My father-in-law and I are a far cry from Al Borland and Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor. As I have stated before, he is brilliant when it comes to home improvement projects. Any time we have run into a snag, he’s always been able to find the right solution.
A few days ago, I posted about the deck project. If you missed it, you can read that post here:
He came over Saturday afternoon and we got the remaining two posts up. Afterward, we had to trek off to Menards to get the rest of the deck boards. They still have our street tore up and Sam wasn’t sure he’d be able to get his trailer down the road, so he didn’t bring it with him. Instead, we took his truck to get our supplies.
He is always thinking ahead. Knowing that the deck boards were 12 feet long, he packed a battery operated circular saw. Once we got all the boards, we found a spot in the back of the parking lot and began cutting them in half so we could put them in the back of the truck.
Once we got back home, we began to lay the deck boards. For some reason, some of the tongues were not fitting into the grooves. They should just fit together like a puzzle piece.
We needed 45 deck boards. We went through and picked the best looking ones out of the ones they had there. Some were a little darker than the others, some seemed a little thinner than the others, but they are all the same part number.
When we start laying them in, some really had to be forced together. We were tapping them in with a 2×4 and a sledge hammer in order to get them to snap together. Some of the boards may have been bowed a bit, too. It was a lot more challenging than we expected. We did make headway, though.
We’re about half way there.
My father-in-law plans to put the remaining ones on and then trim the ends. He says it will be easy, and I trust him. He is having some surgery this week which will slow him down. He was talking about coming over this weekend to finish, but I told him there was no hurry. Sam and I were more worried about getting the support posts up. There are still boards leading to the door, so we can wait a little while.
I may attempt to lay a couple down, but I’m not sure I want to try without him there. I’m so grateful for his help on this!
So, my father-in-law and I are working on yet another project. This one, however, was not a planned project. And as per usual, once we started it, we found that we’ll be doing more than expected.
This time it is our side porch. Forgive the photo, but the only one I could find was one I took once the Christmas lights were up.
The above picture will serve as a “Before” picture, as I didn’t really take one.
So here is what happened. Sam and I have been discussing getting rid of the railing and just keeping the posts for some time. One day she was sitting on her bench rocker and I leaned over the railing and it broke away from the post. That wasn’t such a big deal because the railing was going away.
However, when the second post from the left in the above picture broke away from the porch itself, we knew we had a problem. It seems that the bottom of the post and the deck boards were dry rotting. With that little incident, I called my father-in-law.
We began to look at each of the posts and saw that some of the others had done the same thing. One of them, in all honesty, we can’t even believe that the roof hadn’t come down! We decided that were were going to do some wider posts and just fix the bad boards. But, as I have stated, nothing ever goes that smoothly for us.
Once we got rid of the railings, we went to work on the posts. The bad news was that they only had a few of the decking boards we needed. That was when my father-in-law suggested that we could probably get away with just replacing the bad boards and stain/paint the deck. We ripped out the bad boards and laid the new boards and ran into another issue.
The old boards are double boards (in the orange square). They have a groove down the middle (green arrow). The only deck boards we could get were single boards (in the blue square) and when you put them together, there is no groove. This led to about a one inch gap (circled in yellow). So it became obvious that we now will end up ripping up all of the old deck board and replace with new ones – at about 15 bucks a board!
With daylight fading, we were able to lay down the remaining deck board and we got up three of the five posts.
In all honesty, despite the work and cost involved, I think the deck is going to look really good. My father-in-law and I were talking and I can see a grey paint or dark stain for the deck itself and white paint for the posts. I am excited to see how this all turns out. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we run into no more issues ….
I’m hoping this is the last big project for quite awhile!
Well, the kitten woke me up about 3:30 this morning. He’s an early bird apparently. So I decided to take advantage of the kids still sleeping and I made a pot of coffee. I figured I’d read a bit.
I then remembered that today is Father’s Day. So I wanted to take a moment to wish all the dads reading this “Happy Father’s Day! Cheers to you!
I am blessed to still have my dad around. We are closer now than ever. There are a few blogs I have written about him and I will post links here for new readers:
Truth is, I could write a book about my dad (and one day I might!). I can always count on good conversations, memories and laughter when we chat. He sent me something recently that I am debating turning into a blog. He is an amazing father and I’m so lucky he is mine! Happy Father’s Day, Pop!
I also want to say Happy Father’s Day to my Father-in-law, Tony. I can’t begin to tell you how lucky I am that he is in my life. You have seen so many of the projects that I’ve completed here (the nook, grout and tile in the laundry room, building an entire new room for Ella, and countless others). I would have had to hire someone for all of those things without him. He’s another amazing dad.
I became a father 21 years ago. 5 years another son was born. 3 years ago, another blessing came with my first, and only, daughter. Finally, my third and final son arrived 20 months ago. Dante’, Dimitri, Ella and Andrew – four amazing kids – each with distinct and wonderful personalities. What an honor and privilege to be their father!
Parenting is the hardest job you will ever have. Throughout all the difficulties in life, this job is 24/7 and it is the most important! Rereading the following blog brought all of that home for me again:
Dante’ works today, so we’re planning on getting together tomorrow. We’re going to meet at a park and have a pizza picnic. The last time all four of my kids were together was around Christmas. I hope that I am able to get them all to sit still for a picture.
I’m starting to ramble, so I apologize. Even though today is supposed to be all about “me” (as “dad”), I am pausing to remember all of the great men, fathers and father-like figures who played a role in preparing me for that role as “Father.” More importantly, I am thinking about the four special children who officially gave me that role!
Over the weekend, I finished up some of the projects on my “To Do” list.
One of them, I’ve blogged about a couple times. I feel like the nook is officially complete. I wanted to get a cushion for the bench, but the size was odd. I really thought that I was going to have to get one custom made, or by the foam and fabric and make my own. However, I found a solution I would have never thought of!
I had to go to Menard’s to get some mulch for the front yard. As we walked through the store, I passed the pet area. I happened to see a dog bed that said 42 inches. I knew that was the length of the bench (and nook itself) because I measured to mark off where the coat hooks were going to go. I put the only one they had in the cart and walked over to where the tape measures were. I knew the bench was 42 x 26, so I wondered if I’d get lucky. I did!
I picked up a decorative pillow and it is now officially complete!
The second project was fixing the swing set for the kids. The main beam on the set that was given to us was a bit rotted out, so my father-in-law told me what to get from the store to fix it.
He came over on Memorial Day and we swapped out the old hardware, drilled new holes, and mounted the new beam. After that, we put up a toddler swing, a regular swing, and a net swing for the kids. At some point I need to paint the bean, but there are a few other boards that need to be replaced first. The kids were thrilled to be able to play on it, though.
As a bonus, my mother-in-law brought burgers and dogs to grill for dinner.
The last, and easiest, project was a small (but important) one. A year or so ago, I mounted a flag on one of the trees in the front yard. The weather got the best of the aluminum pole and it broke and fell off the mount. The flag itself was tattered a bit, too. It was time for a new one. Thankfully, the mount is still in good shape and I was able to fly the Stars and Stripes proudly for Memorial Day.
The “Closet to Nook” project is underway. I neglected to get a true “before” picture, but I did get some pictures of the early stages.
The first thing my father-in-law and I did was rip out all of the shelving and such that was in the closet.
The above is a look directly into the closet. There was a shelf up top that had the bar to hang coats and such on hanging below it. That stuff came off the wall fairly easily. If you look in and to the right you can see where there were other shelves.
The shelves that were in there were hand made and thankfully didn’t take too much to get out. My father-in-law and I started framing things up as you can see above. Originally, my wife just wanted us to put a wall up and cover the hole back there. (More on that in a minute.)
The frame above the floor is where the bench seat is going to go. We added a couple diagonal beams (like a V) to stabilize the bench (especially for when fat guys like me sit on it!). Now let’s talk about Project Problem #1.
Because this closet was not square really anywhere, we had to make it square. Lots of adjustments and such. We got it as close as we could and started framing and putting every thing together. We were checking to make sure everything was level and there were plenty of screws and nails.
Once the bench frame was ready, we laid the premeasured bench board on top. To our surprise, it was about 2 inches short. We both stood there and looked at it. My father-in-law says, “You know what we forgot to do? We forgot to subtract that extra inch and a half off for that beam in the back.” So I asked him what we needed to do now. He says, “Well, we’re gonna unscrew all of those boards and trim them up and put it all back together again.”
Now, it took about an hour and a half to cut, frame, measure, and screw everything into place. The last thing I wanted to do was undo all that we had done. So I asked, “What if we get a bigger board?” He says, “Well, we could do that. We’d have to cut it to size, though.” Well, I spent the extra money on a new piece of wood, because it was the easy (and granted, more expensive) way out. Once it was cut, it fit perfectly!
The second day of work, we took all the OSB wood and cut them in slats. We’re going to paint the walls, so it won’t look like it does in the picture. My father-in-law asked me again about “walling up” the side of the closet where the shelves were. I asked Sam and she said that she didn’t want shelves and that we were going to put a wall up.
While my father-in-law and I were outside cutting the OSB into slats, Sam and her mom got to talking. (Sam’s mom was there watching the kids while we worked.) We came back in and we found out that they had been discussing the possibility of a cabinet in that wall. So her dad says, “We could do that if you want.” He explained that we had just about enough room to maybe fit one and place OSB above and below it. This, of course, meant another trip the the store.
My father-in-law is one of the brightest guys I know. In every project we have tackled, he has always been able to find a solution. So as we are walking in the store, he says we can do a cabinet or maybe a closet organizer might work. We looked at both and decided the cabinet would be the easiest way to get what we wanted. So we walked back to the cabinet area and spoke with someone.
We knew that we had 54 inches to play with for height. A 40 inch tall cabinet would work. We had 17 inches as our width. The cabinet we wanted was 18 inches wide. No worries, though, because my father-in-law told me we had an inch of wood that we could just trim out and make it fit. So we ask the gal to get us all we need. She runs all the numbers and says it would be about $160 for everything. Perfect. “Oh, wait a minute,” she says.
They didn’t have that cabinet in stock and would have to order it. My father-in-law looked at me and said, “Well, that won’t work.” So we asked what cabinet that size they did have in stock. She tapped a bunch of stuff back in the computer and found one. The door was different and it was about $40 more. “Ring it up!” I said. By this time I was so ready to be done with this!
I had no problem paying extra. It is for my wife and I want it to look good for her! So we brought the cabinet home and built something for it to slide in and sit on and mounted it. I was impressed with how easy this portion of the project went.
So all that we really have to do now is finish putting the OSB up along the side of the cabinet and up on the top of it. Then we have some trim we need to work on closer to the ceiling. We also are going to run a router over the edge of the bench seat edge. After that, we should ne ready to paint.
I can tell you that I would NEVER tackle anything like this by myself. My father-in-law has been such an amazing mentor to me when it comes to this stuff. His tape measure got caught on a board and got bent up while working on the project. When we went to the store to get the cabinet he grabbed a new one. When we got the the register, he picked it up and was going to pay for it himself. I grabbed it back from him and told him that I would get it! With all the things he has helped me with, I certainly wasn’t about to let him pay for a new tape measure!
I have been informed by my Project Manager (my wife) that I am tackling a new home improvement project this week. Thankfully, I will once again be under the direction and guidance of the Site Supervisor (my father-in-law). All joking aside, I couldn’t really do anything without his help! He helped me redo our laundry room (with tile and grout), he helped me transform our dining room into Ella’s room, he as helped me with plumbing issues more than once and now he will be working with me on the new project.
In our living room, we have a closet. If you don’t count the linen closet in the bathroom, it is our only closet. Currently, it stores our winter coats and some other things that are hanging in there. It also has shelves off the the side and up top which are holding tools, various boxes, and other things. My wife wants a nook with a bench – so that is what we are going to give her.
The space itself isn’t too big, but I know we need to tear a bunch of stuff out of it to get what my wife is thinking. I am not 100% sure what she is looking to have, but I know she wants a bench, some coat hooks, and basket/bins to go under the bench.
It could look something like the above picture, but this one seems really in the open.
It could look like the picture above, but again, I think this is more complicated than she wants. If I had to guess, I would say that she wants something more like this:
This is deep, like our closet. The coat hooks are perfect for what she was saying. I’m not sure how she wants the baskets under the bench, but it is probably a bit more simpler than the above picture.
It looks like we will get supplies, and do demo of shelves and such on Sunday and finish it up by Monday. I’ll keep you posted.
The above picture is of a grave marker designed by a grieving father in Utah. This photo has made the rounds on the internet for many years. Captions vary, but they all seem to include that the father created it to represent his paralyzed son reaching up to the sky from the wheelchair he spent his life in. It is said to represent that his son is finally “free from his earthly burdens.”
This image popped into my mind this afternoon as I walked into the church where my 10 year old sister-in-law’s viewing took place. My wife and her family were there before I arrived. I took Ella and Andrew to the baby sitter and joined them afterwards.
When I walked in, a video played with photos from Grace’s life. Her smile ever present. Instrumental Disney songs played along with the video. Grace loved Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
There was a beautiful blanket with her picture on it and “Always in Our Hearts” written in a Disney font off to the side. Surrounding her was a stuffed Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto, and Goofy.
I once again remembered the image above. Grace is free from her earthly burdens. No more wheelchair, no more feeding tube, no more pain, and no more suffering. I personally believe, based on my knowledge of Scripture, that she is feeling a joy that none of us has ever experienced. She is walking, talking, and singing. What a wonderful thing to know.
As with any death, it is hardest on those who are left behind. There is a void. There is the adjustment that has to be made to their being absent from our lives. There is the grieving process that has to happen for each one of us (and every one will grieve differently). It will not be easy.
My heart sank as I read a Facebook post from my father-in-law the other day: “This morning was so different. Normally Pam starts Grace’s breathing treatments while I make my coffee, then Pam gets Grace’s meds made up while I finish her treatments. Drinking coffee with no Grace brought tears to my eyes then I remembered her body has been restored and she doesn’t need treatments anymore that made me smile. Pam and I are trying to adjust to our new normal. Thanks for all the phone calls texts visits and prayers.”
The “new normal” isn’t normal at all. There will be many adjustments and life goes on for the rest of us and there will be many emotional hurdles to get over in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.
Grace’s memorial service will take place at noon Wednesday. I would appreciate your prayers and positive thoughts for my wife, her parents, and our family. It is going to be a very hard day.
It wasn’t too long ago that my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and I worked on the brakes on my car. Recently, I began to hear grinding on one of the back brakes. It was just the one and there was no indication that the pads were going before it began grinding.
If you are familiar with the brake pads, they have a little indicator thingy that when your pads are getting low, they begin to squeal a bit. My brakes never did that. The one side just started grinding – and bad.
The day I noticed it, I pulled into work and could see that the pad was tearing a huge gouge right in the middle of the rotor. The other side was fine. I couldn’t really figure out what happened. My brother-in-law and father-in-law thought I might have gotten a set of bad pads and one cracked. By the time we got a day to work on them, that pad had tore up the entire rotor on that side.
Mine was worse than this!!
They had gotten so loud that any time I stopped at a drive thru for coffee, the workers looked at me and the back end of my car as I drove up to the window. As I drove away, the watched as well, probably hoping to see sparks flying from the back wheels or something!
After calling around and getting estimates, I picked up the parts and we were blessed to have a nice day to work on them. My brother-in-law said it would be a “piece of cake” and the whole job should take less than an hour. We figured we’d jack up both ends at the same time and he could do one side while I did the other. Our time saving idea really didn’t work.
We forgot about one of the bolts that happened to be in a really tight place on the brake shoe. The nut sits in such a way that you can barely get a wrench in there to loosen or tighten it. The longest part of the job was getting to that particular nut. We had to painstakingly turn this nut little by little (maybe 1/8 turns at a time) until we could loosen them by hand. What a pain!
Once we got the old rotor off and the pads on back on the shoe, everything came together quickly. That is until we had to tighten that one bolt/nut again. I swear that was tedious! It took so much time.
Finally we got everything set and we put the tires back on. My father-in-law has a socket for the lug nuts. He also has a breaker bar which you put over the socket to tighten or loosen the nuts. Basically, the end of the socket goes into the hollow tube of the breaker bar. His is square, but this gives you a sort of idea as to what I am talking about:
So the tire is now on the ground and I have this socket in the pipe. I am tugging on all the lug nuts to be sure they are secure. I must not have had the socket one one of the nuts, because as I tugged on it, the bar slipped off the socket and because I was bent over, the thing came up and conked me on the forehead! The only thing missing was the “pipe konk” sound effect used in a Three Stooges film! I saw stars for a few, but recovered quickly.
The goose egg had gone down a lot by the time I took a picture of it. You can still see it and it still hurts like a bugger!!
I’m happy to say that despite the comedy interlude, the brakes are working fine. Thanks to my father-in-law and brother-in-law for their help once again!
I am not a handyman. I’m sure that I have mentioned this fact many times. So when my wife came to me and said she was worried about the front porch, we both knew who to call.
Our front porch has felt “soft” for some time. Sam (and I) were worried that our mail carrier would take a step on it and fall through! My father-in-law has helped us on numerous projects. Sam called him and he came over to assess the situation.
The one thing we were not clear on is whether or not there was anything below the deck boards. As we stood there wondering, it was decided that the fix it project would take place the following day. So, without thinking about it anymore, he grabbed a hammer and started to pull out the deck boards.
We were relieved to see that there was a cement porch under the boards. At least we knew our mail carrier was gonna be ok! The boards were literally falling apart as we pulled them.
My father-in-law took some measurements and began to do some figuring. He guessed that we’d need about 10-12 deck boards and we’d be able to get the job done in about 4-5 hours. So Monday night, Sam and I headed to Lowes and grabbed the boards, deck screws, and a few things for pumpkins for the kids.
Tuesday morning, we took the railings off, ripped up the old boards and began measure for the new ones. I’m always in awe of the little things my father-in-law does that I would never think of. For example, the first thing he did was measure and mark the center. I am sure I wouldn’t have done that. He knew exactly where the first boards were going to go and how we were going to attack the rest of the project.
As we were cutting and setting boards, my father-in-law said, “I’m not sure we got enough boards.” This freaked me out. He is always right on with measurements. He reminded me that we had measured thinking we were going to lay boards a certain way, but we opted to lay them a little different.
Thankfully, the main walkway area of the porch were all full length boards. For the outer parts, we were able to take the boards we had and stagger them a bit. Once we butted the pieces together, you really can’t even tell. Plus, Sam and I will eventually paint the porch and those seams will be even harder to see. So it all worked out and the only extra money we had to spend was on a few bolts for the railings which needed to be a tad longer.
If you look close at the outer boards, you can see where we butted boards together. I think it looks great! I was actually pretty impressed with just how much better it looks. It also was a fairly quick job once we started. Instead of 4-5 hours, we were finished in just under 3 hours.
If I didn’t have my father-in-law’s help, I am sure that the porch would be uneven, cracked, and a disaster that looked like I hired these guys:
Instead, it looks amazing! As I stood on it yesterday, I was impressed at just how study it felt. I’m sure the mail carrier will feel a lot safer, too!
Friday night I was at work and I got a text from my wife. It went something like this:
Sam: So there’s a leak in the shower.
Me: It’s probably the shower head. That’s an easy fix. I’ll look at it when I get home.
Sam: It’s not the shower head, it is leaking by the faucet handle.
At this point, I did what any guy would do – I called an expert – my father-in-law.
I’m not stupid. I know that if I had tried to do this on my own it would have been something straight out of a Three Stooges movie!
In texting my father-in-law, we thought this might be a couple hour job. He joked that the longest it would take would be a couple days.
He came over, as he always does, with a bag of tools and gadgets anticipating what needed to be done. Once in the house, he assessed the situation. He knew that there was an access panel behind the faucet in our bedroom. So the first thing we had to do was look inside that panel.
The panel was held in place by a simple nail. When the room was painted, the panel was painted over and so was the nail. I grabbed a butter knife and began to pry at the panel. It opened and my father-in-law reached in looking for the shut off knobs. We couldn’t find them. In all seriousness, he says, “We’re gonna have to cut the wall.”
We grabbed one of those box cutter razor things (my description of this tool in itself should be enough to give you a picture of my handyman skills!), and I began to cut a hole about where he told me to cut. Once we pulled that piece of wall off, we reached in again. “Nope, we need to go higher.” So I cut again.
We finally can see the place where the valve is. The shower enclosure is right up against the pipes and a bear to get to. They are copper, so my father-in-law says that we are going to put in new pipe, and shut offs.
As I look at the above picture, I wonder just how any expected any repairs to ever get done with that access panel so low! All we could see when we opened it was the two pipes!
After a few trips back and forth to the hardware store to get what we needed, we basically got things back up and together. We certainly made quite a mess, though.
Once things were ready, he went downstairs to turn the water back on. I wondered why he didn’t send me down there, but then figured he probably wanted me to get drenched if things weren’t right. Ha ha! The water pressure returned to the house and the shut offs to the shower were off. We checked it and there were no leaks. Now we could work on the actual faucet and shower head.
Getting the faucet and the valve lined up with the pipes was a bit of a challenge. Any time I have ever had to trim a pipe to make something fit, I almost always cut it too short. (One time I was putting in a laundry tub in our basement and I cut the pipe so short, I wound up putting bricks under all four legs to level it off!) I was glad to let my father-in-law do it. He got them exactly were they needed to be.
It looked like it would be smooth sailing from here on out, but naturally, there was one more bump in the road. For some reason, we couldn’t figure out why the handle was so loose every time we put it together. The instructions were worthless. I was trying to put it together with this silly little allen screw. It was easier to get to it with the handle turned up. Every time I did that, it was loose.
Both of us must have looked at that instruction manual for 30 minutes apiece. I noticed that the picture had them tightening it with the handle down and from the bottom. I guess I was afraid to lose this tiny screw down the shower drain, so I kept trying it from the top. Once I attempted it from the bottom it snugged right up and we were done with it. It still doesn’t make sense, but that is what it took.
Thankfully, the shower head went on with no problem whatsoever! We turned the shut off valves on and turned on the shower. Ta da! No leaks and everything was working. And so ended another project I would never been able to do without the help of Sam’s dad. Thanks, for your help, Tony!!
For the record, I am a bit jealous that my father-in-law didn’t let me use the blowtorch.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 