Home again, home again

Jiggedy-jig, as they say.

If only my life were that simple.

My truck broke down last night while I was headed home from Massachusetts. I had just had some Popeye's fried chicken at the Kennebunk plaza and headed up the highway. I was on the phone with my friend Mike when what felt a lot like a blow-out on my front left tire happened. He was an absolute peach and talked me through it, I got over to the side of the road, put my hazards on and called AAA. After waiting through the required automated message hell for a couple of minutes, I got a nice lady whose first concern was that I was ok. That was really nice. Got out and checked the tire, only it was not flat. Not sure what it was - maybe a ball joint? Axle? Ty-rod? I don't know enough about vehicles to know what it was. I do know I couldn't drive it like that.

We worked out the details of where I was, where I wanted to go, and the fact that my aunt recently upgraded us to the premium membership (thank goddess!!!) which allows for 200 free miles of towing. Turns out I was just about 180 miles from home. It took about an hour and a half to find a flatbed driver willing to drive nearly 400 miles round trip on a Saturday night with a storm coming, but a nice guy named Chris from Grondin & Sons Towing out of Sanford showed up and treated me nice. He even took Route 3 out of Augusta to Belfast and then up to Ellsworth to shave miles off the trip. AAA covers 200 miles. Every mile after that costs three bucks. Ouch. I was all for saving miles.

So we got underway at around 11 p.m. and I called home from Ellsworth at around 2:30 a.m. to have my sweetie meet me at the auto mechanic's garage. I got home here at around 3:30 or 4 a.m. and went straight to bed. I was utterly exhausted. That whole simulated blow-out thing scared the hell out of me and was discouraging as well. I had spent the money from this job six times already in my head, and none of it had been to fix my truck. What a pain. I had bills paid, fuel oil purchased, and maybe a hotel room at the upcoming FFFlea in Providence. Now all of that hinges on how much the mechanic is going to take. Damn. Back behind the 8-ball again. Some days it seems I can't win for losing.

On the up side, I did finish the bathroom. But not without incident.

Remember how I complained that the old tile had been stuck to 3/8 inch drywall? Remember how I said it was inferior and a bad idea and the wonderboard stuff I was using was much better - it being a half inch thick and all? Well, the added thickness of my wonderboard and the new tile was just enough for the shower fixtures to not quite work.

Oh, the plumbing bits are fine. The screws and bolts and such are just about a quarter inch too short to reach what they're supposed to. Because I did it right. And there is no access panel in the back because the landlord paneled over it. That would have been easiest - just get in there and lean on the fittings enough to get me what I needed, but nooooooo. That would be too easy.

I ended up sweating an extension into the pipe that is the tub fill spigot thing to make that work, the shower head thing was ok (thank the goddesses!) but the knob control thing was an issue. I ended up leaving the pieces for the lady's son to assemble today when the hardware store opens and he can get some number 8 by 32 machine screws that are 2 1/4 inch long. The whole family is under strict orders to not use the shower until at least 8 p.m. tonight to allow the tiles and grout to do their thing. I expect I may get a phone call asking how exactly the thing goes together, and if I do I'll talk them through it. I hated leaving the job not quite done, but I am some kind of glad I was on the road last night and broke down under a medium-clear sky and a full moon as opposed to today with a howling snowstorm. Bleah.


So here are the pictures of the finished product. Note that I made a couple of little shelves with the leftover trim boards. These are to make up for the towel racks that got ripped out with the tiles. I am most pleased with the result. If the colors look odd, know that the tiles and wood trim are bright white, the tub, the accent stripe and the tiled ceiling are all sea-foam green. The new floor is an off-white pattern.

Crawlspace

What a beautiful day it was today: sunny and up near 70 degrees. There was no wind to speak of and everything is drying out nicely. Except for the north side of this cabin I've been working on. I put in a shower stall last week and the owners liked my work enough to hire me to put a screened in porch on the front of the little cabin.

I had to retro-design things because there is a false dormer over the front door, so I decided to drop the platform by about six inches and run a very shallow-pitched hip roof out from under the existing eaves. At this point, the plans are all still in my head. Not to worry, though. There is plenty of room up there to store them or to lay them out flat and turn them around.

So I have been working on the platform of the porch, framing up the 20 by 6 foot base and propping it up on blocks and odd scraps of wood pending its final attachment to the cabin. Now I should mention here that this is a summer rental cabin. It has no basement or even a pad - it is supported by blocks of concrete at the corners and in a couple of spots underneath. It is not insulated, and only lattice covers the rudimentary foundation. There are lots of leaves under the building, some spiders, and a handful of scrap boards and odd pieces of PVC pipe. In short, it's a cruddy little hole that never sees the sun and probably never entirely dries out.

The blocks are important to the story because I needed to mount the porch to something, and because I had to drop the platform six inches, I was left with nothing to nail to but a few concrete blocks (not great in the nailing department) and some spider webs (certainly no better). So, I bought some bits of metal at the hardware store the other day and brought them home to weld into reinforced brackets. I can now attach the brackets to the platform via some half-inch carriage bolts, and to the support beam/floor joist with some equally nasty half-inch lag screws. I welded six of these brackets and spaced them appropriately along the back plank and then set about to mounting the things to the underside of the cabin.

Not much maneuvering room under there. Certainly not for a plus-sized lesbian and her tools. Damn. I was under there five minutes and had soaked through my knees and elbows in mud, had fetched my head a nasty crack on a broken cement block, and dropped two washers and a nut in the leaves. It took some doing, but I got a mostly workable system under there, and I have a few little odds and ends to finish up tomorrow and then I can start laying the decking and building the walls.

But today was a muddy, dirty, cold, nasty adventure.

To be fair, I did spend enough time standing at the chop saw and walking around that I managed to get a sunburn on the back of my neck. It was warm enough as well for a few mosquitoes to venture out. I slapped a few but did not get bitten. This too shall pass.

In another vein, I am getting disgusted with vehicles. We have three, but not one of them has a valid sticker. And today, on my way to work on this cabin, a golf-ball sized rock spun out of the top of a dump truck and smashed into my windshield directly in my line of vision. It looks like a fake, it is so perfect. Except I got a lap full of glass shards. I had to hold Quinn very still on her side of the seat (she was pretty freaked out) so she wouldn't get into the sharp stuff. Glass guy says it will cost $225 to fix. Add that to the muffler and tailpipe, the leaf springs, shocks, struts, front brake job and the rest, it's going to eat up almost every penny from this job. It is depressing. Some days it feels like I make a few steps forward only to get kicked back six more. Damn.

Quinn and I were ok, though, so that's a good thing.