Why so quiet?

I haven’t been writing so much lately because I’ve been preoccupied. There are just too many things to do and not enough time or energy to get the all done.

Of course primary among these is the continuing search for work. Much as I might like to live a life of leisure it’s just not in the cards at the moment. My pocketbook cries out in pain and continually urges me back to the workaday world.

However, these are tough times and finding another gig isn’t the easiest thing with so many people out of work. That’s not an excuse as much as a statement of fact. If you have to find work, you find it. Don’t complain because it just keeps you from accomplishing what needs to be done.

I should be putting more time into the search but sending out materials blindly is futile and the past experience has proved more fruitful ground lies within the network I’ve built up over the course of my career so I just keep making the rounds on that front.

In the meantime, there are a few more pressing things in the neighborhood needing to be addressed. The weather turned a few weeks back and the nights have gotten particularly cold. No biggie really and certainly not as if we are deep in the heart of winter but time for the heat to be turned on once again.

When you own a home, you view heating season as a necessary evil. Another expense (heating) but something you can’t really avoid.

Last year, just before the season started, I finally took the plunge and replaced my furnace. I couldn’t avoid it and though I was loathe to part with the money, the desire to keep warm won out.

It took the guys who installed it a bunch of tries to get everything right - they were here three, maybe four times before I could say things were in working order but even then I wasn’t entirely happy.

I got a deal thankfully due to a relative who owns a plumbing company but I would rather it hadn’t taken his guys so many tries to get it right (I don’t want to cost him money in trying to help me out). The guy he sent was shortly let go soon after and I could understand why.

After he finished getting everything installed, my utility room became a crazy quilt of wiring. It was just the job the guy did and while it bothered me a great deal, I certainly wasn’t going to do anything about it until the heating season was over.

Then just as the heating season was coming to an end, the thumping noise I heard every time there was a strong wind culminated in the exhaust chimney on the roof getting knocked over. Not a big deal since I was turning the boiler off but, something that made the local building inspector leave his card in my door letting me know it was noticed and had to be fixed - no exhaust from furnace equates to carbon monoxide poisoning, a pretty serious thing.

Even though I have a carbon monoxide detector in the utility room there are some things you shouldn’t take a chance with.

I had turned the heat off though so it wasn’t something needing immediate attention and then I got a nice streak of work. The work lasted a few months and truthfully when the weekends rolled around I wasn’t quite up for crawling around on the roof. As the gig ended, I figured on having the latter part of the summer to do all those nagging jobs around the house I had left unattended because I would finally have the time and some better conditions to work in.

But, I had the scooter accident.

Crawling around on the roof became a non-starter with a broken leg and rib so more weeks passed. The cast came off in September and even after it was off (and to this day) I’m still working my way back to where I was before the accident happened.

Damn though, it’s been cold!

So I got up there a few weeks ago and got the piece down off the roof and finally took a look at it. It was old and unusual, I hadn’t seen anything like it before. I took it over to the aforementioned relative to take a look at and even he was awash in disbelief as he had never seen anything like it himself.

He opined I might be able to get another one custom fabricated but of course that would involve tracking down a place where they could do the work. All in all, it would be a lot more involved, complicated and expensive than I could want or imagine.

The one thing I do have right now those is time... time and tools.

I got about doing what I needed to do to get things running.

Another thing is this: when you do a project yourself (around the house) you really want to do a good job. I’ll even go one better, you want to do it perfectly because if you are going to go through the trouble of doing it yourself it’s just not worth it to do it and then have to call someone in to fix it. Why even make the attempt when you could have just called in someone to do it to being with?

I set about breaking out my books (thank you Time Life Home Improvement Library) and got busy.

First it was cutting the pipe down, removing the crimped and damaged portion. Then it was figuring out just what would need to get done on the roof and getting the supplies (shingles, flashing, nails, roofing cement). Next was making sure I had all the tools I would need to do it.

Before I did that though I rewired everything in the utility room – this took a few days but now everything there is artfully done, streamlined and in code. I reran metal conduit around (instead of over the top) of the boiler and used the existing conduit tubing to run wiring instead of taping it to copper pipe like the guy had done.

I finished that over the weekend.

The last few days have been spent up above. I imagine it’s quite the sight to see me scrambling around my roof. My neighbor came home at one point and commented on how very adventuresome I am.

This struck me as funny because he scuba dives, something I would never do but, he is afraid of heights. I don’t consider myself adventurous at all. I had a rope tied off to a tree on the opposite side from which I was working on so I couldn’t go over the edge and after three days (not full days, a few hours at a clip), I am done!

The edge of the roof there? That’s about a 20 ft. drop. Doesn’t sound like much but you don’t want to fall (especially not with a bum leg that is still recovering).

The shingles look really, really white but they’re just the normal asphalt gray. The big problem is taking pics with a camera phone, they just aren’t the greatest pics.

Am I happy with the job and how it came out?

 Not entirely, I’d say I’m maybe 85% with how it wound up.

Am I glad it’s done?

GOD Yes!

But best of all, I am now toasty warm!