Wire we even trying?

If there's one thing that gives me a Not-Quite-Third-World-but-Possibly-Second feel, it's do-it-yourself public utility repair.

So, what have we here? We have a house that was just sold and is undergoing some reconstruction by various men in unmarked trucks and vans. The chain-link fence runs all around the property but for the gate at the driveway. And the big wire from the utility poles seems to have been dangling uncomfortably low. So, the boys took some 2x6s and made their own booster poles on either side of the gate.

I do applaud the desire to get things moving and not wait around for the bland bureaucracy of the power company to answer the call -- a call that would be appropriate, with the wire about seven feet above the pavement, but not one that would trigger an emergency response. 

I applaud also their use of wood instead of metal for the wire supports. (Although note the lampshade on the ground in the top photo -- they used a trashed lamp to secure the ersatz pole by tying it to the metal fence with the lamp's electrical cord, which is just a wee bit suspect.)

However, monkeying around with utility wires is not only dangerous on its own, it's also dangerous because if you black out the whole block, people are going to be angry. Which is why it's always best to leave it to the pros. 

The Third-World-or-Maybe-Second feel springs from the thought that the people doing this come from someplace where you never expect authority to answer a call within months, and if they do, they will require palms to be greased. Meanwhile, these guys got a house to demo and clear out and new walls to put up and paint, and they don't have time for this crap. They have to be able to get the trucks in and out today. 

They also might not have expected any response from a call to the utility company, because it would have gotten ignored back home. 

"I see no problem here."

Well, I went ahead and put in a call yesterday. You know me -- safety first. Unless it has to do with my own acrobatics -- walking down some stairs, crossing the ice, you know. Then it’s Safety? What’s that?

I will let you know how long it takes for the saggy wire to get fixed. I hope it's before the first ice storm of the winter. I'm sure the power company employees would much rather fix it now than fix it then. 

Say no to pools.

I feel like the only guy who doesn't want a pool at his house. Surely I can't be. 

It would be different if we lived in the south. Relatives in Florida had a heated pool under a skeeter- and UV-blocking screenhouse that was very nice. It wasn't a heated pool, so you really didn't want to go in the water from, say, Thanksgiving to St. Patrick's Day, although you could if you were brave. But here in New York, you get maybe three months out of the pool. They open in May, no one goes in the water until June, they come out for good at Labor Day, and wrap it all up by October. 

It's a lot of work and money for a three-month dip. Besides, most of the time no one actually goes in the water in the families I've observed. They just sit around the pool, tanning. 

Bankrate.com tells us that in-ground swimming pools can add up to seven percent to the value of the house, but they may cost more than that to build and maintain. 

The value they add is more in scenery and potential than swimming. Everyone who wants to entertain knows that guests--especially those with kids--will be excited to come over if there's a pool. The kids will use it, but the adults, probably not. However, it will keep the kids busy. And it looks nicer than a dry, empty, sunbaked backyard with maybe a tetherball and some cornhole stuff. BORING.

I don't want people coming over in large numbers anyway, so I'm cool.

I've resisted successfully, and it has not been too hard. Our backyard has a severe slope, so the cost of installation would be much higher than if the ground was flat. The legally required fencing alone would cost thousands. Financial setbacks over the years have often taken big capital improvements off the table. Most of all, I've resisted because you know whose job it would be out there with the net and the chlorine tester every day. (It's always the husband.) 

Now, this kind of pool might be worth investing in: 

Keep the dogs cool and give 'em a stealth bath while you're at it. Win-win.

Game of throne.

New toilet for the master bathroom arrived yesterday. If you heard something, that was the parade I threw in its honor. We're flushed with joy.

As is typical for the homeowner, what started as a small issue turned into a pricey fix that took weeks to resolve. There were a lot of ifs along the way that would have prevented this from getting out of hand and thus out of pocket:

🚽 If I had installed this toilet properly two decades ago, it might not have started to leak.

🚽 If I had bothered to change the gasket when I was changing out the screws that held the tank to the bowl, that might have stopped the leak for real. 

🚽 If I had just bought a cheap can at Home Depot instead of asking my wife which throne she desired, I might have been able to bring it home myself and not have to pay delivery. 

🚽 If she had picked something that wasn't big and heavy and had super-flush technology (we'll get to that), we would have saved a hundred bucks. 

🚽 If I had not exposed myself as an incompetent plumber, I could have installed it myself. 

🚽 If she had not noticed the damp spot on the ceiling below the toilet, all this could have been ignored until we moved or died. 

But, if ifs were horses, beggars would ride. 

It's all resolved now, however. The new throne has arrived and was installed by two very polite young chaps. The new one is elongated and chair-height, which is nice, and has Kohler's Revolution 360 super-flushing technology. The queen of England in her Windsor-era WC could only wish for a throne this delightful. 

I'd like to go up and play with the new installation some more, but I've already flushed it a few times. I would hate to be called a four-flusher. 

Terror in the streets!

Longtime readers may recall that late Golden puppy Nipper had a pathological fear of garbage cans, so bad that I could not walk him on Tuesday or Friday mornings, when the garbage men were due. I could sometimes get away with it on "recycling" day, which was Wednesday -- those little box-like cans didn't set him off so much.

New Golden puppy Izzy, I'm glad to say, does not fear the garbage cans. He's wary of them, and I think that's fair; they're a lot taller than he is and they must put off the smell version of a KISS concert in terms of sensory overload. But he does not fear them.

However! Yesterday morning we encountered something on the street so terrifying, so horrible, that he recoiled in panic. I thought he might break free and run all the way home, if necessary dragging my bloody arm still attached to the leash. 

I got a picture of the item that scared him so badly. I include it below the break for informational purposes. If you are easily alarmed, I caution you, proceed only if you must. 

So long, tree.

Well, the tree I tried to save almost three years ago died anyway. It was a fruitless task for my fruitless plum, a thundercloud, that looked magnificent in the spring and gorgeous in the summer. Last year it only sprouted a few leaves, and by autumn I knew it was dead. 

I brought that tree home myself, in the back of my car, barely more than a sapling, from a garden center that has since closed. It took root and grew where previous trees had failed. Alas, I didn't know that they only live for about twenty years, one of the shortest life spans of cultivated trees, and it had been growing a few years when I got it. In the end there was nothing I could do. The maples nearby continue to thrive, but for the plum, its time was up. 

I only have a hatchet and some saws, and this was no job for that. Time to call in the pros. They dispatched the branches first, then pulled the stump out with truck and chain, like popping a cork. 

Sad to see it go -- by far the most successful thing I've ever planted. What's got two brown thumbs and kills plants? This guy [points to self]. Every spring when it began to flower I'd think I planted that! But alas, no more. It is gone. 

Except for the stump. They said they had to come back for it. Well, I guess they will, since I haven't paid them yet.

Now I have to figure out what to do to fill the hole. I've already had a maple and a dogwood die in that spot, each within one year. 

Maybe I can get a redwood sapling. It would annoy the neighbors. It'd take a century, but it would annoy the neighbors! 

Joining together, falling apart.

The Babylon Bee hit one out of the park again the other day: "Archaeologists Uncover Missing Chapter Of Job Where He Has To Put Together IKEA Furniture":

"We knew the suffering of Job was bad, but had no clue it was this bad until now," said Dr. Philippe Domino, professor of Babylonian Studies at Oxford. The new passage of scripture was found miraculously preserved in a bronze age IKEA catalog. He believes it may have been hidden by Jews during the Babylonian exile.

Many of us find that the more we put furniture together, the more we personally fall to pieces. I note that there is an IKEA app, but to my surprise it is just about shopping. I expected it to have a series of increasingly difficult puzzles followed by an escape-the-room game.

But I don't want to blame everything on IKEA. The crib I was asked to help assemble last month wasn't one of theirs. The friend who called said that the instructions explicitly demanded two people for the job, and his wife wasn't up to being a coequal furniture lifter. He also seemed a little daunted by the instructions. That daunted me, because he's a very smart guy and can handle complex projects. If he was worried, what would I think?

Still, the Guy Code calls on one to act when a brother needs help, so of course I couldn't wait.

The thing is, while all consumer-assembled furniture has its little joys and complications in the instructions, cribs have the highest safety standard of any piece of furniture in the house, for obvious reasons. Only something like a self-assembled oven would be worse.  

I tried to be prepared. I printed out a copy of the assembly instructions before I went over. I read it and made notes. It looked simple enough. But no, like any good puzzle adventure, it had hidden traps that would hold us up as we went. One example: The assembly required three different sizes of bolts, which were packed together and were very close in size. Well, of course we used two bolts that were too short early in the process, and you'd better believe that made a difference down the line when the 1/4-inch-longer bolts wouldn't fit. For another: The assembly was almost entirely connected with barrel nuts, which kept rolling in the wrong direction at the worst possible time. Little things like that required stopping, reconsidering, finding, and fixing on a few occasions. I entered the arena like Tool Man Fred, but left humbled, but wiser. I'm glad no one was drinking beer.

In the end we got it done, and it's a lovely piece, sturdier than my own house, a crib that the great Shecky Weeble himself would applaud. The best part about it is that it converts into a bed, so it will suit the baby until he's ready for high school, I think. I should be up to helping assemble a bed by that point.

And I'm glad IKEA doesn't make pianos. They would call them PJANK and they would be as hard to assemble as a nuclear reactor. 

The Christmas shoes.

I Ho-Ho-hope you made out well from Santa for Christmas. I did, thanks! I got a skateboard and a G.I. Joe and a pony!

No, actually, but I was very happy to get (among other things) a new pair of L.L. Bean duck shoes, also known as their Rubber Moc Bean Boots.

My wife got me a pair years ago, and they proved exceptionally useful. Easy to slip on for runs outside with the dog; kept my feet dry in all weather except snow that came up over the top of the shoes; and able to handle my strap-on spikes for ice. 

The old pair lasted for years. In fact, I would still be wearing them if not for Izzy the Pup Wonder. 

The Artist at Work

Izzy takes his time about wrecking toys, but is fast as lightning about destroying my shoes. This is pair #3 that he has wasted. Tralfaz got one of my old pairs of boat shoes years ago and ate up the shoelaces (leather pisgetti!), but as you can see, Izzy is truly indiscriminate about how he annihilates the footwear, as long as he annihilates it. Pull up the lining, chomp off the toe--whatever works. 

I have to be careful to keep my new shoes out of his reach. 

On a similar note, I got my wife a new rug for the family room. I was lucky to get a duplicate of the rug that's in there now. Why? Because Izzy is slowly destroying the one that's there now, and she's quite fond of it. 

We think that maybe he smells our late dog Nipper on it. But more likely he just likes to chew anything that doesn't chew him first. Last night he destroyed a tube of Aquaphor while no one was looking.

The plan is to not put the new rug down until Izzy is older, wiser, more obedient, and has had his little surgery. We hope that by then he'll be less inclined to ruin things.

🎅🥾🤶👢🎄👞

P.S.: Biggest surprise of the day -- my wife, a longtime defender of circus peanuts, got a bag in her stocking. She triple-dog dared me to try one. And... I liked it. I've spent years hating on the circus peanut but I liked it. I'm so ashamed. 

I will; not, however, eat candy corn. For those waxy, tasteless nubs, my mouth is a bridge too far.  

P.P.S.: If you're wondering how I wrapped a 5x7' rug, I didn't. It's still rolled up, wrapped in plastic, hiding in the cellar. I wrapped a picture of it from the Web site. 

Fred gets results!

You may remember last year when I went bonkers over a minor thing that was none of my business. All right, that doesn't narrow it down very much. What I was mad about was the cheapassery involved with a house that was being flipped. The flippers took out a glorious old light fixture, one that showed off a gorgeous vertical window, and replaced it with a cheapjack kitchen table fixture. 

Time marched on, and no one bought the house. Then one day in the spring I noticed that the cheapass fixture had been replaced by a more expensive one, although one still too dull and small for the showplace window. 

Couldn't really get a nice shot, but this one is triangular with an unusual fiery bulb. Okay, well, better anyhow. Not so cheap. 

A couple of months later the For Sale sign was gone and lots of activity was seen on the grounds. 

In the end, the new owners put in this: 

Well, all right! It's a big eyecatcher, which is just what the space needs. It is the first thing one notices about the house from the street and it deserves something special. 

I still think it's not long enough. The space is narrow and high, and would be better served by something similar, like maybe:

But hey, I don't have to live with it. I'm glad they've improved what the flipper put in. 

Now, I hope they don't suffer for all the cheap structural "improvements" made to the house as well. 

Of course, I'm still not happy. The new owners are building some sort of arbor at the front of the main door that looks terrible. Why, if I weren't an uninterested party with no stake in the outcome, I'd have words with them. But as it is, I will just continue silently judging, like everybody else.

The roof! The roof! The roof state is dire!

In theory, guys are coming tomorrow to work on the roof. 

There's a lot of ifs about this theory. It makes Descartes's defense of rationalism vs. empiricism look like third-grade homework. 

A guy once told me that we have a twenty-year roof. Guess how old the house is?

So I didn't hire that guy, who would have insisted on ripping out the whole works. Besides, there are a bunch of houses around us that are a year or so older, and I've only seen one of them get any serious roof work, and that one was surrounded by massive dead trees. 

Not one other house has needed a new roof. I doubt their original owners said, "Well, I'll pony up for the thirty-year roof. You never know."

Theoretically, the roof and gutters should be in lovely shape forty-eight hours from posting time. But there are those ifs:

IF the weather holds out. It's going to rain today, all day, off and on but mostly on. Tomorrow it will clear, but who knows? By then the roof may be too soggy to hold a nail. 

IF they can get the materials. No one has called me, but the materials shortage has been so bad and so weird that I just don't know. Thanks to the Chinese Death Virus, there has been a severe disruption in the supply chain. In fact, we were supposed to have the shutters replaced as part of the same job, but no one knows when they will be available.

IF they aren't missing workers due to the CDV or other illnesses or injuries -- say, falling off a roof.

IF the guys don't get drunk early in remembrance of September 11. That sounds unlikely, but I live just north of the city, and a lot of these men used to be card-carrying builders down there. 

IF they aren't delayed by another job that ran late, the contractor's great bane and/or excuse. 

If, if, if. Meanwhile I will spend today trying to push through a job of my own due on Monday, because I don't know how long the guys will need to do the job tomorrow and I don't know if I will be able to work with hammers above and dogs freaking out below. 

Wish me luck, and safety for the crew!

Sleeping in the fridge.

Regular readers (you delightful souls (everyone says so)) will know that I am being treated for terrible back pain with the SNRI antidepressant Cymbalta (duloxetine), which miraculously made the terrible pain go away. Of course, my back may be healing as well, but as I have not had an MRI since February, my current status has not been assessed.

But you regular readers also know I am obsessed with having a clean refrigerator. Not that I always keep it clean, but I often sit around and think about keeping it clean, which strangely does not automatically make it so.

Further, this cleanliness has been difficult, since my back started up last summer and continued until the winter crisis. No one else in the house is interested in doing the job, except the dogs, but they can just lick the inside and only about halfway up.

So yesterday I rolled up the ol' sleeves -- metaphorically; I was in short sleeves already, which would have hurt -- and got in there and got to it. I had picked up tips from expert Schar Ward, and from Mrs. Key fave Melissa Maker, but it looks like I have pretty much been doing a good and efficient job already. And, a couple of hours later, done!

It looks good. Plus, we set a new record for fewest condiments that had to get thrown away with four. It would have been two, the ones that expired, but the onion relish and the maple chipotle BBQ sauce were pretty bad and I finally gave up on finding a use for them.

How did I get motivated? It was that or work. I have a book sitting here that I'm supposed to edit, and it's not long or dull or bad, but it is focused on a subject that irritates me. So I told myself if I was not going to use my time to make money, I would have to use it to clean. Generally I am a creature motivated by fear, so sometimes I have to make deals to set priorities.

The problem is, as I mentioned before, the duloxetine makes me drowsy quite a bit -- two-naps-a-day type drowsy. I can usually fight off a nap with coffee, but following the fridge job I wanted two things very much: 1) a parade and 2) a second nap. And not in that order. Further, I often wake in the night and have trouble getting back to sleep.

I'll be talking with the doc later in the month to see if I should consider coming off the pills. Today I have exactly two things I need to do beyond my usual duties, neither of them difficult, but the idea of doing them makes me want to sleep now. I hope I can make it to the sofhkghjk

Man-eating garage.

Ugh.

I'm sorry that I have little to report today, because yesterday's task filled me with shame and disgust and took a lot out of me.

I cleaned out my garage.

For some men -- car guys whose garage is a professional-level workshop; Felix Ungers whose garage is pin-neat and organized; people in old houses whose garage is single, detached, wide enough for a 1930 Studebaker and never used and possibly haunted -- the task never comes up. For others -- folks with eight kids who store old toys in there but never the car; Oscar Madisons who turn any space into a junkyard; refugees from Hoarding: Buried Alive -- cleaning the garage is an impossible task and thus never done. I fall somewhere in the middle, but alas, closer to the Oscar Madisons. The one saving grace I have is that we do use the garage for cars, so there's a limiting factor to the disaster.

That said, the job filled me with shame. I couldn't believe I had let it go that bad. I couldn't believe how many things I found dupes of -- bottles of deer repellent, for example -- because I lost the first one in the mess and assumed I was out. And now I can't believe how much the garbage men are going to hate me for this. Three heavy lawn bags of toxic waste. I hope the truck doesn't blow up.

I used to keep the garage pretty neat, or relatively so, when we first moved in and I had some house pride. At least once a year I would clean it out and sweep it out and even hose it out. Those days ended about ten years ago, and I can't even say for sure why. I wasn't working more hours. We hadn't gotten the dogs yet. I'd ask Younger Me but he has nothing but excuses.

Anyway, I was impelled to do the job because this week the guys are coming to install the fenceless fence for the dogs, which requires an electrical hookup. I asked the lady who called to confirm where it will connect, and she said it depended on the property; could be the garage or the cellar, for example.

Uh-oh.

So I figured I'd better clear out the garage and straighten it up before someone dies in there. It was a warm, rainy day yesterday, which made the job even less pleasant. But I'm alive.

I'm glad the job is done. Today, of course, I have to tackle the other part: The cellar.

Ugh.

That sink feeling.

No spring training. No Mass in the Archdiocese of New York, at least this weekend. No St. Patrick's celebrations. Too early to worry about the lawn. Too crippled with spinal issues to walk the dogs. Too scared to go out to eat or go shopping.

Might as well fix the sink!

I've been threatening to fix the kitchen sink for some time. Even before my hospital visit last month, I had finally ordered the part I needed. These modern Delta faucets are very nice, but you can't stop the drip by changing a five-cent washer. Oh, no, like every other freaking thing these days, it's much more complicated. And expensive.

$30

And this fixture is only about three years old.

The problem was somewhere inside this sealed valve cartridge case. You must replace it in its entirety. Probably if I took it apart and tried to fix the thing, I would void the warranty on the faucet and my house would burn down. Anyway, the instruction road map that came with the faucet said that if your faucet is dripping, you need a new RP50587, and nothing less will do. Naturally, neither Lowe's nor Home Depot had it in stock, so I had to order it. Then, with one problem after another, including the hospital thing, I wound up having to wait a few weeks. Meanwhile, I slapped that damn dripping faucet a few times to show it I wasn't fooling around. You can't lose the respect of your plumbing, or you're sunk.

Maybe I slapped it around too much over the last three years.

So, yesterday I got to the job, and I have to say it went well. No floods, no puddles, no problems at all. Well, it was tricky to get the hot water turned off to the sink. I was noodling around with a wrench for a while until I got it totally sealed. The cold water was much more cooperative. Then I was able to pop off the faucet handle after I found the tiny hex screw, wrench off the big ol' ball nut (har!), and remove the offending party.

Here's your problem.

I soaked all the old bits in CLR and got them cleaned up, then installed the new valve, and no leaking! Better yet, no more dripping! Got it right the first time.

My dad could do any household job, but his son did not inherit that talent. So every successful repair is a victory. However, I've often thought that if I'd been wise enough to enter one of the trades, it would have been plumbing. Less chance of having to work on a roof or girder, and I hate heights. Less chance of electrocuting myself or others. And I think plumbing is exceptionally valuable. Ask anyone if he'd rather have electricity or running water in the home. Some may say electricity at first, but ask again a week into the experiment. Human beings survived about 200,000 years without electricity, but not one single year without water.

I know plumbing is not a pretty job, but that's why it pays well. And sure, I know the first rule of plumbing -- crap runs downhill. But I've found that to be true in all the other jobs I've worked, too.

Dim bulb.

Sometimes I get very angry over things that properly call for an angry response -- although fury is seldom a useful feeling, even for things like injustice and cruelty. At least it's appropriate. Sometimes I find myself mad enough to strike out over things that I can only characterize as stupid. Here's one that really got me worked up, and it's something that involves me not in the slightest.

What you see below is a picture from a house that was built in 1959 that had been empty for a few months before a flipper bought it. I thought he might have it knocked flat and build new, but apparently not. No, he is having it renovated and is apparently he is being exceptionally cheap about it. Rather than have the old, patchy wooden siding pulled off and replaced, he's having vinyl siding slapped on right over it. Holes, termite damage, rot, who cares? Just cover it up. This strikes me as execrable foolishness -- careless parsimony that could come back to haunt him.

But that's not the stupid part. It's the light:

Next to the front door are these four glass panels over the staircase, the kind of thing that makes the house unique and even a little awesome. And what did he put in for the new light fixture? A goddamn shaded lamp, the kind you hang over your kitchenette table, and not just that but the cheapest one he could possibly find.

This goes beyond stingy and straight into stupid. It takes the single most eye-catching part of the exterior and turns it into a cheesy flashlight. A space like this needs a large hanging light, the kind of thing that is itself an attraction. Here's a piece from another building, contemporary to this one:

Not a good picture, but you get the idea: Large, colorful, stylish, artistic, practical for the space but dead on for the aesthetic, the kind of thing that helps make someone fall for the house as he or she is getting out of the car. By going cheap on the fixture, this nincompoop is going to lose buyers he could have grabbed right away, and P.S., is leaving the stairway underlit. It's so dumb I want to slap somebody. He's not just fishing with no bait, he's fishing with no hook.

I'm no decorator. If it were a bachelor I probably would have furnished the house with clearance-sale stuff from the furniture store. But I know that a great space needs a great light, and this dumb-ass blew it. What adds the willfulness to the stupidity is the penny-pinching, and willful stupidity should be punished quickly and effectively. There's no excuse for this.

GAH!

Swedish death cleaning prayer.

For the last couple of years, since the publication of Margareta Magnusson's book on the theme, we have been hearing about the idea of performing Swedish death cleaning on our domiciles. The idea is not to clean everything within an inch of its life (remind me to tell you of the time I broke a toilet) but to get rid of everything unnecessary so as not to burden our descendants with our crap when we reach our Date with Destiny.

I must interject that I think it only became a thing because we love Swedish stuff -- skiing! pacifism to the brink of annihilation! socialism that supposedly works! cheap furniture! -- and if it were called German Death Cleaning, or North Korean Death Cleaning, or perhaps Cambodian Death Cleaning, it, uh, probably wouldn't have caught on.

"Gentle" and "Death" go so well together

Family Handyman has a concise series of tips about the means to perform this particular Swedish action. And I admit that the idea has its appeal. I would love to bring up a dumpster and just get rid of a mountain of things I don't need. On the other hand, it seems to play right into the anti-humanism of the modern intelligentsia, seeking for us to make ourselves as invisible as possible as we wait for the end, eating our kale and praying to Gaia.

But we cannot pray to Gaia for our eternal souls, as Gaia is just a planet and has no mind, no authority, no life beyond its temporal existence. Therefore we need to come up with our own Swedish death cleaning prayer, to say at eventide, as we prepare to sleep -- and prepare as well for the Big Sleep.

Here's what came to my mind, anyway, based on the 18th-century prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
All this crap I'll have to take
My cases stacked with books unread
Will still be here when I am dead
The junk that all my walls does haunt
Like some damn nineties restaurant
The vinyl, tapes, CDs, and more
That did my precious music store
A load of clothes, especially pants
That fit me once, but now, no chance
Each bill and paper safely filed
And old computers sit here piled
Hammers, drivers, nails, and wrench
Left scattered on my cellar bench
Attic, basement, full of junk
Attest I'm no Franciscan monk
Kitchen stuff once much regarded
Used one time and not discarded
The bathroom has things undesired
Bad aftershave and meds expired
Don't ask about the cars below
The garage is just a horror show
Every room has too much crap
Now I'm scared to have this nap
Since I can't take the stuff, I fear
Oh Lord, you'd better leave me here.

HGTV's Flintstone Home!

HGTV NEWSWIRE

Discovery Communications, New York City, October 11, 2019 -- The HGTV cable network enjoyed amazing success last month with its special series, A Very Brady Renovation, in which members of the original cast of The Brady Bunch TV show helped turn the actual house that was used for exterior shots on the original 1969-1974 series into a duplicate inside of the television show's sets. Now, in our next series, HGTV uses its massive resources and limitless talent to take on an even tougher challenge: A Very Flintstone Renovation-rock!

Drew Scott of The Property Brothers made the announcement this morning at a press conference at Discovery offices in Manhattan. "There's no more iconic TV sitcom home than the one inhabited by the titular family of The Flintstones, in the town of Bedrock," he said, referring to the 1960-1966 series. "To have the opportunity to renovate this home with the rest of the HGTV family of designers is a dream come true."

"It's a wonderful project, but it has some serious challenges," said Mina Starsiak of the show Good Bones. "For one, everything in it is made of rock, except the front door. Stonework is especially expensive and difficult to install. For another, none of the appliances run on electricity; many are animal-powered or just seem to work on nothing at all. How we're going to handle that is an amazing story itself!"

Lara Spencer, star of Flea Market Flip, added, "Saber-tooth tiger lampshades and leopard curtains may be tricky. But bird record-players and can openers, mammoth showers and vacuum cleaners -- we're not just looking to match knickknacks this time!"

Matt James, former host of one of our many failed yard-based shows, added, "The Flintstone landscaping is a real nightmare. After all, prehistoric plants in strange colors are not just available down at the local garden store! We realllllly have to reach on that one! We called exotic florists, university biologists, Steven Spielberg, everyone. It was incredible!"

Jonathan Scott, the brother who does all the actual work on The Property Brothers, also noted some unusual difficulties in dealing with a cartoon house. "To make it match the interior on the television show, we needed to be able to run through the house and pass the same background objects over and over again. Well, the house appears to be no more than forty feet deep, but we'd have to be able to run for at least five hundred yards."

Scott laughed and added, "I guess back in the sixties, they just didn't worry about these things."

In a crossover episode of the Discovery Channel's hit series Fast 'n Loud, host Richard Rawlings will attempt to build the Flintstone family car and make it run without the courtesy of Fred's two feet.

As with the Brady house renovation, the producers had hoped that the original cast members would be able to participate in the renovation. Sadly, they are all dead, having passed away in the paleolithic age or something. It turned out there are surviving cast members from the 1971 Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, but nobody likes that cartoon. There were two live-action Flintstones movies, released in 1994 and 2000, but that might mean working with Rosie O'Donnell, and no one wanted to take that chance.

"We don't want any unpleasantness," said HGTV president Jane Latman, "We want this to be a yabba-dabba-doo time. In fact, a dabba-doo time."

"We'll have a gay old time!" added My Lottery Dream Home's David Bromstad.

"It's a really tough reno," said Steve Ford of Restored by the Fords, speaking to reporters afterward, "but I promise you one thing -- when we're done, that cat will stay out for the night!"

Porched earth policy.

So, to continue the saga from yesterday -- an all-day saga, if you will -- I had to paint the porch again because it looked like crap after one winter, and since I didn't paint it last year, it looked like crappity crap after two winters. I refused to paint white again, at least for the floorboards, and the Mrs. agreed. All colors can show dirt and wear, but nothing compares to white.

Picking a color took most of the spring, but that was okay since it was too rainy to paint then anyway. The question was, should the porch floor match the shutters and roof? Or would it be too matchy-matchy? Ultimately we decided to take a chance on matchy-matchy, because the house already has two bold and one mild color, and a fourth non-white color would make it start to look all crazy-quilt, which anyone can tell you is more risky than matchy-matchy.

The other big decision was to use a textured paint, which was new to me. Our porch is ridiculously slippery in the winter; I've fallen down the stairs at least once, and I live in fear of UPS men with attorneys delivering to us in the winter. This textured paint has some sand-like stuff in it gives you a little grip. If it prevents one concussion, one back injury, it's well worth the extra expense.

They used to call it sand paint. I remember my dad using it. It was very popular for ceilings in the fifties and sixties, and was still in many homes when I was a kid. Now they call them popcorn ceilings, but I first heard the term in this decade.

For kids, these ceilings ceased being popular as soon as we let go of our non-Mylar helium balloons, because that sucker was popping instantly. Sand paint did not feel like beach sand; it felt like broken glass. You wouldn't want it on your walls.

Anyway, I remember Dad using sand paint and it being quite difficult. What made it harder for him was the cleanup; Dad never used today's disposable brushes, paint rollers, or drop cloths. In fact, I am dead certain that he had the same drop cloths in use from before I was born until they sold the house after I graduated college.

So, yes, sand paint was difficult, and textured paint is not as bad (less sand), but still more difficult than regular paint, and I didn't prepare adequately.

We prepped the space all right; I even let my wife use the power washer and play Ghostbuster. Seriously, she probably saved me an hour. But the textured paint ate up all that time and more.

It's extremely thick, as you might imagine, and painting the trim around the deck was like icing a driveway with a rubber spatula. My one saving grace was that our porch is not that big.

To determine if I could afford this house, I'd have to factor in the money
to have flunkies on hand to paint the doggone porch.

Usually I can do the boards with a roller on a stick. The textured paint can warns you right on the lid to use a roller cover with a 1/2-inch nap. I thought I had one but I did not, so I thought -- this 3/8-inch cover is close enough, right? That's just an eighth of an inch off!

Har.

The roller got sunk in this goo and wouldn't move. Trying to roll it out was like try to butter new Wonder Bread with cold butter. I wound up doing most of the planks by hand, with which my back and legs took great issue by Sunday morning. I work in a chair most of the time; I have muscles that have been dormant since the Space Shuttle program ended. They registered their displeasure.

But despite that, on Sunday morning, I dragged my sorry behind to Home Depot and got the right roller covers, some more disposable brushes, and some more disposable roller pans. I was aiming to burn whatever I used after this job, because nothing would ever come clean.

And the job did get done, but for a touch-up on the white bits, which I'll do today. It came off looking pretty good. You don't get that nice, smooth finish with a textured paint, but I'll trade that for safety. From the street it looks great. Not too matchy-matchy.

The one thing I didn't mention in all this is that the dogs only leave the house by the porch. They both are scared of the cellar steps, and the back steps are very steep. I had to time the painting around their usual evacuation periods, because no way can I carry 100+ pound dogs down the other stairs. I should have started training them on those back stairs after the last debacle, when the porch got repaired. Anyway, no dogs exploded and my back is relatively intact.

And the porch looks good. Will it really be safer underfoot in the winter? Will it really still look good come spring? Watch this space in the months ahead for more kvetching, moaning, krexing, and general complaining to find out!

Porched.

Blarg.

I'm afraid I have little for you today, as yesterday was finally Paint the Porch Day. I literally cannot tell you how many times I've done this since we moved in here and my wife decided the porch needed to be stained white. At a guess I'd say five, plus one porch repair job that included professional painters. That's a lot, but the elements beat the crap out of the porch. How they got on my porch, I'll never know.

I was at it all afternoon, and then we went to the Vigil Mass Saturday evening so I could have all day Sunday to finish the job. Fun!

Anyway, there's more to the story (isn't there always?), which I will share with you Monday, if finishing the job doesn’t finish me today. Darn you, nice days! Where's the rain when I want to get out of chores?

Post non-haste.

Back in early March I related the sad saga of my mailbox, a story that actually happened in February while I was recovering from a concussion. The breathless adventure is told here, but in a nutshell, I'd scheduled a cable-box pickup for a particular day, we had another of our endless series of ice storms, and when the delivery truck came he nailed my mailbox and the post upon which it sat. The whole thing was a twisted and mangled mess. When I set it to rights, the pole snapped.

This was not my mailbox (mine was laid out on ice like a fish; I failed to get a picture) but it sums up the drama inherent in the story:

Blarg

From that February day to this past weekend, it has been my mission to replace the jury-rigged mailbox post. That proved to be harder than I expected.

First, it was too cold and icy for a month and a half afterward, making the earth too solid for proper installation of anything that required digging. (Too bad ya died, Aunt Bertha; we'll bury you in three months.) Second, when the weather improved, and I began to shop for a post, I found that both the local Home Depot and the local Lowe's were completely sold out of them. Obviously the winter had taken a toll on our local mailbox posts. I'm not exaggerating; I think half a dozen posts on my street still have some kind of brace or bracket holding them in proper position, gewgaws that were not on the posts last Halloween.

Finally I gave up and (during a trial of Amazon Prime) ordered a nice cedar post. It smelled pretty good, and being cedar it should keep the moths from eating my mail, but it was more rough-hewn than I expected and required sanding down. I had also ordered new reflective house numbers to nail on the sides -- remember, pilgrims, make sure that your house or unit number is very visible. The ambulance or fire truck may one day toll for thee.

I'd also gotten a new mailbox from Home Depot, as the old one had gotten dented and was (kinda) hammered back into shape. Right about the time the weather got warm, it got rainy -- and stayed that way for a month. Putting the new post in the soft ground seemed as poor an idea as putting it in the frozen ground.

Finally the day arrived -- this past Saturday.

Installing a mail post is one of those jobs that takes longer than you think it will, however long you think. It seems simple enough -- so did building a bell tower at Pisa. My mailbox is not likely to become a tourist destination. The main problem is getting the damn thing in level, solidly enough to stay level.

The post went in all right. The old post was six feet long; the new one is a good deal shorter but uses a metal anchor at the bottom to keep it upright. I also have a plastic brace that sits under the surface of the dirt that helps keep it vertical. I considered putting in some concrete as well to firm it up, but it seemed pretty solid. And concrete would just make it hard to remove the next time my post gets nailed by a truck.

Ultimately it was a good choice, as later that afternoon we had a popup thundershower.

So far, so competent, but that wouldn't last. You see, the new mailbox I bought turned out to be too big. I thought it was a bit taller than the old box -- but it was also much wider. It needed bigger bracket (or adapter plate) to sit on the arm of the post. I tried to rig it up with the brackets that came with the post, but finally I gave up and resintalled the old, dented mailbox.

So my triumphant project ended with a bent mailbox. As I type my six-foot post is waiting for the garbage men, who will hate me. The new post will probably lean despite my best efforts because of all the rain, and a leaning mail post is one of those things my wife says makes a property instantly look neglected and sloppy. Happy Wednesday. I hate everything.

Cleanliness court.

Mr. Key, please tell the court what you were doing last weekend, about which you were bragging to your friends.

Well, your honor, I would hardly call it bragging; I merely mentioned that, last Saturday, with grim determination and no thought of the danger to my own personal person, I cleaned the refrigerator. And freezer! And I even vacuumed the coils. 

You sound pretty proud.

No, no, sir, not at all, although it was a good job of it. Lots of dog hair on those coils. And some even in the fridge interior! Uh, could we strike that from the transcript?

No. Now, we have called you today to ask some questions about this effort of yours. You understand that Cleanliness Court is very interested in people performing such public acts of cleaning.

Oh, sure. Maybe I can share some tips with you. Fire away!

When did you purchase this refrigerator, Mr. Key?

Um... Let's see... I think it was the end of November. 

November of what year?

Uh... November 2017. So, a year and four months ago. 

And how many times would you say you have made a thorough cleaning of this appliance?

Oh! Well, I have to say, yes, uh, that is, I have cleaned it many times.

Many?

Yes, that, uh, is if you, uh, count, you know, uh, dusting the top.

So, Mr. Key, we are free to presume that this is the first time in 16 months that the interior of the appliance has been cleaned with anything approaching rigor or thoroughness. 

Uuuuuhhhh............................. yah.

Now, is it not true that you work in medical copy sometimes, and thus are familiar with the general recommendation from home health experts and appliance manufacturers that refrigerators be cleaned at least quarterly, and if contaminated with spoiled or recalled food, be decontaminated immediately?

mumble mumble

Please repeat the answer with clarity. 

I said yeah, I know, but --

And haven't you on at least two occasions sung paeans to the importance of refrigerator cleaning on that silly blog of yours?

You read my blog?

Let's face it, Mr. Key. You have missed five quarterly cleanings since this refrigerator came into your possession. It's amazing you're still alive.

But... but it looked so clean.

You're going to get a warning this time, but we will be looking into this again in July. See that your refrigerator is clean -- including the butter dish -- and the freezer and ice maker as well. 

mumble mumble rub the whole thing down with raw pork you geezer

Speak up, Mr. Key!

Yes, your honor.

Now, about your dishwasher....

Drive on the driveway.

Yesterday our long national nightmare finally came to an end. Yes, I was able to drive my car on the driveway. What a relief.

Last winter really killed the driveway, and it wasn't so great before that. Last fall I realized I had waited too long to have it sealed -- they say every other year is good, and it was on year three -- and the winter before that had taken a toll. But by the time I called around it was too late and too cold and raining a lot. So, my poor unsealed driveway got pounded by the blizzards in March, and looked like hell.

I've waited since May for the guys I contracted to do the job to do the job, but they finally did it last week. It cost me. Large chunks had to be cut out and replaced with fresh asphalt. Money evaporated.

When the job was complete, we were told not to drive on it for days, and not to walk on it that night. Of course it's hard to get that across to the dogs. I kept little dog Nipper on a leash, but big dog Tralfaz? He didn't care that the place smelled like an airport. He's used to walking on the driveway to get to the far lawn for his business, and no amount of panicked instruction to the contrary from his nominal master was going to stop him.

I was sure he would track tar into the house, and leave permanent paw prints all over the driveway. My wife heard my moans, and, sympathetic soul that she is, sent me this text:

Fortunately it had dried enough so he didn't stick to the tar, nor the tar to him. No footprints were visible in the morning.

Normally you can drive on a resealed surface after a day or two, but since there was new asphalt and it had to adhere to the old stuff, I had to park out front for almost a week. It's not a big deal, except that Nipper likes to bark when he sees anything unusual outside the front window, like, oh, I don't know, a car parked on the street. Took him a few days to get used to the sight. And I worried because we're on a long stretch with no traffic lights or signs, and at night people like to drive way too fast along here, throwing their banana peels higgledy-piggledy. I expected to be awakened by some idiot conjoining his car to my parked vehicle in the middle of the night, but that didn't happen.

I never worried about this stuff when I lived in the city and parked on the street all the time. The suburbs have spoiled me.

But no crises, the job is done, the check cleared, and now I don't have to worry about the driveway until 2020. What a relief.

Now, about that roof....