construction

Construction Conundrums

/ Diane Henders / 30 Comments

I’ll tackle just about any household renovation, and I’ve sometimes thought that it might be a nice way to make a bit of extra income. After all, what could be more satisfying than building and fixing things? It seems like a good idea, until I actually do a project.

Last week we replaced an exterior door that had leaked since Day One. It didn’t meet the BC Building Code standards in the first place (and the building inspector didn’t catch it, grrr). But even if the door had met code, it was so poorly installed that it would have leaked anyway.

So we bought a new door, and realized why the builder had cheaped out in the first place. Over seven hundred dollars *hyperventilates briefly* for a 36″ wide NAFS-08 door, plus half a day’s work; and the door was caulked, insulated, weatherstripped, dry, and done.

The project went fairly smoothly, other than the fact that we tried four tubes of caulking and two cans of expanding foam before we found ones that actually worked. Yes, the expanding foam was a brand-new can, and yes, we had to make a special trip to town to get another, thank you very much. This illustrates the First Law of Construction: Even when you think you have all your tools ready and assembled, you don’t.

The Second Law of Construction also kicked in: Caulking and expanding foam have an irresistible attraction to any place you DON’T want them.  I can’t get within ten feet of caulking without getting it all over myself and my clothes. Fortunately I knew that in advance, so I wore my “construction” clothes and all was well. But despite the overall success of the operation, I felt… unsatisfied.

It’s good to know that the problem is (hopefully) solved. And the new door looks nice. But the old door looked nice, too, until puddles formed under it. After all the time, money, and aggravation we expended, you’d never know we’d changed anything. I’d post a picture, but it’s just… a door. “Wow, look at how well that door was installed!” said nobody, ever.

So I guess I’ll stick with my writing career. Words don’t cost me a penny no matter how many I use, and I can put them together and tear them apart and rearrange them as many times as I want without damaging them.

And, unlike lumber, I’ll never ‘measure twice, cut once’ only to discover that I should have ‘thought twice, measured thrice, cut once’. As our elderly neighbour used to complain with tongue in cheek: “I’ve cut that board twice, and it’s still too short.”

Hope everything has measured up in your world this week!

Book 16 update: After weeks of plotting and untangling complicated story threads, I’m finally writing again. I’m on Chapter 25, and things are getting explosive!

Plumbing The Depths

/ Diane Henders / 56 Comments

I’d just like to say up front that I hate plumbing.

I’ll tackle carpentry, automotive, and electrical projects without complaint; but I hate plumbing.  Not because it’s difficult; just because it’s disgusting.

I have a pretty strong stomach.  I can deal with blood, injuries, and even vomit without flinching.  It takes a lot to gross me out; but plumbing does it.  I don’t know whether it’s the gray and glistening slime, the stench, the revolting schloorrrppp sound of pulling out a giant clog, or all three; but it’s almost enough to activate my gag reflex.

Not quite, though.  What it does activate is my mouth.  My exclamations of disgust are completely involuntary and frequently unprintable: “Eeewww!  Bleah!  Eugh!  Aw, gross!  Ech!  Blargh!  Yuck!”  (Etcetera.  The full list would require an F-bomb alert at the top of this post.)  Those with delicate sensibilities would be smart to flee the scene if they see me wearing a resolute expression and clutching a pipe wrench.

That happened last week.  After months of avoidance, I had finally reached my breaking point with a sluggish sink drain. It’s been a long time since I plumbed the depths, so my memory of revulsion had faded and I started the project without much dread.

But as soon as I got the P-trap off and slimy reeking gobs of I-dare-not-name-this started slithering out and splatting into my bucket, my fountain of expletives surged up and over.  And when a particularly large splat spattered slime onto me, well… let’s just say you wouldn’t want to have been there.

The good news is that the clog was easy (albeit repulsive) to fix, and the drain is fine now. The bad news is that I might have melted a piece of the ABS pipe with the heat of my invective.  And I think I lost a layer of skin from scrubbing my hands ten times in a row afterward.

And scrubbing the sink.  And scrubbing the cabinet under the sink.  And scrubbing the floor just in case some molecules of grossness escaped…

Have I mentioned that I really hate plumbing?

Book 16 update:  I started plotting this week and the ideas are flying!  This week’s goal is to round up my brain and point the story in some recognizable direction.  Stay tuned…

Getting Down And Dirty

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

Psst!  Lean closer so I can share the latest sordid news from my personal life…

*glances around and lowers voice to a whisper*

Yesterday I had a sweaty four-hour session with five guys, and I’m so sore I can barely walk.  I guess I should just be grateful that the sixth guy with the really big tool didn’t participate much.

The whole experience wasn’t as much fun as the salacious stories say it should be; but maybe I was doing it wrong.

Here’s the photographic evidence:

That’s a 33′ x 83′ pond, about 80,000 Imperial gallons.

Yep, we finally got our pond done! The rubber liner weighs 1300 pounds, so Hubby and I planned the project very carefully.  Then we hired four guys from the local labour pool, and had an excavator operator (the guy with the BIG tool) standing by to place the rocks.

The excavator operator had dug the pond last week, and when I mentioned I’d hired guys from the labour pool to help install the liner, he raised an eyebrow. “Guys who can’t get a steady job in this economy? You’ll end up working harder than they do.”

But he didn’t realize that I have a secret weapon: I’m female, I’m strong, and I work really hard.  There aren’t too many young guys who’ll let a 55-year-old woman show them up.

(Have I mentioned lately that I love young guys?  My strategy doesn’t work nearly so well with older guys — sometimes they just shrug and say, “Nah, knock yourself out.  I’ve got nothing to prove.”)

Anyway, we got a great bunch of labourers — hard workers and nice guys.  We spent four solid hours raking, rolling, and wrestling (yes, I’m still talking about landscaping) to get the liner into place.

Even though Hubby and I had planned everything down to the last detail, we didn’t actually expect it to work the way we’d planned.  But it did — hooray!  Today we’re creaking and groaning a bit, but we’re triumphant.

And I gained a juicy story, so it’s all good. After all, how many middle-aged women can say they’ve gotten down and dirty with five guys at the same time? (And don’t forget the sixth guy with his really big tool.)  😉

Anything juicy happening in your world this week?

One Of Those Weeks

/ Diane Henders / 35 Comments

These photos perfectly illustrate the way my week has gone:

On the left is a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) that I bought last fall for about $15.

I carefully amended our crummy soil and tucked the little plant lovingly into the ground.  I hovered over it, cheered when it survived the winter, worried when it died back to the ground in the spring, and cheered all over again when it put out a few tiny sprigs of new growth.  During this whole hot drought-ridden summer, I’ve been hand-carrying water to it.  It’s about a foot tall.

On the right is… you guessed it:  another butterfly bush.  It apparently started itself from some wayward seed carried by wind or birds or whatever.  It’s growing in bare gravel that was dug up last spring, so it’s at least a year younger than the plant I bought.  It’s never been fussed over (in fact I didn’t even notice it until it started to bloom) and it hasn’t received a single drop of water that didn’t fall from the sky.  Did I mention we’re having a drought?

But the intrepid new butterfly bush is three feet tall and growing like stink.  Go figure.

That’s the kind of week it’s been:  Our well is beginning to show the stress of the drought and we’re not sure if it will supply enough water to get us through the rest of the summer.  We’ve been wrestling with well drillers and water consultants AGAIN (I was really hoping we were done with that for a few decades), and we still don’t have a decision or quote or timeline.  Hubby is being his usual laid-back self, but I’m finding it immensely stressful and time-consuming.

Still, though, things could be worse:  I was sitting outside enjoying a cup of tea one morning and listening to the pounding of hammers over at the neighbours’ place when I heard *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* OW, SHIT-F*&$#$F*#@B&$!!!

After my wince and (I’m ashamed to admit) instinctive snicker, I waited worriedly for a car to rush past on the way to the emergency room; but a few minutes later I was relieved to hear laughter and jovial teasing.  I’m glad nobody got seriously hurt, but I bet their week was a whole lot worse than mine.

So… no complaints.  We still have water (so far).  I’m still clinging to sanity (or to be precise, I can still fake sanity convincingly).

And hey, I got two butterfly bushes for the price of one!

How’s your week going?

Book 14 update:  The water fiasco ate up a bunch of my writing time this week, but I still made it to Chapter 9.  Onward!

 

Doing It… Doing It… DONE!

/ Diane Henders / 34 Comments

We did it!  Or, to be precise, we’re doing it right at the moment this post is being published.

Wait; get that look off your face!  We’re not ‘doing it’; we’re doing ‘IT’:  That is, moving into our finally-at-last-thank-God-could-it-possibly-have-taken-ANY-BLOODY-LONGER?!? much-anticipated and mostly-complete second floor (we still have to hang doors and do some finish carpentry).  As of 9:00 this morning, the movers are hauling all my office, fitness, sewing, and art equipment, along with Hubby’s N-scale model train layout and all his astronomy gear, out of the garage and into its final home upstairs.

Are we relieved?  OH HELL YES!!!

Are we still sane?

Not even close.

Our intellectual capacity has diminished to the point where we can’t retain even the most basic snippets of information for more than ten seconds.  Our most frequent conversation for the past couple of weeks has been:

“What about (fill in construction question)?”

“Are you really asking me that?!?  I just told you half an hour ago!”

“You did not.”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“Did too…”

I’d love to say that it’s all Hubby’s fault because he never listens to me; but I’m not quite sure how that would explain the fact that I’ve done exactly the same thing.  ’Cause I always listen to him.  (Hubby, stop laughing.)  Maybe we’re simultaneously developing acute dementia caused by paint fumes.

I’m so brain-dead I can’t even feed myself.  When the building inspector departed after giving us a passing grade on our final inspection, I allowed myself a celebratory Lindt truffle (or maybe several; but I’ll only admit to one).  They’re one of my favourite indulgences:  An oh-so-smooth-and-delicious soft chocolate centre enclosed in a chocolate sphere and wrapped in pretty foil.

So I peeled off the foil and put it into my mouth.  The foil, not the chocolate.  Seriously; if I had to take a mental competence test right now, they’d lock me up so fast I wouldn’t even have time to yell, “Hey, where’s my truffle?”

I’ve also developed an unnerving tendency to forget where I’m going and why; resulting in a scenario where I stop in my tracks, thump my forehead, and mutter, “Come on, brain, you can do this.”  (For the record:  It can’t.)

But I can hardly wait to unpack and settle into a period of blissful normalcy… at least until our budget recovers enough that we can afford to install flooring up there instead of the painted plywood we have now.  Then the renovation insanity will begin all over again; but we’re both so heartily sick of construction that there’s an excellent chance we’ll put off installing flooring for another ten years.  Maybe longer.

Or maybe we’ll just wait until the trauma fades; which, given the current state of my short-term memory, could be as early as next week.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to resuming my life now that I no longer have to spend every spare moment either thinking about or doing construction.  We’re done!  HOORAY!!!

*does happy dance*

And in other news… I just hit the halfway point on Book 13 – woohoo!  Now I’m looking forward to having some quality time to bomb ahead with it.

*does another happy dance*

 

Paint, Lies, and False Optimism

/ Diane Henders / 30 Comments

We’re close.  We’re sooooo close…

You may think that first sentence should end with “…to insanity” but in truth, our sanity fled a long time ago.

No; we’re close to finally finishing our second floor renovation… if by ‘close’ you read “we only have to paint three walls and half the floor, install the shower doors, buy four sets of bifold doors and install them, hang a bathroom door, build storage shelves and a twenty-four-foot bookcase, and trim out six doors, four windows, and two skylights”.

Honestly, we’re almost done!  …Or we’re delusional.  It’s one of those D-words; but ‘delusional’ is so harsh.  I prefer ‘optimistic’.

You may recall that I confessed my antipathy to painting back in May when I ended up painting our exterior trim.  Shortly thereafter, we tried to hire a painter to do our interior work.

The original painter who did our addition was the messiest painter I’ve ever seen.  By the time he was finished there was paint everywhere, all over our new flooring and even on the door handles; and he seemed to think that was perfectly okay.  We didn’t call him back.

After a lengthy search we found a second painter who thought he could fit us in.  He showed up, gave us an astronomical quote, and then vanished after we asked when he could start.

So we found a third.  He showed up, gave us a reasonable quote, and said he could start the following week… and then vanished.  (I heard a rumour that he was fleeing three ex-wives and a soon-to-be-ex fourth.)

So we tracked down the second painter again.  We waited a month until he finally showed up and started painting… and then he had a tantrum and walked off the job after doing only two rooms (badly).

By then I was out of time and patience, so I did it myself (despite the fact that I REALLY HATE PAINTING).  It was a slow process, but it looked surprisingly good when I was finished.

So for the second floor, we didn’t even bother trying to hire somebody.  “I’ll do it,” I said to Hubby.  “Even though I REALLY HATE PAINTING.”

“Should we do the floor last?” he asked.  “Just in case you drip?”

“I never drip,” I said proudly.  “I’m a very tidy painter.”

Well.

I guess I can’t blame our ex-painters for being flaky, because apparently there’s something in latex paint that turns people into liars and/or nutjobs and/or destroys their hand-eye coordination.

Last summer I painted without a dropcloth and never had a problem; but now?  Good Lord.  I have paint on the floor, the ladders, my clothes, and every part of my body that isn’t covered by clothes, including my hair.  When I’m finally finished upstairs, I’m going to frame my jeans and market them as a modern art piece.  (On the upside, the walls and ceiling are pristine; and thanks to Hubby’s foresight we’re painting the floor last.)

But slow?  I’m positively glacial.  With emphasis on ‘positively’; as in ‘falsely optimistic’.  Before I started, I thought, “Ah, I’ll be done in a few days.”  I’ve been painting six hours a day for two weeks and I’m still not done.

But I’m close.

I’m sooooo close…

*cuddles into straitjacket and rocks back and forth, humming*

Did I mention I REALLY HATE PAINTING?

To be fair, that mess isn’t all from mistakes – I also clean the end of my small roller on my pants because it’s easier than finding a rag. But still…

Unpredictably Predictive

/ Diane Henders / 21 Comments

This week I was delighted to discover that computers are now capable of writing stories for us using predictive text. I had already suspected as much, since these days my iPhone can pretty much compose text messages all by itself. If I type “Are…”, it will automatically fill in “…you still coming today?”

This is an unavoidable result of dealing with contractors who are genetically incapable of showing up as promised; and it also proves that my iPhone is at least as smart as they are.

Um… no, I’m not bitter; why do you ask?

Anyhow, back to predictive-text stories: Botnik Studios fed all seven volumes of Harry Potter to their computer, and then turned it loose to write the next great Harry Potter saga.

Amazingly, the computer did create a story that has taken the internet by storm. Not because it’s so good, but because it’s so hilariously bad. Check out “Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash”.

Better still, talented artist Megan Nicole Dong couldn’t resist the challenge of illustrating the particularly bizarre bits.

Inspired, I turned to my iPhone. Surely it had the world’s next bestseller locked away in its little electronic brain!

Here is its magnum opus:

I don’t know what to tell you about the other day but we’re not going to get any more time. Officially the best thing to do is to get a new job. Jobless claims are still coming up in a couple of months but I haven’t been able to make any changes to the company.

I forgot to ask you about the foundation of your job and how to make it work. The next time we have to make sure you get the house. The beams are not going to make it any better than the last time I had a chance to look at it and I haven’t done anything for the last week. I want to see what we can do to get the job done.

I admit I was disappointed in its painfully dry prose; but at least the whole composition was more coherent than a lot of business memos I’ve seen.

Moving on from ‘predictive’ to ‘predictable’… Christmas holidays are here again!

And that means I’m going to skip next week’s blog post so I have time to remove a few pounds of dust from Every. Single. Surface. In the house.  Including the Christmas tree, all the Christmas decorations, and the (formerly nicely) wrapped gifts, because the contractors (who were supposed to finish a month ago) exploded Dustpocalypse in our house the day before our houseguests were due to arrive.  GRRR!!!

*breathes deeply through a dust mask for a few minutes*

Okay, I’m all better now.  Ish.

I’ll also be taking time to prepare some festive calorie-laden goodies for my guests.  With any luck I’ll be able to keep the dusting separate from the cooking; but if not, at least I’ll be serving high fibre (if oddly-flavoured) meals.

Merry Christmas to those who observe it; and whatever your December traditions may be, I wish you joy, comfort, peace, and prosperity.

‘See’ you on January 3, 2018!

 

Do Ya Feel Lucky, Punk?

/ Diane Henders / 40 Comments

It’s been an interesting week… if by ‘interesting’ you mean ‘a blood-pressure-spiking, rant-inducing tragicomedy of ridiculousness’.

Or in other words:  ‘Same-old, same-old’.

We started the process for our second floor renovation in early August, reasoning that two and a half months was lots of time to get a permit, frame a storage closet and a bathroom, and insulate before the weather turned cold.  I sealed my doom by signing up for a six-week watercolour course to begin in mid-October, because the construction would be done by then, right?

Ha.  I reckoned without the glacial pace of structural engineers and bureaucracy.

Last week when we were rushing around getting ready for the framing inspection (we did the framing ourselves), I finally lost my grip… on everything from my paintbrush to my temper.

In our last watercolour class I had foolishly bravely decided to paint along with the instructor.  I didn’t expect great results; but what the heck, if you don’t try, you’ll never know, right?

I actually did okay for a while.  I laid in washes for sky and water, and underpainted my trees… and then my coordination short-circuited and my paintbrush (loaded with brown pigment) flipped out of my hand and bounced… not once; but twice… onto my painting.

Two gigantic dark-brown turds splotched down in the middle of my misty landscape.

I burst into uproarious laughter.

Taking their cue from my continuing chuckles, the rest of the class converged to giggle and cheer me on while I tried to convert my turds into dock pilings jutting out of the water.

I failed, but at least we all had a good laugh.

In between construction and turd-painting I’ve also been hard at work on Book 13, and apparently I need new reading glasses.  For a few days a muscle under my right eye twitched wildly, making me look like a female version of Dirty Harry on speed.

That turned out to be fitting, because when I discovered water puddling on our floor from a leaky door, I completely lost my shit and fired off… *ahem* …a strongly-worded missive1 to our home-builder, who has been ignoring my deficiency reports since May.  I doubt if it did any good, but at least it relieved my feelings.

After that banner week, I couldn’t help snickering in anticipation of comedic disaster when I looked into my kitchen junk drawer.  It contains everything from screwdrivers to matches to notepads… and also a tube of lip balm, a black Sharpie marker, and a Tide pen all in the same convenient compartment.

Now, what could possibly go wrong?

So if you hear about a woman who accidentally poisoned herself by using a Tide pen instead of lip balm, you’ll know who it was.  Or who knows?  I might unwittingly use the Sharpie to enhance my Dirty Harry image with a permanent black moustache.

So whenever I make a blind grab for that tube of lip balm, I have to ask myself:  “Do ya feel lucky, punk?  Well… do ya?”

*

1 Even though I really wanted to fill that email with enough profanity to make their eyes bleed, I didn’t use any swearwords at all.  Aren’t you proud of me?

Contractor’s Contractions

/ Diane Henders / 41 Comments

If you’ve ever tried to renovate during an insane housing boom, you know exactly what we’ve been going through for the past year.  But if you’re blissfully unfamiliar with that situation, I’m here to tell you that contractors use a special language full of shorthand and contractions; and after a year of tearing my hair out I’ve finally learned to interpret the local dialect.

Here are some common phrases and their translations:

“I’ll be your project manager and take care of everything.”:  “I’ll collect $1500 per month from you and ignore your job entirely unless you call and nag me every day.  If I do actually get involved, it will be to obstruct progress by telling all the trades that I’m the sole point of contact and then dropping off the face of the earth.”

“You can have anything you want…”:  “…as long as it’s one of our three substandard stock items.”

“We can have that in for you by Friday…”:  “…two months from now.”

“Yep, we can do that no problem.”:  “We’ve been promising that we can do it for the past three months; but now that it’s time for us to actually show up and do the work, we can’t do it after all.  You’ll have to find somebody else and sit on their waiting list for another three months.”

“That’s impossible.”:  “That’s not the cheap-ass way we want to do it.”

“This is prepped all wrong.  Whoever did it was an idiot*.”:  “I’m going to charge you extra.”
*Any trade not currently on site will be blamed for shoddy workmanship regardless of the actual quality of the work.

“I’ll drop by and do an estimate and get right back to you…”:  “…when hell freezes over.”

“I’ll be there Tuesday at nine AM…”:  “…or maybe noon.  Or maybe sometime Wednesday.  Or I might not come at all; but the one thing you can count on is that I won’t call to tell you.”

“I’ve just got a couple of days left on my current job and then you’re next in line…”:  “…after I take the money from my last job and go on a three-week bender, and then do ‘a quick job for a friend’ that takes another two months.  But right after that, you’re next… ish.”

“I have to leave for another job, but don’t worry; you can get anybody to finish these last couple of details for you.”:  “I’ve made a fundamental mistake in my work and I can’t finish unless I tear it out and redo it.  And that ain’t happenin’, so sayonara, suckahs!”

“I’ll charge hourly.”:  “I’ll hide in my truck talking on my cell phone for hours at a time and hope you won’t notice when I bill you for it.”

“I know that’s what the building code requires, but as long as you don’t get a permit or an inspection we can do it my way for a lot cheaper.”:  This means exactly what you think it means:  RUN AWAY!

Unfortunately, being able to translate these phrases accomplishes nothing except to adjust my expectations far below what I would normally consider sub-par.  And even my adjusted expectations are turning out to be wildly optimistic.

So if you’re looking for me, I’ll be the bald chick in the corner muttering profanities to empty air and yanking on my last two remaining hairs.

But at least I speak the language now.

*

P.S.  I learned these phrases the hard way this year but, to be fair, we’ve also had some excellent tradesmen who were professional and reliable.  But after two separate miscreants bailed on us this week after promising us the world for months, I was just a leetle cranky.  I’m all better now.  Ish…

Jusht An Ash Hole

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

I was on the phone with my step-mom the other day when the conversation turned to my messy painting habits, and I confessed that by now I have paint on my jacket, shoes, jeans, and even my socks.

My step-mom expressed concern about my jacket, but I assured her, “Oh, no, it’s only my old camping jacket.  It’s ancient and full of ash holes from sitting around the campfire.”

I should have known she wouldn’t let me get away with that.  She hesitated, then let me have it:  “Are you saying there’s an ash hole in your jacket?  So who’s the ash hole?”

Needless to say, I laughed my ash off.

And I was ready for a good laugh, because my patience with the construction process is wearing thin.

But… *drumroll please* …we might get the all-important Occupancy Permit in a few days!

These days Hubby and I utter the words “Occupancy Permit” in the same way one might say “Holy Grail”: with capital letters and in a hushed tone of awe.  The other day our neighbour’s truck went by towing a flatbed trailer with an oak dining room suite on it, and Hubby said, “Mike got his Occupancy Permit last week.”

I sighed with the same hopeless desire as if I’d just found out Mike had won $50 million in the lottery.

Wait, no.  If he’d won $50 million I’d be pleased as punch for him.  But an Occupancy Permit?  I admit it:  I’m rabidly envious.  Imagine, an actual dining table and chairs.  And a kitchen to cook real food instead of microwaving plastic prepared stuff.

And maybe… dare I even think it?  *whispers* A dresser and a closet.  We’ve been living out of suitcases for so long I can’t even remember if I have other clothes besides the same fourteen T-shirts I’ve been wearing over and over for the past five months.

But despite my limited sartorial options, I’ve discovered that no matter how few clothes you have in your suitcase, the item you want will always be at the bottom.  And when you have multiple T-shirts of approximately the same colour, you will have to unfold each and every one of them before you finally find the one you want.

And socks?  I’ve previously speculated that socks are the work of evil; and their behaviour in my suitcase confirms it.  No matter how carefully I pair and arrange them so the best ones are on top, the sock imps rampage through my suitcase at night, pulling pairs apart and hiding the best socks in odd corners while moving the second-string ones to the top.

Here’s proof:  My painting shoes have holes in them.  Ergo, I have a pair of socks with blue paint on the toes.  How many times do you think I’ve pulled that pair out of my suitcase thinking they were good socks?

Yep, you guessed it.  Every… single… time!  This despite the fact that each time I find them, I push them back to the bottom of the suitcase.

So, between the malevolent sock imps and the irritation of STILL not having a finished house, I’m a woman on the edge.  If we don’t get our Occupancy Permit by next week, I’m gonna put on my ash hole jacket and start kickin’ ash!

Am I the only one with sock imps in my suitcase?