DIY recovery – DIY Recovery

About a month ago, I found a little hole, about the size of a nickel in the eaves over my back patio where some conduit was removed, mmm, maybe a year ago. I texted one of my DIY consultants and he said to just fill it with any kind of caulk, even the kind I use to fill in the trim pieces around my kitchen window and door.

As you know, I was waiting for a rainy day to do the work on that trim, and then I needed to wait for a dry day to drag the ladder out and fill this hole before something got in there and made things worse.

Um, sort of like this:

When it comes to home maintenance, I know that a little water can turn into a lot of water pretty fast. But I didn’t know that a tiny little hole on the exterior of my home could turn into this so fast. So lesson number one: “Do it now,” needs to be our motto.

I admit, when I think something (or someone) is living uninvited in my walls, or my attic, or my garage my mind goes all awry and I start to panic. I mean, actually, I panic a little when anything goes haywire because I immediately see dollar signs. But I gathered myself up long enough to send out an SOS on Reddit to see if some helpful person might know what had made that hole its home. I thought it might be either bats or tree frogs because there was some kind of guano below the hole and we have lots of both of those around here.

Big mistake. I only got two replies, both of them snarky; one about cockroaches, and one about someone’s ex-wife living in there. I didn’t know Reddit was full of distinctly unhelpful persons.

Lesson number two: Free advice is worth about the same amount that you pay for it.

So now I’m faced with yet another decision to make in a life that just keeps unraveling: do I just patch it up or do I call an exterminator? I’m pretty sure if I just patch it up, whatever is in there, will exit in some other, more unfortunate way–perhaps through my bedroom ceiling or the attic access in my yoga room.

But the thought of calling an expensive critter ridder to do something that I could probably just suck it up and do myself doesn’t feel right either. I mean, whatever it is, has to be able to fit through that hole, so it’s smaller than I am. And that makes me feel brave.

This situation seems a lot like the first time I taught Freshman composition and my mentor reminded me that I at least knew more than first-year students, so I had that going for me. Remembering her words and that fact that I am clearly bigger than whatever it is, gives me confidence that I can handle this sitch myself.

I know for sure that I don’t want to kill it. After a very bloody incident with a mousetrap this winter, in which I heard the trap go off and found no mouse, but only several rich, red blood splatters, I switched to humane traps only. So if anyone out there (not you Reddit) knows what this probably is and how I can nicely ask it to please leave, I would still appreciate some free advice.

Meanwhile, since it’s ninety-eight degrees in June in the mid-west, I will ditch my outside work again, and go back to finishing the trim in the kitchen. Oh, and I finally called a tile guy to come and put in a backsplash for me so soon I can finally post some after pictures.

I mean, I’m really asking because I am a woman with relatively normal-sized fingers. I can’t imagine how difficult this is for some thick-fingered dude.

I tried Google for the answer and all she came up with was a guy who said to stick the new staples in the holes leftover from the old ones 🙄.

Well I didn’t have any of those. I was just trying to finish installing this garage door opener that was almost installed about five years ago.

I know it’s probably best to start at the opener end of the wire and work your way down the connector wire to the safety sensor, but when we installed this, I guess we didn’t have any of these staples because the wiring was installed like this.

**The purple iris support I was looking for two weeks ago**

And I needed that pitchfork to turn over the compost.

So because the safety sensors were already installed I had to start at the bottom and work my way up. I considered taking the sensors off and starting over but I wasn’t confident that I could get them put back together.

I also very much considered calling a garage door repair guy but people like me who don’t have a lot of disposable income have to try to do this stuff ourselves first. Which brings me to the reason why I was doing this in the first place after living with it happily twined around that pitchfork for the last four or five years.

I had taken extra days off for the holiday weekend so I could do all the stuff around my house that I had been neglecting. But I woke up Friday in a surly mood and knew the only thing that would snap me out of it was to go outside. So I loaded my bike up for a short ride on a nearby path.

In my haste to get out the door (mostly because I made no haste getting out of bed where three cups of coffee, The NYT Morning newsletter, and Wordle kept me overtime), I accidentally let the dog out. He’s a ninety pound runner and the only way to catch him is to open the car door and act like we are going somewhere fun. So Ben ran to the garage and rescued me by getting the dog to jump happily into car only to be disappointed later and sent back into the house. In the process Ben accidentally hit the overhead door remote and the door came down on my bike strapped to the rack on the rear end of my waiting Subaru. The bike was fine. The door was fine (we thought). So I left.

When I got to the path I decided (already being surly and oppositional) to ride south instead of north like I usually do. There I discovered a whole new experience that led to this:

OMG. OMG. OMG.

And, well, I had to try it out. The trail was way too technical for my old gal (my bike) and this old gal (me), but I couldn’t resist so I went for it. I bailed on more the downhills than I rode, but it was really fun.

The best thing was that I was all alone. There wasn’t another human being anywhere so I didn’t have to feel stupid jumping off my bike when it seemed too risky and sliding down the dusty track after it. After a bit I heard three kids on the trail behind me and lots of “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.”

Which is pretty much what I said, too, interspersed with some negative self-talk calling myself a wuss and some self-encouraging, “You got this next hill girl. Make it your bish.”

I made no hill my bish that day.

Needless to say, my short ride turned into hours of goofing off and causing trouble much like those kids on the trail behind me at noon on a school day.

So most the day was wasted on the joy of the ride and fun I had taking pictures to share with my bike-loving friends and all that stuff I had been neglecting, got neglected some more. I promised myself it would get done the next day.

In an avoidant move on Saturday I also promised someone else I would help them get their house ready for a party that night. When I tried to leave the garage, the screws holding the bracket, holding the track, holding the opener popped out and the whole thing fell down. So yeah, I considered calling the garage door repair guy but like I said, people like me don’t have people like that on speed dial. The fix for the door was pretty simple. I just got some longer screws and reattached the bracket to the wall and reattached the carriage arm to the door and it worked fine. So when I also found this box of wire staples in the bottom of a crate full of nails, I decided to finally finish the original installation and do something with those wires.

So there I was in my garage three days into the holiday weekend hammering my left thumb and forefinger into the wall trying to attach these staples. The worst part was when I got to the ceiling.

I’m not that good at standing with one foot on a ladder and the other on a shelving unit doing a backbend and hammering over my head but I managed (thank you yoga).

Most DIYers will tell you they would trade a kidney for a third hand when working alone and that’s clearly what I needed if not just to have a different thumb to pound on. But finally when I was three staples from the end of the second wire I had my eureka moment.

I made myself a little third hand, of sorts.

Out of tape.

Like this.

Some kind of stickier tape probably would have worked better but, my mom always taught me to make-do with what I had and painters tape is what I had. And honestly this worked pretty well.

I could hold on to the little wings or just hammer blindly into the tape secured on the ceiling and save my finger and thumb from any further damage.

Secure to the wall (or ceiling in my case).

When I was done, the hook on the ceiling needed a new purpose. So I swung it around and made a nice spot to hang my bike rack next to my lovely, muddy bike.

But they won’t stay there for very long. I’m feeling surly again.

Tag: DIY recovery

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