My house smells like lighter fluid.

Okay, so sometimes I do some really stupid things. And the really, really stupid things are usually things I try when I think I'm being clever.

Jill being clever = trouble.

Case in point: The day I tried to fix—or "fix"—our dryer. We have a stacked washer/dryer and by "stacked" I mean "temperamental, abused, holy crap how soon can we get rid of this thing, oh wait we have to pay the mortgage, so I guess we keep it since technically it still works". One of the joys of the machine was the hideous squealing noise that came from the dryer. At first it was sporadic and you could only hear it if you were in the vicinity. Then it got louder...and louder...until one day, when DBF came home, he greeted me with, "What in the hell is that noise? You can hear it outside!"

So I decided I needed to eliminate the squeal.

Remember when I said you need to keep WD-40 around? Here's why...you can usually silence squeaks and squeals with it.

These are our dryer innards. My first plan of attack was to lubricate the belt because sometimes they get squeaky. Using the little red straw that's now conveniently attached to the WD-40 can, I applied the lubricant to the belt.

You know, while the dryer was running.

It's important to do this while the dryer is running so that you get the WD-40 on the whole belt. At least that's the general rule of thumb when lubricating belts, I had never tried this on a dryer.

Unfortunately this squeak wasn't coming from the belt. Next plan of attack, lubricate the drum.

As you can see, the drum is much bigger than the belt. Instead of trying to apply the WD-40 to the drum with the little red straw which would take a very long time, I folded down the straw and went full on sprayer.

Better coverage faster.

Again...with the dryer running.

Now, the smart(er) way to do this would have been to have the dryer running on fluff cycle...no heat. The belt and drum still turn, but there's no flame.

Flame?

Yep...it's a gas dryer so there's going to be a flame.

And lots of lint and dust.

And Jill sprays a flammable liquid into the innards, with the flame going...and sets them on fire.

Well, just a little.

It wasn't a big fire, it was just a little one fueled mostly by the dust and lint that had accumulated over time. Fortunately I was able to blow out the fire pretty easily, so no harm was done.

Interesting thing about WD-40: When you torch it, it smells like lighter fluid.

Interesting thing about torching WD-40 in the room adjacent to your HVAC system: It makes the whole house smell like lighter fluid.

Fortunately the lighter fluid smell dissipated in a couple of days...and I killed the squeal.

The hole in our house.

We have a very old-fashioned kitchen exhaust fan. It's a hole...and it usually has a fan mounted in the hole, but in this picture, it's just a hole.  The fan's on/off "switch" is controlled by that dangling metal ball chain which also opens and closes a spring-loaded door.

Like I said, old-fashioned.

This picture with the fan removed and the door open begs the questions: Why did we remove the fan? And what's with the pot o' beans?

I'm so glad you asked.

Just a few nights ago, while making dinner, DBF tried to turn on the fan but the spring-loaded door was stuck. Spinning fan + closed door = bad. So I tried to un-stick the door by gently tapping on it with a long-handled spoon...to no avail.

"I know how to fix this," came DBF's voice from the next room. He came back with the broom.

I should tell you that he had just gotten home from an 11 hour day, so he wasn't at his best. I should also tell you that while part of me knew this wouldn't end well, a much louder part of me was screaming, "I'm hungry!"

You see where this is going, right?

DBF successfully knocked the door loose with the broom handle. But he also popped the ball chain out of the connector, leaving us with a hole in the house we had no way to close.

**sigh**

Sometime after dinner...obviously neither of us was going to get much done on an empty stomach...we figured we should try to at least close the opening since it was 45 degrees outside. Fortunately once we removed the grate and the fan, it was simple enough to reach through the hole and pull the door shut.

Unfortunately, when we took the whole thing apart, we realized that the fan wasn't actually black metal, it was just black because it had 50 years of kitchen ick on it.

All together now... EEEEWWWWWWW.

Time to break out the big guns.

Krud Kutter. It works. Seriously.



Tools we used to fix this ick:

1. Krud Kutter. It works. Seriously.
2. Hammer. If you leave something in one place for 50 years, moving it is going to take some convincing.
3. Flat head screwdriver. Apparently DBF would rather use a real screwdriver than my pocket knife.
4. Bent-nosed pliers. Sure I bought these for jewelry-making, but pliers are pliers and when working in small spaces trying to pinch that little ball chain connector shut, these will certainly get the job done.
5. Pocket knife. I'm totally cool with using my pocket knife's screwdriver when the knife is closer than the toolkit.
6. Tongue and groove Channellocks. While we had it apart, DBF tried to adjust the switch to make it a little less finicky...he gets points for trying.

As for the pot o' beans, DBF made Boston Baked Beans from SCRATCH.

That's right people, not all baked beans come from a can. Who knew?

Concrete and Cookies

We have amazing neighbors. They're the kind of neighbors that I didn't think existed anymore; when we moved in, they had us over for a cookout. That evening was full of good food and great company and before the evening was over, we felt like we were home. ***warm fuzzy***


That evening, we also learned 2 very exciting things about the husband:

1. He loves my butterscotch cookies and
2. He's a general contractor.

Not just any general contractor, mind you, but the general contractor who has done more work in our house than we have and who knows the history of our house pretty darned well.

Like that super-high kitchen floor, for example...it may be super-high but the tiles are straight because of him. He couldn't talk the previous owner out of laying the tile right over the existing floor, but at least he talked him into laying the tile straight. Yay, neighbor!

Being a general contractor, he immediately came to mind when we needed a concrete guy. When we asked if he had a good concrete guy, he said, "Yeah, actually, and it's the guy who did your sidewalk."

Our sidewalk? You mean the one stretch of concrete on our property that isn't buckled or cracked? Heck yeah!

So we hired the concrete guy to put in our new driveway. As part of that process, we needed to put in area walls to protect the basement windows. You know what area walls are...you just might not know what they're called. Here's a photo...with labels (how helpful am I?).

As it turns out, of all the tools we do have, the one needed to attach the area walls to the house is not among them. But our AwesomeNeighbor does have the right tool...and kindly offered to attach the area walls for us.

The weekend after the area walls were attached and the driveway was poured, I took a fresh batch of butterscotch cookies to AwesomeNeighbors' house to say thank you. Then I smiled and said another thank you, this time to the Universe.

A pigeon for your thoughts.

I've been away for too long, but I'm afraid I must stay away a bit longer.

You see, my alter ego must work in order to pay for the house about which I write. And right now, work's pretty busy. A few weeks ago I was in Montreal (QC, not MO) for a conference. Now I'm trying to finish a paper for another conference. Next week my group is hosting a 2-day meeting followed closely by the conference for which I'm trying to finish the paper.

But fear not, loyal reader (hi, Mom!), I have planned topics that I've just not yet had time to write or photograph, including:

• Good neighbors = Gifts from the Universe
• My house smells like lighter fluid
• One of these things is not like the other

And hey, if there's something DIY or home improvement related you'd like to read about in a self-deprecating and hopefully humorous way, lemme know! Chances are I've tried it.

And now, as promised, a pigeon...Canadian, no less.

There's a list for that.

As I've mentioned before, I like lists. Scratch that, I love lists. They help me think things through, remember stuff, and stay on task. So in the earliest days of my relationship with our house, I made a lot of lists.

There were lists for projects, project supplies, small tasks, "someday" wish lists, things for which we needed professional assistance...I even considered making a list of lists so I wouldn't forget any of the lists.

When you come to the point where you're making lists of lists, you either spiral into a recursive hell or you step back and try to find a better way. I stepped back, took a few (thousand) deep breaths, and came up with a better system.

Behold!

This is my "better system." Each one of those index cards represents a room in our house.  The list on the left side of the card is stuff that needs a-doin' and the list on the right side is stuff that needs a-buyin'.

Over time, we've added to the lists, crossed stuff off when it's done or bought, and once or twice, we've scratched parts of lists out when our plans changed.

Take the workroom, for instance...I know, it's the example for almost everything...but it really has been a microcosm of the house as a whole.

So, please, take the workroom (formerly called "Utility Room"). The list used to be 3 items. Then the plan changed. We decided to gut the room, and redo it. So we added a fourth item:

That scratched-out word is "Gut." I made the mistake of writing "Gut & Re-do" as a list item. Looking back, I probably should have just written "redo," not just because it shouldn't have been hyphenated, but apparently DBF stopped reading at the first word.

So one Saturday in January, I'm sitting in the dining room, figuring out what projects to tackle today, and I hear very loud noises coming from the basement. When I went downstairs, this is what I found (DBF has been grayed out to protect his "innocence").

Does that hammer look familiar?

That's the ceiling on the floor, by the way. Fun!

Yes, I know the demo needed to be done, but I hadn't thought the whole project through. Which meant I hadn't made a list for it. And I had hoped...well...I had hoped to make a list for it.

One of the best things about DBF is that sometimes he saves me from myself.