Fall Is Coming

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This morning since the weather is warm and it’s not raining — as opposed to the rest of this week — I decided I needed to get on with the seemingly endless list of tasks that need done in the house, including tuck-pointing the front of the house before winter, and mulching the flower beds. And–

It’s been four hours and the difference might be negligible, in what I actually accomplished out there. I mean, things are done, just not nearly as much as should be done, and–

And I’m tired. Really tired. Particularly since I’ve been running a low grade fever for days — probably auto-immune because of course my stress levels are spiking at going to Son of Silvercon, even though the guest of honor is my friend and a lot of you are coming — and so I work very slowly and get tired way too easily. However I have chapters to do.

Thing is, you know, that it’s not misplaced priorities. For two years now we’ve been looking for people to do this stuff, from the gardening to the tuck pointing, to the painting. When we first got here, it wasn’t as bad as Colorado, but now it’s getting there. We’re willing to pay, even if it’s expensive, because my time is better employed writing, and I’m getting too old for this.

But after trying, I can’t let the snows come again with the house in this state. and it’s not like Dan can do it. His knees are shot, and he’d never recover.

Of course, I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ll ever recover. Right now it doesn’t feel like it. But I’m sure it will get better. Vitamin I, aka ranger candy, is my friend.

I’d say I have no clue why we can’t find a handyman or someone to do this little stuff. But as with other things that make no sense, there’s usually some macro-society thing going on. At a guess it has to do with my generation having been brought up to the idea that while collar jobs are better, and that no one should do this kind of handyman stuff. As well as a lot of influx of manual laborers holding the pay down, so no one learned to do this. And now the oldsters are retiring.

Why the imported manual laborers aren’t available is something I’m not willing to consider. Look, yeah, I was on a board yesterday that someone was talking about how illegals make so much better construction workers. I’m going to say horse pokey to that. Not only do I know Latin culture and its enshrining of “fast and sloppy” as a virtue (these people mostly based it on speed) but in the last almost forty years in the US, I’ve lived in a lot of Victorians that had a lot of problems acquired over the years. None of it compared to our newest house built by mostly illegal labor, which frankly needed redoing from the ground up, because after 15 years the “good enough” no longer was. So, Bah. Also Latin culture and a lot of others across the globe seem to be completely unaware of the need for maintenance. So perhaps the minor jobs of maintenance don’t appeal to the “imported” work force. I don’t know.

What I know is that handymen are unobtainium and so I must do what I can even though, d*mn it, captain, I’m a writer not a Jill of all trades.

This morning, and I no longer remember about what, which tells you more than it should, and certainly nothing I’d like to know, Dan told me about something “This can’t go on. It’s at a breaking point.” And I told him truthfully “I feel like everything is. Not just that field.”

And so it goes. And I also didn’t want to have to do the maintenance before Fall and the inevitable rebuild after. I’m in the fourth generation of poorly schooled people. As with tuck pointing, I have to read the instructions before doing it, and fashion a narrow enough trowel from the tortured remains of a plastic fork. (Deal.) Only you can’t rebuild working society alone, or with a plastic fork. It’s going to take a lot of hands, and there is by definition very little I can do. And like this stuff I’m doing outside, it might kill me.

But it doesn’t matter, because it needs doing, and I’m — we’re — the ones here.

Sometime before Christmas, I’d like to schedule a whole day to go to bed and stay there. Luxury.

Probably won’t happen.

There’s stuff to do. Before the fall. Either one. And after.

Shoulder to wheel. Let’s get it done.

171 thoughts on “Fall Is Coming”

  1. Everything is at a breaking point, sure.

    The scary part is that the virtues needed to put things back together after everything falls apart are déclassé at best, and raciss-sexiss-patriarchy at worst.

    So things will fall apart. And then either they get put back together, quickly and probably shoddily, and the fixers will then be made into the new bad guys, or, more likely, the fixers will say “fuck this noise” and not do anything except for the very few people they trust.

    1. The scary part is that the virtues needed to put things back together after everything falls apart are déclassé at best, and raciss-sexiss-patriarchy at worst.

      When it is adopt those virtues or give up, in the words of the chorus of a sadly socialist song (great music and catchy chorus),:

      Walls for the wind
      Shelter from the rain
      Something for the hunger
      And something for the pain

      those virtues will return in a generation. If people are lucky because of general adoption. If there is no general adoption the generation after will consist nearly exclusively of those who already had them and passed them on.

        1. Darwin is a-hole. Lots of us are going to learn (note: I’m note sure I have enough virtues to survive certain levels of collapse, but I’m working on it).

          1. Look around at all the other old guys, guess what, when it starts to fall who are they going to start asking questions of. Yep, that’s you and me. If you don’t know the answers find reference books. The more you build around you the safer you will be.

            1. There was a massive BitTorrent collection, The Survival Library, made up of PDFs of books from a hundred years ago (and newer, useful books in the public domain, like government manuals) on skills as diverse as furniture making, surgery, and nuclear energy. The point being to have, at least in ebook form, the tools to rebuild civilization no matter how squirrelly things got.

              (No, you don’t need the grid to survive, you just need a couple of Kindles, and a number of solar charging devices.)

                1. I find it interesting that my work computer blocks that site as Illegal/unethical.
                  Take that for what it’s worth.

            2. Said it before; enough information in the circa early nineteen hundreds Audels manuals to rebuild an early twentieth civilization from the rubble of the fall of the 21st, if necessary, -or to become an excellent handyman, jack of all trades, today.
              Many are available over at Thrift books at reasonable prices, BTW.

              1. Book knowledge, yes…but trying to apply that without experience or someone with experience to guide you is a pain.

                1. You’re very welcome to you opinion, but in this case I thoroughly disagree.

                  Audels manuals were written so an early 20th century farm boy or an immigrant with a fifth or sixth grade (Back in that day.) education could read, comprehend and utilize the data therein.

                  I, in the early sixties, was able BS my way into a machine shop job in NYC using the info I gleaned from Audels and, again using the info I gleaned from Audels, do the work required, in the time allotted, without damaging any lathes, milling machines, drill presses. etc.

                  I will allow there is a leap twix book learnin’ and practical experience but not necessarily an insurmountable one nor always a particularly steep learning curve. Also why yes, fellow workmen and foremen would augment the book taught new worker but the same is true for a hands on apprenticeship worker.

                  I’ll also, of course allow different strokes for different folks. What worked for me wouldn’t necessarily work for you, and vise versa. However Audels was, in my opinion a very valuable tool back in the day for many and I believe the, again in my opinion, same is true today.

                2. Bottom line; I suspect we both agree it can be done, even without experience or a mentor, by error and trial and error but it is a pain, though often well worth it. 🙂

                  1. I agree it can be done. What I suspect is it can’t be done at scale during a mass crisis of competency in time to avoid a general loss of infrastructure and services.

                    1. Exactly. I would add “or quickly enough, with even the incompetent opposition of the government to gum up the works”. Too many chokepoints.

              2. Just check. Internet Archive has several. Despite self teaching from a book not being my first choice grabbing the PDFs and printing and binding them sounds like a good side project for a bit.

                1. Intent was to teach you how to be a machinist by building your shop tools. Start with really, really simple things that are also useful. Kinda like how a blacksmith learns his craft. First, make a nail. Eventually, make tongs. Then fancy stuff.

                  Nails are useful, valuable, scutwork. But they do teach you how to make stuff by heating and beating. Also how not to annoy the smith by chipping his anvil.

                2. Yep. Or even hire out the printing. Just for the fish, just for the halibut, I just priced printing and shipping, Joseph Coppinger’s 1815 232 page The American Practical Brewer and Tanner, as a paperback, novella sized at Lulu. A hundred copies printed and shipped to my door for around $715.00.

          2. Definitely depends on the level. Humanity as a whole has survived catastrophic collapses at least twice (one time, according to genetic studies, the entirety of humanity was made up of at most ten thousand individuals; no, those studies were not funded by Battlestar: Galactica.). I doubt things can get that bad no matter how awful things get in the next few years.

  2. It shows what sort of person I am that I saw the tuck pointing comment about using the tortured remains of a plastic fork and immediately thought “isn’t that what you use the handle of a toothbrush for?”

      1. They make skinny little trowels for pointing. Probably about 5 bucks at Home Despot.

        I not only keep old toothbrushes for cleaning, I use a heat gun and bend the handles into odd shapes for different applications.

          1. Amazon has multiple choices of the GI-type double-end “toothbrush” for cleaning weapons. They have very stiff bristles, and the handle end has a very narrow brush. I much prefer these for hard-scrubbing chores than my worn-out dental implements.

            Live a little.

      2. We buy cheap ones from the dollar store for crafting. The nice ones from the dentist are actually the wrong type for most crafts. (Yes, I have a specific one for making stars. Cheap and stiff, spatters great.)

      3. I think the “proper” term is ‘repointing’ – taking out the weathered, crumbly bits of mortar in brickwork and then applying fresh new mortar to keep the brickwork from (further) decaying.

        I didn’t know the terms then, but I spent one long hot Summer (1984?) doing that for a long-neglected building. It would have been MUCH better had it had regular maintenance.

          2. hm. My very Odd brain is now imagining sealing the finished mortar work with white silicone gasket goo.

            Probably not a good idea, but …. hmmmm… (smacks brain. Not now. Trying to work..)

  3. We have needed our chimney redone for 5 years. We have had several people look at it and say, “Sure! I’ll do it!” And never come to actually do it. Small town so we’ve seen them at the grocery store or wherever. Remind them. “Oh, I’ll be up next week for sure.”. Next week of which decade is not pinned down, however.

    Unfortunately, neither hubby nor I can get up on the roof to do it.

    No idea when it will ever get fixed.

    We also need the roof reshingled and the house painted. Can’t do either ourselves. Our kids live in other states.

    Sigh.

      1. We took care of the “need tree branches cut” problem. Preliminary major trim beyond “we can’t reach” in 2014 by a neighbor who used to do that type of work for local utilities (including a 42″ diameter branch that grew perpendicular to the tree over the roof, then turned upward to create a 6th crown, good thing it was gone when the 2017 ice storm hit). Then permanently solved the problem summer of 2017, after the winter ice storm that buried the yard (luckily not into the roof) in thick heavy branches. Permanent solution was tree removal. Not inexpensive, and we got a dang good deal. 1/3 all the other bids, just had to let the urban tree removal have any surviving logs. Which given Giant Sequoia trees, was not guarantied there would be intact logs.

        Branch removal, had we had the equipment, hubby could have handled, even topping and falling the trees (had we been rural) he could have handled …. 20 years ago. That is what he did on the fire crew when he worked for the USFS was drop danger trees. But not now. Age catches up with people.

        Summer 2017 I contacted 10 urban tree companies about getting a bid to take out those two trees. I got 3 bids back. Yes, they were all busy. No one wanted to tackle those big trees (10’x10′ at the base, each). And, the trees were in the front yard.

        1. “Which given Giant Sequoia trees, was not guarantied there would be intact logs.”

          One of the weirdest arguments I ever ended up in on the internet was about a coast redwood salvage tree. I mentioned that it would not have predated the houses, as it is not a tree native to the area, and someone vehemently argued that it was possible that a redwood had sprung up of its own accord in Sacramento. “I grew up in Redwood City,” said poster declaimed, and totally ignored the fact that those just. don’t. grow. in the valley. The “argument” only ended when I found another post from the tree company, saying that 96″ diameter trunk (yes) had eighty-something rings, making it younger than the houses that surrounded it.

          Like, they were SO invested in proving me wrong about a tree. I don’t get it.

          1. Our trees, despite the size at the base (8′ diameter, 8′ height, then quick taper, typical) counted out 45 rings. About right. That was when a major developer planted trees all over Eugene. Not only the Giant Sequoias, but Redwoods, and Douglas Fir. Douglas Fir, Maples, Oak, etc., volunteer if not weeded, but wrong area for Giant Sequoias or Redwoods, no matter how many cones produced and broken open by the squirrels. Although the neighbor swears she has baby Giant Sequoias growing (doubt it).

            We’ve been in the house 35 years this Thanksgiving. Trees weren’t small then. But they grew a bit (understated) more, until could no longer walk between them. Gorgeous trees. But our front lawn, especially after the ice storm wasn’t the right place. Love/Hate relationship. Beautiful but the cones put dents in vehicles parked in front of the house (that hard). The needles were all but impossible to clean up (for an evergreen they put out a lot of needle debris, luckily the county also took the needles as part of the leaf cleanup haul. There were a lot of needles, every year.) They sucked up both water and sunshine from any plants planted around them.

        2. Oh, heck, time is the great leveler. At the state fair today, tried to dunk the clown. I couldn’t even get the baseball to reach the general vicinity of the target.

          1. Once upon a time at the fair, foul-mouthed clown was teasing slow kid. Really vile. Kid kept missing the target. Clown has kid all wound up, in tears.

            Kid notices something key. Clown is tall, and sticks up over the plexiglass enough to expose the head. Kid winds up, pivots, and beans clown in the face. Falls backwards into tank. kersploosh. Applause.

      1. Our kid lives with us. He painted the house the last time it was done, on college break. Now he works full time and then some.

        We can afford to pay legal contractors to replace the roofing materials and properly replace the skylights, and fix the problems caused by leaking. (Done, cost of $17,700.) We can afford to have someone come paint too. Painting cost, to someone with the correct professional equipment, is the paint itself. Not worth it to have us paint the house again. We can’t strip, prime, and paint, the house in a week, even retired. But a professional can, and do a better job (because we won’t be taping off anything).

          1. Getting someone out to even bid on the house to reroof was a PIA. We contacted a dozen roofers, got 4 bids. Every roofer has been so busy, scheduled so far out, that they didn’t have the bandwidth to go out and provide bids. All 4 bids were all 6 or more months out and not one would schedule without 25% – 50% down. (Cringe!) We took the bids to one roofer (the one we were pretty sure we were using) and asked “why so different?” We did get lucky. They called a month after we gave the deposit. They had an opening were we interested in moving up the list? Uh, yes! Same happened when we put in the sprinkler system, in 2021.

            Sister & BIL are putting in a vacation home at Long Beach, Washington coast. Difference between now, and over the last 3 years, on availability of subcontractors is night and day. House is moving along way faster than their general contractor predicted.

            1. We were in that area for dinner tonight. We’re at the local camp doing volunteer work for a few weeks. As in, over the last four days 7 people:
              Moved out the furniture from a two-bedroom, one bath cottage; gutted the bath; replaced the insulation and re-sheetrocked the bath, plus installed the tub; pulled the wall-to-wall carpet; removed the “%$#!! popcorn ceiling and skim coated the resulting gouges in the sheetrock; caulked here and there, filling seams; sanded; leveled two places in the floor, one of which required cutting open the floor and replacing bad wood; and started laying down luwan (?) on the floors as underlayment for the vinyl plank flooring.
              No wonder we’re tired. . BTW, we are all retirees. And IS there an easy way to get popcorn ceiling down? I don’t remember it being this hard,

              1. IS there an easy way to get popcorn ceiling down?
                ……………..

                I don’t know. That is something else that should be done at our house. Doubt it will get done. Wetting it and scraping it off is all I know what to do. Which for me means climbing up/down and lots of moving ladders. Being vertically challenged. Be easier to move.

                1. I bought a small scaffold from Home Desperate several years ago. About a 3′ x 6′ platform, and four lockable wheels. All the ceilings in the house are cathedral, and it’s so much easier to paint a ceiling from a scaffold. It’s worth it if you can find one.

                  OTOH (yes, WP fixed the carriage return!) the commercial scaffolds are 7′ long and about 5′ wide. I don’t use them indoors, but the adjustable feet means I can do things around the house with considerably less danger to life and limb. I rented enough so I could do 20′ worth of gutter in one setup. Turned an impossible project into one that was merely annoying.

                3. We remodeled one bathroom, and ended up simply taking down the ceiling sheetrock and replacing it sans popcorn.

                  1. PS: Yes, popcorn ceiling in a bathroom with a shower. A previous owner had delusions of Tim Allen.

                  2. Bathrooms and kitchen are smooth ceilings (yea!). Another option to removing the ceiling sheet rock, is to overlay with 1/8″ sheet rock. Especially with the cost if asbestos abatement is required.

                    1. “Bathrooms and kitchen are smooth ceilings (yea!).”

                      They are certainly SUPPOSED to be. Ours weren’t. And aren’t. I can send Sarah a picture of our kitchen ceiling which we haven’t gotten to…..

                1. Cover everything, because that crap gets everywhere.
                  ……………….

                  Likely to have asbestos, too.

                  Oh, off topic. Looks like the CR is now working properly. Yea, WP. Now what did they break. 😉

              3. Spritz it with water and scrape it off with a 6 inch mud knife.

                Keeps the dust down, too.

                1. Did that. Repeatedly. My beloved said he wonders if someone put up popcorn then added a second coat of enamel. We got it down, but it was two days of hard work.

            2. My parents go their roof done by saying to the roofer “What if you just sent your guys over here when they finish a job early or have a free afternoon?”

              Of course, that was new construction, so it didn’t matter that much if a bit of rain came through…

              1. We had a really bad leak around two skylights. We could see the damage from inside up around the window. Had no idea how far down the wall or roof plywood was affected. We got off lightly. Besides replacing the skylights and flashing around all 3, we only had to pay for plywood (only a little bad, but one sheet) and cost to replace the 2×4’s rotted out (we had that in storage).

          2. Honestly, if you know how to do it and can direct the work, call the local Mormon missionaries and tell them you need help. Painting is easy. Remortaring bricks is something any 18-20 yr-old can be taught to do, and you ask the sharper of the pair to do the tricky/fiddly bits.

            Can’t beat young mormon men for cheap, unskilled labor. The most it ever cost us was some cookies and lemonade.

          1. Might be part of the problem. Hubby thought we could just contract out the high parts of the house, 3 sides above the garage. We could do the rest. Not one painter would bid until we said “entire house”.

  4. Why the imported manual laborers aren’t available is something I’m not willing to consider.

    For handyman stuff you need to find where day laborers hang out. You can either round one up (tools might be an issue) or get a lead.

    Garden and outdoor stuff might be easier.

    Plus, once you’re know it’s easier to find people.

    When I hired a few to unload the UHaul moving to this house one made sure we had his number and made sure to know he was a painter as an example.

    1. Depends on what kind of handy work needs to be done? Unloading. Fine, day labors work great. Roofing, painting, even fence building work. Make sure licensed contractor is the one responsible. Not that you’d be protected from shoddy work, but not responsible if they or someone working for them, gets hurt. At worse it gives your insurance someone to go after.

  6. Adding to the lack of laborers and handymen might also be the low birthrate. I do want to be optimistic about my country, and still think it is just fall coming and not The Fall. But it is hard. 

    I’m beginning to resemble “too tired.” We bought some land earlier this year and intend to move there and improve the property.  Some mornings though…how can everything hurt so much when I’m just getting out of bed?

    1. Sort of.

      Think back– where are these handymen to have come from, when they couldn’t get hired because illegals are cheaper?

  7. Have you been secretly watching my house, Sarah? I have a dying oak that needs to be taken down and away, saggy boards on the stairs and deck leading to the backdoor, a broken secondary toilet, a defunct (for years) dishwasher, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Yesterday at the hardware store, a nice gent told me how to (possibly) fix the leaky shutoff valve AND remove the bottom of the toilet without spilling water everywhere (provided I can wrestle it to the street). I actually got a thrill thinking I won’t have to hire a plumber – because I don’t know how to find a local one who isn’t committed already to multiple jobs.

    I always want to hire local. I had the bathroom flooring replaced by the same family that installed wood flooring years ago. Since it was during my work hours, they picked up my house keys, did the work, and returned the keys at the front desk. It’s hard to explain to some people that yes, there is something to having an “American” code of work and conduct.

    1. DadRed asked one of the shop teachers if he had any suggestions for “advanced students or others” who might be interested in stuff he and I can’t quite handle. He also is well known at Home Despot and gets leads from some of the older employees about handymen. Heck, there are gents here who go door to door leaving cards.

      1. Same here in DFW. I’ve had variable luck going through services like Angi, Handyman Connection, HomeAdvisor, etc.

    2. Things are somewhat more under control at CasaRC. The house was re-sided in June, repainted (barring fascia that needed gutters) in August, and the fascia painted and guttered last month. I’m now doing the small deck for the front porch, and the next Autumnal project is a new set of snow panels for that porch. Since I’m almost 20 years older than when I did the first set, the new ones will be modular to make them easier to carry and install. With luck, they’ll also look better.

      There’s a paver walkway and patio, but that’s for Spring. There’s also the tree that That Guy cut. (He said he knew how to cut trees and there was somebody who’d take the big trunk. Both statements were dead wrong. Sigh.) That was screwed up last year, but I need to try to get it closer to ground level sooner or later. Double sigh.

      1. The tree is more-or-less horizontal, but fell against a cut in the one-time dirt road, so there’s a bunch sitting 3 feet off the ground. Not fun when the tree is 3′ in diameter at that point. I might call in the pros and see what they would do.

  8. This is the end of the easy times, heading once again to hard times. Hard times breed hard men, hard men breed easy times, easy times breed lazy men, lazy men bred hard times.

    2. Hard or soft?

      Whole article on it, but:
      At any rate, the way to do shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations is to get someone who is a wild outlier, amasses a vast fortune, and decides his children SHALL have everything they want, plus the pony. No one will ever speak to them in anger. They not only won’t be spanked, every pain will be spared to them.

      This usually creates an absolute wastrel, who might coast through life on daddy’s money, but whose kid will have to work to GET BACK to “shirt sleeves.”

      This has society wide implications, which is why if people squint really hard that strange thing about hard times creating strong men “feels” right. But it isn’t.

      It would be more accurate to say that discipline and a strict upbringing creates strong people. This might or might not be a “hard” upbringing. And of course, if taken too far it creates broken people. As hard times tend to.

  9. We’re dealing with long-overdue renovations to the house and almost all the contractors in the area are busy as hell. Dad’s skill at making friends is a Good Thing because he knows a guy who knows guys who are coming by and offering quotes…in a few days.

    I remain hopeful that the upcoming upheaval is more akin to ripping off a band aid versus a prolonged slog. Because the prolonged slog will…encourage our enemies to do something stupid and a multipolar world with idiots armed with nuclear weapons does not make me sleep well.

    (For the most part, I hate the leadership of the fools and idiots that brought us this far-on both sides. You can bitch all you want about the Left, but when the Church doesn’t stomp on corruption and criminal acts with both feet…how in the hell do you expect it to stand as a pole against political idiots?)

    1. I too hope that what’s coming is quick, and not a long, drawn-out agony. I’ve been collecting some supplies (just snagged a set of three portable solar arrays for the price of one, all compatible with our existing power banks), but beyond a certain point, there’s not much I can do. Even a decade ago, I could’ve gotten along in pretty bad circumstances, as long as I wasn’t having to deal with bullies who got their kicks out of dangling things in front of me and then demanding I demean myself to “earn” them. Now that I’m dependent upon thyroid medicine, once my stockpile runs out (or if I’m dispossessed of it by one means or another), it’s a slow decline into a very unpleasant state. (There’s a reason that I specified that the character in one flash fiction piece was the younger sister — I didn’t want to have it look like a self-insertion).

      Right now, what’s driving me nuts is the waiting for the next shoe to drop — and not knowing what form it may take. It’s why I’ve been feeling can we just get it over with for the last couple of years. I’m tired of lining up conventions and wondering whether they’ll happen, or if everything gets upended again. I’m far better at dealing with a known unpleasant thing coming down the pike than “something’s on its way, it’s going to be nasty, but nobody can say when or what.”

      1. That’s my big thing. I can handle most disasters. It’s the waiting for things to happen that gets me. Worse is waiting for things to happen, when I don’t know what’s going to happen.

    2. I have a friend who manages a tree company. It’s not her company, but the owner might charitably be called ADHD as heck, so she does a lot of the mental labor. And they are busy as can be.

      1. I suspect that all these people being busy was due to the Crow Flu. Nobody could get anything done, nobody could get supplies or materials, and now not only are you dealing with deferred maintenance, but people building home offices and such.

        1. Further complicating issues was the fact that around 2018, the Orange Bad Man’s economy was such that contractors had considerably more business than they could handle.

          I contacted somebody to do solar system mounts in late Spring. Got it done in November, and that guy couldn’t get the plumbing/septic people in to do the septic digging for his own house.

          Then Covidiocy hit and the materials got stuck on ships and too many of the workers stuck at home.

          We got lucky; it took 6 weeks from signing the siding contract to having (unpainted) siding on the house. Another 4 to get the painting crew in.

        2. now not only are you dealing with deferred maintenance, but people building home offices and such.
          ……………..

          In our area new homes are/were going up as inventory was low. Older homes are being bought and renovated, as their long term elderly residents were moved out (either to nursing homes or cemeteries). Latter might still keep happening. But the housing inventory is going up, and prices are stabilizing, if not declining a bit.

          I think we are headed back into the the late ’70s and ’80s, where inventory is slow, and low, because people won’t sale for what they can get. Unless forced to sell, they won’t. That is where we were in ’85 when we left Longview. We held on to the house, renting it out because we knew we couldn’t sell it at any price (not with $300k newer houses going for $100k that were just down the two streets below us). When market flipped, we were able to sell for slightly more than what we had bought it for, ahead of the new building starting up. In reverse we had problems getting a loan purchasing our current home. Not the house appraisal, not our credit rating, those were golden, but the house appraisal was “outside” the neighborhood norm. Of coarse, nothing had sold in the neighborhood in over 10 years, and not a lot of new building. Once our house closed, it was like a log jam broke. Difference could be seen when we refinanced 9 months later (out of a 13%, 12 month adjusted variable, 5 year balloon into a 10%, 30 year fixed. FWIW, we are 14 years into a 30 year 3.34%.) The house was no longer over appraised for the neighborhood.

            1. We’re due again too. We redid the kitchen in 1990. 2001 new flooring, and windows, throughout, plus additional work.

              Outside next project is the painting.
              The chimney is pulling away from the house. Lining is kaput. But when we replaced the woodstove in 2001, we had full stacks inserted, so safe to use. But I really want it all removed and the wall fixed. Whether we replace with gas fireplace TBD. I want the wall space.
              Upstairs, room above the garage needs painting. Floors need redone (carpet 2001). Vinyl plank is preferred.
              Bedroom floors need replacing (carpet 2001). Again Vinyl plank.
              Would like to do the rest of the house to have same flooring throughout except keep the solid oak plank stair treads to upstairs. But the kitchen/dining, living room, and hall, a little harder to justify, because that was all replaced in 2014-ish. But I’d like to get rid of the carpet.

              OTOH other than painting, outside is up to shape. Spent most of last summer getting ground cloth and bark or gravel, to help keep down weeds. Took 4x longer than it would have 10 years ago. Worked too. Other than the maples producing a lot of little maples, weeding has been a lot easier. Could have let most the maples just die, they wouldn’t have done much more than the seed allowed (no soil to get to). Got them pulled anyway. Just kept plugging at getting them all pulled.

              1. We got vinyl plank from a flooring outfit last year, and I installed it after the house got repainted. (Stripped carpet, de-stapled and put down new underlayment. The last might have been overkill; the particle board went over structural MDF, and getting 1/2″ stock meant that the crud was very heavy. OTOH, once the stuff was ready, the vinyl plank went down quickly. I had to do some fiddling; they wanted the plank ends tapped together, and the friction against the underlayment meant that nothing was going to move. So, locked the ends together and got the long sides joined in. The first few rows were hard until I learned the techniques, then the rest was almost easy.

                This stuff is rather better than what Home Depot sells, and seems to be worth the extra money. It can be cut with a saw, but most of cutting was with the vinyl shear; a truly scary relative to a paper shear. OTOH, it was fast and clean, so I could cut in the room. The pieces that needed special care were done in the shop, either with the table saw or a saber saw for the odd cuts.

                It came out really well.

                1. “the particle board went over structural MDF,”

                  … somebody used MDF for structure?

                  incoherent ranting noises

                  1. Used as a subfloor, not sure how thick. This is a manufactured house, so there are Things that are highly unusual (and would have had me throwing a fit in a conventional stickbuilt house. (The fingerjointed 2 x 3s in non-loadbearing wall framing takes the cake…)

                    OTOH, there’s some decent steel at 16″ centers under that MDF. It is bouncy, and the better of the two turntables will be set up in the concrete floor shop when I get around to it. (Have to check that turntable, it should need a new belt. And maybe a replacement stylus for the cartridge. It’s only been in storage for 20 years…)

                2. Removing the carpet, and laying the floor, isn’t what will be daunting (painful, and slow, but doable). Okay, removing 3 (or 4?) layers of floor in the center of the house (kitchen, dining, and entrances), and 2 layers in the bathroom/utility areas, will be more than a PIA. It is moving out all the furniture. Seriously, the couches are not going anywhere without a lot of outside help. I can roll them to clean underneath. I can pickup one end, but I cannot pickup one end and move at the same time. Forget about getting the two upstairs down and backup again. Not happening. That isn’t counting the dressers or even the king mattress, out of the bedrooms. Even one room at a time is daunting. And to think both major overhauls (1990 kitchen we did everything except the countertops and backsplash, 2001 we just moved stuff out/back in, and painted everything) we were both working, and dealing with kid stuff (1990, he was < year old).

                  1. When we got our foundation repair last year, we had 2 bedrooms, living room, dining room, 2 bathrooms, 3 closets moved out to a PODS unit and the garage, and then back into place, for ~$1700. Admittedly, that’s in the DFW area, which had good availability of labor.

                    1. Oh, and the living room and bedrooms had approx 200 square feet of well packed bookcases.

                  2. Yeah, that was the slowdown for the master bedroom. I have an 1880 (or so) wardrobe, 7′ high, 6 feet wide (mercifully in modules), plus the chest of drawers from hell–complete with the locking bits for the bottom drawer–whoever did that never intended for that drawer to come out. Which it did, and went back in without the “safety bits” on that layer.

                    At least the bed wasn’t too horrible; Sleep number bed, so once deflated I could drag the mess out to the living room and set it up on the frame. Moving back into the bedroom was a day of great joy–the kitchen appliances tend to be noisy and $SPOUSE is a very light sleeper.

                    We had stuff in various outbuildings and overcrowded rooms.

              2. Things are just…worn out. In the process of cleaning stuff out after Mom’s passing, we’re just finding stuff that is failing. And having to be thrown away, because Mom and Dad made it work for far, far too long.

    3. Hubby is the same. We have 3 bids to paint the house. One bid from same painter who bid on neighbor’s house, another on the “friends & family” discount (2nd cousin, once removed), third from the painter that did nextdoor house this last summer.

      Hubby was just approached by a golfer he knows, who just takes on a few friends/acquaintances. No bid, but that is who is painting the house next summer. Plugging the yard (VS renting equipment?) – the person that plugs the golf coarse.

      Our driveway was ripped out and new concrete put in at the same time as neighbors across the street, because another neighbor noticed someone else getting theirs done. Good discount because 3 houses being done at the same time. FYI. Windows replaced because we approached the company replacing windows at a neighborhood house. Then that is how contractors got work, word of mouth. Now? So busy, they can’t take half what they are approached with.

      This be changing really fast. At least locally. Housing market down trend is affecting contractors fast.

  10. I personally feel like I’m in a haze of tiredness and apathy, but at the same time feel (or maybe hope) that a massive angry backlash is coming soon.

  11. “I’d say I have no clue why we can’t find a handyman or someone to do this little stuff.”

    Part of it is the old guys are retiring, and the new guys are just starting out.

    Part of it is that the guys in the middle got out of the business because they can’t find good workers to work for or stay with them. (That’s where our HVAC guy is. He had a good business, quit running it, not for lack of work but for lack of workers.)

    Your best bet for finding a handyman or contractor these days may just be “friend of a friend who used to do, and doesn’t mind doing a project or two for a small consideration”.

    Or see if the local hardware store has business cards for local handymen

    1. DadRed is well known at the local Ace Hardware, and sometimes gets tips from the employees about guys who can do what he and I can’t. He also befriended several electricians who are willing to do small things (replace a light bar over the sink) between their larger jobs. We make sure to have everything ready for the professionals when they come. That also wins friends.

      2. If you’re clever, you kind find those guys fairly easily here in San Antonio. Besides having all the materials and site prep ready, the one thing that gets you on their speed dial is prompt payment. In cash.

  12. A lot of it comes down to an old lyric from Roger Miller’s “King of the Road”:

    “ Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom
    Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room”

  13. I’ve had a case of the blahs recently, in part because of interrupted sleep. I changed some of the ergonomics of my desk at home, and a few other things, and now I’ve developed some muscle aches in new places. I need to figure out what I did and undo it. Plus the weather is changing, so everyone at work is going more bonkers than usual.

  14. When I do repairs, I do them to last. Periodic maintenance is a must, and pays for itself in the long run. A good repair person is going to ask you if you want it done cheaply and only last as long as the warranty, or done well, and cost more.

  15. Around here, the Amish and Mennonites do a lot of new construction. We also seem to have a number of general handymen, but Cleveland has a strong blue collar base, so maybe that helps. 🤷‍♀️

  16. This is the first brick home we’ve owned for more than a couple years before moving. We’ve owned it for thirty-eight years now . . . and I’ve never heard of tuck pointing. Now I’m afraid to go take a good look at the outside . . .

        1. The Reader believes Gutfield will be the next act disappeared from Fox. You know, because the wrong people watch him.

      1. Wouldn’t it be Great (Again?) if various agencies were, well, AMERICAN rather than traitors that are merely the neo-KKK: The Enforcement Arm of the Party of Slavery, Jim Crow, and Other Evils?

        Once upon a time a “G-man” was figured to be a good guy.
        And now, well, one of the worst things to be called is “Fed.”
        And the bastages have EARNED it.

        1. Once upon a time a “G-man” was figured to be a good guy.

          Of course, that was back when it was standard practice for G-men to interrogate suspects by holding onto their ankles and hanging them out of 11th-storey windows. Which, in turn, is how so very many suspects “briefly escaped custody” and “committed suicide” by “throwing themselves out an 11th-storey window”.

    3. Well Hillary wants Reeducation camps for Trump voters so at least they’re consistent. How the hell did we get here?

        1. She’s also let the UniParty cat out of the bag:

          we have to just be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican Party,”

          2. That would be the 8-16% that shows up in polls. The ones that show up (R) but think Bidenomics is just fine, that there’s no issue with politicizing All The Things and Especially Children, that nods and smiles along with Democrats when called on to be Bi…partisan.

            The McConnells. The Bushes. The McCarthys. And so on.

            The ones they can count on to be Democrats, but run in red states, elected by blue cities in said red states. Highly questionable, those blue city totals, as we’ve seen- if they do it for the presidential, do you honestly think they’re going pass on doing it during the House and Senate? Or lesser offices? Because we know they can.

            Such persons are not Conservative. Or Republican. No matter what they sound like during the election cycle, that’s not what counts.

            High time there was a house cleaning on the right. If you’re not representing us, be gone with ye. May the cold comfort of our enemies be your only recourse and may your shattered dreams of power haunt you as your relevance shrinks into nothingness.

            Run along to MSNBC, Disney, and the like. Let them, your ideological comrades, be your punishment as the churning mob of incessant hate devours you, in turn, as it does all in the end.

            1. One can only hope that some of those have implemented the definition of diplomacy: “The art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ while searching for a rock”. Not very likely for most of them, but one can hope.

              It’s usually best to be underestimated by the enemy. 😈

  18. Tuck pointing is nothing to be afraid of, in many cases, some of the cement grout between bricks is already crumbling out, it is just a little bit of work with an old screwdriver or chisel to remove any more that is loose, then inject new cement grout into the space. A very narrow trowel or even a cut down wood painter stick with rounded end will work.

    If it is the entire chimney, that is where you need a real mason, in many cases the brick or stone is loose and has to be carefully deconstructed until you reach solid bricks well cemented, and you build it back up. I have to do that soon on some of the window sill brickworks, have noticed some “slots” where there used to be cement. Good fall project before we get freeze.

      1. Sad we are so distant. Would gladly help out seeing as I am already the “on call” handy man for my extended family. One of the joys of being retired.

    2. What’s all this with trowels? Use a piping bag. They even make special ones for mortar, not frosting. It’s very easy.

      I need to do my breezeway. Before it freezes is out, since that’s predicted for this weekend (it was 35 this morning). No doubt there will be a few more warmish weekends, though.

      1. Too modern, this squeeze tube stuff. Have seen the videos, looks pretty fun once you get the consistency of the mix just right.

        I learned basics some 60 years back in a small far a way country, all done old way, slow but properly finished. Great fun to be helping the bricklayers building our family workshop and learning from them. Even how to do arched ceilings in brick after casting cement uprights with rebar tension members embedded in same, going from side to side. Never saw wood building methods until coming to U.S.A. 🙂

        Hope you get those extra warm days. I am out in the shop cleaning and clearing while the weather holds here too.

  19. Just saw this and figured it might be a mood lifter:

    1. All great points, but also the fight is just beginning, and it’s gonna get ugly. Commies don’t take losses philosophically or stoicly, they pillage, burn, and kill.

  20. I was worried a while ago about the retirement and death of the real expert class, the ones who know how to build things and fix things.

    Then I busted a sprinkler in my yard, and looked up my problem online, and a friendly and very expert guy walked me through how to fix it. Ditto to how to disassemble and clean my .9 mm, which I have since unfortunately lost in a boating accident. Expert, cheerful guy showed me step by step. Today I couldn’t figure out how to take my blinds down to paint my bathroom, and yep, there ya go. Expert girl, this time, showing me how to take the blinds down, and put them back up again.

    The internet may go out someday, but until then we have, frozen in time, millions of videos that will teach you everything you need to know. All we need are youngsters with strong backs and minds who are willing to learn. I don’t know when the dam will break and all the young people will flood out of the rotten universities and into the world, ready to work, but I know it will happen. I know it, because we’re people, and we love to work with our hands and fix things.

    1. Online videos are great for car repairs too. Sometimes means I have to down the street to buy proper tools, but tools are a good thing. Parts can be expensive though. Cheap parts usually made in China, prefer to avoid unless desperately short of cash.

  21. I have to admit I sometimes have to willfully restrain the urge to ask some customers, “Parlez-vous français?” Because I’ve been seeing some of the same guys over a year, and their English is absolutely no better. Particularly frustrating when (as happened today) a guy was holding a kind of shovel and asking, “this is more?” And apparently had no concept of, “more what?“

  23. Slightly off topic (yeah, like that’s unusual 🙂 ). I read (and SIL confirmed through JoAnn workers) that they are at a high (10-50% in 12 months) risk of going bankrupt, partly because of Bidenomics and also a huge debt burden. ($1B or so.)

    The risk for us would be gift cards. When Bed, Bath and Beyond went under, card holders had a short window to use the cards or lose the value. (It would be unsecured debt, so good luck with that…)

    We had to go to town today, so $SPOUSE bought as much as practical on her current gift card. I will get a bit next week, and we won’t be buying any more of their cards. (The fuel discount at the Kroger makes gift cards attractive…)

    2. Will give mom a heads up on Joanne’s. She and my aunt make quilts. Mom does t-shirt quilts, which is tailored to the individual (using their old t-shirts) and the theme. She uses the plain backs of prior use t-shirts for wedding and baby quilts. But she gets the quilt fillings and backings from Joanne’s. I guess there is always Michael’s or Hobby Lobby.

      1. Michael’s has looked like crap in many locations the last couple of years. JoAnns has looked better- more on the shelves and the like. Hobby Lobby is just chugging along…

        1. Hobby Lobby and Chik-Fil-A. Two stores that close on Sundays, all locations, for pretty much the same reason. (Religion). Both hated by the left for pretty much that reason, though the left tries to frame it through a political lens because politics is the left’s religion. Both with a highly devoted (heh) customer base, and therefore still going strong. (Didn’t know that about Hobby Lobby as I didn’t make any stops there on our most recent trip Stateside. But I did eat at Chik-Fil-A quite often, and the place was packed every time, every location we ate at, unless we showed up at really unusual hours.)

          If you’re running a company, remember: refusing to bow to the left will NOT lose you customers. The left wants you to think it will, but there are two examples right there to show that they are lying to you. (Yes, the new(-ish) owners of Chik-Fil-A have bowed to the left on some points. But Chik-Fil-A’s current success was laid down years ago, under the previous management.) In fact, in many cases, publicly refusing to bow to the left will probably gain you a short-term surge of customers, and when your sales return to normal, you’ll find the value of “normal” for your sales has just gone up by some measurable amount.

      1. From Wiki: (Topic: Jo-Ann_Stores)

        On March 16, 2021, Joann went public on the Nasdaq market under the ticker symbol “JOAN.”[22] Leonard Green & Partners owns a majority stake in the company allowing it to nominate up to five directors.[20]

        In September 2023, Joann announced it would be laying off a portion of its workforce in its corporate headquarters, but would not specify the amount of workers that would be laid off.[23] In October 2023, Fitch Ratings and CreditRiskMonitor reported that Joann was nearing a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.[24]

        My guess is that if they do go Chapter 11, they’d close all or most of the retail stores and would concentrate on on-line sales. OTOH, SIL has mentioned that the quality of much of the fabric they sell under their own name has dropped badly. The brand-name stuff is OK; we got some Blizzard fleece for an indoor coat for Kat-the-dog, and it’s still good fabric.

          1. Bookmarked, and will check it out once $SPOUSE gets through the TBS (sewn) stack.

            Thanks!

            1. I have bought boxes of scraps and — warning — they’re very generous and often throw in extra. Some pieces of supposed scrap are big enough for full garments.
              But mostly I’m going to use it to make Christmas gifts.

    4. Fortunately I have no gift cards, but I am trying to apprentice in a medievalist/fantasy group for sewing and textiles. They are my current main source of new fabric (Goodwill has provided curtains for wrap paints and sheets for tunics and tabards).

      Maybe this get me to stop at that weird fabric store down the road.

      1. Once you have a oattetn that suits you, consider making your garb from pure linen fabric. Expensive at first, but I have tunics 20 years old that are still solid.
        The stuff I am most comfortable in is 15th C Low Countries / Breughel.
        Reach me directly if you need some simple patterns. John

        1. Wool and linen, yes. Right now trying to nuke out a pattern for Thorsburg trousers that fit me.

          Big standard tunics I’ve done. Lost my nice red linen one in the many moves since 2004.

          1. Good luck with the patterning. My standard pants are like that, but with an extra deep saddle like Turkish cavalry pants for comfort and durability. You might look at dress slacks for fitting ideas.
            John

          2. And check tablecloths. I got a decent linen-look (may be linen) chitin out of a yard sale tablecloth.

  24. I taught myself a long time ago how to fix/replace a leaking toilet, but something is wrong with the shutoff valve behind the toilet. It won’t shutoff. More research is in order.

    Meanwhile my water catchment system is progressing, if slowly. More research is in order.

    A deck needs to come off so I can patch the wall behind it. It seems that some days much of my time is spent on research.

    1. Turn off water to the house. There should be a valve outside near where the water pipe goes into the house. If not, there’s a valve right in front of the water meter.
      Remove the bad valve behind the toilet. Determine size, fitting type (compression, NPT, etc.)
      Buy a new valve. I recommend 1/4 turn ball valves because they don’t have packings to leak.
      Install new valve.
      Turn on water for 10 seconds, then turn it off.
      Go inside and check the new valve for leaks. Take your time.
      If no leak, turn the water on for good. If leak, fix and try again.

      1. We need to do this. Also will be interesting to see how the new (smart) water meters work. They finally got around to replacing ours (which meant raising the meter because we raised the grade around it). There is suppose to be a trick to turning the new meters off. Really liked the old one. Don’t know if the prior owner changed it, but instead of a valve with a turning handle (like on outdoor facets, one was there but it was frozen/locked) there was a lever that was pulled up to turn off. Something even I could do no matter how long it’d been since the last time it was done.

      2. Sure. I just need to do the research. I don’t want it to go the way of most of my projects and have five stops to go get more stuff, or to do more research. Especially with the water off to the whole house.

        But it needs to get done, because the toilet floods from the tank every time it’s flushed and I suspect there’s also a slow leak from the base.

  25. Renovating. Dammit. I find the pain, but seem to have put the motivation in a safe place, and I can’t remember where that is.
    We finished painting the interior, walls and ceiling, and have only to finish the crown molding, trim, and doors to be done with that. We didn’t get the weed barrier down early enough, so we have to cut out a jungle and do it now.
    Bring in the last of the books and boxes from the move 18 mos ago, build new pantry shelves, yadda, yadda, more.
    Some old guy came and stole my once functional body, dammit.
    Yes, we need to do some repointing and get gas, water, and drain lines run to move the laundry to the utility room, and put in the gas stove, sink, and new countertops.
    I am so glad you guys are working on similar stuff. It makes me feel less alone in my efforts. John

    1. Your motivation is in one of the boxes of books. You put it there for safe keeping, remember?

      Personally, I left my brain in the locked bottom drawer of my desk when I left my job in 2010. I figured most of what was in there would be useless to me, and night help whoever took on my responsibilities.

          1. In the SCA, the saying used to be that when you won Crown Tourney, the crown sucked your brain out during coronation. When you left the throne, it wou,d deposit a brain, but the one you got wasn’t necessarily the one you started with.

      1. (Singing)

        Myyyyyyyy body lies over the ocean.
        My body lies over the sea.
        My body lies over the ocean.
        O, bring back my body to meeeeeeeeee.

  26. So I’m almost done with the foundation for the little tin shed that I’m finally putting up to house the emergency generator that had been “temporarily” housed under multiple tarps for several years …probably finish that up today. (The shed itself will at most take a couple of hours: it’s just the typical erector set lol.)

    I hope that finally getting this done doesn’t turn out to have been meeting a pseudo prophetic need over the winter.

    But before I could site the shed to a more permanent fixture, I had to paint the west wall of the house (it’s needed it for a few years …well, really since a decade ago when we moved here lol), as the shed would have made painting the wall less …convenient.

    (Lord knows I’d also like to run wiring for an electric light fixture too before putting the thing in place, but at least I left a route to do that for a future addition. Hmm. Did I just talk myself into that too? Gaaaa,)

    This done, I’ll shift gears to a bunch of minor fall landscaping, branch removal, etc. As alwayes, the underground water system needs the Fall draining too.

    And I definitely need to see if oxy sensors are all the old XJ needs to become fully functional again: this is a must (I hate having to use the TJ as a snow vehicle). (I blame Covid for this delay.)

    Oh. And new tarps for over-wintering my temporary outdoor woodworking projects “shed/tent”, and the trailer (and part of the Jeep, poor thing).

    I probably won’t get to installing the bidet for my wife’s bathroom until after the first freeze (but I promise that this year I will get to it). At least I finally replaced her old AMD desktop with a new, rather nice, Intel LGA1700 upgrade (because of a Radeon 6800XT that MSI pretty much gifted me when I returned a 580 card to them for repair).

    A more permanent car port remains but a distant dream (but would mean no more tent/sheds that my long suffering neighbor’s only complain about the Neighborhood eyesore about sotto voce).

    The log pile (from a downed pine tree from the neighbor’s back yard from a windstorm over seven years ago will be delayed for another year: but hey, I did get a battery chain saw that should do the deed: there’s that, at least lol).

    The covered porch for the hobby shed I built years ago will be delayed yet another year.

    Ditto for the back “porch” that I’ve been planning for a while for the basement’s backyard door. (This one makes me sad to have to wait on, sigh.)

    The list goes on.

    Short list: painter, carpenter, electrician, plumber, mechanic, and tech. (Plus: I still sys admin for a living into my 7th decade lol.)

    …I know exactly what you mean Sarah lol.

  27. Come on Sarah. After all, 60 is the new…

    60?

    The Reader can vouch that 70 is still 70.

  28. In your obviously copious free time, I think you’d enjoy the interview of Mike Rowe by Nick Gillespie in the current issue of Reason.

  29. Your problems finding a handyman to do the things you need done in a new home invoked Heinlein’s “It’s Great to be Back!”. Unfortunately, you can’t use their solution…

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