Never Gonna Give You Up

Last Friday we went to my father-in-laws for dinner. He knows that I want to do woodworking around my house and got me a pair of great tools for Christmas.

He told me that he knew what he was giving me for my birthday. He has a tool at his shop that he has never used and it would be perfect. So I’m thinking this’ll be great. After a couple of glasses of wine and dinner, he asked me if I wanted to go look at his shop. He’s a painter by trade and has an enormous garage shop that, of course, gave me shop envy in the worst way. This is painful, in a guy way (no tears), since we just fixed up an extra bedroom for K. It’s her new sewing/craft/project room; I have a part (read small) of the garage in which to move tools around. I’m beginning to feel like a dog without a doghouse.

Back to the shop; K’s dad spots the tool, a jointer, he’s going to give me and asks if we want to take it home that night. I thought, what the heck, we’re here let’s do it. It only weighs about 500 lbs. Moving that thing in to the back of my 4Runner on a hot and extremely humid night left me drenched in sweat. Of course the door had to be tied down and the tool, attached to a base, sounded as if we had a sneaker-full basketball court in our vehicle. The squeaking was beyond bad and I knew K would pop a vein on the side of her head; I couldn’t wait!

The ride home was damn near unbearable for me as well as K and the kids, surprisingly, zonked out. I waited until Saturday morning to unload the beast and then realized what a jointer does. At least I believe it faces boards to give them a flat edge. I have no idea what I’m going to with it; at least short term. And it’s a good quality, belt driven tool.

I asked K what would possess him to buy a jointer in the first place. I said it would be like me, a huge music lover, buying a Rick Astley cd.

Monday Morning Musings

• 2 hours of work with a chainsaw can leave your body out of commission for days, especially when the limbs are above your head
• Social Distortion is underrated
• A cat starts to smell like its litter box if it’s not emptied on a regular basis
• I now think of driving around in dollar figures (it takes $18 to drive to my father-in-laws and have steak – but WORTH EVERY DOLLAR!)
• Brand new mulch can smell like ass
• BitTorrent is the next best thing to sliced bread
• A home-made lasagna, out of the freezer, is so much better than store bought
• If you interested in purchasing a pool want to go to a pool and spa show at the convention center, call to make sure there will actually be pools there(that cost me $3 in gasoline)
• Pillsbury Crescent rolls, sprinkled with parmesan cheese and garlic are the bomb; thanks to K!

I Don't Believe This Was On The List

As luck would have it, there was water droplets under the kitchen sink. K, "I think the disposal is broken". Me, "Let me see, no it looks like it's coming out of the cold water line to the faucet." After toweling off the drops, "I stand corrected; it is the disposal."


Notice the food particles in a nice smattering on the disposal. Notice the McGuyver tape job. Flash backwards a few months, "Hey, where did that screw go?" Now flash forward two hours after dinner as the disposal is engaged, 'chink, thwack, chink, thwack' and so on. "Found the screw" And the screw found the side of the disposal.


Yep, shot right through the side of the disposal like a bullet shot out of a gun. We did the McGuyver repair job and it worked just fine until this weekend.

So Mr. Handyman had yet another project attached to his list. And in no time flat I had the old one out and the new one in. Now we're the proud parents of a brand new bouncing Badger I.

And everyone knows that, pound for pound, the badger is one of the fiercest animals around.

Photo Friday

Before:

After:


A weeks worth of work and a brand new kitchen.

Yes, dear

Spring has sprung and oh how the winds of change are in the air. I like to tease K because we both are basically project managers. She's a Planner by title and I'm an Estimator by title. I've managed large scope and small scope projects. And when we have a project to accomplish at the house there are no two people that can scope it out and get it accomplished(I mean, we painted a wood paneled living room in a few days-and we're talking, sanding, priming, painting and trim painting).

HOWEVER, while TD suffers from a mild case of procrastination, K suffers from severe scope creep. If you've taken any PM training scope creep is when things get tacked on to a project that are not allotted for monetarily or time wise. K's creep is more like, "Man doesn't this paint look great on the walls!! Oh, this window sill looks rotted, I think we should tear it out and replace the window and possibly put in new gutters while we're at it"

'yes, dear', I reply with my tail between my legs.

I've learned it's best not to be argumentative and just go with it; chances are those tasks will be forgotten when it's discovered you have to build a raised flower bed before it's time to seed this Spring.

Here's my list so far:

1. Take ceiling fan out of extra room and put it in kid #2s room(it gets freaking hot in there already)
2. Take ceiling fan out of our bedroom and put in kid #3s room
3. Put new ceiling fan in hole that was left in our bedroom ceiling
4. Install new bathroom vent in our master bath(ok, ok, we've had the vent fan now for 6 months and I haven't gotten it done yet)
5. Change fuel filter on K's BMW
6. Figure out why her BMW door panel is falling off and fix it before her head explodes
7. Aerate front lawn
8. Plant Bermuda grass by June
9. Install new front door
10. Paint guest room
    

I came home early from work today and edged the front lawn, mowed it and bagged all the leaves in the flower beds. I'm already wincing as I brace for K's inspiration from what I've done. "You know, it would look really good if we moved the front porch over 10 yards to the south and built an arbor"

'yes, dear'

The Yard of Yards

We have begun the daunting, but enjoyable, task of re-landscaping our front yard. Just over 12 months ago we purchased our home from a widow who was no longer to keep up with the day to day routine of taking care of a 3000+ sqft house as well as the yard.
Or what you could call a yard. K and I spent the first few months getting the interior in a satisfactory condition for three kids and one animal. With that completed (somewhat) it was time to tackle the front yard.

It was a mess.

My first task was to remove the yard of ivy. What we’ve gathered from numerous conversations with the neighbors is that the previous owner decided to let it go ‘natural’. I guess natural for her was to create a safe haven for rodents of no particular shape or size. She planted ivy throughout the yard, which had completely covered anything that resembled grass and was choking the life out of two of the trees. The ivy climbing the trees was as large around as a shipyard rope. Not wanting to destroy our lawnmower with ivy I decided the best approach was the oldest approach: by hand. Word to the wise – invest in a good pair of leather gloves; they’ll save your hands. I would yank out the ivy as deep as I could and then use a limb pruner to finish it off.
This took WEEKS to accomplish and was no easy task. All the stooping and pulling has had its toll on my lower back. It will never be the same. But the yard? Oh yes, we finally had a yard. I planted an fescue mix called “Tulsa II”, specifically for our area, and it was beautiful as you can tell from the photos, but it did not withstand our summer heat with the amount of sun it received. So it will be Bermuda grass this Spring.

You can also see from the photo that there was a ledge that tiered the yard into two separate areas. Only problem was the mortar was terribly sub-par and was crumbling all over. K and I decided it was to come down. So there was another weekend of hard labor and back pain but it was done. And the neighbors cheered as they walked by, “you guys are doing a terrific job! It’s looking so much better!” It doesn’t help that we have the neighborhood matriarch living next door, constantly asking, “What are you cleaning up next?”

I was not looking forward to leveling out the ledge that the brick wall left. I was looking at probably two weekends worth of work. But miraculously, our neighbor got a new “toy”, a tractor, with a box blade attachment and they volunteered to level out the yard. YES!! Two weeks ago they leveled it out and I planted some annual rye grass to make the dirt hill pretty and green.

Now can someone tell me how to make money doing this kind of work?