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House & Yard

Shoring Up the Barricades

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Okay, so assuming I’m not moving away from Crime Central anytime soon—because I can’t afford anything I want to live in anyplace where I want to live—then presumably it makes sense to shore up the defenses. This house’s barricades are easy to breach: three old sliding doors, all of them ugly, two of them installed by different previous owners, two of them with locks that don’t work, and none of them energy-efficient. The handle set on the front door is falling off; every now and again I have to screw it back on. Neither of the two wooden gates is very sturdy, and one is falling apart.

I can’t afford to fix all this stuff, either…but doing so would be one helluva lot cheaper than selling this place and moving. So, I suppose I’m just going to have to raid Survival Savings and get some work done.

Friday we made a start: a Home Depot subcontractor came by and installed a security door on the kitchen door. It’s not too ugly, and unlike the gate on the front door, its metal screen lets you see out.

Well. It’s not too ugly when the kitchen door is open. With the cheapo door closed, it’s plug-hideous.

Also at the Depot, I picked up three sets of bump-resistant locks. Because these don’t have pins, they supposedly can’t be bumped. Of course, they can be drilled, but that means the Perp has to bring some equipment that can’t be carried in his pants pocket. While these KwikSet Smartkey locks can easily be picked or smashed, they’re much sturdier than the existing locks, and they’re actually quite handsome pieces of hardware.

Heh. I just learned how vulnerable they are while researching the present post, and so will return them to Home Depot and get something better (I hope) from the locksmith. Lissen up, folks: DON’T BUY KWIKSET SMARTKEY “BUMP-PROOF” LOCKS!

The door installer put these on the new security door, and while he was here took out the double-cylinder deadbolt I’d installed on the kitchen door by way of avoiding having to put a security door there and put the old single-cylinder deadbolt back on. With the security door making it harder for the Burglar to break out a light, reach in, and unlock the deadbolt, I no longer need a lock that’s keyed on the inside. That means in the event of a fire, I won’t have to grope around searching for the key to get out.

Couldn’t talk him into installing the other two lock sets on the side and front security doors, which is just as well, since I’ll have to have the locksmith come over with better locks, anyway.

Yes. The cheapo kitchen door combines with the mid-cheapo security door to hideous effect. Plus one of the unlockable sliding doors resides adjacent to the newly secured kitchen door.

So, what I’m thinking is to replace all three sliding doors with single-pane sliders, and to install a matching door in the kitchen—the kind that has just one large glass pane in it. Then all the Arcadia doors would match, they’d all have halfway decent factory-installed hardware, and once they’re supplemented with bars dropped in their tracks, screw-on locks, and door squealers, they should be relatively safe. The back door, then, would be mostly clear glass, so when you look out through it, you’d see the “decorative” (heh) ironwork of the security door: only one layer of kitsch instead of two.

These little gems are not cheap. Each will cost about $1500. On HD’s website, however, I found Anderson knockoffs by some outfit called “Masterpiece” for about  half the price. They’re probably junk—I’m having the company that installed the windows and skylights in this house give me a call, tho’ I don’t expect them to underprice anything at Home Depot, since they carry top-of-the-line products and do first-rate work. I’d rather not spend any money on this  kind of thing, but still…closing costs alone on my house would run over $12,000; and then we’d have the cost of moving my stuff across town, plus the usual mountain of bills that invariably accompanies possession of a new place. Clearly, making the place a little more perp-resistant trumps selling this house, finding a new one, and moving.

Meanwhile, as long as I’m spending money on the house, the interior really, really needs a paint job. The Alexander Julian color scheme my friend and I cooked up when I moved in here about six or seven years ago was very stylish at the time, but it’s pretty…uhm…idiosyncratic. I think I’d like to replace the surprising colors with more neutral shades, and also paint the white doors and trim brown. The color of dirt. I am tired of scouring dirt off the doors and woodwork!

Paint the woodwork the color of dirt, and the dirt won’t show. 😉

While visiting the Depot, I came across a gorgeous paint color, or so it appears in the chip. Behr is calling it “faded peach.” It’s really an off-white with just a tiny touch of peach in it. The effect is a very warm, rich neutral that picks up one of the subtle shades in the floor tiles. If someone didn’t tell you it had peach in it, you’d never know. My plan is to put this in the living room, dining room, and up the (presently orange terra-cotta) hallway. The accent wall in the living room, which is now swamp blue a kind of murky teal, will give way to “adobe straw” (a soft grayish brown) or “blanket” (brown brown, which is also going to be the color of the doors and trim). The gray in my bedroom will be covered with “adobe straw,” and the swamp blue accent wall in there repainted with “flint smoke,” a much lighter, subtler sort of misty teal. The master bathroom will be “Arabian sands,” another neutral brown that’s close to “adobe straw” but goes better with the travertine in the shower. The office and other two bedrooms: variants of “peach fade,” “adobe straw,” and “flint smoke.” Overall, the effect will be much more subtle; keeping the woodwork clean will require a lot less elbow grease, and should I decide to sell the house after all, the paint job will be neutral.

While the painter’s here, I think I’ll have him paint the garage walls “adobe straw,” too. Same strategy: hide the dirt.

So, by the time these projects are done, the house will be a little more secure and a lot more attractive. I think.

 

Funniest Customer Disservice Eff-You Remark EVER!

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Okay, so today I’m wrestling with the pool—its filter pressure is running twice as high as normal, so I’ve backwashed it and now go to prime the pump. This is easy: just turn it on with the pressure release valve open to drain off the air; then when the pump is primed, shut the valve and go on about your business.

Well. No.

Turn the breaker switch to “on” and the system kicks in and looks like it’s gonna run OK…for about 10 seconds and then holeee gawd it’s suckin’ air out of the skimmer basket. A great water tornado has formed in the skimmer and it’s pumping air into the system. Shut it off. Cuss.

This is the second time that’s happened in a week. Last time after I fiddled around with it, I got it to stop. But don’t know what on earth I did to make it stop. This time no amount of fiddling makes the phenomenon quit. So…it’s on the phone to schedule a visit from Leslie’s repair service.

Since it’s been less than 90 days since there were out here expensively repairing the leaking pump, and since this started after the guy adjusted the drain valve (thereby changing the force with which water is sucked in through the skimmer basket weir), I figure they should give me a break.

No. Base price is $110. That’s just to show up out here.

Soonest the guy will schedule a trip is next Friday. That is a LONG time for a pool to just sit, in 100-degree weather. The upshot will be an algae infestation. The pump needs to circulate to keep the chemicals in balance and moving around.

So, I ask if he has any recommendation for how I can keep the pool from turning green while we’re waiting for a Leslie’s technician to show up. Get this…

Oh, this is too, toooo good!

He says (no joke!), “What you can do is add the chemicals and then sit on the edge of the pool and kick your legs in the water real hard!”

😆 🙄 😆

LOLOLOLOL!  I don’t think I’ve ever heard a funnier eff-you from a customer disservice representative, not in many years of trolling punch-a-button systems and putting up with rude, stupid, and uncaring reps. This guy truly takes the cake.

Tomorrow I’m calling Swimming Pool Repair and Service to set up a business relationship with them. When last heard from, they were still a locally owned company. They don’t answer the phones on Mother’s Day. But that may simply mean they don’t hire overseas and cross-country slaves.

Meanwhile, I tried to reach Phil, the manager of the Leslie’s shop nearest my house. He’s worked for that illustrious corporation forever, and before taking on a store job he was a field technician. He does know how to make a pool work. Interestingly, the guy who answered the phone said “Phil no longer works here.”

Telling.

Anyway, so I ask the new guy if he thinks he could give me a clue as to what might be the issue. He thinks backwashing drew the water level down too low. I say it’s only a quarter-inch below the middle grout line…not like it’s anywhere close to the weir. He thinks the pump could be drawing hard enough that it’s sucking so much water in through the weir that it’s pulling in air.

I adjust the drain valve, cutting the suction a little. He suggests filling the pool above the middle grout line (the “full” line, for those of us who are not pool aficionados) and then turning on the pump again. If it doesn’t suck air at that point, it means I should overfill the pool a bit to keep the thing from doing that.

This requires running the hose about 30 or 40 minutes at full blast.

A-n-n-n-d…yeah. Overfilling and fooling with the drain valve seems to have worked. Right now it’s running pretty well. Nice for swimming in, too: the water’s perfect!!

“Kick your legs.” Heeeeeeeeeeee!

Here Comes Another Big Expense

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Uhm...not your father's Buick

LOL! Sumer is y-cumin’ in…and with it, the usual array of stupefyingly pricey unplanned expenses. You’ll recall what happened last summer: the minute the power bills started their climb toward the stratosphere, every damnfool thing that could go wrong did go wrong and had to be fixed, from teeth to car.

This time it’s the toilet. The one in the roomier bathroom (this house has two alleged bathrooms, one of which is smaller than the master bedroom closet), the one I prefer to use, has finally given up the ghost. It’s never worked well, though it’s been better than most water-efficient toilets.

How something that has to be flushed three times every time you use it can be dubbed “water-efficient” beats me. But at least this model doesn’t have to be plunged every other time you use it.

Anyway. Satan and Proserpine installed a couple of mid-priced American Standards in this house. They have been OK, but I’ve missed the $300 Toto I put in the old house after I made the stupid mistake of replacing the 1970s toilets that actually worked with pretty but nonfunctional new models. That was shortly after the rules came in saying all toilets had to be “water-efficient.” One detail I’d missed out on was just what that implied: i.e., toilets simply stopped working. Finally, I found a plumber who would admit that he knew of a toilet that did not have to be plunged once or twice a day, but it was expensive. Three hundred bucks was as nothing compared to the annoyance factor of the things I’d installed.

If I’d had any sense, when I put the house on the market I would have removed that terlet, replaced it with another Home Depot special, and brought the thing with me to the new palace. Oh well. Hindsight is…heh!

Moving on. The newer toilets work pretty well. We put a pair of Kohlers in the downtown house, and they’ve been fine. So when the favorite throne in this house finally stopped working, I decided that instead of having Wonder-Plumber fix it (which he surely could do in short order), I would ask him to replace it, preferably with one of the elongated models instead of the dwarf-sized affair that’s in there.

Geez. Satan and Proserpine were both tall, big-boned people. Not fat, but tall and solidly built. These tiny little thrones must have really been really uncomfortable for them. One wonders, doesn’t one, why on earth people make the choices they do?

Anyway. I want a low-end Toto, which isn’t all that much more expensive than a functional version of other models. He thinks it’s ridiculous to spend that much on a toilet, and, he being a plumber, I expect he knows whereof he speaks. So he’s bringing a new, larger American Standard. Oooohhhkay. This had better be good, Mr. WonderPlumber! And I’d better not have take the damn thing apart and fix it every time I flush it, as I’ve had to do with th’deceased!

WhatEVER. By the time I finish paying him to acquire, deliver, and install that thing and haul the old piece of junk away, the bill no doubt will hover around $250 or $300. It’ll be worth it to have a non-annoying piece of hardware in there, one that actually functions. But…was there a reason this couldn’t have come to pass in February, when I had an extra $250 laying around?

Can’t wait to see what goes on the fritz next month.

🙂

Image: Delftware-style toilet. Evert Maijis. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands license.

2012 Baptized!

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w00t! It’s only the first 100-degree day here, and already the pool is warm enough to plunge!

Yay!

This morning while returning Harvey to the drink after an extended rest, watering plants, and generally puttering around, I happened to stick my feet in the pool.

Hm. Not too bad. Stepped in deep enough to get the hems of my cutoffs wet. Legs did not turn into blocks of ice. Amazing.

Threw off the clothes and jumped into the drink!

woooHOOOOO!

Deliciously, perfectly crisp against the hot sun on the skin! It is almost ideal.

😀

Of course, I forgot that the neighbors across the street can now see into my backyard from their front windows, in the absence of the devil-pod tree. So had to slink into the house.

Undeterred, I tried on one of the El Cheapo Costco T-shirts over the bottom part of an old Land’s End tankini. And…yes! It works! Tucked in, it works just like a swimsuit in the water. Pulled out, it looks like a tank top or coverup over a bathing suit. And with the AC set at 80 degrees in the house, a damp orange T-shirt keeps you feeling mighty cool while parked in front of a computer. And it’s SO much more comfortable than the hateful girdle of a woman’s swimsuit.

The pool is so gorgeous. It liked being emptied and refilled last November—the water is sparkling clean and clear. And boyoboy, did it ever like the assassination of the devil-pod tree.

Despite concerns that the Satanic tree’s last blast had killed Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner, he survived and now trundles around the bottom and up & down the walls for days without much attention. Overall the water can always use a little more acid, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. No algae is growing, no bushelsful of gunk collect on the bottom. Harvey needs a new tail…that is, new hoses. But otherwise the whole system is working magnificently.

Hopseed closeup
Detail of a hopseed bush

The hopseed bushes have taken hold and are beginning to put on new growth. My guess is that by next spring they’ll be tall enough to block the eye-rays of nosy passers-by. Meanwhile, because I started pouring more water in that part of the yard, the cat’s claw along the west wall has sprung to life. If that continues, in a couple of years it will do what the vines on the north wall have accomplished: piled up so much vegetative matter that they add a good three or four feet to the height of the wall. So. Soon there should be plenty of relatively benign vegetable screening between me and the neighbors and prowling burglars.

 

Feeling Short on Things to Be Thankful For?

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FirefighterOkay. Then sit there and be thankful for firefighters. Firepersons. Firemen and firewomen.

Today’s drama: instead of spending the afternoon reading real estate, I decided to spice up my life by trying to burn down the house.

Some days ago, M’hijito and I cooked up half a lifetime supply of chicken thighs for Cassie the Corgi by setting them over the lowest possible heat on the ’Cue. This causes a great deal of fat to render and drip down into the rendered-fat container beneath the metal thingies that emit smoke when hot grease drops on them, thereby faking real charcoal. And, as a bonus, whenever you cook chicken slowly over propane, you get gummy icky stuff sticking to the cast-iron grill grates. The stuff is not easy to scrub off said grates.

This can be dealt with in either of two ways:

a) the correct way (take the damn grill apart and CLEAN it!); or
b) the slacker’s way (turn the heat to “high” and let the damn grill self-clean).

Quite possibly the slacker’s way is not the desired way.

After tossing a little piece of defrosted steak on the grill by way of cooking up a large noon meal so’s I could have a light salad for dinner, I turned up the heat and closed the lid.

Bad move.

As Cassie and Charlie were begging food from the backyard table, as I was transporting about the sixth bite of food from the plate to my mouth and elbowing aside the adolescent golden retriever, I happened to smell a smell.

Smoke!

And we do mean smoke! Black, swirling clouds of smoke. Black. Smoke. Swirling.

The barbecue was on fire. And we do mean fire.

Flipped the burner handles to off, hollered at the dogs to follow me, and RAN through the house to the front door, grabbing the phone and hitting 9-1-1 on the fly.

“Get everyone outside the house,” said she. “Do not go back into the house!!!”

Man. Building that enclosed front courtyard was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done to this shack. The dogs were locked outside the house but still confined in a relatively safe place. I didn’t have to get back into the house to enter the garage, open the garage door, drive the Dog Chariot outside, and wrestle two excited animals into it. If I had to let them outside the gates, they could run off and still have a chance of coming back alive.

Fire-individuals (all male individuals, coincidentally) showed up forthwith.

A firefighter does not walk to the scene of a billowing propane fire. He runs. He runs while decked out with pounds of equipment and protective clothing that you and I probably couldn’t drag across the yard.

By the time the men got to the scene of the crime, the fire had more or less burnt itself out, thanks to my having shut off the burners. Barbecue was still hot enough to burn a man’s hand, but mercifully there was no danger of explosion and no danger of setting fire to north wall of the house. (How do we love block construction? Let us count the  poorly insulated ways). They turned off the propane tank (which I was afraid to touch) and pronounced the emergency over.

“Is the grill ruined?”

“We don’t think so.”

They suggested that I go so far as to, yes, clean it. Take it apart. Clean. It. Sounds extreme. But it could be well advised.

You know a firefighter?

Call him now. Tell him how much you love him.

Image: TSUGI, Japan (July 30, 2008) A Commander, Naval Forces Japan firefighter douses a fire on a dummy aircraft during the annual off-station mishap drill at Naval Support Facility Kamiseya. Emergency response and rescue teams were tasked with putting out a simulated fire, and rescuing two personnel from a plane crash scene. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Seaman Barry Riley (Released). Public domain.

NESTing the Thermostat

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Look at this extremely kewl thing my son gave me for Christmas! It’s called a “Nest.” It’s a thermostat that (allegedly) can learn your wants, desires, and real-world habits, can talk to your computer, can be spoken to through your  mobile devices, and on top of all that is decorative as all get-out.

So white-hot is the mob’s desire for this Objet that M’hijito, having ordered it in what he thought would be plenty of time for Christmas, only just received it from the manufacturer. Yes. A two-and-a-half-month backlog.

It really is very beautiful and very easy to operate. Instead of having to figure out and remember how to set a programmable thermostat using a manual that would make an engineer’s head hurt, you simply set it to the temperatures you would like at the times you ordinarily like to change the temps, spinning an outer ring much as we could do with old-fashioned, easy-to-work, now unavailable, round thermostats. A week or so of this and it will “learn” your preferences and adjust your climate control accordingly. You can set it to “away” to change inside temps to uncomfortable (but cheaper) levels when you’re at work or on vacation, and your manual settings can be “learned.”

And…it is very, very handsome.

If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. So…best not to ask. I could not believe my son spent that much on this thing. But having been gifted with it, I’m thrilled.

Now all we have to do is get it to work.

It looks easier to install than it is, especially in an old house with old wiring, the crumbling drywall hiding the ghosts of past air-conditioning units. M’hijito had no problem hooking it up to something and getting my MacBook and my iPad to talk to it. In the balminess that was Saturday afternoon, setting it at 68 degrees seemed to work just fine. It chugged along happily, and in fact I believe it was working fine.

Then I turned it off, because I prefer having it chilly for sleeping.

Sunday morning after the 4:00 a.m. hot flash wore off and the 62-degree ambience became apparent, I turned it back on and set it back to 68.

Three hours later it was still 62 in the house. The blower had been going nonstop, and what it was blowing was cold air. Apparently the Nest was actually running the house fan, not the heat pump. Or whatever heats in a heat pump.

For an extra $112, you can hire a technician in your area, certified to work on these things. So I got online and found not one, not two, but three of them who also appear in Angie’s List. All three have “A” ratings and rave reviews, which is something. Certainly not what I expected! Called the one with the largest number of customer reviews. Asked the dispatcher if she could tell, before I paid for someone to come traipsing over here, whether the thing was compatible with the new Goodman heat pump the insurance company had installed after the late great hailstorm. She said yes, sure it is. Asked if they had an Angie’s List coupon. She said yes, they sure do. Asked how much the job would be: $80.

So. Not good, but an improvement over a hundred and twelve bucks. And I think it just might be worth it. This thing is really, truly, extremely kewl. It is so kewl it’s Applesque.