Finally, You Can See My Small Deck...

It took a full week to build, what with not being able to avoid my regular day job, but the yard project is finally complete. I can't seem to do anything without stopping to take a picture or two, so without further adieu, this is how it went. You may recall that my wife and I started a little project to convert a small part of our yard on one side of the house to a little area with plants and ground cover. With that finished off - well, all but the actual growing of the ground cover and plants we planted, we decided to add a small deck off of the larger deck.

I started off with an idea of what I wanted and bought just enough materials to layout a frame. Our yard is built on a slope so building a deck here isn't like the easy stuff they show on HGTV where everyone seems to have a perfectly flat yard with plush green grass and not a single rock under the surface.Because of the slope, I had to dig in some deck blocks on one side just so the deck wouldn't be too high off the ground. I'm not afraid of heights or anything, but I'm pretty sure my neighbors wouldn't care to have us hovering over their backyard like we were in a deer blind or watchtower.Setting the clocks back an hour is cool if you don't want to send your kids to school in the dark, but it really takes a toll on the amount of daylight after work. So adding in daily trips to Home Depot after work, I could just feel the daylight burning away, taking away the precious time I needed to work on this deck. Maybe I should have done this a few weeks ago.So we decided on a 12 x 10 deck so I wouldn't have to cut the boards to fit. It only took an hour or so to get the thing set in place where we wanted it, but then I used the next two evenings going really overboard on making the frame sturdy. I probably could have put more into it like pouring some cement footings or something, but by the time I was done with it, I had 4 x 4's holding up just about every board. Let's just say, it doesn't creak at all.Next came the fairly easy part, actually putting on the deck. I decided to go with treated 2 x 6's even though there are newer decking products available - either the new plastic decorative systems or even the 5/8"s deck boards. Our original deck is made of 2 x 6, so I went with that.

About two years ago, my wife and I were at those outlet stores in San Marcos, and I bought this cool little attachment for the drill. It allows you to load in a bunch of screws and drill them in from the standing position. It really is a cool, back saving attachment. I have been waiting two long years to finally open the box and try it out. Yea, that lasted about 10 minutes. Oh, it worked, but when you are doing the work by yourself, you have to lay out each new deck board where you want it, then start to drill. I realized that it was just quicker and easier for me to move the boards into place, drill in the screws and move on.By Thursday, all I needed to do was to finish putting in the last two 2 x 6's so the deck part would be complete. Unfortunately, you need to have the right tools for the job. As the frame was going up, we decided we would have a small bench on the far end of the deck to serve as a railing (we wouldn't want anyone to get liquored up and fall a full 16 inches to their death) and also as a place to set drinks or plants and such. Well, I needed to notch out the deck boards so as to fit comfortably around the 4x4 risers. I went to grab my jig saw, and sure enough - no blade.I'm sure Bob Vila would be horrified to know that instead of running out to Home Depot to buy new blades, I grabbed my trusty saws-all and commenced in he-man Tim the Toolman Taylor fashion to screw it up. I gave up after a few minutes and decided the project could wait until I had some new jigsaw blades. In the end, I made the cuts using my circular saw and cleaned them up with the freshly bladed jig saw. Norm Abram would be proud.As the deck was starting to come together, we also decided to extend the walkway of decayed granite we made around the garden project. So on Thursday, my wife went back to Fertile Gardens and bought another yard of the stuff and on Friday, I went and picked up the second half of it. So basically, I decided to get up Saturday and just knock it out.With the deck top complete, I needed to clean things up a bit by replacing a board that was all jacked-up and adding some trim.Because our area is home to lots of wild skunks, possums, raccoons and feral cats, I wanted to cover the sides of the deck right away so nobody would get the idea that they could get under there and have a littler of babies. And I think it makes the whole thing look a little nicer. I just used fence boards to make the siding. I can honestly tell you, this was probably the hardest part of the project - the constant bending over to measure then getting up to make the cut, then back over to nail it in. Make no mistake, my knees and back are feeling it.We finished adding in the decayed granite to make a small walkway from the bigger deck down to the new one, and we still have a lot of tamping to do, but that can wait.In the end, we added one of those little fire pit deals so my wife could roast wienies and marshmallows. I think we are going to put in some sautillio tile in the center of the deck to place the fire pit on, though on our inaugural use, we didn't burn anything down.And there you have it: pictures of my little deck. I know, I giggled too. It's okay.

Update: Now you can see the Deck Movie, too!

I'm Not a Happy Camper Report:

A few years ago, I used to frequent my local San Antonio version of Craig's List in the Rants and Raves section. The idea was, you could Rant or Rave about whatever, and it was a great release. I recall writing a long entry about a visit to a McDonald's and all of the characters I encountered while attempting to obtain a simple breakfast. It was very well received by the participants of R&R at the time, but not quite a Best Of. Interestingly enough, there is only one person from San Antonio to ever make CL's Best Of list, and that honor belongs to a friend of mine. I shan't provide a link, but you could probably find it if you looked.

Anyway, this isn't about Craig's List. In fact, I stopped frequenting the place because the San Antonio R&R turned into a racist, homophobic, anti-W, anti-Republican, anti-Black, anti-Mexican, anti-White, anti-Conservative, anti-Obama or Hillary or McCain, and anti-Mature forum for what amounted to a bunch of internet hooligans, or in my mind, the equivalent of taggers, but with less creativity.

But I do need to rant for just a moment and I hope you won't mind me taking a jaunt from my usual discussions of neighborhood watch meetings and restaurant reviews to just tell you a few things about my day.

San Antonio is a furnace this time of year, and it hasn't even gotten hot yet. Seriously, talk to me in August if you think a June day of 98 degrees makes you sweat in places you didn't know you could sweat from. If you aren't used to this, you may want to wear diapers.So my mother-in-law lives in an older home without central A/C. She has roughly 5 or 6 window units placed strategically throughout her home to allow the place to be habitable. The most important one, the one in the kitchen that serves the dining room as well, simply went Tango Uniform which resulted in a call to my office today. Need to obtain new unit and install ASAP!

I suggested that my wife run to the Home Depot near our house and grab a new unit, then I'd come home from work, change clothes and we would extract the old one, and insert the new one. My wife grabbed her Mom's Visa, went to the Home Depot and found that the particular unit advertised in the flyer, a 15,000 BTU, 110V unit was not available. No problem says the expert working the area where the A/C's are located. Take this 18,000 BTU 208/230V unit. The one with the funny plug.

My wife is no stranger to appliances or electricity and she asked Mr. H. Depot if the 18,000 BTU unit would run on a 110 circuit. Sure it will, he reported, just purchase this new electrical outlet with the horizontal look, and you can plug it right in. So my wife asked him again if he was sure. And, he was genuinely sure.

So, we both get home about the same time, me switching into my shorts and my wife pulling into the driveway with an A/C unit ready for a window with a 220V plug, in the back of her truck and I say, "What dumbass told you this would work?" And she pointed to the guy at Home Depot.

So in the back of my mind, I'm thinking this is an honest mistake. Maybe the guy misunderstood her electrical requirements, the question about the funny plug and the difference between 110 and 220.

We go back to Home Depot, get credit on my mother-in-law's Visa for over $300 dollars, then proceed to the A/C section. My wife points out the dumbass manning the position, providing insight to customers such as, "To check for electricity in your sockets, insert a butter knife into the holes."

Wait, that's what I told my kids when they were little. (Happy Father's day).

My wife begins to verbally abuse this guy for being a total retard and he commences to tell her that, all you have to do is swap out the outlet, and it will work. Yea, part of it may work, dumbass.

Look, I'm not an electrician and I didn't stay at Holiday Inn Express last night, but I have done a little wiring in my time. Hell, just yesterday, I replaced the triple A battery on the igniter switch to my gas grill. I'm sure that Home Depot sent this genius to a few classes in order to sell boxes full of A/C units to unsuspecting people that didn't make it beyond the Electrical Engineering Merit Badge in Cub Scouts, without having Grandma singe the curtains on her new window unit. Neither of us are experts, but I am pretty confident that Bob Vila would have simply called in Norm Abrahm on this deal, and the two of them would have bitched slapped A/C boy into next week.

I on the other hand, asked him to explain to me how he could extract the required 220 from the 110 wire, simply by changing the outlet receptacle. He then explained in great detail that I simply needed to have the proper gauge wire. And I could check the wire gauge by connecting a voltage meter to it. WTF?

Can somebody please contact the Home and Garden TV police? I seriously nearly burst a vessel. Am I on crack or is not the gauge of the wire pretty much the thickness? Yes, you need a thicker gauge of wire to handle 220 versus 110, but don't you need some more voltage or amps or something coming into the outlet in question, along with the thicker wire?

Okay, so we left the 1604 and Culebra Home Depot and went to the one closer to my mother-in-law's house by 151 and Loop 410. We go in, grab the 15,000 BTU unit and head to the check-out. My wife swipes her mother's Visa and the alarm sounds and the lady at the register asks for her ID. My wife then explains that the card is her mother's and presents the receipt from the other Home Depot and asks why they never asked for any ID at the one by our house? The lady didn't have an answer, but to her credit (no pun intended), she would not accept the card.I busted out my card, bought the A/C and am happy to let my wife and her mom figure out the details.

Okay: So I love Home Depot, but seriously - this was not a banner day for the one by my house. Oh, turns out they are building a Lowes, just across the street in Alamo Ranch. Think about it.

Okay, I don't mean to be a whiner here, but on the way home, we decided to stop at the KFC by my house. We get into line in the drive-thru behind this guy in a car that seriously would make Al Gore film a movie. The car was blowing out white smoke like like it was the opening to a Foghat concert or something.So we wait in line behind this eco-terrorist (or maybe, anti-eco-terrorist, who knows?) and the people at KFC simply never take our order, and the line ain't moving. After more than five minutes, I finally told my wife I had a hankering for Bill Millers, and we exited the drive-thru line.

Minutes later, we pull into my neighborhood, and sure enough, the white-cloud producing car is only a few car lengths in front of us and turns out he lives only a street or two over from us. Nice. No wonder my yard is turning brown.

So there you have it. I'm all Ranted out. What pissed you off today? Tell me about it.

Art Report: Expressing My Inner Monet...

Okay, not really. More like my inner Bob Vila. And even Bob Vila would be offended at my sloppy workmanship. But life goes on, right? It would probably help if I told you what I was talking about. This past Friday morning, I drove to work and noticed that not only had some inconsiderate bastards tagged the Oscar Perez Memorial Park, they scribbled the entire length of the wall that makes up the side of a church. I called 311 on my way to work and alerted the city of the park situation but really, with the Final Four in town, don't expect any clean-up before Tuesday or Wednesday.I suppose a picture is worth a thousand words - or at least a handful of vulgarities if you can make them out.If you are wondering wear I'm talking about, this building is on the corner of Timber Path and Grissom and was at one time an HEB. When HEB relocated to the corner of Grissom/Culebra/Tezel, this building turned into a hugely popular nightclub called Coyotes. Later, it became Tejano Texas and pretty much died out. Now, it has opened as a church called Living Waters (I think).

I'm sure most people who drove by this afternoon and saw GNWCIA Director Richard Garcia and I painting over the profanity just assumed that we were from the church. That's fine. It doesn't matter who does it, but someone needs to clean up the mess, so we did.I hear people complaining that the patches of paint not matching the original color look just as bad as the taggers' work. I'll agree it isn't perfect by Bob Vila or any stretch, but it is better for sure.

Construction Report: Screened Door...

I may have mentioned my brother-in-law, Junior before. He has been known to dabble in the trades and can usually figure out an efficient way to build or fix most things. Like the time that he found it to be more cost effective to repair a leaf rake, rather than splurge for a new one at the Home Depot.

You might recall that during a brief hiatus from my regular line of work, I did some freelance craftsmanship for him, just to help pass the time.

So this past weekend, we were over at my Mother-in-laws house, and Junior had come up with a plan to build a screened door for the cabana out back. The thinking was, with scrap wood and some screen from the shed, he could whip together a nice door for less than the $23.00 that one of the big box stores wanted for the cheapest model on sale.I suppose I could just cut to the chase and tell you that nothing ever seems to work as planned, and as evidence, I offer you this picture of a stool Junior made out of scrap wood.The only thing missing is the yellow caution tape. But, on to the project. First, as Norm Abrahm, the guy on The New Yankee Workshop says, safety first. Never mix power tools with beer.

Actually, Junior came up with a really good design. The door frame is made from 1x3 wood left over from some other project (see stool above) with a thin piece of plywood on the bottom for sturdiness and to keep a little dog from scratching on the screen. At about mid point, there is a 1X4 horizontal stabilizer, not only for sturdiness, but to allow two separate pieces of screen to be used. Pretty smart, eh? But the screen was too short (even in two pieces), and he still needed the hardware. Plus, with all the inadvertent nicks and chips, he had to purchase some wood putty to fill the voids. Before we ever did a dry fit, we had to make a quick run over to Culebra Hardware to get some supplies, and by now, the parts and pieces (not even considering the time) had exceeded the $23.00 Junior was trying to save. Another brother-in-law, Ed from Rockport, got in on the action. In total, four of us got our hands dirty on this project. Bob Vila would be spinning in his grave (if he were in fact deceased).Please don't misunderstand - it isn't that we aren't all capable of a simple project like building a door to slap on to the front of a cabana, I think it is the overall effect of having four different people measuring, cutting, stapling and screwing. Screwing the door to the frame.After multiple attempts, we figured out where we needed to make a few trims and shaves of the existing frame, and eventually, a grill full of fajitas and a few 12-packs of beer later, we had the door in place.The final touch was a fresh coat of paint, added by another brother-in-law, Armando (no relation to Armando Montelongo). Looks pretty good for a little more than $23.00 and about 4 hours of labor from four of us.

Shopping Report: Habitat Home Center

Since I have been in Bob Vila mode, I thought you may be interested in knowing about the Habitat Home Center over on Probandt. My wife and I were chatting with our good neighbors Gus & Ruby last evening, and they mentioned to us that the HHC has different lines of furniture for sale, so we thought we'd go have a look.

I have been to this store as well as the companion store over on Walzem. Both places are great for people looking to do home projects without breaking the bank. If you need a door or windows or a new counter top, they may have just the size you need at a very reasonable price. When I was doing some work with my brother-in-law rehabbing rental properties, we often came up with our paint schemes based upon what colors were available at the HHC.

The beauty of it is, the proceeds of the items they sale at the home center go right back into the bigger Habitat for Humanity program. You don't have to like Jimmy Carter to think that's a good idea.

So, anyway, we took a look at the type of dining room table my wife has been thinking about. It is a taller table with taller chairs almost as if you were sitting at a bar. The table is square when you put the leaf in, so you can seat six people. I like this idea too, but honestly, the one they had that fit our size requirement just did not seem, uh, well... sturdy. My wife was convinced that they just had not tightened the floor model, but looking at the construction underneath, I was just not satisfied it would hold up to a Thanksgiving Turkey.

So we moved on and looked at all the other good stuff they had - the building materials. Though you get the impression that this is almost flea market like, the fact is that they have things very organized and they have lots of stuff.

Okay, so here are a few pictures of the things you need to fix up your house:
Have you been thinking about building yourself one of those fancy mailboxes guaranteed to keep Gramma and her walker off the sidewalk? You can't beat bricks at 30 cents each.
Got a teenage movie starlet or "Lil' Paris" running around your house? You need some lighting to help them see all the oil running from their pores. Buy about twenty or so.
Have you ever wondered why your house doesn't make it to the cover of Better Homes and Gardens? The answer is simple - you don't have some of these cement architectural structure thingys. A little duct tape and some spackling, and people will think your double-wide had a make-over by Ty Pennington.
Looking for a new cutting board? This might be a little heavy.

You know, everywhere throughout the HHC, they have these little signs that say things like, "Smile - you are on camera" or "We video tape everything" and such. So, I was thinking, if you worked in the surveillance department, how many video tapes do you have of some dipshit like me taking a seat and asking his wife for the TP. Thankfully, my wife was able to snap a picture before any arrests were made.

In the end (certainly, no pun intended) we bought a few room carpets (new, not used) to go over our saltillo tile.

Crappy Job Report: The Time I got Poop in my Eye...

The other day while my wife and I traveled through some of the older parts of town to avoid contact with the construction on Loop 410, I was reminded of a brief period that I was working with my brother-in-law while waiting for details of my current contract to be worked out.

I'm not in the construction trade, but what guy would pass up the opportunity to be like Bob Vila for a few weeks while making a few dollars? If you are familiar with the neighborhoods in between IH-10 and Loop 410 between Vance-Jackson and West Avenue, you get the idea of where I am talking about.

My brother-in-law, Junior as we call him, works in the trades business. He is certainly a jack of all trades and can do electrical, plumbing, general construction, and he has also done repair of restaurant equipment and other things. This is no free advertisement or anything - so please don't e-mail me asking to see if I can get you a good rate. During the time of this story, we had been working to refurbish several rental properties around the city and had a few different property managers and Realtors that would call us for bids.

So anyway, he calls me and asks me if I can go look at a property to help him assess the situation. He says that this Realtor has a property that was vacated by the renters and that the house needs to be cleaned up. Now keep in mind, you all know that when people leave a rental property, they usually just un-ass, take the stuff they want and leave the rest. The result is, the landlord is stuck with hauling out the trash, getting rid of a dead couch and cleaning things up. A few guys and a pick-up truck can usually clear out a house in no time.

The Realtor said that “Before you make your bid, you really need to go look at the place.” Junior was pretty adamant that he could get the job done for less than $500.00. The Realtor again said, “No, you need to see the place”.

You have no doubt heard of cat ladies that have 68 cats living in a house, crapping everywhere, newspapers piled up, opened cans of cat food sitting all over the place. This was worse. No cats.

The people who lived in the house were no doubt sick.

When I first peered through the window, I though I might be in beer drinker’s heaven. It was this experience which taught me to take my camera with me everywhere I go. If I had the camera to take pictures, you might find it easier to believe this.

This 3 bedroom, 2-bath house was a sea of beer cans and trash piled 2 feet high. But, they had small paths leading to strategic locations like the refrigerator, the bathroom, and the front door. I refused to enter the house for fear of rats. The beer cans and the 18-pack cardboard cases were left in place as if the occupants had simply arranged to have a non-stop supply of beer delivered, and that they sat there and drank one beer, dropped the can and opened the next. When the first case was finished, they simply opened the next and so on and so on until their was an 1,800 square foot house full of beer cans, pizza boxes, dirty laundry, discarded tissues and so on.

Oh, the bathrooms were a hoot. And yes, beer cans in the bathrooms. The walls of the shower stall and the tub were covered in mold. And for some reason, they stopped putting the toilet paper in the toilet – they just wiped their butts and threw the toilet paper on the floor. Perhaps they had visited Mexico and decided to be exotic or something.

So, long story short, Junior had to hire some other workers he found to clear out the entire house. In addition to $650.00, he told them they could take anything that wasn’t nailed down that they wanted (nice side by side refrigerator at Best Buy - $1,200 – the mold encased version, free). These guys came in with gloves, masks, shovels and a huge truck and cleared the place in a matter of hours.

You can empty the contents, but you can’t empty the filth. That’s when I showed up with a power washer. Bob Vila would never recommend using a power washer inside a house on solid wood floors and sheetrock. I march to the beat of a different drummer I suppose.

The worst part was when I aimed the power washer at one of the toilets.

Big mistake.

Apparently, when they decided that the toilet was running too much, they decided to turn off the water supply to it. Well, apparently, that didn’t stop someone from taking a dump in it. By the time I got there with my power washer, the poop in the pot had dried. Dried feces and 2300 psi from the power washer equals a whole new game of foul smelling doo-doo flying back at you.

Thank God I have fast reflexes. But I could not dodge the smell. I literally threw up on the spot.

I ran out of the house and threw up in the yard. I waited a few minutes to regain my composure and decided to go in for another whiff. I threw up again.

In the end, I had to hold my breath long enough to get a hose through the bathroom window into the toilet so I could try to clear things up. I let the hose run full blast for 15 minutes before it cleared the funk from the bathroom. Oh, it was a total of 4 times that I threw up.

Okay, three days later, the house was clean and the real estate lady did not even recognize the place. She was in shock. Turns out, it was her house and she had been letting her daughter and her family live there, and the reason the house was vacated was that she had moved them into a new house she bought in a nicer neighborhood.

Attention residents of Stone Oak: Your new neighbor is Joe Dirt!