Category Archives: House

Mouse Trouble

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One AM. Our nocturnal guest is back. It has chewed right through the wall for the second time. I plastered up the hole it chewed last night, but I guess I started that project too late in the day and it was wet enough for our friend to smooge through. Persistent little bastard.

I bought a couple traps a week ago and set them outside, on the outside of the wall in which our tiny mammalian guest has decided to be so industrious. How can you not catch a mouse when you leave a trap outside? But I didn’t. One of the traps disappeared. I never found it. I’m thinking it became a couch in the new pad. But that’s just speculation.

These traps are called “the better mousetrap.” I bought them on the recommendation of a fellow hardware store patron who said “Those work really well.” Better mouse trap? Better at what? Causing frustration? Offering free meals to rodents? They don’t stay open, which is a good feature once a mouse has been caught, but not such a good feature before then. I moved the remaining trap inside, next to the new hole in the wall, and propped it open with a rock. I am not hopeful.

Lying in bed, typing on my iPod, I can hear something downstairs, but it might just be my imaginaton. Tomorrow I am going to get some standard mousetraps. And plug the hole again. And hopefully get a better night’s sleep.

Toilet Seat Adventures

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So we needed some new toilet seats.  One of them was outright broken.  The others were getting skanky.  Who knows how old those puppies are?  So I stopped putting off that task and headed out to get some new ones.  I went to Lowe’s in South Burlington.  The place has been open for a while but I had never been there.  I had some errands in that direction and combined tasks into one trip.  Actually two.

The thing is, I just needed some toilet seats.  Toilet seats have the potential to be embarrassing upon purchase.  Like toilet paper, everyone uses it and everyone knows what it is for, but we kind of pretend it is just another thing.  If I were a cashier ringing up the purchase of a toilet seat at Lowe’s, I would have to try hard not to picture the purchaser using the item.  See what I mean by potentially embarrassing?  For everyone involved.  Anyway, I just needed three toilet seats to replace all of the ones in our house.  I was quickly overwhelmed.

Do you have any idea how many types of toilet seats there are?  There are:

  • squishy ones
  • solid ones
  • round ones
  • oval ones
  • decorated ones
  • plain ones
  • wooden ones
  • plastic ones (heavy duty)
  • plastic ones (light duty)
  • chrome hinges
  • plastic hinges
  • nickel hinges
  • fancy new easy to clean hinges
  • slow closing lids
  • ones with no lid
  • regular old slamming if you are not careful lids
  • anti-bacterial mystery substance somehow molded right in ones
  • your standard wash it to keep the bacteria away ones
  • and my personal favorite–the one with the glittery butterfly on the soft foam lid one

Like I said, I just needed some toilet seats.  Of course, it took me way too long to decide.  I went with the nickel hinges. I mean why not? But ack! There was only one left! After all that time deciding, only one left! Quickly, I recovered. I went with one nickel plated hinge and two chrome plated hinges. The purchase was speedy because I only put one on the shelf to be scanned three times.  All the same price, right?  And I was out of there.

I installed one. I installed two. I pulled the third from the box and ack! A cracked seat! Back it went into the box and back I went to Lowe’s.  Now, on the way home the first time, I had a small amount of angst that the “associate,” or whatever employees at Lowe’s are called, scanned the nickel-hinged seat as a chrome-hinged seat. I knew it would mess with inventory, even the price was the same. Justice was served, however, as I had to deal with returning the one that was incorrectly scanned. I played dumb, of course, as if I had no idea what had happened. I hope the associate (since I am sure this is tracked somehow) doesn’t take heat for that. I did get a refund, then got another chrome-hinged toilet seat.

So we have three new toilet seats. It was a small and satisfying project, one of which I will be reminded daily (more than daily on days like today when my gut feels less than healthy, if you know what I’m saying). We also, however, have a leak in the tank of one of them, discovered upon seat replacement. When I went back for the return I looked to see if the bolts were available to fix it. I should have guessed that there are at least three types of bolts for different brands of toilets.  I don’t know what brand of toilet it is.  It’s a toilet.  So it leaks still, to be repaired soon. Stay tuned, friends, for the continuing adventures of my toilets.

Slaving Away Over a Hot Desk

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Diskobolos

It’s back to work time for this boy.  No more lounging away the summer days on a ladder with a paint can in one hand and a brush in the other and beads of sweat dripping into the eyes one can’t wipe clear because of the protective rubber gloves.  No more happy encounters with cucumber beetles who wish to share their produce with those who live inside the house.  Alas, it is back to Excel spreadsheets and phone calls and eventually, talking with students about their promising futures.  Starting yesterday, my brain had to rev up like a DVD just inserted into its cozy drive.  I think it is still spinning.

I did not break a sweat as I prepared for the upcoming academic year.  I went to meetings.  Sometimes I break a sweat at meetings because I have to present or I have to be responsible for enough that my armpits drip.  Nervousness they tell me.  My friend Spike refers to that as squirreling.  No squirreling today.  I didn’t even break a sweat when I blasted out the house for a quick bike ride before prepping dinner.  It was raining.

Did I mention dinner?  I baked up a summer vegetable gratin again.  I had to wait a couple of days from gathering all the ingredients as we had family engagements the past two evenings (last night we posed for family photos–it’s nice to have someone just tell me where to stand once in a while).  Think fresh tomatoes, three kinds of summer squash, potatoes dug up just two days ago, parmesan cheese and fresh herbs.  All baked together into a bubbling and steaming delight.  Two words:  Ooh baby.  My daughter ate it.  My son would not.  We fed him oatmeal.

This job I’ve got means working at home, often evenings, sometimes weekends.  Already I am thinking about what I might get done as my spouse tucks the children into bed.  I resisted actually doing anything so foolhardy this evening, however.  Instead I read about ten interesting deserts (one in Brazil is littered with lagoons when it rains) and a list of weird allergies (people really can be allergic to water, apparently.  And sex.).  Then I decided to bust out the old blog and get cracking.

I hung out with a friend recently who said that she never reads blogs because all they are is a bunch of people boring anyone who happens to stumble across them with repeated fannings over their boyfriends or overly detailed descriptions of their new puppies foibles.  I tried to tell her she might be able to find something that caters to her sense of humor or to her modern and refined wit, but she was skeptical.   Certainly I wasn’t going to point her here.

Did I tell you about my new puppy?  My sister-in-law’s kids are so in love with it.  And the way it wiggles its little hiney.  SO cute!

Anyway, summer is still here.  It is in the 80’s for Christopher’s sake.  Two days ago it was 91 degrees and the air was pretty much saturated.  It felt like Florida, where my electric bill would be like ten times what it is here in Vermont since I would pretty much be required to have an air conditioner running at all times.  I did wish we had an extra fan the other night.  We let the children use them and just sweated into the sheets.  Now I have to wear pants in this heat.  I just can’t bring myself to wear shorts at a school.  Maybe I should when it gets this hot, however.  But what difference would it make?  I will either distract students with my balding pate glistening with rills of sweat, or I will distract them with my Discobolos-like calves.

I can’t win.  Not in this heat.

Thinking About Integrity

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I continue to spend a bunch of time painting when I can fit it in.  I had the idea that I might paint all the trim on our house this summer, but that is clearly not to be.  There is too much left to do and my flexible time is about over.  One week and I am back into the swing of things with work full time.  So it goes.  I’ve got weekends, right?  I got up early and painted this morning.  I removed the doors from our deck yesterday, took them right off the hinges and set them up in the garage on sawhorses.  I scraped and sanded them and primed them yesterday.  Then they had to dry for a day so we had a night without doors onto the deck.

Of course, we had some intense thunderstorms last night.  Heavy rain and wind and those big flashes of lightning that make everything seem more dramatic in the dark.  I hung a couple of towels at the base of the doors to at least catch the splashing.  That worked out just fine.  This morning I got up early again to paint the doors lying down in the garage.  They were waiting patiently for me.  That is done.  Now I still need to scrape the windows, clean the glass, reattach the clips for the storm glass, rehang the doors, and rehang the storm glass.  Almost done with that task.  All that needs to get done by this afternoon when we have visitors coming.

Anyway, with all this time prepping and painting, I have some time to think.  I spent the other day thinking about my brother and the path his life has taken and the opportunities he has not in front of him.  This morning I thought about morals and integrity.  The book of the summer for me has been John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent.  The plot of the story revolves around one man’s struggle with his principles.  Under pressure from his family he winds up making his fortune, but only after making some decisions that are morally questionable.   While I slapped on latex I thought this.  The book was, according to Steinbeck, written in part to address a decline of integrity in American culture.  That decline has not been stopped.

I was thinking about how we prize money in our culture over most anything else.  We don’t think long term.  We don’t look at the big picture.  Have a loss this quarter?  The company must be in trouble.  But what company can grow every quarter.  That seems an impossible thing to ask.  But this pressure to make profits means that companies, meaning the people who run them, think more about dollar profits than they do about costs to the environment, to health, to workers.  The people who run companies often compromise moral principles for short term gain.  That is too bad, since I would prefer to shop from companies that are simply, well, better, not just who offer better products.

OK, I’m generalizing, but can anyone, conservative or liberal or anywhere in the middle, really believe that our moral compass is pointing us in the right direction?  Our cruel and polluting food system is a tragedy, yet food companies work to hide that fact (see Food Inc.) and we seem to truly want to be ignorant of where our food comes from;  otherwise we might have to make a moral choice.  Many of us hardly know our neighbors.  We fill our homes with stuff without regard to how that stuff was made or who made it or what will happen to it when we toss it.  We accept layoffs of a thousand people as just the cost of business.  What gives?

Right now, our health care system is an embarrassment.  What we need is a system where everyone is covered and we don’t spend billions of dollars on advertising for prescription drugs or on overhead to run insurance companies.  I know that many people just don’t want to rock the boat, but come on here people.  Medicare and Medicaid spend far less on overhead that any insurance company, yet we think the insurance system we have now just needs a little tweaking?  Maybe this just makes me sound like what conservatives like to disparagingly call a liberal.  If being a liberal means asking questions and thinking about what makes the most sense for “we the people” (remember them?) then I guess I am one. When I hear people criticizing a bill that would help improve our health care system (at least it would move it in the right direction) by denouncing its support of euthanasia, which isn’t even in the bill, then I have to ask, what is wrong with us?

So I get Steinbeck’s ire at a declining sense of morality, of a loss of principles, and that was 50 years ago.  What would he think today?  What would he write today?  Not that it matters.  he was trying to point it out in 1960 and things haven’t changed a whole lot.  Some would say things have gotten worse.  And this brings me back to thinking about my brother.  He has tried to do the right thing and has made lots of sacrifices for his daughter, who is a teenager.  He has lived in his home town his whole life and did not move, although he wanted to, in large part to do as much as he could for his kid.  And now, despite his desires, she is moving with her mother half way across the continent.  That move isn’t right or wrong;  it is the situation to be had.  My brother has tried all along to do the right thing.  I respect him for that.  It often is not easy to do.

In Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do the Right Thing, Da Mayor tells Mookie, “Always do the right thing….That’s it.”  That has stuck with me for 20 years.  One can’t really be sure much of time what the right thing is, but that shouldn’t be a barrier to doing it.

Does all this make sense?  Maybe so and maybe not.  It’s what I have to offer from my musings while painting.  I was in the garage, and the circulation was limited, so there may be some fume-addled ideas here.  In any case, it’s what you get, at least for today.

Compost Bandit

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I take our kitchen bucket of scraps out to the compost bin every few days.  The bucket is made for kitchen scraps.  It seals tightly enough, and it has a carbon filter on it keep the odor down.  We don’t usually notice the bucket, except when it isn’t there, meaning I forget to bring it in after emptying it into our outside compost bin.  I do need to empty it, or fruit flies set it.  The scraps consist of lime rinds and the stale ends of toasted bagels and onion peels and pasta that fell on the deck during dinner and other rot.  It is pretty much stuff we don’t want to or really can’t eat.  Not everyone feels so timid about digging into the ort, however.

Every time I head outside to the compost bin to empty the bucket, there are bits scattered about the ground.  I scoop them up and add them to the top of the pile, but they come back again.  Some critter gets in there and roots around and eats stuff and makes a general mess.  It is stealing our future dirt.  It is a compost bandit.  Recently what finds its way out of the wire mesh of the bin is corn husks.  We have been trying to eat corn on the cob lately as often as we can.  Fresh corn season only lasts a few weeks, after all.  I did add a few cobs to the pile the first couple of times we ate local corn, but they take forever to break down, so I often get creative after dinner–read, toss them into the woods.  If the squirrels are going to nibble the cobs anyway, why invite them to dig through the scrap pile?

The thing is, although I have to clean up after them, the squirrels (they are most often the culprits, although turkeys have been knows to find the pile as well) do me a service, despite their slovenly ways.  Whenever they search for bits to eat, they dig, and digging means they move stuff around, and this means they add air to the pile.  They help aerate things so it all breaks down faster.  I do stir the pile whenever I add to it, but they make sure it happens more frequently than I might get to that task.

In the end, the animals can have their bits.  I will not feed them on purpose;  I will always do my best to hide things from them.  But if the critters find something upon which they enjoy dining, they can have it, as long as they have to stir things up and help me out in the meantime.  I don’t mind tidying up their spills.  I can accomodate some quality labor, even if it does make me forget to bring the bucket back inside on occasion.

Painting All Day and a Full Moon

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The plan was to get started as soon as I could.  I needed to sand some more, so I figured I needed to wait until everyone was awake, at least.  But I didn’t wake up until late myself.  It was 8:00 before I was really moving about the house.  And I was the first one up.  Coffee, breakfast, water, making plans, all that happened before I got out there.  I sanded with the disc sander, then with the corner sander.  Then I taped.  Then I had to decide what to do with the windows.  Tape them or scrape them?  I decided to try a third method and scrape/wipe as I go.  And I realized I didn’t have a small paintbrush, as I had thought.

After a trip to the hardware store I began the actual painting–meaning dipping the brush into the primer and spreading the white stuff on the trim–at 11:30.  We have a small extension of the house in front of the deck.  It has an additional small piece of roof.  I decided to just do the trim on this section, not including the upper windows above this small roof or the windows off to the side on the same side of the house or the soffit along the roof proper, and I am glad I limited my ambitions.  After two hours of slapping on primer I was maybe a third finished.  I took a break for lunch and kept going.

I painted and painted.  I was not looking forward to the cross pieces on the windows.  They would require the most time and the most care.  The thing is, I don’t even like those things.  They are not necessary to the structure of the windows–one pane would do fine–and the house isn’t so old that that all those panes were the only option.  Plus, they block the view.  I have to bob and weave to see the sunset or to follow the harrier hovering over the field.  I wish they weren’t there and now I have to paint them with care.  I saved those for last.

These are tall windows I am painting at this point, the size of doors.  I decided to leave the two actual doors for later since I need to take them off to really paint them.  I’ll get to those when I paint the upper windows.  Still, that means four full length windows with ten panes each.  Painting those would be a bear I imagined.  I painted one, ten panes total, and it was late.  My family had already eaten dinner.  I wanted to keep plugging away.  I didn’t want to leave it for tomorrow since the oil-based paint needs a day to dry.  But since the remaining window panes had been covered by storm windows (which I removed before starting) they didn’t need primer.  I painted the bottoms where some water had leaked through over the past few years and I was done for now.

I was at it for eight hours.  That is a good day’s work.  The problem is that I still need to put the final coat on, the actual paint.  That will take me another day.  The other problem is that I still have most of the house to paint.  The other problem is that I am just working on the trim.  The siding will need to be painted as well, it just didn’t need it so badly this summer, or so I thought until I spent a bunch of time right next to it while painting the trim.  I have many many hours of work left to get this all done.  I understand why other people hire someone to paint their houses.  A team of people with the right tools who know what they are doing and have the time to just hammer it out?  That would get it done way faster and way better than me.  It just happens to cost thousands of dollars.  I’ll do it myself, at least this time.

I can’t quite figure out why one would use paint instead of stain these days.  Stain seems better for the wood and requires far less work to maintain.  Our last house was stained and (granted is was a little smaller) took me only a few days to refinish.  That was easy.  This is not.  Scrape it all off and stain it next time?  Sounds just as hairy.  Maybe next time I have to get this done, however, I will be better equipped.  I will know what I am doing and will have the tools and equipment.  I might be faster.  Or I could just pay someone to do it.  I hate to succumb to that but whew, this project is a beast.

Anyway, night has fallen and the air is cool and I have some peach ice cream under my belt, and I mean that last one literally.  I am not sure how much I will get done tomorrow.  We plan to head to the Addison County Field Days.  All this playing certainly gets in the way of painting.  One can’t do everything, however, and I, humble homeowner that I am, am simply doing what I can.  At the moment I plan to just enjoy watching the full moon peek out from behind the clouds.  That is enough for the time being.

Sick of It Then Ready to Crank

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If you have ever done any painting then you know how much prep needs to go into getting it done right.  I have spent a lot of time prepping to paint the trim on our house this summer and a little time painting.  I plucked away all day at it and did do some final painting.  I did everything to prep another side of the house and it is finally ready for some real paint.  By that time, however, I was sick of it.  I had had enough for the day.  I called it quits.

I was hoping to be further along by now and I was hoping to paint all the trim by the end of summer.  By the time I dropped the roll of masking tape next to the paint cans I was feeling like that is just too daunting.  I want to get it done but I want to do other stuff as well.  Luckily I have been doing other stuff.  I have had a good summer so far.  Nonetheless, my mood was a little blue as I headed to the kitchen to make dinner.

That cheered me up.  I grilled up squash and onions and make paninis of sorts on the grill.  They turned out dang tasty.  The herbs and the zucchini were from our garden, so it was a double deal.  I love to whip up a good meal, so that, plus a beer, made me feel good all over again.  Then I headed out to the garage to start peeling tape off so at least one section would be done with the painting.  That perked me up as well.

The final product looks good.  Whoa, I thought, maybe there is some reward here after all.  If I can make our whole house look like that, then sign me up.  I was newly motivated to get up and get started tomorrow.  The forecast for sunny skies helps as well.  I need to get a good rest tonight so I can work faster and better than ever, and get farther along than I have yet.  For the first time, I am excited to get painting.  As long as I still feel that way in the morning, I should get mucho done manana.

Shelf Project Underway but Not Finished

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Lower Shelf Installed, Upper Shelf Waiting

Lower Shelf Installed, Upper Shelf Waiting

While this will not be a surprise to anyone in the Champlain Valley, it was raining again this morning, with showers forecast all day.  So much for painting the house.  It would be, however, a good day to work on the shelves I wanted to build in the garage.  I was stymied a couple of weeks ago by my missing level.  I did finally find it, hiding behind the paint cans.  How it got there, I can’t say.  I found it when I took a trip to basement with the children to see what paint we had that might be acceptable to paint their rooms.  Another project.

I am glad I had the level.  Someone made a comment on my earlier post that I could just measure from the floor.  I was tempted.  The level was key with the imperfect lumber I had, however.  I was determined to use the lumber I had on hand and not to buy any.  So far so good.

I would have finished both the upper and lower shelves, but I had to take my daughter to the doctor.  She got a cut on her hand a couple of weeks ago and today it was clearly infected.  She and her parents tried to clean it and bandage it but it got the nasties anyway.  She was afraid to go to the doctor.  She didn’t want anyone to poke it and she was afraid the doctor would want to look at her throat.  She hates that.  I’m not a fan myself.  She had no throat inspection, however, just a confirmation that it is infected, a recommendation to come back in a few days to make sure it doesn’t need to be lanced, and a prescription for Amoxicillin.

By the time we got home it was a little late to keep plugging on the shelves.  We had to stop to get the prescription filled (they didn’t have what we needed in stock so had to find a substitute) and shop for a few things to go camping at a state part tomorrow.  I agreed to take the advice of a store employee and use the self-checkout.  That was a bad idea.  I have not had much luck with that approach.  There seem to always be issues.  The system doesn’t like when people bring their own bags, and the slightest shift on the scale sends it into a fit over the fear that one might be heisting some chewing gum.

We paid for the gum.  I am chewing some now.  The shelves wait for me.  Maybe I’ll get to them after our little camping adventure.  Or maybe I’ll just paint.

Slow Day

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My boy is asleep in the chair next to me.  He had a fever.  He just woke from an hour long nap.  Then he fell asleep again.  The kid is out.

My daughter had a rough morning, feeling homesick about this half day art camp she has been attending.  It is three hours in the morning during the week.  She has had a blast.  Today she was afraid of the dog she met yesterday and concerned about the number of kids and other stuff.  She went anyway.  She came home and said it was the best day yet.

I installed three new smoke detectors today.  I also installed two carbon monoxide detectors.  The ones in the house might be twenty years old.  Who knows?  That was a satisfying project.  It rained again so no painting today.  I also dealt with a bunch of eBay sales.  EBay sales don’t exactly rake in the cash here but it is kind of fun, I have to admit.  And it pays for our Christmas presents.

I was ready to tackle a few other tasks but they involved making too much noise.  I need to finish taking out the bush I started tearing up yesterday, but it is right outside the window where my son is conked out.  No need to wake him for that project.  It can wait until tomorrow.

So I didn’t get much done today.   It felt like a Sunday.  It is amazing how a day can slip away when you are worried about a sick kid and you have a bunch of other days ahead of you.  The sun is finally out so it is good weather for some outside projects.  Oops, time to make dinner.  That’s a project I won’t put off.

Trimming the Trees

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Yesterday my wife mowed the lawn.  That was a bit of a messy task, given how wet the lawn has been.  She left tire tracks all over the place.  But it had to be done.  It is raining again as I write this.  The amusing bit, however, was when she tried to mow under the silver maple tree.  We have this beautiful tree, maybe 25 years old, and it grows, like all silver maples, faster than most trees.  The branches have been hanging lower and lower, some of them almost reaching the ground.  The mower has taken a wider and wider path around the tree.  It just gets too scratchy trying to blast through the low branches.  So I took some action.

I started yesterday, clipping the lowest branches.  I had a good pile of branches going before I quit.  Today I busted out a ladder and finished the job.  Well, I finished the trimming part.  I had a big honking pile of brush by the time I was done, and my son was having a blast playing in it.  He has the peddle ride on tractor and he started by hauling the branches into the woods.  He got tired of that after, I don’t know, one load, and then just romped in the leaves and sticks.  He sat neck deep next to his “crashed” tractor.  He wanted to have a picnic in the pile.  I got him a cup of pretzels.

Later, once the sun had dried things a little, I started in on the endless house painting project.  One corner of the house has some lovely lilac and pine trees surrounding it.  It looks nice but it was a bear trying to move around them.  So I busted out the saw.  I have been meaning to prune these anyway.  Last winter we would be kept awake by the pines scraping the side of the house whenever it got windy enough.  Those wily branches needed to go.  I lopped and sawed and now I’ve got some room to work.

I had one other issue, however.   We had two bushes on the south side of the house, the same one I am trying to get painted first.  One of them succumbed to what we think was some kind of fungus.  I cut that puppy down in the spring.  The other one is now kicking the bucket and I need to cut it down before it gets too far gone.  It right in front of a window I need to get at.  The problem is that is it an evergreen with needles.  When the needles are green, they are smooth and soft.  When they get dry and brown, each tiny needle is just that–a needle.  Those babies are so sharp and so persistent they make me just about cry.  Getting one of those in a shoe is painful I tell you.

I started in on this bush but I had to be careful.  I was wearing shorts and Crocs, of all things.  This was fine for scraping and sanding, but not so fine for cutting back the needle bush.  I did manage to cut enough that I can now maneuver at the window.  Of course, the thing looks truly wretched now–a hacked and mangled, jagged, green and brown protrusion.  Now I really need to get that thing out of there.

Since it is raining again, I won’t be able to sand first thing tomorrow.  Looks like I’ll need to slide into some pants, put on my heavy jacket, don the gloves and goggles, and have at that bush.  It’s tough, but I’ll show it the what for.  I’ll make sure to wear some better shoes.