You raise me up

This weekend wifey and I bought our first batch of drywall and got the ceiling up. I know it doesn't sound like much, but buying drywall, hauling it home, and getting it up the stairs is a lot of work. And it was 100 degrees all weekend.

Total cost of insulation was $144.61 and the first batch of drywall cost $58.40 so the current total is $549.94.

This weekend's work made me think about my marriage. When I was dating my wife, I knew that she was the person that I wanted to spend my life with and maybe start a family with one day. I knew that she was a genius and looked great in a bathing suit. I never looked at her and thought, “I wonder if this girl can help me haul four-by-ten sheets of drywall up a turning flight of stairs” or “I wonder if this girl can stand on a ladder and hold a heavy sheet of drywall in place over her head while I screw it in.” But sometimes you get more than you ask for. Maybe these are things you should consider when you are dating.

If you're a woman, maybe you should consider whether your man has close male friends who live nearby and who will help him drywall so you don’t have to do it.

They'll never see you leaving by the back door

I didn't do any work on the room over the weekend, but I did make an important decision.

Last week on the way to work I noticed that one of my neighbors was throwing out two milk crates. I stopped to pick them up since I always need milk crates for my homebrewing projects. One of the crates was full of coat hangers but I was running late so I just took the crate with the hangers and threw it into my Jeep.

When I got home, I threw out the old coat hangers and found a doll at the bottom of the crate. The doll has a baby's face with a mustache and is dressed in mariachi or matador clothes. The doll is missing both legs and an arm. Someone nailed small nails into the doll's head where the ears should be.

It's incredibly creepy.

Obviously I couldn't just throw out the doll because it's evil and it will hunt my down and kill me with a guitar or burrito or whatever. But while I was trying to figure out what to do with it, it occurred to me that this doll is the solution to another problem I have been trying to solve.

Before you close up the walls of a room, you should always put something cool in the walls for someone to find ages and ages hence should anyone else embark on a home improvement project. In years past, I've found newspapers from years ago, children's toys, and even an old pair of shoes. But instead of something cool, I'm leaving this evil doll behind the drywall. I wish I could see the look on the person's face who tears down a wall years from now and finds that this evil doll has been lurking in the house for years.

Make some noise if you’re down with me

This weekend I installed an electrical box in the closet so that I could put a light in there and then wifey and I put in insulation. Wifey is very good at insulation. I think it’s because insulation involves scissors and she went to camp as a child.

My policy is to put insulation everywhere including internal walls and ceilings. I grew up in a house wherein you could hear everything that was going on in the entire house – even two floors away – because my father decided not to insulate the ceilings. My father is mostly deaf so it didn’t matter to him but I’m sure my brothers weren’t happy to hear me giggling with my girlfriend in the basement when I was 14. And if there are ever kids in my house I don’t want to hear them talking, crying, plotting, doing drugs, or whatever it is that kids do. They all have cellular telephones these days so they can just call 911 if they need help.

Mama said knock you out

On Friday I went to my parents’ house after work. My mother’s air conditioner kept blowing the circuit in her house so I decided to go out and have a look.

It turned out that my mom had a monstrous window air conditioner and her pool filter running off a 15 amp circuit breaker. I pulled it out and put in a 30 amp circuit breaker and it worked like a charm. I celebrated by jumping in my mom’s pool.

When my mom came outside, I explained the problem and told her that I fixed it all in five minutes.

I expected her to be overjoyed but instead she seemed to be deep in thought. She said, “Do you think that is the same problem we have in the kitchen?”

In our house growing up (and still to this day for the unfortunate souls still living there), we were only able to use the toaster oven OR the toaster OR the microwave OR the dishwasher. Activating more than one device tripped the circuit and required you to go down to the basement and reset the circuit. This happened hundreds of times – usually when one of us didn’t notice that the dishwasher was on and we microwaved a snack. It is a frustrating situation.

When I told my mother that yes her entire kitchen is running off a 15 amp circuit breaker and yes I can fix that in five minutes next time I come out, her mood turned to anger. “You mean to tell me that it only takes a three-dollar part and five minutes and I’ve been up and down those goddamned stairs a hundred goddamned times and your father could have fixed that years ago?”

I quickly dried off and went home before my dad got home from work.

When I told my triumphant story to my friend, hoping to get the accolades that my mother deprived me of, my friend said, “What happens if your parents’ house burns down?”

I said, “Well, I suppose my mother will stop complaining about her air conditioner.”

When I spoke to my mother the next day, I asked whether her smoke detectors had fresh batteries. You know, just in case. She said, “We got rid of our smoke detectors. They were too much trouble. That one in the hallway went off every time I fried something.”

You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine

This week I replaced all of the electrical boxes and outlets in the workroom. It didn’t really have to be done since the wiring all appears to be pretty new but a new room looks much better with sparkling new outlets and I’m more comfortable living in a house in which I personally did the wiring.

I mounted all of the electrical boxes to studs because the prior boxes were installed with Madison clips and Madison clips are for fucking anarchists.

Cost of mountable outlet boxes, new outlets, new light switch, and more contractor bags: $44.17. Total cost of project thus far: $346.93.

I also added one outlet – in the closet. Wifey snickered at me and you may be snickering too but I believe that every room and every closet in every house should have an outlet. Someday someone will invent a super electronic device to install in every closet that makes all of your clothes wrinkle-free and shines your shoes and makes you coffee and smells like roses and I’ll be ready with outlets in my closets and you won’t so snicker away.

We love dirty laundry

On Saturday I went out to my dad’s house to repay the favor.

My dad has an old cable line in his backyard between two trees that he put up for a dog run. This was useful thirty years ago when we had a giant mangy mutt running around the yard with me and my brothers but since that mutt has passed on and my parents currently have a dachshund that wouldn’t run away if the house was on fire, my dad now uses it as a clothesline.

A few months ago during a storm, a branch fell on the cable and it snapped. My dad has been bugging me to fix it for a long time but I have been putting it off because he had a hip replacement in March and he really isn’t supposed to be out there hanging laundry all the time.

But this Saturday I finally went out to repair it. My dad came outside to supervise. He asked why I had a drill and when I told him that I was going to drill a pilot hole to sink the hook into the tree he scoffed at me. My dad is old-fashioned.

“Just hammer a ten-penny nail two inches into the tree and then pull it out.”

I rolled my eyes and drilled the hole. After I put the hook in, I abandoned the project to visit my grandmother and on the way back to my dad's house I stopped at Home Depot to buy a shiny new turnbuckle to tighten the cable. When my dad saw this he first pointed out that it wasn’t necessary and then he said, “How did you get that on a Sunday?”

Look out kid, it’s something you did

Saturday was a big day in the work room because my father came to inspect. When it comes to renovations he knows everything about everything. He is also very skilled at leading you in one direction without making it obvious.

“Sure, we can turn this into a bathroom. I mean, we’re going to have to install a whole new floor that is level, we might have to vent the drain out the side of your house, and there really isn’t any point in having two bathrooms on one floor of a small house but I can help you run the plumbing.”

So we’re definitely not making it into a bathroom.

After coffee with my dad, I bought some lumber and installed some studs where necessary so that we have something to which we can screw the drywall. Cost of lumber was $15.97 bringing the total to $302.76.