A Good, Old Fashioned Disaster

See, when things go wrong, it is you housebloggers that I think about. A couple weeks back, we had a nasty cold snap. It was below 25 degrees for about a week here in Arkansas. My renter was good and left the faucets dripping, but when it's that cold and the house doesn't have real insulation, it just isn't enough sometimes. Oh, and the renter wasn't home when this happened.

They discovered it when the neighbors called because they were concerned about the lake in the yard.


Note, the builders of this gem of a house decked the floors with chip-board. On the upside, this probably saved the whole house from flooding. Once the floors in the bedrooms were ruined, the water drained straight through it and into the crawlspace.

Some of the tear out heaped in the carport.



Condensation on the ceiling from all that lovely moisture.

Oh, and did I mention that our insurance doesn't cover this kind of damage. Driving rain? Fire? Tornado? Yes. Burst pipe in the bathroom? No.

So, this is all out of pocket (and being documented for a monster tax write-off next year). So far, all new plumbing, new bathtub, new sub-floors (approximately 400-500 square feet), new carpet, new vinyl, new drywall, three new doors, and . . . counting.

On the upside, this should all be finished next week because I hired the whole bleeding mess out. See! I learned something!

But plumbing is still the Devil.

Would You Do This for $100?

So, what if someone offered you $100 to spend the night in your house because they thought your house was really cool and totally haunted? Would you let them? What if it was for their Honeymoon?

Would you let them spend the night there alone?
	No.
	Maybe.
	Yes, but I'd want more money.
	Yes, but not for their Honeymoon.
	Yes, no questions asked.
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Competitive Freezing

Funny. I didn't realize that freezing to death in your own home was a competitive sport until recently. I read this post which I thought was cool because of the story behind it. Then, I had lunch with my sister, and she told me about some friends of hers who see how long they can go without turning on the heat in Boston. I might be mixing my stories, but I think November 1st was their minimum goal for this year. As far as my sister knew, it wasn't an issue of money or economy, but a competitive need to see if they could do it.

As for me, I don't have a target date. My goal is to go as long as possible without turning on the heat. Then, once the dirty deed is done, the goal is to run it as little as possible. For me, it is all about money. I could have had a nice European vacation for what we spent on heating the Devil Queen last winter.

So far, I haven't been tempted yet. However, this week is the first one that has actually been cold at night. Last night the temperature made it down to 48 degrees. According to the thermostat, it was a cool 60 degrees in the Devil Queen this morning. Tonight should be a real weenie shrinker though with low around 38 degrees. But the heat won't be coming on tonight. I'll just wear a sweat shirt if it gets nippy.

What is interesting is how much just being at home adds to the house's temperature. I've been closing the living room door to the drafty main hall this week. This segregates the thermostat and the living room, dining room, kitchen, and the bathroom/laundry from the rest of the house. That is about 756 square feet. Just by coming home and being there, the temperature will rise 1 degree within the first 30 minutes to an hour. If I cook and turn on most of the lights, you can add another couple of degrees over the evening. If you run the dishwasher and run the washer and drier too, you can bring the temperature up by five or six degrees by bedtime.

I'm thinking that if I get the rest of the storms up this weekend and re-hang the transom over the living room door that it ought to be possible to keep this part of the house pretty warm for a while, particularly if I use an electric space heater.
In any case, it ought to be an interesting experiment.

Millions of Peaches, Peaches for Me

After spending the last four years completely consumed with the house, the rest our life has been demanding some attention. Apparently, it was tired of being ignored. So I've had a lot on my mind lately, but not much of it has involved the house. Unless you count gardening, I haven't done anything besides the laundry and dishes. While tending the garden offers a Zen like satisfaction and the home grown tomatoes and peppers are wonderful, they don't make much of a post.

The search for new car is officially over because I can't afford anything that runs. Hell, I've even seen wrecked, non-running cars that I can't afford. The price of gasoline isn't the only thing going up these days. My solution to the car problem is having our old Saturn's engine and transmission replaced. While this is not cheap, it is cheaper than buying something used. If things go well, the rebuilt car ought to give me roughly two years of service before any major maintenance or repairs are required. This is based on putting roughly 40,000 a year on the car.

My father-in-law, the used car dealer, thinks this is a horrible idea since the car "is worn smooth fucking out." To my mind, if the engine and transmission have been replaced, that should pretty well take care of that, no? He suggested that I buy a 2001 Honda Civic with "some front-end and hail damage." Since the money we have from selling the VW wouldn't cover the purchase price for this fine automobile, he suggested that we charge the difference on our credit card. My only response to that is no fucking way.

No one else has expressed much enthusiasm for this solution besides Scarlet. The last time opinions aligned this way, we moved a house. That didn't turn out so great, but in spite of all the portents otherwise, I'm hoping for a better out come. Really, our finances don't offer any other options.

My little sister is putting our home improvement efforts to shame. She is on the verge of finishing all the remodeling and renovation work on her house in under a year. Of course a house is never really finished, but the only major work left is painting the living room, installing some baseboards and trim, painting and installing new cabinet doors in the kitchen, and the bathroom (needs sheetrock, paint, and to have the toilet and sink reinstalled since it was completely retiled). I did have the opportunity to shine as a Home Improvement Superhero, but that tale will have to wait to be told. Maybe next week?

Despite everything we've had going on lately, I've managed to fit in a lot of extracurricular reading. At least once a year, I go on a manic reading spree. Apparently, that time has come. I've knocked out Beauvoirs' The Mandarins and She Came to Stay, Camus' The Stranger, Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, and O'Brian's The Fortune of War. I started A Clockwork Orange this week, and I am thinking about rereading Conrad's The Heart of Darkness if I can find my copy of it. Some other possible future reads are more O'Brian, Andrew Green's The Story of A Marriage, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Beauvoir's The Second Sex, The Lucifer Effect (forgot the author's name), and Pullman's His Dark Materials series. More possible re-reads are Orwell's Animal Farm and Selected Essays, and Machiavelli's The Prince. I don't know if I'll make it all of the way through that list, but if I do, does anyone any suggestions?

No major house related activates are planned for the weekend. I'm hoping we might go and pick some white peaches this weekend and gorge ourselves. Since last year's crop was destroyed by a freak freeze, it's been two years since we've had some fresh-picked goodness. I can't wait.

Home Improvement Chiaroscuro

As I mentioned in my comment to the previous post, my obsession with the economy and personal finances has a lot to do with the Devil Queen. Once we signed a construction loan to cover what turned out to be the initial costs of moving and rebuilding the Queen, we surrendered most of our financial freedom as well. It is embarrassing to admit, but we actually thought that the initial costs would actually cover the whole project. We were just too green to know better.

The Devil Queen is a cautionary tale. In an exercise of home improvement chiaroscuro, I thought that I might give you a fine example of what you ought to do with an old home. I think the deep, hope-killing darkness that is the Devil Queen only makes this bright example shine even more.

In particular, consider this:

"Below is the short list of what I’ve done in the last 6 years. All work needing it, is done with permits, inspected, and meets code.

Remodeled 2 apartments over the garage, and I have great tenants
Removed 3 bathrooms and 3 kitchens (rentals)
Removed 2 story addition
Rebuilt 2 porches
All new wiring from the poll on, with new sub-panels and main disconnect
All new copper water lines from the curb on and several new drains
All new phone lines, CATV, and coaxial from the poles on (work in progress)
Restored kitchen and bathrooms, including building my own cabinets
Stripped off asbestos siding and restored exterior detail
Had all of the missing interior and exterior trim remilled out of salvaged old-growth redwood.
Stripped exterior to bare wood and repainted
Built a laundry room
Stripped all of the wallpaper and old flooring back to bare plaster and original floors
Stripped all of the paint out of 4 rooms – all with LOTS of woodwork
Removed all of the 1920s partitions and rebuilt walls
Cleaned a “shooting gallery” out of the attic
Purchased antique lighting for the entire house (mostly rewired and installed)
Purchased antique tile for the 2 fireplace hearths
Purchased antique doorknobs, mortise locks, and hinges for all of the doors
Purchased antique Eastlake doors for the entire house
Plus 1.4 zillion other little things

The last 6 years have been a blur, but really a lot of fun. To date my total debt is $9,000 on a $20,000 home equity line of credit. Four thousand of the $9,000 debt went for dental work and taxes 2 years ago. My 2 credit cards carry a zero balance. There are a lot of things about my life that I’m not proud of, but boy, this is not one of those."

I'm impressed. In any case, congratulations for a job very well done Greg.

It’s The Economy Stupid

I came across an article in Der Spiegel today which caught my interest. It was written by Bob Herbert with the NY Times regarding the U.S. presidential elections. The election wasn't nearly as interesting to me as the underlying demographics. I'm not sure how it ended up in Der Spiegel, but here are some excerpts:

"The youngest of these voters, those ranging in age from roughly the late teens to the early 30s, are part of the so-called millennial generation.

This is a generation that is in danger of being left out of the American dream -- the first American generation to do less well economically than their parents. And that economic uncertainty appears to have played a big role in shaping their views of government and politics . . .

A number of studies, including new ones by the Center for American Progress in Washington and by Demos, a progressive think tank in New York, have shown that Americans in this age group are faced with a variety of challenges that are tougher than those faced by young adults over the past few decades. Among the challenges are worsening job prospects, lower rates of health insurance coverage and higher levels of debt.

We know that the generation immediately preceding the Millennials is struggling. Men who are now in their 30s, the prime age for raising a family, earn less money than members of their fathers’ generation did at the same age. In 1974, the median income for men in their 30s (using today’s inflation-adjusted dollars) was about $40,000. The figure for men in their 30s now is $35,000.

The landscape is changing before our eyes. Younger voters struggling with the enormous costs of a college education, or trying to raise families in a bleak employment environment, or using their credit cards to cover everyday expenses like food or energy costs are not much interested in hearing that the government to which they pay taxes can do little or nothing to help them."

If you're interested in the full article, click here.

So, what do you think? Based on your own experiences, do think Mr. Herbert has got it right?
	I'm 34 years old or younger - yes, I agree.
	I'm 35 years old or older - yes, I agree
	I'm 34 years old or younger - maybe? I don't know.
	I'm 35 years old or older - maybe? I don't know.
	I'm 34 years old or younger - no, I disagree.
	I'm 35 years old or older - no, I disagree
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Stagflation

Chaos, murder, mayhem, raging infernos of insanity, ugly babies, plagues, pestilence, and woe unto all.

Okay, nothing that bad has been going on here. Really. But, we have had some problems we've been working through. Pretty much everything goes back to the joys of stagflation and the dubious pleasure of clinging to the lower rungs of the middle class ladder. We have fixed rate mortgages (yes, plural) so a balloning mortgage payment isn't an issue for us. However, when the price of gasoline, groceries, and electricity increase by roughly 25% and your income doesn't, you have a big, expensive problem on your hands. Add your car breaking down (again), and you now have a very big, interesting, expensive problem.

We have some possible solutions in the works, but things are still up in the air. I should have something to actually post about it later in the week. Wish me luck.

And, we have actually completed some landscaping and plumbing for a change. Pictures and more to come.

Home Improvement Minions: Crows vs. Flying Monkeys

Since making zombies is such a labor intensive process and they do half-assed work most of the time, I'm always looking for new minions of evil. So, this article at NPR really caught my attention.

Here is a short excerpt:

" Hacker Josh Klein wowed attendees this weekend at TED — the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference — with his "crow vending machine," a device that gives the birds peanuts for depositing a coin. It's all part of Klein's plan to train crows to save human lives.

Just wrapping up in Monterey, Calif., TED gives inventors 18 minutes to wow an audience of people who each paid $6,000 to be blown away by new ideas. Klein's game plan? To explain "why crows are better than flying monkeys, and how you can teach them to do your bidding."

Personally, I still think flying monkeys are the way to go. In addition to really freaking out your neighbors, they have opposable thumbs. I don't care how smart your average crow is, can he use a nail gun with that friggin' beak?

That isn't to say that having trained crows don't have their uses for the average DIY'er. Screw saving lives, let's focus on the important part: these birds collect money. And what DIY'er doesn't need more money? I don't know how fast these crows work, but I imagine that a whole flock of them working day after day could bring you quite a nice haul.

Decrapification Equals $73.45

That's right boys and girls! Once the cleaning starts, the money pours in by the fistful!

Last night I went to Lowe's and returned three sacks full of unused, unloved, and unwanted plumbing supplies. And, having learned from our encounter with Ms. I-flushed-my-brain, Lowe's resident demon of the return desk, I took the unusual precaution of washing all of my returns. That is right, I washed them.

Filling the kitchen sink with hot water and gently washing all the dust and dirt off thirty or forty PVC and CPVC fittings is an odd experience. You have to be extra careful to not get the stick-on price tags too wet so they don't fall off or bleed, but I did it. Then, they were all carefully dried and bagged.

I didn't have any trouble with my returns. They wouldn't take two items because they weren't from Lowe's (fair enough, right?), but I'm okay with that since they gave me $73.45 for everything else.

I can't wait to see what else I can find to return.

Decrapification Continues

I won't bore you with the details. Another night of excavating, another five bags of trash hauled to the curb. For those of you who don't live to tally the amount of trash generated by the Devil Queen and her occupants, that is nine bags of trash in two weeks.

Aside from reclaiming all of this long submerged square footage as actual living space, this has been a profitable endeavor. Literally. Last night while sorting through a stack of old papers, Christmas and birthday cards from years past, and whatever else it is crazy people collect, I found a crisp, clean fifty dollar bill. I'm guessing this was a gift that we lost track of one year. Nice.

If you calculate out how many hours it took me to find this, I'm still not making minimum wage but what the hell. It's enough to buy Christmas dinner for everyone which is good enough for me.

At some point, I just had to wonder what year it was that I went shit-bat-crazy and decided to keep this stuff. The construction material is the worst at this point: tin cans full of bent, rusty nails; broken light fixtures; four inch bits of PVC plumbing; and, my current favorite, little coils of old, filthy wires. I mean you never know when you might want to wire a whole electrical circuit with thirty or forty 12-to-18 inch bits spliced together. Bring on the roaches, the nukes, and the whole Jesus-in-sky apocalypse! We are ready! We'll save Western Civilization in all its glory with a box of old wiring and tin of rusty nails. Don't mess with us, we're obviously ready for anything. Except refinishing the floors.

Volkswagen, Du Kanst Mich Mal!

It was a day drifting between last summer flush and cool fall. The sunny, early afternoon was comfortable in the trees' shade, they lined the lane. I climbed into the yellow convertible parked at the curb. It was a classic design, providence and origin unknown. The long, sleek hood was too big to hold anything less than a V8. The engine started with a whisper and purred. I had to smile. I eased the car away from the curb and raced down the road. The old wooded neighborhood vanished, the road masked the lakefront, southbound to downtown. I glided through traffic, rocketing past everyone. I never shifted out of second gear. I ruled as a god among the shoddy, weak plebs of the road.

Imagine my disappointment in wakening to a much different world.

Even though one gallon of diesel will get you 56 miles down the road, I hate this car, our 1998 VW Beetle. Apparently, I am not the only one either.

As long-suffering reads will already know, this car has cost us quite a bit of money over the last eight or nine months. It got a $2500 check-up for Christmas and another $400 of electrical work after leaving me stranded during an ice storm. Then, we had another $1000 of work done this summer.

The current problem with pimple sized bit of over-engineered, four-wheeled dung is the battery won't stay charged if you don't drive it every day. There are two possible explanations for this.

One is that this is one of the endemic problems that plague the newer Volkswagens. There is so much passive-electronic crap in this car that they vampire all the juice off the battery when it's not running. Volkswagen installs solar panels that charge the battery via the cigarette lighter while they are shipped from the factory to the dealership. Prior to this, the cars were arriving at the dealers' with dead batteries. Nice.

The second possible problem is that we may have a short in the new electrical system, another endemic problem with the new VW's. Steve, our good mechanic, said that we ought to take the car back to the dealer and make them fix it. This sounds reasonable at first, but, since this nut-sucking bunch of monkeys has yet to fix the car to my satisfaction, why would they start now? Besides which, they probably won't make it right for free to and they'd keep the car for a week or more while they fucked it up in some utterly novel way. Volkswagen, du kanst mich mal am Arsh lechen!

Oh. Since we've already pissed away a small fortune on this car this year, I don't have any money to really do much about this at the moment. I'm guessing I'll have to dig out my trickle-charger and just plug the little bitch up over the weekend so it'll start come the work week.

Do you remember my much lauded Saturn, the one I retired after it lost a cylinder at 287,000 miles? It still starts the first time after sitting in the driveway for over a month. I used it to jump my "good car," the VW, yesterday morning. Again.

Anyhow, the question is what exactly we'll do with this piece of maggot eaten shit.

Fiscal Olymipcs or Sodomy by Another Name

I have to say that I’ve missed you all. Sure, I’ve been lurking around Houseblogs for the last couple of weeks, but I haven’t been spending a lot of quality time with you.

Things have been chaotic and complicated of late. The last week and a half has been hell.

We closed on the Devil Queen’s mortgage. It is a nice feeling, but it certainly hasn’t been the cure-all that I hoped it would be. In addition to all the drama that went along with this particular transaction, we’ve had some other problems too.

For one, all three of our cars are broken and in the shop. The Dodge’s motor is burned away. The coolant line was nicked and the radiator drained before we knew what happened. I’m not sure what is wrong with the Saturn. Two weeks ago it started burning a lot of oil. Now it sounds like a lawn mower and doesn’t have as much power. I think it lost a cylinder. I suppose that could happen after 286,300 miles, right? And, the VW Beetle still has some issue. Little things like the missing rear windshield and possible damage to the cooling system.

With me working in Little Rock and the wife up in NW Arkansas, this just wasn’t going to work for us. Charlie loaned Scarlet his car for three weeks while we tried to work out this mess. He was willing to loan the car more or less indefinitely, but neither Scarlet nor I felt comfortable with this. There is something innately sad about being this dependent on parents and grandparents as your 31st birthday lurks just over the horizon. None of our cars are going to be out of the shop anytime soon, so we did the one thing we sworn we’d never do in our lifetime. On the same day we closed on the Devil Queen, we bought a brand new car.

You may wonder how we could afford a new car. On the surface, it doesn’t look like we should be able to make this purchase. I mean, I thought it was a long shot, but what the hell.

It took some determined juggling. First, the dealer offered a $1000 rebate you could use as a down payment. That helped a lot. We are also the beneficiaries of a strange paradox: we have really good credit even though our finances are in shambles. This meant we could finance the car for a long enough time to work the payment into our budget. And, to sweeten the deal, my genius wife found us a new insurance company. She saved enough money on our premium to nearly pay for the car's monthly payment.

Now, we’re trying to sell off some of the houses we’ve been accumulating over the years. We’re hoping to meet with a real estate agent tomorrow to list Mr. Blue, our first house. Our renter is moving out this summer and we’d just like to be rid of the damn thing. Once this is accomplished, we’re going to be doing some more financial olympics until we get everything to fall into place. This includes paying off credit cards, refinancing loans, and making sure that we make more than we spend on a consistent basis. Not working on the Devil Queen day and night has really helped with this. I was looking over our books for the last couple of years, and we were consistently spending no less than $1000 a month of the Devil Queen. During a couple of peak months, we were spending an averaging $5000-$6000 per month. Nice.

In addition to all of this, we had to clean out our storage room. I think I may have mentioned this already. July 1st was our deadline. I tried to clean it out myself, but it just wasn’t going to happen for me. Even if I had gotten all the bloody boxes out myself, I can’t move the wardrobe, the dresser, and rest of my furniture. So, as has been my penchant of late, I hired a couple of professional movers to finish this project for me. I’m glad it’s over with but there is a downside. All the crap we had in storage filled the bay-window room and spilled out into the hallway. I honestly have no idea what 75% of this stuff is and looking at it just pisses me off. I see a bonfire in my future.

I’m not sure what else has been going on lately. Taking sick cats to the vet, dealing with appraisers, bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, and others. It’ll certainly wear you out.

Anyhow, I hope that explains my long absence.

Canon PC 430 Personal Copier for Sale

[There don't seem to be any takers on this one, so I've posted it on eBay as of February 16, 2007. If you've decide you might want it afterall, click here to go to the eBay auction.]

Since I had such good luck with the wallpaper steamer (Jennifer, it's in the mail as of today), I thought I'd post this here to see if there were any takers. Otherwise, it'll be off to eBay. I know that this isn't a home improvement item, but, by buying it, you are getting it out of my way so I can paint my son's room and you are buying paint or primer for the Devil Queen, so there is a tenuous home improvement connection.

There is a bit of a back story for this item. This copier is new, in-the-box and has never been used. It has been stored in its original shipping box since June 2006.

Why have I had a brand-new copier in storage purgatory for 8 months? My wife is working on an extensive research project that requires a lot of onsite copying. She requested that I look into buying her a portable, personal copier. I spent a lot of time looking online, and I settled on this model. I ordered it and a toner cartridge from Amazon. A couple weeks later, the box arrived. My wife opened it, looked at the copier, and told me that it wasn't the one she wanted. According to her, this one is too big to be truly portable (as a big, dumb man I disagree, but I digress). Anyhow, she asked me to return it which I tried to do.

According to Amazon (see the fine print), this item is not returnable. Splendid. I've been meaning to get rid of this damn thing for a while. I'd forgotten about it until I found it cleaning out Gideon's room last night.


Here are a few pictures of the copier.

Here is a link to the copier at Amazon. It makes 4 black & white copies per minute and weighs around 18 lbs. Shipping weight is around 30 lbs (includes the toner cartridge). I'd be willing to take $199 for it plus shipping or your best offer. I just want this thing to go away.

Let me know how you'd like it sent and I'll give you a price on it. I randomly picked two zip codes to get an idea on how much it would cost via the US Postal Service.

Eureka, CA

Parcel $25.06
Priority $43.40
Express $71.60

Buffalo, NY

Parcel $18.83
Priority $32.00
Express $71.60

And, I'd recommend insuring it too.

As I said, it's never been out of the box or used. Since it is brand new, I assume it is 100% functional. However, there is always that 1 in a million chance. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Thanks!

Eating Poor

No matter how much money I make, I always feel poor. And, a majority of the time, I actually am too. Sure, the bills get paid, the house gets worked on, and things inevitably get taken care of, but there is seldom much if anything left over at the end of the day.

Back in 2002, we were completely wiped out. I had to drop out of graduate school, we sold one of our cars for cash, my wife couldn't find a job, and my job wasn't paying enough to survive. It was in this time that my wife taught me the art of eating poor. She in turn learned this fine art from her mom and her family; as poor Southern sharecroppers, this art was perfected over several generations. Surprisingly enough, you can eat pretty well on $20.00 a week if you juggle things just right. Hell, I've seen my wife feed 14 people for $4.00. I have yet to top that.

Since we are struggling to remedy our chronic financial woes, I've decided to take up the fine art of eating poor. Fortunately for me, we have a small stockpile of food we've horded over the last year or so. One of the tricks of eating poor is making do with what you have on hand.

To this end, I've spent the last couple of days digging through our kitchen trying to figure out what I have to work with. In addition to my neurotic need to bake, I have a complimentary need to horde flour. I have white flour, wheat flour, stone ground flour, corn flour (for tortillas), cake flour, and corn meal. Add two packets of yeast and some time and you have all the materials for a sourdough starter and several weeks of homemade bread, biscuits, corn bread, and tortillas. That can go a long way.

Unfortunately, not everything in our kitchen is so versatile. In fact, some items are a complete mystery to me. Not only do I not remember where they came from, I don't know why we even have them. Case and point, sorghum.
In my life time, I have never tasted, eaten, or cooked with sorghum. Until yesterday, I didn't even know what it was exactly. However, at some point lost in the haze of the past, I was so impressed with this mystical elixir that I bought (???) not one, but two jars of sorghum.

So, the question I am left with is what in the hell do I do with over two pints of sorghum?

Even my ever trusty William & Sonoma Kitchen Companion (a dictionary of all things kitchen related) failed me. According to Wikipedia it is used mostly in the South for baking, barbeque sauce, baked beans, syrup, and cakes. And, it is healthier than processed sweeteners since it won't dissolve your liver like high-fructose corn syrup. More interesting perhaps is that it is used to make a beer in Africa.

Today's Menu:

Breakfast - Half a pot of coffee (free).
Lunch - Two Pop Tarts ($ 0.65).
Dinner - Homemade refried beans (black), homemade salsa verde (tomatillos, onions, Serrano peppers), and corn tortillas (roughly $2.00).