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Home repairs made complex
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Home repairs made complex
  Editor’s excuse: This column originally ran June 12, 2007 and is being revived here because a grandboy came to stay with us Saturday and in the ensuing commotion, Susan misplaced her marbles. She only had a few left and is pretty sure she’ll find them eventually, under the couch cushions or in the back yard. Besides, this column still has meaning — we’re still chasing the elusive rattle all around our house.  It will all be funny someday. We’ve been making repairs around the homestead lately. I have reached that point that comes, for me, in any ongoing project, where I wonder why the hell I started, how much longer it’s going to take, and how bad it would look if I just quit now. We started by tearing out an ancient wall heater. It sat with one side in our bedroom and one in the hallway. The only thing it’s been used for since we bought this house is for Smacky, the most militant of our cats, to perch atop. She liked to sit atop the bedroom side of the thing, which put her at my eye level and allowed her to surprise me badly when I came around the corner. So tearing out the wall heater was a good thing. Of course, tearing it out left a hole in the wall, which is bad for privacy and aesthetics as well. So we went to Lake Hardware for what journalists learn to call gypsum board to keep out of trouble with trademark attorneys, but which turned out to be actual Sheetrock®. Read that, attorneys?  We also had to patch the top of our bedroom closet, where a leak happened before the new roof came to live here. And a hole in the hall ceiling, where Micheal’s foot went through when he went up there to see how bad the leak was. And a hole in the bedroom wall where Micheal put his fist through the wall. Doesn’t sound like the Micheal you know? It wasn’t. For several years now, our central heat and air has caused a really, really annoying rattle in our bedroom. The rattle seemed to be centered about this one wall, and thumping the wall would sometimes make it stop. Micheal just thumped too zealously once.  Micheal did most of the patching work. Not, I’m afraid, seamlessly. In fact, some of the patches have a rather mosaic-like quality. Neither of us is an expert handyperson, but we can usually figure out how to do something eventually. The good news, in fact the highlight of our home repair campaign so far, is that when we cut out the piece of hallway ceiling we were replacing, Micheal found the badly-anchored beam that caused the stupid rattle, and fixed it. Here’s more good news — on another project, I used a tube of caulking compound, and didn’t ruin anything. I had a really bad experience with a caulking gun once, and decided if I ever had to use one again, I would buy an extra tube of caulk. I would empty that extra tube of caulk into my hands and smear it over my body and on the bottoms of my shoes, then walk through my house touching things. I figured the end result would be the same, but I’d have the satisfaction of having done it deliberately. Happily, that wasn’t necessary.  Back to the fist through the wall thing for a moment. When Micheal and I ran Pat’s Place on Surfside back in the 1970s, the male patrons liked to put their fists through the walls on a regular basis. Always next to the pay phone. Probably while they were explaining to their beloveds why they were at a dance hall, and their beloveds were explaining to them where they were going to live from then on. Whatever the reason, it was tiresome. We patched the paneling next to the pay phone at least a dozen times before the late Richard Burton (not the actor, but one of my favorite people) decided to put a stop to the sport of wall-punching. Before he patched the busted paneling, he put a piece of sheet metal under it. I’m not sure how many guys busted their knuckles after that. If any did, I figure they deserved it, and I’ll bet their beloveds would agree with me. I would never do that here. Micheal didn’t punch a hole in the wall on purpose. And besides, I’m betting the damned sheet metal would rattle.  |
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