No End in Sight

The house project has become a continuous cycle of dismantling much of the structure, setting it out for the trash, and waiting for it to be picked up. So far the trashmen have taken away much of the bathroom, the kitchen, and many pieces from the basement. I’ve also made numerous trips to the trash depot in the truck, but have retired the old Mercury after the last trip to the colosso-hardware. It doesn’t seem too safe to drive, owing to the steering, which feels more and more stiff. So I hack away at the house, bag up or put into boxes its peelings, and set the stuff out.

On a more positive note, my brother is to get a new mailbox. I’ll take time away from my activities to erect a post and new box just adjacent to his neighbor’s at the end of their shared driveway. I’m rather looking forward to this. He probably won’t like walking a few feet over to the other side of the driveway to fetch his mail, but so be it. I’ve already checked with his neighbor, and he said to go right ahead. Currently the state of my brother’s mailbox is thus: It is a plastic affair, battered and broken because it’s too close to the road. Trucks smash into it, then cars run over it. It has not had an easy time of it, this mailbox. Compared to others like it, it has undoubtedly endured hardships in the span of one short year that the others have not encountered in many seasons of receiving mail. The broken thing is propped up between the post that once supported it, and the cracked and broken plastic box that the newspaper is supposed to be delivered to. Except that the newspaper box is no longer there; only the rusted steel post remains. There is no door on the mailbox, and it is tilted upwards, its great, gaping mouth drinking in the rain that falls from the grey skies, drenching the insides and all the mail besides. It is a kind of anti-mailbox, a thing that—if you wanted to guarantee the least amount of protection for your correspondence—you would erect. This is the kind of mailbox you would put up.

I’ll bring my chainsaw. I haven’t fired it up in a long time, need to be reassured that it still runs, want to cut something with it, besides. The thing I’ll cut is the post that once supported the box, cut it off level with the ground, make a thorough job of it. This will make it impossible for my brother, who will be tempted to relocate his box to HIS side of the driveway, to make such an attempt. With the absence of a post, the situation will cause a short, brief conundrum. Looking first at his new mailbox, over there next to his neighbor’s—safely removed from the road and passing trucks, he’ll then scan the landscape for the old location, see only the bare minimum stump just meeting the tops of the winter grass. The situation will be quickly resolved in his mind.

I’ve already selected two long bolts and a sturdy piece of steel from my collection of scraps. I remember the piece of steel—about a quarter-inch thick—and its provenance. I’d made the trip out to the enormous junk sale one day about a year or so ago, to find that the sale was already over and done with. Only scraps remained, bits and pieces hanging out of colossal bins, to be picked up and hauled away for the price of the old iron within. I grabbed the iron bar, a piece of ancient farm implement, with some green paint still remaining, and greedily took it to my car. It was free. The long bolts came from a farm sale long ago. They are about a foot in length, sturdy, but with a nice finish of rust. They will work just fine. I even have the right size nuts for them. I went out to the maple tree where I feed the ‘coons and so on, and retrieved a piece of four-by-four treated lumber that I’d had firewood stacked upon. The firewood is gone, and I have no more need for the post, which is just the right height for the mailbox. I may even have to cut it down some.

I have concrete as well, bags of it that Big J.O. dropped off after a project he was working on with his father. This stuff was left over, no longer needed. Since I will not be using it anytime soon, I’ll donate a bag to the project over at my brother’s house. This weekend I’ll dig out a hole near the other mailbox, fill it with the concrete mix, and place the two long bolts into the wet concrete. The ends of the bolts will be bent into a “J” configuration, to get a better bite on the concrete. This is overkill, since there isn’t much weight for them to support, just the brackets that will hold the wooden post upright. The brackets will be cut from the piece of scrap farm implement steel, and drilled to accept lag screws that will hold them to the post. The long bolts embedded in the cement will hold the brackets down tight. It will work just fine, will probably take much longer than I expect, but eventually will turn out all right. It will also be utterly thankless: If left to his own devices, my brother would be just as happy with sodden, heavy mail, weighed down by the recent storms. It makes not a bit of difference to him. Plus, he’ll have to walk farther.

February 7, 2008

I’ve long since passed the point of no return; no going back now, even if I wanted to. With every little bit of house that gets torn apart and discarded, more and more of the same presents itself. It’s likely that I will completely remove the kitchen floor, all of the wall supports between the bathroom and kitchen, and remove the main support that runs under the wall between the two rooms—down in the basement. It is this latter issue that has prompted all of this work. With the main support beam all but completely eaten away, the wood floor above it has also been affected—as well as the studs, or wall supports, separating the kitchen and bathroom. Initially my approach was this: I would take out a couple of bug-eaten studs in the wall, replace them with new lumber, then start putting the area back together again. Once I discovered that these studs were supported by nothing but bug-eaten wood down below, the big phase of additional work had to begin.

Today I completely removed the one joist that was mostly termite-eaten. Its mate, just next to it, I left in place until I put new wood in. Then I’ll remove it as well, and put another joist in its place. These pieces measure about two by eight inches and around twelve feet in length—maybe a little longer. They are not optional lumber that the house can do without, otherwise I would gladly be rid of them and continue with the project. Unfortunately, they support a good deal of weight. In the kitchen, the area of floor where the bathroom and kitchen meet at the wall has been too severely eaten away, needs to be cut out and replaced with new flooring. May as well just go ahead and replace the whole floor at this point, with the big, cheap fiberboard they build new houses with. It will be more solid, give a more even and smooth feel, and will insulate the kitchen from the basement a little better than the battered and worn old pine flooring. The main issue I have with this approach is the old floor tiles that cover the area; they are stuck fast to the wooden floor and may contain hazardous ingredients that shouldn’t be released into the air. I’ll have to be extremely careful when removing this part of the floor. It may take a while.

With more and more of the house coming apart, and no end in sight, I have a feeling of urgency lately. I want to put the main bulk of the demolition behind me, start rebuilding, maybe even have the place ready to live in by August. Yes, August would be nice. I believe it is around that time last year that I started on the house---maybe a little earlier. I’d have to check my notes. I know this: With a crew of skilled tradesmen, experts in their fields, working in a coordinated way, the project would be finished in about three weeks. If they stuck with it, that is. Working alone, uncovering each new issue—bit by bit—is taking an agonizingly long time. However, there has been progress, and for that I am grateful. It’s not much, but it’s something. I just checked: Work began on the house August 22, 2007. If nothing else, I keep an accurate journal.

February 8, 2008

I got a haircut earlier this week, discovered a new squirrel-feeder outside the barber shop. This one is a different design, not the one that I’d copied some time ago and that I keep outside on the maple tree. The squirrels love my feeder, sit on its little chair and nibble at the corn on the cob—one kernel at a time—until it’s picked clean. This new feeder outside the shop was an outlandish affair, a spinning thing with spokes radiating from a central hub. It looked like a windmill. The squirrels grab at a spoke, hang on, and eat the corn stuck to the end of it. I imagine that, with two or more squirrels eating, the thing starts spinning, and it must look absolutely hilarious. I must have one. I plan to stop all work on the house henceforth in order to make one of these new feeders. I may resume work sometime next month, or whenever the new squirrel-feeder is finished. I have my priorities.

February 10, 2008

I took my idea for my brother’s mailbox project over to my friend’s shop, let on that I planned to use the mishmash of scavenged and leftover materials to put the thing together. In about thirty seconds he pulled out two items that would accomplish the project in its entirety—with the exception of the cement and the hole that I would need to dig. I looked at the things, ready-made for success and to save time, realized how much at odds this approach was with my usual, arduous and roundabout way of doing things, relying heavily on the materials I have on hand. Then I conceded that he was right, that what he was proposing made more sense. For one thing, this mailbox was to be positioned on a blighted, heavily-traveled section of a major U.S. highway. No one would see it, would even notice it there in the weeds next to the road. The only thing that the speeding motorists would be preoccupied with was putting this terrible area behind them as quickly as possible. Ok, it’s not as bad as that, but it is one of those roads that offer little in the way of scenery, except for the auto shops, liquor stores and biker bar that stand just a few feet from the rumbling trucks and speeding cars. The other issue I have is the time factor: Using my approach would require a greater outlay of time for a project that—as my friend put it—didn’t really warrant it.
“Go crazy with something that matters,” he said.

We spent more time on my Honda, the golden orange motorcycle from 1972, got a few wrinkles ironed out, and I fired it up for a ride out in the long parking area that surrounded the shop and its neighboring businesses. The bike ran fine, accelerated well, with the clutch engaging as it should and the motor responding with no unusual noises. I was in heaven, with the few drops of cold rain doing nothing to quell my elation. I wheeled the bike back into the shop, cut the motor, and resumed eating salted peanuts in their shells, while King fiddled with a rather complicated project he’d been working on.
“What’s that thing?” I would ask, while he toiled at some connection or other.
He would explain, his voice drowned out by the sound of crunching peanuts as I stuffed more and more of them into my mouth.