I Have A Dream...

Funny comment of the week: My neighbor's thirteen year old daughter rode in the back of a police car this week (as a witness to go ID someone, not as a suspect). With the hard plastic seats, easy to hose out materials, and lack of exit options, she said it was a lot like being in a plastic pet carrier.

So here's a good way to make yourself feel really attractive: Spend all day cleaning out the garage, then decide at the last minute that you need to get some stuff from the grocery store. Now, you could take a shower and put on clean clothes, but the chances of actually leaving the house after that are approximately zero. So instead you just brush the worst of the grime off and walk to the store, knowing that they'll be closing in an hour so not many people will be there and the ones that are will look like they've been cleaning the garage all day. And then the guy walking into the store in front of you is wearing a suit. Who goes grocery shopping in a suit?

Anyhow, the garage is looking the cleanest it has looked since sometime before I bought the house.

It's so clean that I could park a car in there as long as a) I was able to roll open the gate to the alley, and b) it hadn't rained in the past month so the garage door was light enough to lift.

The garage door is supposed to get replaced this week, which is good because it's supposed to rain tomorrow. Once it rains it absorbs enough water into the wood that it's too heavy for the springs. Soon I will be able to open it with a click of a button (as long as the broken three way switches that control the electricity in the garage are set to the one setting that allows current to flow).

The rolling gate, which goes between my driveway and the alley, is a fine example of how not to build a gate. You can see it in the picture above, held up on the left side by the wheelbarrow. It's twenty feet wide. Here's a closer look at it:

There is a 2x4 along the bottom with the 4" side sticking out parallel to the ground. Originally it had two wheels, one at either end. The first time it rained (and the wood got wet), about 18 feet of the fence sagged to the ground, making the whole thing immovable. Then my brothers came up and we put an additional two wheels on, so that problem was solved.

One of the other problems with this fence is that it was connected to the fence by one bolt that slid along a metal rail. The rail was held to the fence by a few short wood screws which have pulled out over the years. Then the track stopped moving freely and the whole thing fell apart, so the gate wasn't connected to the fence at all. That was a problem because if the fence falls down it's too heavy for one person to lift.

Luckily I have amazing carpentry skills, so I tied a rope along the length to replace the metal rail which is falling off, and added a new 2x4 on top of the remains of the old contraption.

(The broken wood is where the old bolt pulled out when the rail got stuck.)

(Look at the bowing of the gate in the distance...)

All I can say is that it hasn't fallen over yet, I've opened and closed it a few times without problem, and it only has to last until the whole fence is replaced which may happen in a few weeks.

My dream of parking in the garage may yet become reality.

This post is seriously lacking cute pictures, so I'll leave you with this photo of the Kittenhead.