Home Repairs

I have not posted recently but we have been very busy and some of the activities have been more exciting than we would prefer.

Home fixes.  As I mentioned in a previous post, there have been an unusually large number of things around the house this year that have needed repairs.  Some were just major nuisances, such as the need to replace the microwave and the washing machine.  More recently there were multiple problems with the sprinkler system.  However, some of the problems were bigger.

Garage.  One of the more major problems was the ceiling in the garage.  We went out one day and a piece of plasterboard on the ceiling had separated and was beginning to fall.  We quickly propped it up with a board to prevent it from falling completely and tried to nail it back into place, but that was not going to solve the problem long term.

Board (next to the garage door rail) wedged between the floor and the ceiling

We had known the ceiling was having problems for some time, but thought it was mostly cosmetic.  It now appeared it had gotten bad enough that we needed to do something sooner rather than later.

We called the construction company that had fixed our roof after the hail damage last spring (only finished late this spring).  Yes, they could fix it.  The plaster board on the ceiling would need to be replaced.  We also decided to get the various holes fixed in the walls and have everything painted.

All of that did not sound too bad, except for one issue:  What do we do with everything in the garage?  An awful lot of stuff had accumulated in the 37 years since we moved in.  We thought about a "Pod" in the driveway but there was apparently not enough vertical clearance to get it and the device used to move it down the alley.

After much googling we discovered that the containers rented by U-Haul (only 7' high) seemed like a possibility.  After talking to U-Haul in person, that was a go.  The containers would be too small to hold ladders and longer pieces of lumber (the containers were only 8' x 4.5'), but two of them would hold most of the other stuff in the garage.

Several days before the construction was to begin, U-Haul delivered two U-Boxes.  They came on a large flatbed truck.  The delivery person parked on Brazos at the end of the alley and brought each one in with a specially designed forklift.

U-Boxes in the driveway, actually after construction was completed.  I forgot to take a picture early on in the process.

Then it was a mad scramble over several days to get everything packed and loaded.  That was after we had already tried to throw out, recycle, or give away as much stuff as possible. 

No liquids were allowed inside the boxes, so we stacked buckets with paint, pesticides, and other goodies in the bathtub inside the house.  The mower and gasoline went onto the patio under a tarp.

It doesn't look all that impressive just looking at these pics, but it was a tremendous amount of work--mostly by the Frog-- to get all of this stuff moved.  The garage sure seemed a lot bigger with everything gone.

It looks awfully empty.  The board holding up the ceiling plasterboard is still in place.

Lots of holes in the walls and problems on the ceiling.  All the pegboard and the shelves came down eventually and were replaced.

After removing the pegboard, shelves, and misc hangers, removing wood trim along the floor and around the doors and windows, and patching the holes in the walls, the next step was removing the ceiling.

Ceiling now in pieces on the floor.  Gwen's yellow step stool, which I had forgotten about, fell from the attic.  I gifted that to one of the workers since he was finding it useful.

I did not do a very good job of documenting this project, but the crew got everything put back together in about five days.  The workers even helped us move some of the heavier items back into place since it nearly killed us moving them out. 


It doesn't seem like what we had done would make much difference, but it really does look a lot better.

I am still impressed with how easy the person from U-Haul was able to move the U-Boxes. The video below shows her retrieving the boxes after everything was finished.

Sick Cedar Elm .  With the garage back together and the multiple (albeit somewhat major) sprinkler problems fixed, we thought we were finished with major problems for awhile.  We were wrong.

Center trunk is dead.  Right trunk is beginning to lean precariously.

 
We knew that the center of the three trunks of one of the cedar elms never leafed out this spring and appeared dead.  More recently, one of the other trunks looked to be leaning badly.  We were afraid it would collapse totally, something that had happened to the multi-trunk cedar elm on the other side of the yard several years ago.

We called our arborist and he agreed the center trunk should be removed and the other two trunks could be stabilized by connecting a cable between them.  So that is what they ended up doing earlier this week.

 

Tree crew arrives...the low hanging branches are still visible over the mailbox and light pole on the left.

 First the center trunk came down.

Then up two of them went to lighten the load on the leaning part of the tree.

Up he goes

Unfortunately some of the good limbs had to be cut to lighten the load on the leaning trunk.

Then using a monster drill, they drilled holes in the two remaining trunks and installed a cable between them.

I can't imagine using this drill on the ground, let alone balanced high in a tree.

Preparing the cable

Cutting off excess cable after it is strung through the trunk.  Note the multiple ropes (using a fancy pulley system) higher up on the left that are providing temporary tension between the two remaining main trunks

By that time, they had quite the pile of branches.  It was quickly turned into sawdust with their super mulcher.

New electrical service.  I would like to think this is the end of excitement on the street for awhile, but it probably is not.  All of the utilities have been flagged in both the front and back because the electric company is running new electrical service.  In fact, you can see a yellow flag and some yellow marks in the street for our gas line in some of the tree removal pictures above. They started digging in yards across the street late this week and will probably get to our service in the alley next week.

Solid food again.  At least I am now able to start eating more solid foods after dental surgery several weeks ago.  I will post more about my food adventures, some of it using produce from the garden, in my next post.