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In Which I Do Manly Tasks
Feb. 19th, 2020 10:02 pmIn Berkeley, my home improvement was limited to ... I don't even know what. I guess I took the front door's lock apart a few times to try and get it to latch right. (I never could, but after we moved out our realtor had a handyman fix it, and he had to get a new one, so that failure wasn't on me.) And I did reinstall all of our other locks with Schlages. Oh, and I rewired bathroom lights twice, so that they could be turned on with a pullchain, because they didn't have a switch.
But, I pretty much wasn't a home improvement sort of guy.
Since we moved to Hawaii, that's changed, in large part because of the presence of my dad, who is willing to both help and teach me how to do things. (We'll see if the lessons stick or not.)
So, I've been working on a lot of projects lately:
Carpentry. Last Friday, my dad and I started work on our long-anticipated bookshelf project, which should put two four-foot wide bookshelves in my office closet (with five shelves each, that's about 40 linear feet of shelving, which I'm hoping will support all or most of my graphic novel collection). We continued the work today. And it's going to be a lot of work. The first thing we did was cut up the plywood we had. So far, we've cut eight strips that are eight foot wide and 9.5 inches deep, which will be the four sides of the bookcases and I presume eight of the shelves.
But plywood, even when it has a nice veneer on the top and bottom still looks like crap on the edges. So for the front edge, we got some red oak and have been cutting half-inch strips from that to glue and nail onto the front of the shelves. The sawing with my dad's radial saw was careful and tedious work, but it's the nailing together of the wood that was really exhausting, as we got down on our hands and knees and carefully drilled and nailed the nails every six inches. And then there was still more work with router and sandpaper today to make those bits of wood really look good together.
So after two afternoons of work, my dad and I have the left and right sides of each shelf pretty much done (other than covering the nail holes and sanding a bit where we burned the wood in a few places while cutting). And we have the shelves cut out but not put together yet. We're planning a little bit of work tomorrow afternoon on the shelves themselves, before I rush home to eat dinner with Kimberly and head out to gaming, night two.
I should say this is a project that my dad has largely been doing, with as much support from me as possible. For example, he mainly did the sawing, with me holding wood steady or catching it as necessary. But, we worked together on the drilling and nailing, and today I did some of the routing and some of the sanding.
Masonry. My dad and Mary own a few different houses and condos on Kauai that they rent (as they did with our house up until January 1). And, they sometimes have to do work on them. In fact, my dad doing this sort of landlord repair for the last 11 years is in part why he's gotten so good at all this handyman work. So, I've told my dad a few times that I'd be happy to help him with that work when it would be useful. We finally planned an outing on Saturday to go out to their duplex (which they co-own with my sister) to do some masonry work.
One of the great enemies of people in Hawaii is water, and here it appears that the duplexes have always had problems with water running down the hill above them, hitting the wall of the duplex, and going through it, down into the carport. (I asked my dad if it had been in the disclosures for the duplex, and he said no, though we're all sure it's an old problem. Ah, disclosures.) My dad came up with a solution for this: a line of cinderblocks in front of the house to run the water away fro the wall. Each of those cinderblocks had to be mortared in, to create a sturdy line.
This turned out to be work that my dad had never done before. Which was probably why we had our first fiasco with quick-setting mortar which didn't get out of the mixing tub before it was drying(!). But second time was the charm. After watching him lay down the mortar and squish in a block, then mortar between the blocks for the next one, I was able to do the same. And, I was really happy to be there, because kneeling down (always the kneeling down!) was hard on his back, so I was able to offer some real value.
Our line of cinderblocks ended up a little crooked, especially at the start, but so it goes when you're learning something. We also didn't finish. I think we got 14 down and 9 more are needed, or something like that, plus the cinderblocks should be capped to keep water from filling them and stagnating. So we'll be back next Saturday to continue.
Paintery. And finally I did a little project of my own, which was optimizing my new printer stand for my use. My dad lent me a hole saw, and I was able to use that to put a hole in the back of the printer stand so that I could feed power to USB devices (and maybe a laptop) on one shelf. I'd say the work with the hole saw was 90% successful: it put a beautiful round hole in the back, but knocked out an extra section on the front. But, it's way back in the printer stand, so should be mostly invisible. I also put two coats of Kona Brown paint on the back of the stand, which had been a bright beigish wood, which was out-of-place in my dark wood office, and problematic because it was facing the side of my desk and so quite visible.
It all looks (and works) much better now, and so I've been able to start using the printer stand's storage and recharging my USB devices out of the way.
Will this home improvement work continue beyond our first year here? I dunno, but I'm hoping my dad can teach me enough about it all that I feel comfortable doing this sort of work.
Meanwhile, in Home Furnishing. We have replaced our failed bed! Both my dad and my Uncle Don mentioned places in Lihue that might have a few beds, so on Sunday, between our late Valentines lunch and an afternoon with my folks, we checked out the first, BedMart. They just had two styles of bed, but one was an attractive reddish wood whose design wasn't unlike the failed Wayfair set (but with the pieces a little larger and the slat design not totally sucky). We got measurements, went home, decided it would mostly work, and went back on Monday to purchase. It was considerable more expensive than our original set (either about 3x as expensive, or not quite 2x, depending on if you count the shipping or not), but it looks to be much better quality.
Even better, they delivered and set up on Tuesday, so we had a bed (again) last night.
Mind you, that means we've only slept on it one night so far, and our Wayfair bed failed on night #2.
Meanwhile, in Berkeley. Our realtor held the first open house on Sunday, and it was apparently very well attended. She's also done a score or so individual tours. Apparently about a dozen parties have asked for disclosure packets, which is of course a sign that someone might be interested enough in the property.
She's having an electrician in tomorrow to fix some minor electrical problems, and is going to hold a second realtor's tour at the same time.
Thus far, she seems very pleased with the turnout and attention, and says she thinks we'll do well, so fingers crossed.
Theoretically we should have offers in a about nine days, and hopefully that'll be lots of offers, because that'll be the prime decider on whether we earn enough to make it easy for me to spend lots of time on my personal writing pursuits.
And hopefully that means we'll close around the end of March, which is where that's been in my head-calendar.
But, I pretty much wasn't a home improvement sort of guy.
Since we moved to Hawaii, that's changed, in large part because of the presence of my dad, who is willing to both help and teach me how to do things. (We'll see if the lessons stick or not.)
So, I've been working on a lot of projects lately:
Carpentry. Last Friday, my dad and I started work on our long-anticipated bookshelf project, which should put two four-foot wide bookshelves in my office closet (with five shelves each, that's about 40 linear feet of shelving, which I'm hoping will support all or most of my graphic novel collection). We continued the work today. And it's going to be a lot of work. The first thing we did was cut up the plywood we had. So far, we've cut eight strips that are eight foot wide and 9.5 inches deep, which will be the four sides of the bookcases and I presume eight of the shelves.
But plywood, even when it has a nice veneer on the top and bottom still looks like crap on the edges. So for the front edge, we got some red oak and have been cutting half-inch strips from that to glue and nail onto the front of the shelves. The sawing with my dad's radial saw was careful and tedious work, but it's the nailing together of the wood that was really exhausting, as we got down on our hands and knees and carefully drilled and nailed the nails every six inches. And then there was still more work with router and sandpaper today to make those bits of wood really look good together.
So after two afternoons of work, my dad and I have the left and right sides of each shelf pretty much done (other than covering the nail holes and sanding a bit where we burned the wood in a few places while cutting). And we have the shelves cut out but not put together yet. We're planning a little bit of work tomorrow afternoon on the shelves themselves, before I rush home to eat dinner with Kimberly and head out to gaming, night two.
I should say this is a project that my dad has largely been doing, with as much support from me as possible. For example, he mainly did the sawing, with me holding wood steady or catching it as necessary. But, we worked together on the drilling and nailing, and today I did some of the routing and some of the sanding.
Masonry. My dad and Mary own a few different houses and condos on Kauai that they rent (as they did with our house up until January 1). And, they sometimes have to do work on them. In fact, my dad doing this sort of landlord repair for the last 11 years is in part why he's gotten so good at all this handyman work. So, I've told my dad a few times that I'd be happy to help him with that work when it would be useful. We finally planned an outing on Saturday to go out to their duplex (which they co-own with my sister) to do some masonry work.
One of the great enemies of people in Hawaii is water, and here it appears that the duplexes have always had problems with water running down the hill above them, hitting the wall of the duplex, and going through it, down into the carport. (I asked my dad if it had been in the disclosures for the duplex, and he said no, though we're all sure it's an old problem. Ah, disclosures.) My dad came up with a solution for this: a line of cinderblocks in front of the house to run the water away fro the wall. Each of those cinderblocks had to be mortared in, to create a sturdy line.
This turned out to be work that my dad had never done before. Which was probably why we had our first fiasco with quick-setting mortar which didn't get out of the mixing tub before it was drying(!). But second time was the charm. After watching him lay down the mortar and squish in a block, then mortar between the blocks for the next one, I was able to do the same. And, I was really happy to be there, because kneeling down (always the kneeling down!) was hard on his back, so I was able to offer some real value.
Our line of cinderblocks ended up a little crooked, especially at the start, but so it goes when you're learning something. We also didn't finish. I think we got 14 down and 9 more are needed, or something like that, plus the cinderblocks should be capped to keep water from filling them and stagnating. So we'll be back next Saturday to continue.
Paintery. And finally I did a little project of my own, which was optimizing my new printer stand for my use. My dad lent me a hole saw, and I was able to use that to put a hole in the back of the printer stand so that I could feed power to USB devices (and maybe a laptop) on one shelf. I'd say the work with the hole saw was 90% successful: it put a beautiful round hole in the back, but knocked out an extra section on the front. But, it's way back in the printer stand, so should be mostly invisible. I also put two coats of Kona Brown paint on the back of the stand, which had been a bright beigish wood, which was out-of-place in my dark wood office, and problematic because it was facing the side of my desk and so quite visible.
It all looks (and works) much better now, and so I've been able to start using the printer stand's storage and recharging my USB devices out of the way.
Will this home improvement work continue beyond our first year here? I dunno, but I'm hoping my dad can teach me enough about it all that I feel comfortable doing this sort of work.
Meanwhile, in Home Furnishing. We have replaced our failed bed! Both my dad and my Uncle Don mentioned places in Lihue that might have a few beds, so on Sunday, between our late Valentines lunch and an afternoon with my folks, we checked out the first, BedMart. They just had two styles of bed, but one was an attractive reddish wood whose design wasn't unlike the failed Wayfair set (but with the pieces a little larger and the slat design not totally sucky). We got measurements, went home, decided it would mostly work, and went back on Monday to purchase. It was considerable more expensive than our original set (either about 3x as expensive, or not quite 2x, depending on if you count the shipping or not), but it looks to be much better quality.
Even better, they delivered and set up on Tuesday, so we had a bed (again) last night.
Mind you, that means we've only slept on it one night so far, and our Wayfair bed failed on night #2.
Meanwhile, in Berkeley. Our realtor held the first open house on Sunday, and it was apparently very well attended. She's also done a score or so individual tours. Apparently about a dozen parties have asked for disclosure packets, which is of course a sign that someone might be interested enough in the property.
She's having an electrician in tomorrow to fix some minor electrical problems, and is going to hold a second realtor's tour at the same time.
Thus far, she seems very pleased with the turnout and attention, and says she thinks we'll do well, so fingers crossed.
Theoretically we should have offers in a about nine days, and hopefully that'll be lots of offers, because that'll be the prime decider on whether we earn enough to make it easy for me to spend lots of time on my personal writing pursuits.
And hopefully that means we'll close around the end of March, which is where that's been in my head-calendar.