Autumn Renovations

Time sure flies when life swirls on around you. This fall, the projects at home have simply sucked up most of the available time I had to do things -- like keep the blog updated. (I did manage to get a few things posted at askalawyer.blogspot.com for those with a yearning for hearing about other peoples’ legal problems).

Home improvement projects were the order of the day around the house this fall, and, when we take on a project, we don’t take on one; we multi-task, project-wise. Here’s the “to-do” list: we finished our basement, and, at the same time, moved my oldest son out (to his first apartment!), then moved my youngest into the now empty bigger bedroom, and then converted the now-empty smaller bedroom into an upstairs office. Of course, these simple phrases don’t do justice to the mammoth undertakings that each one of those projects is. “Finishing the basement” includes the sub-task of emptying the basement, which leads to sub-sub-tasks, like: (a) getting rid of the junk that we’ve accumulated over the years, (b) having the eternal debate with the missus about why some of the things she considers “junk” is really “valuable-stuff-you-should-save-because-
you-might-need-it-down-the-road,” and (c) purchasing storage bins within which to put the things we will continue to save.

This last sub-sub-task leads to the task of finding a place to temporarily store this stuff while we rip out the half-walls left by the guy, two owners ago, who started to finish the basement but then never did. The problem, of course, is that the guy who half-finished the basement decades ago did a fairly poor job of doing so, which necessitated the rip-out. This, of course, leads to the sub-sub-sub task of making arrangements to dispose of the stuff you’re pulling out before you put new stuff in.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that, before we could start any of it, we had to replace the furnace? After all, if your 15 year old furnace needs about $1500 of repair for the new "heating season" (we used to call it "winter," by the way), and you’re going to finish the basement anyway, you might as well buy and install a new furnace, and then finish the basement around it. This avoids the possibility of damaging your new basement walls in three years when you have to replace the furnace after the $1500 repairs give out.

Of course, installing new furnaces isn’t like installing a new refrigerator. There’s a chimney, and soot, and rusty water, and corroded pipes, and a host of other incredibly dirty, dust-creating things that, upon your return home at the end of the day, require intensive top-to-bottom scrubbing of the house. (That soot does get everywhere.)

You can see where my free time went these past few months.

Oh, the tales I’ve got as a result of these renovations. There was the Saturday in mid-October when I drove a shower stall all around North Jersey. See, the fininshing of the basement included a remodel of the bathroom. I was told that a uni-body shower stall (which is one, giant piece of whatever they make shower stalls out of) was a better bet than one of the kits you can get, which is essential three plastic panels, nailed to the two-by-fours, screwed and caulked together, and voila: shower stall. So, I head off to Home Depot, my youngest in tow (for moral support), and find a shower stall. It was nice looking, perfectly square, and designed to fit into the 32 inch opening in the corner of the bathroom. With the help of a couple of guys at Home Depot, I got the thing up on the roof of my father-in-law’s truck, tied it down, and headed home.

On the way, I was feeling pretty confident. I had my 32" shower stall, I’d measured my door openings into the bathroom, and along the hall, and in the bathroom and knew that the uni-body stall would fit. I was in the process of calling Dave, my very handy neighbor, to help me unload the shower stall, when I paused. It had suddenly occurred to me that I had not measured any of the entry doors into the house from outside. Sure, I could get the shower stall down the stairs, down the hall and into the bathroom. However, it had not occurred to me to see if I could actually get the shower stall into the house.

I’m sure you can predict the rest. I have 30 inch doors in my house. Front door. Back door. Bilco door into the basement. All 30 inches. Geometry had never been my long suit, but I was fairly confident that there was no way that I could twist, turn, or manipulate a 32 inch square shower stall through a 30 inch wide door. So, the shower stall and I returned to Home Depot, where I swapped it out for -- a three-piece shower stall kit. At least the uni-body had a day out.

Then there was the PODS adventure. Have you heard of them? PODS is an organization that rents you storage pods, either for storing stuff on your property, or for packing your stuff up and moving it to another location. It’s a great idea for folks like us, who just need a place on a temporary basis to store some stuff.

The POD itself is, essentially, a container similar to that on the back of an 18-wheeler. The POD people deliver the pod to your home, off-load it from the back of the truck, and leave it in your back yard, or on your driveway, or wherever you’ve got room for it. You fill the POD with your stuff and then either leave it there until you’re done storing, or call the POD people, who will send a truck and move the POD to wherever it is you need it moved.

It’s a great concept, and we thought we had the perfect solution to our temporary storage dilemma. However, the best laid plans....

I’d called PODS to arrange for the delivery of a POD. Their web site walks you through what you need to do, and how much room you need, and how much clearance you have to have, something like 12 by 12 by 16 feet for the large pod. I measured the area where I wanted the POD, filled out the on-line form, scheduled a delivery for Saturday morning, and waited.

On a rainy Saturday morning, the POD truck arrived at about 8:00 a.m. I knew there was trouble when the POD driver looked at my driveway and shook his head. I ran out to face the problem head-on.

“Oh, man, I’m not sure this is going to get up the driveway,” said the driver.

I was puzzled, because it was obvious that the POD itself would fit in my driveway.

“Why not? Just back the truck up and roll the POD off,” I told him.

The driver shook his head again. “No, man. That’s not how it works.”

I had – mistakenly – believed that they just backed the truck up and rolled the POD off the back, kinda like a dump truck. In hind sight, I can see how that wouldn’t work if you were packing a POD for moving. Imagine having everything packed neatly in the POD, and then having to drag it up the back of the truck, on an incline. That wouldn’t work so well.

What PODS has is a contraption that resembles a four-legged spider, which stands itself up off of the truck. The crawler then straddles the back of the truck, and the driver attaches the POD by chain to the crawler (which is about 15 feet tall). The crawler then lifts the POD straight up in the air, keeping it level, and lifts it off the truck. The driver than directs the crawler, by remote control, to wherever the POD is supposed to go, and then lowers it down.

The problem at my house was this. The crawler needs a twelve foot wide path to get the POD from the truck to the place where you're going to put the POD. That, I didn't have. I had a big enough spot for the POD itself, but the pathway leading up to it was only about 9 or ten feet wide. My driveway is very narrow at the end, with a 3 foot high retaining wall on one side, and a four step staircase, leading to a walkway, on the other. There was no way that the crawler could fit up the driveway, because it wouldn’t be able to navigate the stairs.

Oh, the driver was game. “Well, I’ll give it a try,” he said as he got the remote control for the crawler going. And he did get the crawler up on the first step – with the POD swaying back and forth like a swing in the storm, and the front leg of the crawler tilting closer and closer towards my neighbor’s house. I politely declined the driver’s generous offer to continue to his effort to scale the stairs and told him to take his POD and go home.

We eventually secured a spot at the local self-serve storage facility and, two days and about 57 trips later, we had the basement’s contents in storage.

It was all well worth it, by the way, despite the time involved. The basement looks incredible, the office looks great, and we’ve just got to get a second coat of paint on the big bedroom to finish the remodel up there. The result has been great, but lawdy, lawdy, it does take time.