Handy Man

Husband can fix anything.

Apparently as a child, he had a fondness for taking apart various electronics in his house and reassembling them.  His parents didn't always notice - though they caught him in the act of taking apart the phone one time. 

The slow progress of the Buick restoration notwithstanding, Husband is really incredible.  For example, there was awhile during law school when my car wouldn't start.  Husband went out and tried starting it a few times, came back in and read the Internet for fifteen minutes, went back outside, and I heard the car start.

Liz:  How did you do that?  What did you do?

Husband:  Well, the solenoid is getting jammed when the engine cools off and so you just need to knock on it a bit to get it to start.

Liz:  The what?  Where?

Husband showed me in the engine where to knock and gave me a screwdriver to knock it with until we could get it fixed.  So I had a week or two where I felt very cool and mechanically inclined; if I was going to drive someone and my car wouldn't start, I'd just casually remark, "Oh, it's probably just the solenoid, let me take care of that," grab the screwdriver, pop the hood, and handle it.  No one could ever see that I was literally just banging on a piece of the engine with the screwdriver, so I looked cool.

Aside:  I used to play the excellent video game The Sims* all of the time, and occasionally they would need to fix an item in their house, and the way they would do so would be to wham on the item with a hammer.  So you'd see the Sim sitting there, just banging the screen of her TV with a hammer for a few hours of her time, and then her TV would be fixed.  Based on this and my experience with the solenoid, the only way I know how to fix anything is to wham on it with some sort of blunt tool.  

A week later, Husband took the car into the shop.  He came back not very long later.

Liz:  Did they fix it?

Husband:  They wanted A THOUSAND DOLLARS to fix it.

Liz:  Is my car worth a thousand dollars?

Husband:  No.

Liz:  What are we going to do?

Husband:  I'm going to fix it.

Husband went on Amazon.com, bought a part for $45, and two days later spent twenty minutes installing it.  The car was fixed perfectly.

When we hired a monthly  housecleaner in our old house on a trial basis because we were living in squalor (in my defense, I was commuting for three hours a day) and she proceeded to yank our entire showerhead out of the wall in the process of cleaning the shower (?!?!????) and Husband found water literally leaking into the wall, he was able to fix the problem with the pipes until a plumber could get out the next day.  

In our new house, Husband installed a dimmer switch when I wanted one for the chandelier in the family room - a chandelier which he had wired in after I bought it on craigslist.  He installed the new oven.  He crawled under the house to figure out why a few boards in the dining room floor were squeaking  and reinforced the subfloor so they wouldn't.  He replaced the rain gutter on the front of the house (because the old one only went 30% of the way across the roof, and then stopped abruptly, creating a fountainous stream of water shooting out over the porch).  He installed a proper downspout.  

He also makes a mean pie.

Blackberry.  From scratch.  I know, too dreamy.

In short, Husband is entirely the functional adult I will probably never be, and I am so thankful that my best friend just happens to also be the most competent person I know.

*  The Sims was the first video game ever to sell more copies to women than to men.  It was also the best selling video game ever for a long time (until, I think, one of the Calls of Duty finally bumped it).  Not a coincidence.

So Expensive: Part 3

Part 3:  Install New Garage Doors

(read part 1 and part 2 of our adventures in expensive house fix-ups)

As is fairly established by now, Husband likes spending time in the garage taking a certain vehicle apart.  The new house has a stand-alone garage.  The old house had a connected garage, and the washer and dryer were in the garage, so I would go into the garage on occasion (and inevitably manage to bash my arm on a tailpipe suspended, improbably, four and a half feet in the air).  But the new one is all on its own and literally jammed to the brim with the Old Car.  I never go in there.

Haunted by rusty ghosts.  Really, just rust.

But Husband is in there all the time.  He shimmies around the edges in the narrow path he's made to get to whatever rusty part of the Old Car he is disassembling at any given moment and doesn't even look like he minds it.  When he isn't working, or sleeping or baking pies, or hanging out with me discussing plot inconsistencies in the Transformers franchise, he's out in the garage working on his car.

Husband:  I think we need a new garage door.
Liz:  Why?  What's wrong with the old one?
Husband:  The springs are really old, and the door is really heavy, and I'm worried the garage door is going to collapse on me and kill me.
Liz:  We're getting a new garage door.

He wasn't delusional: the old garage door had no automatic lift and was made out of solid wood, and every time Husband lifted it, it made a terrifying dying-badger sound.  It was just that a) I knew it would probably be a bunch of money and b) after the heinous floor experience, I didn't know if we were ready to deal with another upgrade.  But Husband's life was at stake this time, so it had to be done.

Miraculously, this time, finding a service provider was easy: Husband found a guy on Yelp and called some people, and one of them was remarkable:

1. He actually replied
2. He seemed reasonable on the phone
3. He was willing to come out the very next day to give a quote...
4. ...even though the next day was Sunday.

It was amazing.

He came out on Sunday and brought a brochure of doors we could pick from.  He showed us the one he suggested, which was one of the cheapest ones, and a very good door as well, because it's really just a garage door and who needs...

Liz:  I want that other one.

Garage Door Man:  Oh.  Well, that one is a fair amount more money... 

Liz:  I don't care.  I want that one.

The Garage Door Man seemed baffled that I was willing to spend more money to have a better-looking garage door.  Or maybe he was trying to be sensitive: on the weekends, I generally dress like a twelve-year-old and I'm not old enough looking that when I'm dressed like a twelve-year-old that people can see, ahem, another sixteen years past that.  

Aside:  One time, right after I had taken the bar exam, I sat on a plane next to a director at a company I really like and chatted very intelligently with him about the directions his industry was taking (as I'd done a 120-page paper on that industry my last term of law school).  Mr. Director kept doing double takes / expressing incredulity that I had a JD - because I was wearing jean shorts and an old t-shirt from a mock trial tournament.  Whatever!  It was summer!  I had just taken the bar exam.  I'm not some person insistent on throwing back to the 60s by dressing up to sit on a sweaty Southwest flight.   

Machine washable clothes save the world, too.  Down with dry cleaning.

So the Garage Door Man probably through we were stone cold broke and I was some sort of 18-year-old bride.  Instead of what I actually am, which is a stubborn lady who intends to buy new garage doors only once in the rest of her existence and is thus going to get attractive ones that look like carriage doors.

(Which Husband also wanted.  I'm not some kind of garage door tyrant wife.  Which is going to be the title of my next blog.)

The Garage Door Man nicely acquiesced, and began telling us about his nine (nine!) children and beloved wife while he went to inspect the current door.  Which was the best part, because our garage door was no regular garage door.  As you can see, within the door was another, regular-style door, complete with glass panes and a locking doorknob, though you have to step up over the ledge to enter through it.  Also, the garage door had in it a separate cat door.

This was part of the reason it was so heavy and why Husband and I were genuinely concerned he could get smushed under it.

Garage Door Man, admiringly:  You know, I've seen doors in a garage door before, but I've never seen a cat door in the garage door before.  Two doors within the door.  That's a first.

We were pretty proud to have a garage door unlike any the Garage Door Man had seen before.

We agreed on a price and signed the contract.  After he left, though:

Husband:  I'm sorry - I forgot to negotiate with him at ALL.

Liz:  Don't worry about that - he has like a million children to feed.  I don't want to negotiate with that guy.  

The very next day, Garage Door Man sent the oldest of his million children over to install the new garage door, which did require Husband to roll part of the disassembled Old Car out of the garage.

But other than that, the garage installation was easy and quick - the guy worked outside on it for half a day, and by 5 p.m. we had a brand-new garage door that went up and down by itself and had a nice keypad on the outside.  Just like regular people do.  No cat door.

  

Which is really a loss in case Husband ever trains a cat to help him put the Old Car back together.

Nearly Unmoved: In Which Superman Fails to Help

How do you move a six-thousand pound car that’s split into several large pieces and has no wheels?

A.  Put it back together

B.  The murder weapon was a giant icicle

C.  It represents mankind

D.  To get to the other side!

E.  A lot of hamburgers

If you selected choice E, you’re correct, and yet likely still confused.  

This story begins almost seven years ago.  I was a senior in college and becoming essentially too cool for school, insofar as I was dating a very sophisticated older man with a job.  That sophisticated older man is, of course, the gent you know as Husband.  And that man had meaningful disposable income for the first time in his life.

I’m not one to begrudge someone a few indulgent purchases upon entry to the real world and the drudgery of work - I myself made some pretty ridiculous purchases upon law school graduation.  So when Husband bought stuff like a backyard hammock complete with stand, or $250 cowboy boots (? seriously, ?), I didn’t say anything. 

But then he bought the Buick.

To be precise, he bought a 1956 Buick with enormous fins, an airplane hood decoration, and such serious rust damage that you could watch the asphalt rush by underneath your feet as you drove it.  It literally had holes in the floor.  Like a Flintstones car.  Seriously.

It wasn’t going to be the first car he had restored; he’d restored an old mustang in high school.  But I was still skeptical when Husband brought the Buick back to the house that he was then sharing with two other dudes (before the mold was known).  I had questions.

Liz:  I mean, how long is it going to take you to finish restoring this car?

Husband:  I don’t know, like a few years probably.

Liz:  A few YEARS?  Are you kidding me?  That’s forever!

Husband:  No more than four, I mean.

Liz:  FOUR YEARS?!?!?

Flash forward to six years later.  The Buick was not done.  The Buick was not only not done, it was not, in any meaningful sense, ASSEMBLED.  I had unwittingly enabled this state of being when I helped husband build two work benches.  He used those work benches to set the body of the car on after he removed the body from the frame.  I had never personally realized that you could take the body of a car off the frame, but you can, and I was reminded of this afresh whenever I went to the garage to do laundry and rammed my arm into a tailpipe hovering five feet in the air. 

THAT state of being had been achieved by bribing fifteen of our friends to come over and pick the body up off the frame and move it six feet to the left on to the tables.  The bribe had been a barbeque.  

This strategy had evidently worked not wisely but too well, because now, when it came time to move the entirety of the vehicle, Husband was of the opinion that all we needed was our friends to pick it up.

To move an entire two thousand pound car, which notably did not have wheels attached to it in any sense whatsoever.

I thought we should rent a crane, or commission an army of sherpas, or perhaps sell the entire vehicle piecemeal on Craigslist before we moved.  But apparently none of that was an option.

Husband sent out an e-mail to literally everyone we know who still lives in the area, and some who (as husband knows perfectly well) live several time zones away.  In exchange for helping to dead lift an entire automobile, carry it onto an auto trailer, carry it off an auto trailer, and up a driveway into a garage, we offered... burgers.  Including veggie burgers for those inclined.

I did not think that was a particular attractive option.  I thought we would have no takers.

But our friends are all spectacularly giving and wonderful people - so much so that I felt even worse about how we were abusing them.  When the appointed day came, we had around 20 people show up to lift.  

The first task was to back the car trailer onto the driveway in a suitable fashion.  I did not think that was an achievable goal: it was a 20 foot long trailer, the wheels of which were nto controlled by a steeing wheel, and the only way to back it was by pushing it with the car it was attached to.

Husband assured me that he was "good at backing things up."  I gave him a look that attempted to convey my lack of certainty that that was a thing.  At all.  That anyone was good at.  

But it turns out even after seven years in a relationship with someone, he can still surprise you.  It turns out that Husband is actually really good at backing things up.  He navigated that trailer backwards into the driveway perfectly.  It was truly impressive.  Everyone applauded.

We then crammed everyone into the garage as best as possible and tried to figure out how to lift something that was designed to be picked up only by tow trucks and machinery in factories.

"Okay, let's get enough people on each side."

"But we need someone to direct!"

"Okay, Jam can direct and guide, and everyone else lift on one side."

"We need someone on the back!"

"Two people on the back.  The rest lift."

"Do we have any more gloves?"

"No, but use these rags?"

"Do we have any more rags?"

"Well, here's a shirt of Husband's that I don't like anymore, no, it has holes in it, stop looking at me like that."

"Okay, does everyone have gloves, or a rag, or a shirt?"

"Let's lift on three."

"Lift on three, or lift on one-two-three THEN lift?"

"One-two-three lift."

"Should we do a practice lift?"

"No.  It's time to lift.  Jam?"

"Ready everyone?  Here we go - One.  Two.  Three.  LIFT!"

It's now that I should mention that our garage wasn't exactly spacious: there was the frame of the car, the washer and dryer, Husband's workbench, a bunch of boxes, etc.  So the grunting and narrative shouting that ensued as 22 people tried to move in concert while carrying the heaviest thing imaginable was NOTEWORTHY.  

Spectacular, in fact.

By which I mean we caused a spectacle in the neighborhood.  The neighbors - many of whom we still had never met - all came out of the house to stare as we awkwardly waddled this car onto the trailer. 

Then it was merely a simple task of driving the trailer to the new house and unloading it into the new garage.  And that couldn't be any harder than getting out, right?  

One, two, three, lift, carry up the driveway, lift to set on the work tables and...

Husband:  "Uh, okay, everyone set it back down on the driveway."

The work tables that had been the right height for the car body to fit in the old garage were not the right height for the new garage, which we discovered was in fact shorter than the old garage.

When Husband and some other individuals broke out the saw to start cutting the tables down, I gave up and started getting the burgers ready.

We eventually did get the car lifted and into the garage, and we did get the burgers on the grill, and we MAY get our friends to forgive us someday.  But I told Husband that if we move again, either the car drives to the new place or it doesn't go at all.  We don't have enough friends to get an entirely separate batch to lift the car again.

We did find one upside the next day to having a giant auto trailer at our disposal, though: