garote | Entries tagged with house

When a massive avocado tree grows over your house, you are prime territory for a rat invasion.

What's amazing, really, is that it took eight years for them to invade. It was the pandemic that did it. People weren't out dropping food or stuffing the garbage cans around the lake, so there was a mass-migration of hungry rats out of public spaces and in towards housing.

Every avocado that fell in my back yard was a delicious rat lure. The tree itself was too vertical for them to climb, and a hostile terrain because squirrels lived up there, but eventually some of them learned they could climb the bay tree in my front yard, leap from there to an electrical wire, and walk along that to the corner of the house. From there they chewed an access hole and colonized my attic, where they could make nests away from the squirrels, who have been known to devour rat babies whenever they find them.

You may recall, I used to have a problem with squirrels in the attic space, but after a while of excluding them and trimming back the trees it became an inconvenient place for them to nest, and they stopped bothering me. But the rats couldn't use the tree, and they didn't mind the commute to the roof.

I was relatively fortunate: They never chewed their way down into the cabinets and pantry of the upstairs unit. They preferred to go running back out along the wire and feast on the avocados littering the yard.

The first thing I did was consult experts and call around. Out of eight different pest control companies I called, two got back to me.

The first inspector stood in the driveway and looked up at the hole, then shook his head.

He said, "If that hole is fresh, it could be just one rat trying to set up a good nesting area. But that only takes about 3 weeks. So if it's been longer you might have offspring in there already. Rats need to go outside and find water every night, so you're going to get a lot of traffic through there until the babies are grown up. And then, they won't leave... They'll just make more nests."

After this grim prognosis, the inspector told me he preferred to work with access holes near the ground, where he could crawl inside, or reach inside and place traps that could be anchored in place. So if a rat got caught, it couldn't drag itself away and die somewhere inaccessible. The stink of a decaying rat is atrocious and lasts for months. Since I was dealing with a hole way up on the side of a tall house, he said the most he would do is climb up there and shove poison inside. The poison makes rats very thirsty, sending them in search of water, so they're less likely to die in the walls.

The company typically offered a two-year guarantee against re-infestation, but he wouldn't for me, since he didn't like the idea of putting a ladder up against the house every time he had to come out and deal with another rat.

He apologized, and took off in his truck. No help there.

The second company was better. The inspector went to the top floor of the house and leaned out the window, getting a close look at the hole. There were no droppings along the tin-coated ledge, which was a good sign. He said the whole setup was too precarious for him to take on, but he did have some advice, in the form of a story.

"Back when I was just starting out in the pest control business, I got called out to a vineyard. They had a big problem with rats nesting in the top floor of the barn. The problem was, nobody could figure out how the rats got up there. It was a storage loft with no stairs, just this open space, and there was all this equipment below so you couldn't get a ladder there."

"I looked around and figured the only way they could make it was by going up along a beam, maybe eight feet away, and then jumping off the wall, doing this parkour move to bounce over to the ledge. So I climbed up there with a hammer and nailed a bunch of old-fashined rat traps along the wall. The owner was looking at me like I was an idiot. I could tell he wanted to ask me, 'you think rats can fly?' Well, no, but rats can jump. They can jump really far."

"So I nailed up four traps that way, and we came back in a couple days. All the traps were sprung. Two had dead rats hanging in 'em. I reset the traps and we kept coming back, and so did the rats. I caught at least a dozen more like that. It's not how I usually do it, and I'm too old to be climbing around on tall ladders now, but maybe you can try something similar."

I thanked him and we shook hands. Then I went out and bought some supplies.

A big box of ten old-fashioned heavy duty wooden rat traps. Touchy and dangerous to work with, but adaptable. Plus some stinky cheese and some peanut butter.

I drilled two pilot holes through each trap, then put deck screws partway in the holes. The traps went into a sack, along with the screwdriver and the bait, and then it was time to climb up there and attach them...

Some hard-won advice: Put on some disposable rubber gloves, and use them the entire time you handle the traps and apply the bait. Rats can smell even the smallest whiff of human contact, and will steer away from the source.

It was really not fun climbing up that ladder, and using both hands to screw traps onto a wall. I had to try a couple different arrangements, too.

I was really worried the squirrels would get fouled up in them, and then I'd have injured squirrels thrashing around and dying on the side of the house. The squirrels have been a consistent nuisance, but they have so much personality. I'd feel bad injuring them. I felt bad about killing rats too, honestly, but I couldn't let them keep tunneling into the roof and crapping in the ceiling over the tenants. They could also start chewing on the wiring and start a fire.

To my relief, the squirrels jumped well clear of the traps. They had zero interest in them.

It wasn't long before I started catching rats.

Some days I'd come out and both traps would be sprung with all the bait gone, and I'd have to climb up there to do a reset. Other days I would see no activity at all. For a while, birds would fly over and spring the traps, then eat the bait while perched nearby. I got worried I would kill birds instead of rats. Sadly, I did catch one, but the rest were fast enough.

I kept traps up there, rain or shine, for about a month. The tally was six dead rats, all adults.

It was very hard to know if I'd caught them all. I left the traps up there for another week and got nothing. I used my tree trimming stick to cut all the foliage off the top of the bay tree, and pulled down a bunch of vines. That seemed like enough, but then during the late winter rains, the tenants reported hearing the sound of rats chewing on wood inside the house again. So up the ladder I went, and caught four more rats.

Then, at long last, it was time for the painters to start. They had a carpenter on staff who repaired the hole in the roof and then hammered an aluminum plate over the area, which would discourage rat teeth the same way it discouraged squirrels. Things went quiet for a while, then the tenants reported hearing more rat teeth, on the far corner of the house. I climbed up there and looked inside the gutters, and saw another hole.

The painters had come and gone. This repair would have to wait for a roofer. In the meantime, I could at least discourage further colonization by making the commute longer. I cut more material off the top of the bay tree, and set some modern "enclosed" traps in the back yard at ground level. One more dead rat in those. Later on, the tenants reported seeing a rat in the driveway. They suspected it was hanging out in the storage nook under the stairs, so we cleaned up the foliage around that, and redistributed the enclosed traps.

Then one morning I came outside and found a single dazed rat wandering around in the bottom of the cement landing by my front door, apparently too weak or sick to escape. Mira was perched nearby, gazing at it warily.

I'd done enough death-dealing. I coaxed it into a bag and took it a few blocks over to a park and let it go.

Then the noise and activity stopped.

In summary, it took two entire years to get the rats out of the house, and there is still one entry point that needs fixing. But I count myself lucky. The damage could have been a lot worse, and the tenants were very tolerant and helpful through the entire ordeal.

Back in 2018, I was contemplating this, and wondering what to do:

So the first thing I did was look at whether I could paint the entire house myself, and the answer was yes. But I would have to rent scaffolding and have people come by to install it, and that scaffolding would need to sit there for a couple of months while I worked on this project full-time. I would also need to buy or rent specialized equipment for painting in bulk. A pressure washer, air compressor, industrial sprayers, et cetera. Then I would need the paint.

I would also need a table saw, and some lumber, and to learn enough carpentry skills to make repairs to the damaged wood I'd surely discover in the prep phase.

And because Oakland, I'd need to bring all this stuff back inside and store it every day, or it would sprout legs and walk off to the nearest encampment.

I reached the point where the list of "ways I could screw this up" grew so long that I couldn't take it seriously any more. I had to admit yet again:

So I called up painters, got estimates, got a schedule, and in October of 2020 someone came by to take color samples and talk about details.

A few weeks later, the work began. First there was the pressure washing, which revealed plenty of ugliness that would need repair from the on-staff carpenter.

Then there was the scraping and the filling, for days after that...

Which revealed new damage. Lots of dry-rot that had to be replaced in little sections.

Then it was several days of primer. More work at the tops of long ladders for these crazy guys.

And finally, it was time to bust out the paint, and the paint accessories.

And time to get rid of that stupid television dish from last century, since we're here.

It really was a lot more work than I could have handled. Four guys working full time with good skills were able to get the job done in less than two weeks, making far less disruption for myself and the tenants.

In the photo below on the left, you can see that damaged corner from the beginning, now repaired with a carefully cut sliver of wood inserted into the gap instead of a big chunk of wood filler, and primed and painted.

As part of the deal, I got aluminum weatherproofing added over the tops of the windows, to slow down the decay, and some other groovy repairs as well.

For a little extra I asked the painters to do some detail work on the gingerbread piece below the edge of the roof. The end result was pretty fancy!

So you're wondering: How much did all this cost, in Oakland moneys? Twenty-two thousand. Yes. In other parts of the country, that kind of money is 20% down for a mortgage that will get you an entire house and the property it sits on, at a reasonable interest rate.

But the thing is, my house is tall and hemmed in, and it's built to withstand earthquakes, and it's a few blocks from jobs that will pay almost 200 grand a year. All the numbers are weird. I often wish that they weren't.

This house was divided into two units before I bought it, but the previous owners decided to keep both units on the same set of utilities. One furnace, one water heater, one set of gas and water and power lines, serving the whole house. To treat this place as two distinct units, I need to be able to present two separate utility bills, at the very least for gas and electric. So, I called a few contractors, got a few quotes, and went with the one that seemed the most reasonable.

That was over a year ago. This project has taken well over a year and it's still not done.

One of the first things the contractors did when they started the project was cut a big slice in the wall of the utility room to locate the current gas line and provide a route for the new one.

That hole was there for months, and months. It was only sealed up recently.

Since that first day, they cut many other holes in the walls, throughout my living space.

You can imagine the fun of waking up every day to giant holes, instantly reminding you of how behind schedule a project is, due to delays from inspectors or the city or the utility company, and how you can do nothing about it but bug people over the phone.

It didn't matter which way my head was turned when I opened my eyes in the morning; I instantly saw a hole. The only difference was, if I was looking up I saw ductwork in the hole, if I was looking right I saw a gas line, and if I was looking left I could see through a hole into the bathroom -- and into a hole in the bathroom showing electrical lines and more ductwork.

At first I kept everything packed away in the garage, thinking that the holes would be sealed up in a week or so. Eventually I started unpacking my things a little at a time and carrying on with life around the holes.

Looking back I'm not really sure what happened; why it took this long. It was an accumulation of smaller delays I think.

The city:

Brought out an inspector (5 weeks delay for the appointment) who declared I would need another gas line from the street -- a cost of at least 15 grand.

Sent out another inspector to do an energy evaluation of the house, when I insisted that I was splitting my existing gas usage, not adding anything new, and therefore didn't need another line (another 4 weeks delay for that appointment).

Sent an electrical inspector (4 weeks delay) who said I needed another electrical line from the pole, and I needed to cut back a tree before they would install it.

Sent a guy to tee-off the gas line (4 week delay).

Sent a guy to install the electric meter and evaluate the work the electricians did (4 week delay).

Had another team come by with pole climbing gear to run the electric line and hook it up (5 week delay).

Sent a team of two people to install the second gas meter and connect it to the lines (7 week delay).

Insisted on another inspection for energy consumption, and declared that the new water heater they'd approved earlier was actually not approved, requiring me to swap it out (9 week delay).

So the city was responsible for the lion's share of the delay I think. But the contractors contributed as well. Every time I needed to have the contractors come out, it had to be at least two weeks in advance, and there were endless re-schedulings on top of that.

Different groups of contractors had to come out separate times for:

The initial quote.
An inspection by the plumber for the quote.
Initial demolition to locate things in the walls.
Consultation with an HVAC contractor.
Co-inspection with the city gas utility.
Consultation with the electrician while the upstairs tenants were out.
Installing a second junction box and circuit breaker panel.
Adding additional gas line routing.
Re-routing all the hot and cold water piping for the sinks, bathtub, and water heater.
Installing a water heater.
Taking out and hauling away the old furnace, and installing the first new one.
Installing the second new one, and ventilation piping for both.
Doing a pressure test on the gas lines and hooking up the furnaces.
Redoing some of the wiring.
Redoing the ventilation piping for the furnace because it was causing problems.
Co-inspection with the city electric utility (where he claimed I would need a different water heater).
Removing the first new water heater and installing a different new water heater.
Consultation with another contractor to install some insulation.
Actually installing the insulation.
Consultation with another contractor to replace drywall.
Installing half the drywall.
Installing the other half of the drywall.
Texturing the drywall.

In addition, the main contractor had to be onsite for most of the inspections done by the city. It was a lot of time and work, and it cost me well over 30 grand. At least it's work that clearly improves the value of the house.

So am I done? Nope! I still need to paint a few of the walls.

Here's a memory from the process: Installing new heat piping, while all of my stuff is heaped against one wall of the garage.

Here's another favorite: Some of the spaghetti piping required to feed water from the right heater into the right pipes.

In the end, I can't tell if it was really worth it. I'm hoping to keep this house for a long time, and that means the increase in resale value is not what matters -- it's the ability to divide out the cost of the gas and electricity and pass it to the tenants. According to the bills I've been paying, and assuming I don't alter the rent to compensate, it will take over 15 years for those savings to pay for this work. And that's just the break-even point.

When I started this I thought, "the sooner I get this done, the sooner I can start paying it off." That was sound reasoning. Doing it now is better than waiting 15 years and then doing it to raise the resale value. Am I glad I did it? I don't know. I think this project damaged my enthusiasm for working on the house. The sense of helplessness in the face of delay, haunting me for such a long time, was not fun. Waking up to holes in the walls every day was not fun.

Nevertheless, I am grateful all the time that I have this house. Living in it has saved me an incredible amount of money in rent, even as the house itself has devoured an equivalent amount of money in maintenance and upgrades and refinancing. I'm just about at the break-even point now, and I feel a lot more capable with all forms of minor maintenance, and dealing with the parade of issues that can come up in the role of a landlord. That experience is great.

The next big project: Repainting the entire outside of the house. But maybe I need a vacation before I take that on...

Buying a house is not rainbows and dollar signs and peace and quiet, at least at first, and not for quite a while afterwards. My place will never enter that fabulous state of "the way I want it".

Instead, as I knock things off the to-do list and add new things on, I've gotten the feel for the house as a continuum. There are some days when I just enjoy it as-is, in the ways I currently can, and I go, "damn, I am so glad I finally have a house; why did I wait so long and what the hell was my problem?"

And then there are other times when I look around and everything my eye falls upon is an unfinished project, crying out for time or money that I've been spending on other things, and I go, "why don't I just unload this stupid place and go rent a tiny apartment downtown, and use the whole city as my living room?" ... It's tempting. I did live that way for a while.

What tips the balance between these attitudes is one thing: Is the house a financial gain, or a financial loss?

Well, so far, if I ignore appreciation that would only matter if I sold the place, I'd say the house is definitely not a financial gain.

"How can that be?" you ask. "You've been living rent-free for, like, four years, and renting out the upper half besides!"

Two words, my friends. Repairs and improvements.

Here's the situation: The entire upstairs rent only covers the mortgage and half of the property taxes. That is a stone cold fact. If you've never owned a house before, you'd say, "well there you go, you're winning big time, because you're staying downstairs for free!" It's true, it would cost well over two grand a month to have the space I do in this location. But take that two grand I'm saving, toss some to the tax man, and some more to the utility companies to pay for the consumption upstairs, and I'm actually saving one grand every month, not two. Still a profit, right?

Okay, let's play it that way. A grand a month, for four years, is 48 grand. Guess how much I put down, for the loan to purchase this house? About 40 grand. Then I was paying mortgage insurance for almost a year, and every time I renegotiated my loan it cost about 3 grand. So just on this loan crap, I'm still down by almost $20,000.

That's not a bad place, really. In another couple of years I could break even on that. Except for repairs and improvements.

To summarize: Tree trimming, landscaping, fence repair, garage door repair, roof repair, sewer line repair, sink and garbage disposal repair, washer and dryer repair, new carpet, interior paint, plus a bunch of odds an ends: 18 thousand dollars so far. I'm not down by 20 grand, I'm down by almost 40.

And then there's the fact that the house needs exterior paint some time in the next year:

That's going to run at least 15 grand, likely more. And then there's the utility split.

The utility split is an epic thing that demands its own post. The relevant thing to say now is, whoooah, it's freaking EXPENSIVE. The project is still underway, and when it's done it will cost me close to 30 grand. So now we move from 40 thousand, to over 80 thousand in the hole. Now we're looking at about six more years before I break even, assuming there are no additional costs during that time.

Don't get me wrong ... I'm glad I bought this place. Working on it has been an adventure, and it will eventually turn a profit, as long as some disaster doesn't happen. But in the present it's kind of a cash hog, and the only way I've been able to keep it ship-shape is by shoveling money into it from my job.

It feels strange, looking over these numbers and comparing them to the math that I used to do when I was renting. I used to think all my money problems would be over if I just stopped sending rent checks. There is also a common belief where I live, that any person who can be a landlord is automatically living high on the hog. Well, maybe if you were already rich and didn't need to take out a monstrous loan, perhaps! But then there's the rest of us...

There's always a "rest of us" I guess. People doing better, and people doing worse. ... And there's always the bank, right on top, collecting interest.

Being able to eventually sell this house is a good thing. That means I have something that approximates a nest egg, or even part of a retirement. There is also some flexibility in the present. If I move out of the lower half, I can use the leftover 1 grand a month to help pay my rent somewhere else. I'll still be 80k in the red historically speaking, but that cash flow does at least give me options.

That leads to the question: What should I do? I don't know. I've had my head down, tinkering with this house for a long time. I really should think about it.

Over this last winter, the fence around three sides of my house took a huge beating from the wind and rain. First the endless rain rotted the posts, then the wind shoved them over.

The previous owners of this place made some wonderful decisions about the layout, and some nice aesthetic decisions as well, but they must have been distracted when it came to the fence. The posts holding it up were all untreated wood hammered straight down into dirt. No cement footings. Not even gravel. In a relatively short amount of time, bugs ate so many holes in them that they just crumbled away.

Well, I knew a proper fence needed proper posts. I asked one of the local contractors how much it would cost to rebuild all the fences with cement and treated wood. He walked around with a measuring tape, thought for a little bit, and then said:

"About seven thousand dollars."

Holy crap-o-noley!! I talked to another contractor. He quoted me six thousand. That's still insane, but at least it's going in the right direction. I had a recommendation for a pair of handymen, so I called them up. It took them about six weeks to get back to me. They stalked around the fence, debated with each other like a Laurel-And-Hardy act about the best way to rebuild it, complete with waving arms and pacing in circles, and then said they'd get back to me with a quote.

Two months went by, during which my messages went unanswered, so I gave up on them. Perhaps I could do it myself?

I did some "research", in the form of ten YouTube videos and a bunch of web pages. It was technically possible, but a huge amount of labor. Some of the fence I could take apart and rebuild with better posts. Other parts of it, I would need to demolish and replace entirely, because the wood was too far gone. I made a list of tools, tried to research lumber prices, then got distracted by my day job.

When I came back to the task, it was because the rear fence was halfway collapsed into the neighbor's driveway, and the only way I could keep it upright was to rope it securely to a tree. It was time to confess:

While I pondered my own imbecility, I had some tree-trimmers over to deal with the overgrown foliage in the back yard. They did very good work on an apricot tree that was overhanging the fence, and I complemented them on it, then said, "I don't suppose you know any people who are willing to rebuild a fence like this?"

Turns out, one of them knew a guy. Now I knew a guy who knew a guy. I got his number and called him that moment, while the arborists were still packing up their saws and mulching the leftover trimmings. He spoke fluent Spanish but only fragmented English. "Your cousin the arborist recommended you!" I said. "Can you rebuild a wooden privacy fence, with cement footings?"

He said he could. He came over the next morning and examined the fence while we chatted, then he took a bunch of measurements and said he'd consult about lumber prices and get back to me. Two days later he sent me an estimate: 3800 dollars.

Now, that's still a lot of money. But it's just about HALF of what the official contractor quoted me. I said, "Let's do it," and I cut him a check for 10% of the amount to get started.

Here's what the back yard looks like with no fence. Weirdly exposed!

Here is what a proper post-hole looks like. They dug each one two feet deep and tamped the soil down with large metal bars.

They used thread to line up the postholes precisely. Turns out the old fence wasn't quite straight. They brought in a cement cutter and took a notch out of the neighbor's patio so they could reposition the hole, then repaired the cement after pouring the cement for the posthole beneath it.

Hmmm, delicious concrete! Concrete is amazing stuff. It doesn't get wet and then "dry" like glue. It actually absorbs the water into itself, growing crystals that interlock with each other to make one solid object. This is why you can create concrete posts even underwater.

Now that is a proper post.

The next day, with the posts set, it was time to put the framing up and start rebuilding the fence. Check out all that fencing laying around!

They used treated wood for the framing as well, and cut it onsite. They also cut custom pieces for the corner of the fence, interlocking it with the neighbor's fence on the other side to make one continuous structure. The whole thing was put together with screws, rather than nails, which is the more modern way of doing things.

In the end, I figured it was money well spent. The guy showed up on time, took exactly as long as he said he would, put all the dirt and plants back in their spots, hauled away the old fence, and even re-attached my irrigation pipes to the new fence without damaging them. If he had a "Yelp" page I would have given him 42 stars.

Now all I had to do was apply sealer to the whole thing:

Warning: Applying sealer to a fence takes a very, very long time. My mistake was trying to do it with tools at hand, such as a paint tray and a roller. The smart way is to use a large spray bottle, which you pressurize with a hand pump. I switched to that partway through.

That is a crapload of fence. It was a crapload of brushwork.

But now, I have a fence that will last 20 years, as long as I keep re-applying sealant to it every couple years. Yaaay! Another thing off the maintenance list.... For the time being.

This picture is pretty self-explanatory:

The question is, whatcha gonna do about it?

For a while, I explored the idea of replacing the carpet with laminate flooring. That exploration mostly consisted of trolling around YouTube for helpful videos:

Removing carpet and trim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrULX2ofBZs
Installation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMDdYmReQw8
More installation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43b2P25CS7E
Undercutting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rGt6lxbMYk

The tools required seemed pretty simple. I already had a jigsaw. Just needed a special levered cutting instrument, sold specifically for laminate floor installation. Less than 20 bucks at any hardware store. I began looking at flooring samples:

Here's some dark laminate that sort of matches the upstairs... And here's an even closer match...
Here's the "underlayer" lining I'd need to install below the flooring, like pad under a carpet...
Here's a cheap installation kit...

Wow; I think I can actually do this!

Then I brought some samples home and placed them in the room and realized - they're all very dark, and they don't match the paint in the room, and a dark floor in a below-ground room would kind of look dirty anyway. All the lighter laminate flooring samples looked aggressively woody, so those didn't fit the room either. I wanted a subtle pattern, or no pattern at all.

The more I looked and researched, the more I realized it was also going to be a huge amount of labor to install that flooring myself, mostly cutting and fitting all those edge pieces. Why go through all that labor just to install something I wasn't thrilled about?

So I threw my hands in the air, and said, "bugger it; let's just get exactly the same thing." I cut a big scrap out of the nasty old carpet, and bicycled it over to a local carpet dealer.

In a couple of weeks they arrived with a big work van.

Then they tore up and removed the old carpet in less than five minutes. Look at that filthy stain on the underside! That's a spore factory for sure.

This pad's not much better... It's practically turning into dirt and crumbs right there on the floor...

Ten minutes later and they were laying down some nice new pad.

And on top of that, some nice new carpet, stretched over the tacks with some weird tool that looks like spare parts from a vacuum cleaner factory.

It was seven hundred bucks to do the whole room and the closet, replace the pad, and haul away the old carpet. That's a good chunk of money, for sure. But on the other hand, all the labor I had to put into it can be summed up like this:

1. Open the door and let the workers in.
2. Scrawl my John Hancock on a cheque.

It's proof yet again that I am not above throwing money at a problem, and admitting this:

5172a3787d9728b5e124bc6c9821ac85173f541e3915fb351bf94c192c12df7a

Party on, dude!

You ever had to replace a garbage disposal? Me neither. Turns out it's trivial: You just unscrew the metal rings from two pipes, pull a plug from a socket, and the whole thing comes out.

There it is! One wrench to remove the connector pipe and set it aside, and you're ready for the new disposal.

Meantime, you can clean out the rest of the pipes. You'll probably find evidence of the last meal that finally killed the disposal off for good.

Mmmm, delicious! I think that's ... avocado skins?? Or maybe someone murdered Shrek.

The one that broke, and the replacement, are both called "In-Sink-Erators". Har har.

Here's some garbage disposal advice, straight from a repair technician I hired earlier this year to fix a dishwasher:

"Always run the water into the disposal when you're running it. You don't have to run it very long to chew everything up; usually just a couple of seconds will do it. There's no need to wait until it's full before you turn it on. If you want to keep the sink smelling good and clean the pipes, turn on the water, turn on the disposal, and squirt some dish soap in there. Let it run for about 10-15 seconds. Suds might come up from the drain on either side of the sink. That's good. Ordinary dish soap is fine but use Pine Sol if you want something tougher."

"A garbage disposal does not shred things, it just breaks them into chunks. I've seen people clog their pipes by putting all kinds of wrong stuff into a garbage disposal. Clothing, coffee filters, plastic or mesh bags, sponges, apricot pits, peanut shells... The general rule is, don't put anything down the garbage disposal that you wouldn't chew up with your own teeth."

"No bones. Would you chew up bones? Well, maybe you would if it was baked chicken and you were my grandma. She could eat a whole chicken down to like, a tiny pile of broken bones. But seriously, the bones people usually throw into a disposal aren't like that. Why make your disposal chop up bones, when you can just drop them in the trash? I dunno; people are weird."

"Don't put ice down a garbage disposal -- it doesn't sharpen the blades, contrary to what people on the internet say. That's like trying to sharpen your kitchen knives by putting them in a rock polisher; how's that gonna sharpen anything?"

THE MORE YOU KNOW (rainbow sound effects here)

Since the beginning of this year, when I hatched a plan to divide the utility costs between the two halves of my duplex, I have been spending the majority of every day - when I'm not at work - managing "stuff". Physical possessions.

At least, it feels that way. If I go wading into the details I remember all the interesting things I've done this year that weren't stuff-oriented. I got to visit my sister for an extended time, and help with a science fair project. Got to participate in a "March For Science". Did fascinating tours of the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Japantown, the Japanese Tea Gardens, and Cal Academy. Had a blast at a video arcade. Finished up two good music mixes, and my long-running Arthur C Clarke series. Ate a lot of great food. Read a lot of great books - mostly nonfiction - some of which inspired interesting thoughts I'd like to write down sometime. Went through a huge collection of old family photos and put them online -- something that feels very important to me.

But still, the idea persists. Why am I spending so much time managing "stuff", especially when I appear to have so little of it? In fact I've been concentrating on reducing the amount of "stuff" I own for what seems like forever, but here it all is. Heaped around me. Being stuffy.

Furniture, books, clothes, pots and pans, wires, bicycle parts, paperwork, candles, pictures, appliances, camping supplies, tools, more bicycle parts, spices, sporting equipment, musical instruments, posters, tupperware, rugs, cat toys, batteries, bags, even more bicycle parts, and more bicycle parts on top of those bicycle parts, packed away in cabinets or arranged in little piles for sorting or disposal or use in some ongoing project. It's like a Weird Al song in here. And I have to admit it's mostly just the everyday materials of middle-class living and I can't actually get rid of it all. Yes, I really do need cups. Yes I really do need clothes. No, I can't get rid of ALL of my clothing, though sometimes I am seized with the urge to just empty my closet out into the street. Most of this feeling probably comes from the fact that I've crammed my existence into a single room, in order to save money. The less space I occupy the more there is to rent out.

But I've been living for three years like this. I think I may have reached a minimum viable size for my possessions, and now it's just refusing to get any smaller without extreme measures, or some kind of fundamental attitude change. Mind you, it's been a pretty great three years. I've just been living a lot of it outside the house. I've also saved a boatload of money and am now in a much better position to consider my future and retirement. The duplex is actually managing to pay for itself at this point, or at least it would if I wasn't constantly maintaining or improving it. It certainly helps that I've refinanced my loan four times, ridding myself of mortgage insurance within the first year, then ridding myself of a home-equity line of credit, then ridding myself of most of a percentage point in interest. I ain't really complaining here. I'm just pointing out a condition I've picked up: I feel like I am constantly surrounded by "stuff" that needs dealing with in some way.

Now that I think of it, this feeling is almost entirely due to the house. Dividing the utilities in this place means installing a second electrical line, water line, gas line, water heater, and furnace, along with additional pipes and wiring in the walls. Getting estimates on that, deciding exactly how to do it, and following up with that project has been the biggest piece of "stuff" in my life. That project has also kicked off a whole family of related projects that have collectively dominated my free time. Actually, let me try to describe this whole demented family tree, so I can get it out in front of me.

Last week a utility inspector came out and told me that I had to clip some tree branches away from my electrical line before they could get to work. Their work is blocking the contractor's work, so this is top priority. I called the handful of landscape and tree specialists I knew, and they were all booked up for the next six weeks. I wasn't gonna wait that long. Since I'd already gathered estimates for trimming all the trees on the property, I knew that particular job would cost at least 100 bucks. I did some research and found the tool I need to do it myself: A sixteen-foot-long extendable pruning hook for 90 bucks. So I went out and bought that.

Standing in the driveway, with a big hat on my head, dancing around under this incredibly awkward device like the world's worst street performer, I realized that sixteen feet was still not long enough. So I opened the gate and backed my van into the driveway, then climbed up on the roof of the van and tried again. The jasmine vines threaded around the bay tree kept tangling in the blade, and I nearly dropped the contraption several times, but after an hour or so I had all the branches cut away from the power line. I smelled like a giant bay leaf afterwards and just about sneezed my face off, but the job was done.

Now my special house toolset includes a 16-foot pruning hook, propped against the shelf next to the bolt cutters, the hedge trimmers, the reciprocating saw, the sledgehammer, and the axe.

That stuff is all in the basement. That's bad, because I have to empty out the basement completely for the contractors to do their work, and after they've installed the furnace and water heater, there will be almost no room in there for tools. They also need a wide path to the basement, which means I need to empty out the garage. That's where I've been living - or at least keeping all my stuff - for the last three years.

So I've been feverishly reducing the stuff in the basement and the garage, with the knowledge that at some point I'll have to stuff it all in the bedroom next-door, and also sleep there while the work is being done. That will be grossly uncomfortable unless I get rid of everything I can. The good news is, "everything I can" is just about equivalent to "everything I should".

For example, I really don't need a gigantic beat-up faux leather armchair. Especially one that I bought used for 60 bucks. Nobody on Craigslist wanted to buy it, so now it's out on the curb. I really don't need a hideous glass-and-particleboard coffee table, either. That vanished weeks ago. I don't need a pile of hundreds of 35mm slides, sitting around inside a plastic bag, not useful or visible to anyone. So I scanned every single one of them, at very high resolution. It took weeks. Those are in a box, ready to be sent back to Roseburg, after I finish scanning the prints and yearbooks that accompany them. One less thing taking up space on a shelf.

The closet in the bedroom is much smaller than the closet in the garage, so I've culled my clothing mercilessly. All the pants that don't fit went to Goodwill. All the shirts that looked good went to my nephews. I don't need six sweaters; now I have three. I don't need five pairs of bike shorts; now I have one.

But wait, before I move anything, I need to take advantage of the bedroom next door being vacant. So, while I'm waiting for the contractors to be ready, I'm sprucing up the bedroom. That means repainting the walls and trim, replacing the crappy blinds, and replacing the carpet. At first I wanted laminate flooring, but after touring several stores and bringing samples home, I couldn't find a color or texture that suited the room. That was weeks of research, with nothing to show for it. I eventually decided to replace the carpet with newer carpet. But, it makes sense to do the painting first, of course, and once I'd settled on a color and bought supplies I realized that I should also repaint the rest of the rooms.

This has been an exhausting process, especially the prep-work. I had no idea it took so much time to apply painter's tape to trim and windowsills (and sockets and mirrors and lights). I'm done with the walls but now I need to purchase more paint and touch up the trim. But before that's done I need to get primer, to paint over the chunk of spackle I had to apply near the bathtub, to repair an ugly water stain that appeared last winter. Oh yeah, and speaking of the bathtub, I need to redo about a third of the grout, and all of the caulking as well. It looks grody.

Meanwhile, the trees in the back yard need trimming. I consulted with a couple of arborists, and along with the estimates, I got some advice. They both agreed that the cherry tree on the left side of the yard is just the wrong kind of tree for that spot. It's grown straight up, and started rudely poking at the eaves and windows of my house and the neighbor's house. It only produces a handful of cherries each year, which makes sense because the temperature has to drop below freezing for a cherry tree to be inspired to fruit. Fat chance of that happening here in Oakland. So I decided to have the tree removed.

The estimate to do that was 400 bucks. That's serious bucks. Besides, I own an axe and I like chopping things. I couldn't handle the whole thing by myself though, so I had some folks over for a picnic in the back yard one weekend, including my pal Andy, and he brought his chainsaw, and we threw ropes over the top of the tree and cut a notch in the trunk and pulled the sucker down in two sections. Plus there was pizza thanks to Kerry, and chips and the board game Tak, thanks to Alex. And Andy's kids raked a whole bunch of leaves and earned ice cream from Fenton's for their work.

The chunks from the cherry tree have been going into the yard waste bin ever since. Probably three more weeks before it's all gone, along with the stuff from the front yard. That's just two trees dealt with -- but there's two more. The plum tree in the front yard needs pruning, and the apricot tree in the back yard is leaning heavily on my fence. Oh yeah, and the fence itself was knocked almost sideways by the stormy winds last month. Turns out it was built without proper cement footings. I've got to figure out how to add those, hopefully without rebuilding the entire fence. Maybe Andy can help, though he has plenty of projects of his own to attend to.

Oh and I totally forgot about the time the dishwasher broke, and I tried to fix it but couldn't, and eventually called a repairman. And the time the garbage disposal broke, and I replaced it myself. And all the hazardous old paint supplies I found in the basement from the previous owners. I had to take that stuff to a disposal center on the South side. I also massively reduced my camping supplies, rerouted the home network, rearranged the kitchen, and inspected the roof. That last item was pretty fun: I flew my drone up over the house.

I sold plenty of extra bicycling gear in a bunch of separate transactions, meeting strangers in coffee shops. A coffee maker I bought from a guy standing outside an apartment complex six years ago went to Goodwill. I only bought it because he included it with a blender I really wanted. (I'm keeping that.) I got rid of a huge mass of extra cables and gadgets by sending "care packages" to my nephews, who picked out what they liked and disposed of the rest. Somehow I ended up with an extra space heater. That went to Carlsbad. An air purifier I don't use went to Sacramento. A huge cooler I don't need went out to the sidewalk, and was gone after 20 minutes. For about a decade I've been hauling around a bunch of DVDs in binders. I've been copying those onto the RAID array and throwing them out. I think I've done about a hundred. There is one binder left, and it's half-full.

It feels like this sort of activity has been my life this year. I know it hasn't really, but it still feels that way.

Ugh. Just describing it all has overwhelmed me. I'm going to take a break from writing and go next door and remove more tape from the bathroom walls, and screw plates back onto electrical sockets for a while.

When will this chaos resolve itself into order? A nice, clean, low-maintenance household. That's worth pursuing. Why does the pursuit feel like a hamster wheel?

I wonder how much I could get for a hamster wheel on Craigslist...

Hello _______.

I hope things are going well with you. There are some things about the house I think we should sync up on.

The first is, I've removed the cherry tree in the back yard and am in the process of removing the wood. The tree was "the wrong tree in the wrong place" according to the arborist I consulted a month or so ago: It was scraping against the neighbor's house and no matter how he pruned it back, it would continue to grow in the wrong direction. It would also never produce more than a few cherries, since the temperature has to drop below freezing to trigger them.

Removing the tree makes a gap in the sort of "privacy screen" of foliage in the back yard, and I'm not sure what to replace it with. My current idea is to just move the bird of paradise in the large pot over there, and let it grow while still confined to the pot. It might reach just the right size and stay there. What are your thoughts?

Next up: The fences. They were built without cement footings, and the recent wind and rain has damaged them quite a bit. The gaps make the backyard feel less secure, and I plan to correct that and hopefully re-use most of the materials, but getting a local handyman with space in their schedule has been very difficult. I may have to do it myself, with help from my contractor friend. In the meantime I'm just going to use a bit of rope to keep them upright. Bear with me!

Next: I have a PG&E inspector coming by with a contractor to do an inspection of the front yard and sidewalk, as part of the work to install separate utility connections for the duplex. They'll be coming by around 9:30am on Tuesday, May 9th. They won't need to come inside.

I have one more issue to raise with you, and it's a complicated one. I have observed recently that your son is smoking in the upstairs bedroom. My observations are not direct, but circumstantial: On 4/20 as I was coming through the front gate I smelled pot smoke, and looked up to see a small bong propped on the upstairs windowsill, and your son spraying air freshener around the room. This worried me, but I reasoned that since it was 4/20, perhaps it was a celebratory one-time act, and I could ignore it.

Since then when arriving home at night I have noticed evidence of smoking two more times, in the form of the distinctive smell and the bong propped on the windowsill.

At first my conclusion was that since he was at least trying to minimize the impact - with the open window - then perhaps I should stop worrying about it and let the deposit take care of any cleanup issues. That's what a deposit is for, after all. Then I realized that if he is smoking indoors, then either the smoke detector upstairs is damaged, or it has been disabled, and either way I need to address that for the sake of safety.

I thought about it for a while and realized there was one major question I didn't have the answer to: Was he doing it with your knowledge? If he was, I could just speak to you. If he wasn't, then my bringing it to your attention could be a violation of his privacy -- something I know I wouldn't have appreciated when I was a teenager. I do not want to be a channel for conflict in your household.

Then I realized that if I actually needed to use the deposit for damage related to smoking, I would have to make your son's activity plain to you at that point anyway. Plus I would then be complicit in allowing damage to occur over time - and a potential charge against your security deposit - that you would have surely wanted to avoid, if you'd known.

So I realized that the right thing to do was bring it up to you. I waited a little longer, hoping that a chance would come for me to run into your son outside, talk to him, and give him the option of telling you himself in advance of me telling you, but that opportunity hasn't come up. Since I assume you would not deliberately violate the lease, this smoking is probably a surprise, and for this surprise I apologize.

I'm sure we can figure out a way to proceed that works for all of us. One outcome I do not want, is for your son to decide to continue smoking but also attempt to conceal it further by closing the windows or using a more confined part of the house. I have no interest in judging him for marijuana use; my concern is over the location. I would much rather see him enjoying it on the back patio, than not see it and ambush you with repair costs later on. No one would be happy at that point!

I'll tell you in this letter what I intended to tell him, if I'd been able to speak with him privately: Some people use pot recreationally and some use it to deal with stress or insomnia issues. I don't judge either way. My primary concern is the safety issue, and my secondary concern is the potential for damage. A possible alternative to the bong is edibles. One of my friends is keen on chocolate covered CBD blueberries, for example. My old landlord Adam suggests using a vape pen, since that can emulate smoking but eliminates the fire hazard and smoke additives that can infuse walls (and eventually the sheetrock beneath them). There are other alternatives as well. If you find that you need the ritual of using the bong, I implore you to use the only space that is appropriate for smoking as outlined in the lease: The back patio. I'm sure that the oncoming summer weather will make it a pleasant place in the evening.

I'm sure this letter will prompt a household discussion or two. Let me know how you decide to proceed.

Sincerely,
_______

Mold is serious business. A long time ago I met a cavalier young person who declared that mold was a harmless cosmetic issue, used by selfish California renters to avoid paying rent for perfectly good buildings. He was the son of a wealthy family that owned an apartment building. Gee, I wonder where he got his opinion from.

At the time, I was also young, and not assertive enough to do what I should have: Slapped him silly for spreading lies. Mold is serious business. Specifically, exposure to it aggravates asthma symptoms, and chronic exposure to it slowly degrades your immune system and your lungs. Chronic exposure is like a constant low-grade infection that your body never finishes clearing. Picture it: A moving cloud of spores, floating up from that patch on the baseboard near your bed, and going into your body, all night long every night. Your immune system cleans it up as it comes in, but the front lines - the alveoli of the lungs - never fully clear.

Here's a handy yardstick: If there's enough mold on something that you can stand across the room and still see it, you need to get rid of that mold. And possibly that thing it's on, too!

( Last winter during the brief rainy season I was horrified to see this forming on my wall: )

How often do you think about the ventilation system in a place?

When you own the place, you need to think about it, because it needs regular maintenance. And if you haven't been doing it ... ( then surprise! No one has! )

My little cat Mira is bloodthirsty, as all cats are. Sometimes she brings in prizes for me, and her track record with eating them is not very good, making it feel especially wasteful, and making me feel especially hypocritical for enjoying nature while simultaneously employing a murderous psychopath to warm my feet at night.

But sometimes her instinct to hunt is overridden by something else that I can't quite figure out. ( This little guy for example: )

Ladies and gentelmen, I introduce to you, the critters that have been my nemesis for an entire year. Squirrel #1, and her two partners in crime, Squirrel #2 and Squirrel #3.

These photos were taken by a previous tenant of mine, a photographer with an excellent zoom lens. He realized there were squirrels afoot when he started hearing the sound of skittering animal feet behind the walls on the top floor. There's a couple of long triangular spaces up there, between the inside walls (which are vertical) and the roof (which is slanted). Humans can't access them, but critters can, especially if they chew their way in from the outside. So my tenant went outside one morning when he started hearing the noise, and stood in the driveway, looking up at the house, and pointed the camera at the eaves just below the second-story window. Pretty soon he had clear shots of all three invaders.

( There are a few interesting observations to make here... )

So how much did the consultations and the repair work cost, altogether? The contract had other work mixed into it, so I can't give an exact number, but I'd say it runs around $4000. Curse youuu, you crazy squirrels!

These are things you see around Oakland, and you just shrug your shoulders and go, "that's Oakland."

(My rule for this list is: There are things I've witnessed first-hand. Not heard about - actually seen directly.)

You see a bunch of guys with low-slung pants, huddled together on a curb, arms over each others' shoulders, grinning like mad, and waving back and forth like a church choir, while a BMW cruises slowly past them, turns around, and cruises past again, over and over. There is a big digital SLR camera suction-cupped to the hood of the car. Nearby, a boombox is playing a rap song.

You're arriving home, at night. Some kind of argument is happening in the apartment above the convenience store on the corner. The lights are off, but you can hear a couple of men, yelling at each other in farsi, plus various thuds and crashes, getting louder and louder. Suddenly a small metal chair comes crashing out the window and tumbles into the street. Everything goes quiet. You shrug, and go inside.

A mail truck stops at the intersection and the worker gets out to deliver a package. A man sprints over from across the street, shatters the passenger-side window with his jacketed elbow, and takes off with the box left on the dashboard. The thief vanishes around the corner and down the block. The postal worker spends the next two hours standing there while the police take a report, and the mail is transferred to a new truck.

Half a block from your front door, you find a pile of small personal possessions heaped on the sidewalk. It's the discards from a recent theft, chucked out a car window. You go through the bag and discover a couple USB drives, a passport, two phones, a stack of checkbooks in another name, some ADD medication from a foreign country, and a bunch of scribbled notes about grow farms and cannabis supplements. The victim is a pothead college student, abusing generic Adderall and mooching off his parents. But, you feel sorry for him, so you track him down on Facebook and reunite him with his crap.

At a long stoplight, the teenager in the car ahead of you finishes his bottle of iced tea, then opens his car door and casually sets the bottle down in the street. He sees your disapproving expression in his rear-view mirror, and when the light turns green he flips you off and races away, dodging recklessly between cars.

You hear a strange "thup thup thup thup" sound out in the street, then a couple of men yelling "Whoooaaah!" You walk outside and see a young man crouched behind the open door of his SUV. He has a paintball gun resting on the windowsill, with a hopper full of paintballs attached to it. He's looking down the street and yelling at the passenger in his car:
"They rain out of air, man! We got them! They out of air!"
You look down the street and see busted paintballs crushed into the pavement, and some fresh tire marks. The men in the SUV close their doors and drive off. 30 seconds later, a police cruiser shoots around the corner, in pursuit of the SUV.

On your way home from work, you have to take the long way around to your house, because the police have cordoned off an entire street with yellow scene tape. Behind the tape you see three police cars and a small crowd of bystanders.

On the Bart train, a man sitting across from you stops checking his phone, leans over, and vomits a huge puddle onto the floor between his legs. The train brakes to a stop, causing the vomit to snake down the aisle towards the doors, which open. Without a word, the man bolts out, slipping in the puddle as he goes. But he left his phone. So you take a picture of the vomit with it, and text it to the first person in the contact list, with the message "you left this phone and this vomit at MacArthur Bart." You hand the phone to the MacArthur clerk on the way out.

You arrive home to discover a huge crowd walking down the middle of the street holding banners and chanting. It's a lovely evening for a walk, so you join up. You go a couple of miles, then ranks of riot police show up and start cornering the crowd. Just before they start firing teargas grenades, you decide to walk back home.

You're inside reading. In the distance, not too far away, you hear six gunshots fired in rapid succession followed by a car driving off. Then you hear someone yelling "I’ve been hit!" "Where?" "I dunno it just hurts! Let’s get out of here!" 45 seconds later you hear the sound of sirens. You walk outside a bit later to find three police cars. A nearby officer holds up a plastic bag into which he has placed a used shell casing, inspecting it with his flashlight.

You're making your way around the lake on a bicycle. The pathway opens up into one of the patio areas, and you spot half-a-dozen fellow cyclists, resting with their bikes leaned up against the stone bench, drinking beers. The bicycles are all tiny - less than two feet tall - with tiny seats and handlebars. One of them has a toaster on skateboard wheels tied to it by the cord, making a "trailer" just large enough for one beer. "We used to ride Harleys," explains the rough-looking guy on the end, "but now we take these around the lake. This is more fun." Then he burps loudly.

You're out with a few friends by the lakeshore. Ahead you see the bird-feeding area. As you approach, you spot two fat rabbits inside, darting around from one hiding place to the next, being chased by a woman and a man carrying a cardboard box. "They're obviously domestic rabbits that someone abandoned here," the woman explains. "We're trying to take them to the animal shelter. Will you help?" So you and your friends join a crowd of people, chasing rabbits around by the lake. 15 minutes later they're both safely in the cardboard box.

You look out your window and see a man walking slowly down the sidewalk. There is something odd about his gait. He stops at a telephone pole, inspects it closely, then raises a tool in his hand up near a box on the pole and begins pulling at something. His other hand moves to his pocket, and then he proceeds to the next telephone pole, repeating the move.
You walk outside, wondering what in the world he is doing. You get about five feet away and see that the man has a pair of pliers, and is patiently removing staples from the telephone pole, one at a time. He glances at you and says, in a strained voice, "You're just gonna have to let me do this." You realize immediately that he is an insane street person, passing his time this way in order to prevent himself from doing something much worse, to himself or to someone else.
"Hey, no worries; you just keep on doing what you need to do," you say, and walk casually back inside.

You've parked your car and are about to walk across the street to your house. Suddenly the noise of sirens is all around you. 20 yards away, you see a beat-up sports car shoot around the corner. As it approaches you see a young man at the wheel with an expression halfway between anger and panic. A cop on a motorcycle is only a few feet behind in hot pursuit. They both roar down the street and around the next corner, with the cop leaning way into the turns, lights blazing. A police SUV zig-zags heavily behind them, lights also blazing. A few seconds after that you see a helicopter plunge diagonally across the intersection, tracking the action on the ground. The helicopter and sirens orbit your block for the next 20 minutes.

You hear some shouting, and walk outside to investigate. A car is stopped directly in front of the house, blocking your driveway. Two police cars are blocking it on both sides. Three young men are sitting on the sidewalk, next to one cop, while another cop searches through the car with a flashlight. Another man is standing nearby, yelling "police harassment!" over and over, mixed into a stream of random swearing.
"Go about your business," says one of the men on the sidewalk.
"You know this guy?" asks a cop.
"Yeah, we've seen him around," says the man. "He gets like this when he's drunk."
Eventually the fourth man wanders up the street, still yelling from a distance, and the cop completes his search of the car. He comes up with a couple of baby bottles with rubber nipples, filled with bright red liquid. Cough syrup.
"I probably shouldn't ask if you have a prescription for this, huh," says the cop.
"Nah, man. Actually you can just pour it out if you want."
The young men and the cops have a brief discussion and everyone departs, but just before the young men drive away, the fourth man comes back down the street and yells at them. "Police harassment, am I right? Man, I hate the pigs! Just a bunch of ... " He is still swearing when the car pulls away, leaving him alone.

. . .

There are definitely more I'm forgetting...

So I called up a few experts, and got one consistent opinion back: Sure, it’s a pretty nice washer and dryer set, but a noise like that spells doom. The repair job, they said, would require taking apart the entire washing machine, and replacing the entire drum. The labor alone would be five hundred bucks, and the parts would be another four hundred on top of that. And of course there’s no guarantee that some other part wouldn’t just break on it a month later.

So I poked at the internet some more, and discovered that I could get a new washer and dryer of excellent quality for about two grand, with tax and installation included. (Yeah, I’d have to get rid of the dryer too, because you can’t mix-and-match stackable units.) That’s some serious cheddar. I could also get a used set from craigslist, and haul it across town and manhandle it into place with some help, and scrap the old one. I’d need to fetch my van from SoCal but it could be done. To get a used set that I’d be happy with, I figured it would cost a little over a grand. That’s still serious cheddar, and some rough labor as well.

Then it occurred to me: If I’m going to get a replacement in any case, what’s the harm in taking the old set apart, out of curiosity? I really would like to know what the problem is... And if it turns out to be something I can attempt to fix cheaply, I might try it out, and if not, it will be easier to carry away parts than to haul away a big heavy box, right?

So on this flimsy excuse, I went to work, using a few youtube videos as a guide.

First I had to unstack the dryer, which was really not easy. Take the lid off, remove some fiddly pins, take the front off including the control panel, unbolt some metal tabs, remove some more tabs from the back, lift the thing off without damaging your spine… And now we’ve got the top of the washer exposed.

Unscrew about 20 screws (thank goodness for electric screwdrivers) and remove some plastic tabs, pinch some wire hoseclamps with vise-grips to remove the hoses... Yadda yadda, badabing badaboom...

Here’s the source of the slow leak. A thoroughly corroded electric water valve. How much does this part cost, straight from the manufacturer? Wow, only 12 bucks.

With the back off the washer you can see how most of the inside is occupied by a huge tub, hanging freely from some heavy-duty springs. Yes, that is an actual concrete brick, bolted to the back of the tub there, as ballast. There are other concrete bricks on the front as well. They are there so your off-balance laundry doesn’t make the tub swing around the room like an orangutan every time the washer spins up.

Yes! Your washing machine is full of concrete!

The cat never uses these beds anymore. She prefers to sit on the armchair, or on laps when she can get them to stay in one place. So instead of beds, they are now padding for the electric motor, while I grunt and strain and unfasten those enormous steel springs from the sides of the tub, and drag the tub out into the garage to continue disassembling it.

I had to make another run to Home Depot for supplies. Those very long pliers in the middle there were an impulse buy - they look totally badass, and they only cost nine bucks!

When I removed the pump from the bottom of the machine, I discovered that it contained ancient treasure. Somehow these coins made it out of the metal basket inside the tub and down into the pump. Dude! 60 cents could buy me 6 minutes parking downtown!

I had to remove over a dozen long hex screws before the tub came apart in two halves like an eggshell, revealing the metal basket inside. The basket is the thing that actually holds the laundry and spins. It’s got an axle attached. You can see it resting on the floor in the foreground.

Does something about it strike you as odd?

That’s right! It’s horribly, horribly corroded. In fact, the steel drum is in good shape, but the metal spider-arms that hold it to the axle are so badly corroded that the metal has actually cracked in several places. This metal was constantly immersed in the same water that my clothes were being laundered with. Delicious.

Meanwhile, on the outer tub, you can see that the seals around the bearings were in fabulous shape, simply fabulous. Not.

Between the broken spider-arms making the drum spin way off balance, and the bearings being corroded by ancient seals, no wonder the washing machine was spinning itself to pieces.

So then I had some thinking to do, and some information to gather.

Turns out that the seals and the bearings can be replaced. Even though the manufacturer doesn’t sell those parts, you can buy equivalent parts from a variety of sources. I found several companies willing to sell me bearing and seal replacement kits through Amazon for about 30 bucks. Okay, new valve, new seal and bearings, total of about 45 bucks, this is still in the realm of "hobby" money... How about the spider arms on the metal basket?

Bad news: The only way to get them is to buy an entire replacement basket, with the spider and axle attached. That’s three hundred smackers, right there. That’s big-time money. Whoo!

So at this point, I had an inner debate, which took a few days while the washing machine lay in parts all around the basement and the laundry began to pile up. Do I spend almost 400 dollars, follow the online instructional videos, take another five or six hours to reassemble and re-stack the machine, and hook it up, even though I’m pretty likely to end up with a machine that’s still broken?

I don’t know if these parts will really solve the problem. I’ve never done this repair before. If I screwed something up and had to take it all back apart, I don’t think I’d have the patience for it. I might be throwing good money into a bad machine, based on an inflated sense of what’s possible. The online tutorials all claim that bad bearings are the single most likely cause of my problem, but I personally don’t think the washer could possibly run right without replacing those busted spider arms too.

Right around the time I ran out of clean underwear, I decided to order the parts. "It’s a challenge to my own repair skill," I told myself. "I don’t feel like walking away from this. And hey, when I test the machine and it goes haywire, I can still just disconnect it, get on the phone, and buy another washer and dryer, just like before."

Oh, the justifications. Really, I just did it because I was too stubborn to stop.

The new metal basket arrived in the middle of a truly impressive amount of recycled packing material.

Sadly, the spider arms seem to be made out of the same aluminum/iron pot metal as the earlier set, instead of corrosion-resistant steel. I’ve no idea why. Seriously, Kenmore - why?

Also, what do these things mean?

At least the axle is all shiny and new.

So, I replaced the seals, put the new basket inside the tub, replaced the corroded valve, oiled the motor, put everything back together including the aggravating shock absorbers with their plastic pins, re-stacked the units, drove back in about 45 screws, and moved the appliances back up to the wall. It took two evenings, about eight hours time total. If I was paying myself the same wage as a repairman that I was earning at my "real" job, plus parts, I’d be breaking even.

I even vacuumed the lint out of the inside of the dryer. (Good grief what a mess.)

But finally, I hooked up the hoses, plugged in the cord, threw in some sacrificial rags without any soap, set the controls, and stood back.

The damn thing works.

I think I've actually succeeded with this repair! It's been about ten days now, and the washing machine has not leaked a singled drop of water, and run through every spin cycle without trouble. I’ve washed all my laundry and sheets, and the housemate has run four or five loads as well. You can bet I watched it like a hawk when it was doing the first new load, but now I've started to relax. It looks like my washer has its mojo back.

And I'm still not completely 100% convinced, but it looks like I've saved myself upwards of 700 bucks.

Wow!

It’s been a little bit over a year since I purchased my home. I can summarize how it’s been going in one short phrase: By the seat of my pants!

I’m not an electrician; I’m not a plumber; I’m not a landscaper or a builder or a repairman. But somehow I’ve been dealing with things as they come up, and also dealing with the increased financial pressure by pushing my comfort zone.

Of course, the risk with that is, you can try a new thing and fail, and end up wasting precious money and time.

About a month ago my washing machine - a stackable Kenmore unit with a matching dryer anchored on top - started making a really loud banging sound every time it hit the spin cycle, like it was trying to jackhammer a hole in itself from the inside out. I tried rebalancing the washer and running it through a few more loads just in case the noise was temporary, but I had to cancel it each time before the final rinse, and squeeze the clothes out by hand and run them in the dryer for hours to finish my laundry. On top of that, the washer developed a slow leak, and a dark patch began spreading on the basement floor.

I peeled off the front panel and looked around, and discovered that one of the shock absorbers on the side of the drum was broken. Well gee, it seems a shame to discard an entire washing machine if that little thing is the problem…

I noted the model number on the inside of the door and dashed to the internet, and discovered that Sears stopped making this particular model almost ten years ago. Very discouraging. Then I found a number of websites where you could order replacement parts, including one from Sears itself, with numbered schematics and diagrams for each model they made. Amazing! This internet thing is really catching on.

So I ordered a new pair of shock absorbers. Only about 20 bucks plus shipping, very affordable for an experiment in machine repair. When the package arrived, I found some printed step-by-step instructions inside.

The shock absorbers have a plastic loop on each end, and they attach with big plastic pins stuck through the loops. The pins are a serious hassle to remove, especially in the cramped area underneath the tub inside the washing machine. You have to hold down a plastic tooth on one side of the pin, then pull it hard from the other side to get it out. I discovered that it was possible to hold the tooth down by putting a socket wrench over the end of the pin, but there wasn’t enough room on the other side to for anything but my hand, and I couldn’t grip the pin hard enough to pull on it.

So I assembled pulling tools out of zipties. One loop was kept large, so I could put it over my thumb. The other was tightened just under the head of the pin, so I could push forward with my hand, and it would pull up on the head.

I tried a whole bunch of different tools, but the little ziptie gadgets were the only thing that worked. Eventually I had both old shock absorbers out, and all the stupid white pins as well.

Installing the new shock absorbers was much easier than removing the old ones. The pins can be shoved into place with a chisel and a hammer.

And that, I thought, was the end of it. I’ve replaced the visibly broken part; the washing machine should be fixed, right?

Wrong. The fixed set of shock absorbers did absolutely nothing to deter that hideous jackhammer sound. With the front cover off I could see the drum smashing against the sides of the machine. It was scary just how much force was involved.

At that point I said, "Okay, I tried. Now it’s time to call in some experts."

(Continued in Part 2)

Oakland has a separate recycling mechanism for plastic bags, relative to the standard throw-it-in-the-can method we used for everything that has a little symbol on it.

There are free dropoff points for plastic bags around the city, and if you feel like a good samaritan, you can haul your bags out there and stuff them in.

This is approximately eight months' worth of plastic bags for three people.

Some of it was wrapped around vegetables from the supermarket. Some of it was peeled off the lids of yogurt and soup and sour cream containers. Some was used to transport cables, or batteries, or zipties, or bread, or bars of soap. There are bags in here from restaurants, hardware stores, pharmacies, gas stations. A surprising amount of it was packing material that arrived in the mail.

One night I stuffed it all into my bike trailer and pedaled it out to the recycling kiosk outside the Safeway.

I don't know where it goes from there, but I hope at least that it stays out of the ocean.

The big bucket back at the house remained empty for about two days. Then I received a piece of junk mail - a catalog - wrapped in plastic. The plastic went into the bucket.

Almost 20 years ago a friend of mine had a radio program at KDVS, where he played experimental/industrial music. The studio had a mechanism for recording the shows to tape, so I hoarded them and eventually they became files on my iPod. Turns out they're the perfect soundtrack to home repairs:

Here's the problem: A leaky faucet. Somewhere up in the guts of the faucet mechanism, a seal has failed, and water dribbles into the cabinet below every time someone uses the sink.

Things could have been a lot worse... The faucet could have had a constant slow leak, turning the wall to mush and filling the cabinet with mold before anyone noticed. Water damage is evil.

Aside from a replacement faucet, I needed two new things for this operation:

That's a "telescoping basin wrench" and a set of "pipe-wrench pliers" with little silicone covers so they can work on fragile things.

The replacement operation took about four hours, including the research I did online and the shopping trip I made on my bike. The trickiest part was getting the basin wrench up behind the sink so I could unscrew the old hoses. If I hadn't learned about that tool from an online video, the operation would have been nearly impossible.

A nice little bit of amateur-level maintenance, and a few more tools for the basement.

Sometimes when I’m going about my business in Oakland, I feel like The Dude. You know; the Big Lebowski Dude. Because I feel like I just sort of fit right in to my particular place and time. Case in point: I love riding my bicycle. I also like snacks.

For a few hundred bucks, I got hold of a snackmobile. Some people use these trailers for cross-country touring, but in my experience a trailer is not ideal for that purpose.

What it’s ideal for, is going shopping, for a ridiculous amount of groceries all at once. It even comes with its own bag.

I weighed the bag after my last trip. That’s about 55 pounds of groceries. Yes, I own a vehicle, but come on man, the store is less than two miles away and the whole bicycling scenario only adds about 15 minutes to my day. That’s less than half an episode of “The Daily Show”, and if I want, I can listen to a podcast as I ride.

Did I mention that the weather in Oakland is almost always perfect all the time? Day or night?? And that there’s farmer’s markets within riding distance, five days a week? And a thai restaurant open until 1:30am, and a falafel joint open until 2:00am? It’s like the city was custom-built for me. I really do feel like The Dude.

Another case in point: I love riding my bicycle, and I’m also new homeowner with some work to do. Well whaddaya know, there’s a large hardware store five blocks away.

Can’t install a cat door without a reciprocating saw.

Here’s the helpful cutout pattern, taped up and ready for abuse.

First I drilled some holes to give the sawblade a place to start ...

... which gave the outside of the door a poker face. CAN’T READ MY, CAN’T READ MY, NO YOU CAN’T R -- *AHEM* I apologize for that.

Incidentally, this is not the first time I’ve used a reciprocating saw... That was three years ago, as this Helpful Instruction Video About Engineering will reveal:

(Insert video about saws and cats from West St here. Dang, where did I put that?)

A fresh new cat door gave little Mira the independence that befits a cat of her stripe. Stripes.

Now she could go play in the garden any time. Aaah, the garden... That’s another reason I feel like The Dude.

A few months ago Kerry and I spent a few days pulling up an entire season’s worth of weeds, uncovering the back yard again.

Crabgrass is insidious stuff. It can weave sideways along the ground, with the end of the stalk looking like the long arm of a crab, planting roots every few inches and utterly dominating the soil. If you let it take over, it will lock itself in place with hundreds of criss-crossing lines. Great for preventing erosion. Terrible for growing veggies.

We pulled it all up, along with some larger plants that had grown amazingly fast.

It was fun! Maybe I wouldn’t feel that way if I pulled weeds for a living, but I don’t. I tend to sit at a keyboard. This got me outdoors, and got my mind working on ways to improve the aesthetics of my living space - and since I’m sharing the place with renters, more people get to enjoy it.

I planted a cute little dwarf lemon. This was a gift from my real estate agent. It still needs a name!

I also found this bizarre thing. Some kind of puffball fungus, growing so rapidly under the ground that it actually displaced the patio stones, shoving them up into the air like a flexing muscle. There’s fungus among us!

Does this look like someone’s been snacking on it? That’s because of the squirrels...

My gang of jade plants is doing very well. A few weeks ago I put little nametags on them.

The Dude has his rug and his whalesong cassette, I have my rug and my plants. This plant is named Bananas, and four years ago he was a tiny sproutling gifted from Kashy.

This one is Whitney, a plant I grew from a scrap that fell near the Whitney Street house that I lived in last year. Doing very well!

The roses are looking nice too, though I totally ignored them for the last nine months. I finally trimmed them back with a pair of hedge clippers a few days ago.

I like hanging out back here at night, so I got some solar-powered lights to augment the colorful lamps that Kerry gave me. LEDs really have changed the literal balance of power with home lighting. These things will glow until about 4:00am, and they charge up again the next day.

Pretty little things!

The garden has become a relaxing place. I like to put my feet up here and chat on the phone, or listen to a book, or just enjoy the fresh air.

Mira seems to enjoy it too. You can see the tendrils of that evil crabgrass near her feet, trying to sneak back in. Not for long!!

Yes, the finances are a difficult balancing act sometimes, and certainly more complicated than renting, and yes it consumes many hours of the week when I'm caught up in some new improvement... But I am really enjoying this whole home ownership thing. It helps that the home and the location fit perfectly into the rest of my life right now, including my job and my hobbies. There's always something to learn about, some new way to stretch - and also something that could turn into a real disaster if it's not noticed and addressed sensibly. Case in point: Squirrels. But that's a topic that deserves its own post.

I am also quite thankful that I seem to have located good renters. Good people, even people I admire, who keep me in the loop. I guess this is how I don't really match up with The Dude at all. The Dude is a perennial slacker, and I actually like having work put in front of me, as long as it's work that feels justified.

What work is more justified than work on a home?

But enough talk! Time for a picnic!

To make the garage a more appealing office space, I purchased a used Persian rug. I’d wanted one ever since I acquired the house, and I actually bought one last year, but returned it a day later when I came to my senses and realized I probably shouldn’t drop 2300 bucks on a floor covering for a room that is below ground level. Hah!! This used one looks pretty nice, and was a bargain especially for the size.

Mira, smart cat that she is, very quickly learned that if she wanted to sharpen her claws, she should use the cardboard scratching brick I set out for her. A few strategically-deployed cat treats made it easy.

To make it more comfortable, I purchased a rug pad. Here’s Kerry removing the plastic.

To manage the space in the garage, I purchased some IKEA cabinets with closing doors. Getting all the clothing and bicycle hardware and photography equipment out of sight did wonders for the visual appeal of the room.

I also removed the heavy door that separates the garage from the laundry room, so I could cut a notch in the corner to admit computer cabling. These are the screws I removed, all lined up for reference. One really long screw per hinge.

As an aside: HAND-HELD ELECTRIC SCREWDRIVERS ARE WONDERFUL. You don’t think you need one, until you get one, and then you always need it. A bit like smartphones I guess.

I obsessed for a few months over whether cutting a notch in the door was the right solution, because obsessive is how I roll. I wanted to be able to close the door to cut down the noise, but should I pass the wires through the wall instead? Use a wall-plate? Do something clever with wireless transmitters? Buy a quieter computer to eliminate the need for cabling?

Well. Given that a new Mac Pro would set me back FIVE GRAND, I decided to stumble along with my current hardware. One dollar for a hacksaw blade equals $4,999.00 in unspent money. Done.

As an aside, did you know that these days, a solid wood door is apparently a luxury, and now doors are made with what is basically a big pressed slab of sawdust inside? I would care, except, ... I don’t. Seems like a good idea actually.

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Peeks, Pokes, and Pointers!

Entries tagged with house

The rats in the walls

A proper paint job is expensive

The utility split.

A duplex: Running the numbers four years later.

Good fences make good possum highways

What the house needs, it gets, part ][

What the house needs, it gets

I am tired of managing "stuff".

Being a landlord sometimes means writing a complicated letter

The Creeping Coastal Horror!

Learning The Components (Plus a digression)

House adventure: Flora and fauna

Adventures in home ownership part 3,000,000: CURSE YOU, SQUIRRELS!

That's Oakland... (Updated Oct 2015)

Adventures in Spin Cycle Part 2

Adventures in Spin Cycle

Plastic bags

More Housenanegans

Feeling Dude-ical

Garage Mods

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April 2025

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