about 4AM, Hazel and I awoke to the odd sound of water dripping somewhere in the bedroom. I got up and followed the noise to the radiator, which was leaking at the relief valve onto the floor. I threw some old T-shirts over it and on the floor, and crawled back into bed until the alarm rang. After making some coffee I checked the basement to find water running freely from the relief valve on the top of the boiler, and on further inspection found that the other radiators were leaking the same way.
After shutting the boiler and main water valve off, a very nice plumber named Youssef came out and between us we got the boiler separated from the water line, the major leaks stopped, and the remainder of the water drained out of the system. I got an estimate to repair the existing boiler and one to replace it, and after picking my chin up off the floor, we opted to repair the unit we’ve got. It’s about 40 years old and will need to be replaced at some point soon, but I wasn’t budgeting for that this year. I had been stockpiling cash to pay for some other stuff, and had just paid off my credit card, so we’ve got enough left over to pay for this out of pocket. But it seems like every time we get some cash assembled to do something we want to do, some other thing breaks and the money goes to that thing.
We hit a huge milestone last year that I neglected to celebrate: our house officially turned 100 years old. Erected sometime in 1925, it’s seen two world wars, 17 presidents, three families, and six color changes (that I can identify). For the last couple of months I’ve been keeping a list of things that need to be addressed. I haven’t really had to do much on it in the last few years, but as with every house, this one needs constant attention. Here are the things I want to take care of that I don’t need to call outside experts in for:
- The master bathroom punchlist. There are a number of small finishing touches that need to be done in the master bathroom,, and these are these should be relatively easy to knock out on a rainy day. The only thing that’s going to be a challenge is fixing a small area of grout on the floor, where the cats knocked over some PVC pipe primer that stained the grout. When I looked into it a few years ago, the grout was only available in a $70/5-gallon bucket—all I need is a half a cup.
- Scrape and paint the windows. I painted the house 5 years ago and did all the windows while I was up on the cherry picker, but it’s about that time when the paint starts to peel, and I’ve got to redo sections of it. Thankfully, I don’t think I need to do any of the eaves, it’s mostly the south-facing windows that need help.
- Replace the kitchen window. There are two rooms in the house that were updated before we moved in with vinyl windows: The original full bathroom and the kitchen. Both replacements were pieces of shit when we moved in. The locks are broken and they leak profusely, so they both need to be swapped out for new units. This will probably be the biggest undertaking.
- Fix the aluminum siding outside the attic window. During the last big windstorm, one section of our aluminum siding was torn off the side of the house. I’ve got a box of replacement siding in the eaves of the garage, so this should be relatively easy to do.
- Clear out the attic. Jen cleared out a bunch of stuff last year, but the fiber ceiling tiles the doctor put up in the 60’s have all fallen down. I had them tested for asbestos and they are free, which is a huge relief, but they all need to be bagged up and hauled out of there. I’m looking into what to put up in their place to keep heat in the house. And there’s a bunch of crap up there that I need to get rid of.
- Fix the greenhouse. I redid the plastic 7 years ago, but whatever I bought this last time didn’t hold up as well as the stuff I got in 2005. There are two places along the top spines where the plastic has split, so I need to redo those sections.
A week ago, the three of us sat on the couch and watched home movies from when Finn was a toddler. We have fun footage of her bundled up outside after the snowfalls of 2009 when the accumulation was taller than she was, and it was a hoot to watch her waddle down the front walk, faceplant into the side of the snowbank, and lick the snow off her chubby cheeks. We haven’t had a snowfall of that magnitude since.
The current forecast is for a large snowstorm coming our way—the latest projections are for 6-12″ and at least an inch of ice to cap things off. Of course, the weather-guessers are predicting power loss and calamity, so everyone is panicking. My procrastination over buying a snowblower has proven to be wise up until now—and I have a seventeen-year-old with a strong back who can shovel for me while I recover from my snowboarding injuries. I am going to bring about six loads of firewood up to the back porch, warm up the generator, stock up on gasoline, and bring the coolers up to the house just in case, but I do hope we make it through without losing power.