The door

When the garage door repairman came to rescue me last week, he let me know that I have a top-notch garage door opener and a reasonably high quality garage door. This was, sadly, small comfort in view of the fact that the door was stuck open, and it was around 8 p.m.

The first problem -- the obvious problem -- was that a guide cable jumped its pulley. The second problem -- the small problem that had been irritating me for weeks -- was that the spring wasn't tight enough, so that the motor was having to take too much of the door's weight. (The primary symptom of the second problem was that the door would refuse to open, usually right when I needed to get to work.)

Investigating those problems revealed a series of secondary issues:

• The track was mounted too close to the frame of the garage, causing the door to rub against the jamb and the frame on one side.
• Support brackets for the track were installed backward.
• The release handle that allows manual opening and closing of the garage was installed backward.
• The pins in the outer hinges of the door were installed such that they could catch the guide cable and either stop the door from moving or pop the cable off its pulley.
• The pulley was loose.
• There was too much give in the door, causing it to shimmy too far left and right, potentially destabilizing the pulley further.

On the plus side, the repairman seemed highly skilled, and, as the owner of a small, local company, heavily invested in making a good impression. He made sure that I understood what he was doing and why he was doing it, and went above and beyond to make sure that the fix was complete. (If you know anyone in the area who needs garage door maintenance, installation, or repairs, let me know. I'll give you his card.)

On the minus side, I didn't exactly budget for this. I wonder if I could make winter holiday presents from the clay in my back yard...

Dragging furniture around

Because replacing a faucet and engaging in a futile, yet exhausting, effort to dig a hole in the back yard weren't enough, I also spent some time moving furniture this weekend. Now that all of the books that I'm not going to give away are in book cases, I have reconsidered the need for a guest room. I don't exactly have hoards of potential houseguests lined up on the front walk, but it is nice -- inviting, even -- to have a place where guests could sleep.

This meant moving the computer and its accoutrements out to the room formerly known as the library (a.k.a. family room). I think it was acquiring a rug for the room last weekend that helped me make up my mind: something about seeing the rug on the floor made me think that that the room would make a good study.

So now my computer has a new home, closer to the source of the DSL. And I rearranged the bookcases and filing cabinet in the former office to make room for a bed.

Now all I need to do is buy a couch, and then my futon can become the guest bed. (It has a pretty decent memory-foam mattress.)

Of course, buying a couch requires money, and I have other things to spend money on first. Like trimming the giant tree in the front yard before it drops branches on my roof. Or like fixing a garage door that stuck in the up position when I came home from work last week. Or property taxes.

But, hey -- at least I know what all my rooms are for now, right?

Digging a hole

There's a wee patch of scraggly grass between my patio and the east fence that's about three feet wide and maybe 8 feet long. It would be a lovely place to plant a decorative border of some sort. It gets plenty of sun. It gets some runoff from my neighbor's yard, which reduces how much water I have to do. I see it whenever I look out the kitchen window.

As I have tried to dig up the patch of scraggly grass, I have discovered some things:

1. Scraggly grass forms mats, which are somewhat difficult to unearth.
2. Something has spread a dense weaving of woody roots just under the grass layer.
3. Several trees have spread thick roots into that corner of my yard.
4. The dirt is only about 8 inches thick.
5. Under the dirt is a rock-hard layer of clay and rock.
6. The reason there's a quarry less than a mile away is that there are lots and lots of rocks around here.

So far, using a pickaxe, a shovel, and a small pruning saw, I have dug a hole about 8 inches deep, 2 feet wide, and 3 feet long. I have uprooted a large quantity of scraggly grass and an equally large quantity of small, woody roots. I have sawn through 3 substantial roots (the largest about 3" in diameter). And I have inhaled possibly my weight in dust.

This is fun?

An aside

As I was typing that last post, I heard my neighbors out on the porch. The man was calling for his wife to look at something, and then both of them started swearing. (I almost never hear my neighbors swearing, as they have 2 young children.)

One of them then said, "It's a black widow!"

The other one said no, but, "That one is!"

Net result: at least 2 dead spiders next door. And I think I'll be extra careful when working along that fence for a while.

Back to work

Life conspired for a while to keep me from getting much done on the house, but I'm back to work. First up: replacing the faucet in the bathroom sink.

Before I moved in, we almost completely redid the main bathroom in the house. My dad and I took out the old vanity, cabinet, light fixtures, and miscellaneous hardware. The flooring contractors replaced the ratty white carpet (!?!) in the bathroom with tile and laid in a new toilet base. My dad and I hooked up the new toilet, and then my parents worked together to put in a new vanity, medicine cabinet, and shelving unit. I don't remember which of us put up the towel racks. The only thing we didn't replace was the tub and its surround. (We did put in a new showerhead and tub faucets.)

Imagine my dismay when, 3 months into living at the house, the brushed nickel coating on one faucet handle started to bubble. By the time I pried the faucet off this morning, the cold water handle was basically chalk, and the hot water handle was starting to show signs of corrosion.

That will teach me to buy the cheapest bathroom sink faucet that I could find. (In my defense, it was on sale: I didn't know it would have been the cheapest faucet in the store even without the sale.)

The replacement is a mid-grade Price-Pfister faucet with some nice touches, like a high arch on the spigot that makes it easier for tall people to wash their hands (or fill a bucket, or whatever), and a bit of elegant detail on the handles.

It was touch and go there at the start. Sinus problems were one of the things that had been keeping me from getting much work done around the house. Although I no longer have dizzy spells whenever my head changes altitude or direction, and I don't have the sense that I'm coming down with the plague, the room does still spin when I lie flat on my back, such as, say, when I'm lying under a sink, trying to disconnect some plumbing hardware.

That was exciting.

Once I got the faucet installed, it took about half an hour for the nausea to go away. Once I was pretty sure I wasn't going to lose breakfast, I went out and dug holes in my yard for a while to clear my head. Then I finished hooking up hardware.

So now I have a fully-functional sink again. No leaks so far! Hopefully I won't have to do this again for quite a while. (It will take a while to recover: there's the residual dizziness from lying under the sink for so long. Plus the cut on my thumb from when my hand slipped as I was tightening the plunger thing that controls the drain plug. And then there's the aching in my hands and wrists from loosening bolts and nuts that my dad had tightened, and from attempting to tighten blots and nuts almost as tightly as my dad would have tightened them.

Good times. (C., if you're reading this: that one's for you.)

And that was just the start: there was the aforementioned hole digging (and root sawing, and weed pulling), plus the furniture rearranging! So stay tuned.