Handy Man?

Every other weekend is my wife’s weekend “on”.  She works at Target, and usually pulls mid-day shifts on both Saturday and Sunday.  On these weekends, my kids never want to do anything with Dad, they just want to play with their friends.  This leads to every other weekend being “Honey-Do” weekends.

This weekend my list was simple enough: Clean the garage. However, that turned into $100 at Home Depot and an entire weekend of work.  My garage isn’t that cluttered or dirty, but there isn’t much room with a truck and van in there. Plus, there were a lot of things in there that didn’t belong.  The main job would be finding a place for all this stuff. 

The Shed!  Trouble is – that’s full of crap, too.  So I throw out a contractor bag full of crap and pile the rest in front of the shed.  Garage is done.  Now the shed needs to be cleaned out.  First trip to Home Depot: shelving for the shed.  Everything out into the yard, clean, everything back in.  This is when discover that the guy that owned my house before me left me a treasure trove of leftover building materials, everything from cement and grout to plywood and 2×4’s.  This is when I get my next bright idea… I’ll use some of this material to build a workbench in my garage.  Minus the wood I’ll use later, I clean out the shed and re-stock everything.  Thus ends Saturday.

Sunday starts with me heading off to Home Depot again for hinges, carriage bolts, wood screws, etc.  As I mentioned above, my garage is not very spacious, so my new workbench will have to fit accordingly.  I “designed” one that is 3×6 and will collapse… on purpose. It has removable legs on the front and hinges holding it on the wall.  When I’m not using it, I just remove the legs and fold it down.  Unbelievably, it actually worked!  It took me most of the day to build it Sunday.  Then, of course, I did a few projects on my new bench.  Re-wired an extension cord that I cut in half with my hedge trimmer and built a new screen for my back door.

Those are two of only possibly five “handy” things I’ve done in the past four years… so the workbench may end up collecting dust… or my wife may come up with many more things to repair in the future.

Mr. Fix-it

This was my role yesterday afternoon after work. I came home from vacation to find someone had broken one of my driveway lights and stolen another. Then I let the dog out and saw that my backyard fence had literally separated and was falling down. Nice.

The lights were only a small problem. The problem being that I had bought them as a set and had no spares. I bought a new set of four, installed them, and put the remaining two (from the old set – that worked) somewhere else in the yard.

The fence was a bit more of a dilemma. I live on a corner lot, so one side of my fence borders the road. That one is all mine. The one on the north side borders my next door neighbor, who is awesome. The back fence borders some dude who owns a bunch of rentals (that house included). He obviously doesn’t screen his renters because they always end up getting evicted after about six months and trashing the place. The neighbors and I have had to call the city on him may times between renters because he does nothing to take care of the property. So… this fence is going to be “my” problem. He won’t fix it and won’t contribute any money to the project either. The fence is probably 12 years old and although made with treated lumber, it runs north/south and gets buffeted by the gale force Colorado winds year round. What to do? I called my dad for advice.

After a brief assessment of the situation, dad had the perfect solution and I put it into action yesterday. I went Lowe’s and picked up about $15 worth of hardware. After propping the fence up with a brace, I used some new “bigger” wood screws to reattach the fence sections to the post. I knew this would only be a temporary fix though, so I bought a 4′ length of flat metal, carriage bolts, washers, nuts, etc. Dad suggested that if I braced the horizontal brace boards with metal – they wouldn’t be able to bend and break again. Worked like a charm.

The funny thing is I did all the work while the new neighbors (who just moved in over the weekend) were away from home. They’ll probably think their worthless landlord fixed it. LOL.

The Art of Fencing

From Wikipedia: A fence is a freestanding structure designed to restrict or prevent movement across a boundary. 

“Good fences make good neighbors.” – Robert Frost

“A good neighbor is a fellow who smiles at you over the back fence, but doesn’t climb over it.” – Arthur Baer

“There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it’s the risk, the gamble. In any event it’s a thing I need.” – William Faulkner

“Don’t Fence Me In (song)” – Cole Porter

I have never lived anywhere in the world where more people have more fences than here in Denver, CO.  It is very rare to drive anywhere in this metro area without finding fences around people’s property.  I’ll be honest, I’m a fan.  It’s great to be able to let the dog out without worry or to let the children have a place to play where they can feel safe and I as a parent can have piece of mind.  I also like the privacy aspect of having people not be able to see into my back yard.  I can be very anti-social that way.

There are many different types of fences you can buy.  Wood, Concrete, Wrought Iron, Vinyl, and even the good old chain link.  Some neighborhoods may dictate not only how tall your fence can be but how far back it must be set from the street. Also, don’t forget to verify the exact borders of your property to avoid upsetting the neighbors.

Speaking of neighbors, how do you decide what type of fence to use if you share a property line?  Do you come to a consensus and split the cost, or does one person get to pay and decide. And what about fence maintenance?  Who is responsible?  In my back yard, I face a rental property that is usually in pretty bad shape.  This spring, I noticed that the middle of this fence is beginning to sag toward my lawn.  Whose fence is it to fix?  The posts are on their side, so I replace the boards if they need repair.  If the posts need to be re-dug or replaced I would think that would be the landlord’s responsibility.  Have you ever been in this situation?   What do you think?

Tape & Texture

I’ve been working on my basement and trying to get it finished.  I’ve got the walls up, the bathroom roughed in and the drywall up.  Now it’s time for tape, mud & texture.

I know nothing about this process.  I’ve done lots of other building projects over the years, helping out other people, but never “mudding”.  We started the process over the weekend and it’s going alright so far.  It’s a long and tedious process if you don’t know what you’re doing… and I don’t.  I found a tutorial or two online and I’ve been trying to follow that advice.  I’ve also enlisted the advice of a couple of neighbors.  They were glad to offer advice, but no one wanted to get dirty. LOL.

Hopefully the process won’t take too long.

Home Improvement

I recently had a realtor friend of ours come over and look at the house to see how it would shape up for selling.  She had good news and bad news.

The good news was that the house has a lot of amenities people want, like air conditioning, tile floors, lawn sprinkler system, etc.  It’s also in a good price range.  The bad news was that due to the lousy housing market in Denver and the fact that there are so many houses in foreclosure, we would definitely be selling it for less than we paid and hoping for the best.

The one thing we don’t have at this point is a finished basement, so I decided to get busy getting that done.  It’s a 17×22 area that I’m turning into a laundry room, bathroom, and bedroom.  I’ve got a couple buddies helping me get the majority of the work done and I hope to have it mostly rocking by the end of the month.

I’m a little nervous because I’m going to attempt the taping and texture myself.  I haven’t done it before, but I bought a book and I think I can do it.

Hopefully with the housing market back on the upswing and a finished basement, I may be able to at least get what I paid for my house back out of it.

By the way, if you like taping and mudding and want to do my basement, let me know… I can get concert tickets! LOL.  Just kidding of course.