DIY Disasters

Squirrely Neighbor. Our neighbor was looking for a good roofer. His roof was full of holes and leaking terribly. We asked how all the holes got there. It seems there was a scurry of squirrels in his attic and he tried to shoot them with a 22 rifle.

His marksmanship didn’t work so he finally called animal control, but he was left with a Swiss cheese roof.

Apparently, our neighbor’s squirrel removal technique isn’t isolated. When I googled “man shooting squirrels in attic” I got several hits, including a Tulsa World article, “Man shot by neighbor shooting at a squirrel in his attic.” At least our neighbor didn’t shoot us when he was on his rampage.

Every time we think of that neighbor, we picture him running through the attic aiming his gun at a squirrel and yelling ‘Take that you dirty varmint,’ like the cartoon character Yosemite Sam.

A Leaky Hose. Another neighbor wanted me to water their plants when they were on vacation. I turned on the hose in the back yard and no water came out. I went to the hose reel to see what the problem was. I saw more duct tape than hose. It appeared that every time his hose had a leak, the neighbor wrapped duct tape on the leak. But even his duct tape fixes broke and water sprayed out of the edges of each fix. His hose would have worked better as a soaker. I gave up and brought our hose over to complete my watering chores while he was away.

Shake and Break. When we were first married Dave made a beautiful room divider. He designed, built, sanded, and stained it. It separated the entrance and the living room. Since we lived in an apartment, we didn’t want to damage the walls, so the divider was held up with tension rods. The divider held knick-knacks, books, and our starting record album collection. We lived next to a train track and trains rumbled by several times a day. We were in bed one night as a train sped by, shaking the apartment. Then we heard a boom. We ran through the apartment to see the room divider toppled over the couch. Fortunately, nothing broke. But I bet the lady downstairs had quite a start.

Rehabbing an old apartment

Our next apartment was about 60 years old and two old sisters had lived there for almost that long. It needed serious rehab. Old paper wallpaper was peeling from the walls and there were cracks in the ceiling from water leaks that had been repaired. Despite the shabby shape, we loved the apartment – huge rooms, lots of sunlight, and a two-block walk to the “L”. The landlady gave us a deal on the rent because of the shape of the apartment. So, we became rehabbers.

Ceiling Cracks. We started the rehab with the ceiling cracks. The spackle instructions said to ‘overfill’ the crack because the spackle would shrink as it dried. We overfilled them a bit too much. Actually, a lot too much. We spent the next several months on ladders, our arms stretched to the ceiling, sanding the mounds of excess spackle. Rehab lesson 1 – don’t learn spackle techniques on the ceiling.

Ceiling is repaired. We also removed the wallpaper, painted the walls, and refinished the floors.

A Beautiful Maple Floor. Next, we started with the kitchen. The decades-old rubber tile was faded, had worn pathways and was curled up around the edges. I noticed there was a maple floor below the tile. I knew one of my friends had removed the tile from her kitchen floor so I called to ask what it was like to remove the tile. Her husband answered so I asked him. “Oh, it was easy, no problem.” The edges were easy, but once I got to areas where people walked I could only chip up an inch at a time. I called my friend back to ask if she had any tricks, and that it wasn’t as easy as her husband said. She replied, “Of course not, he didn’t do it, I did! And it was the most horrible task I did when rehabbing the house.”

Maple floor peeking through from rubber tile removal

Rehab lesson 2 - When you ask someone how hard a job is be sure to ask the person who did it.

We did eventually got the tile removed and the finished floor was beautiful.

You can't see the floor really well but here is the finished kitchen.