It is Exam Week for yours portly’s students, and my school has revived the practice of only requiring teachers to be on campus to administer actual exams or to cover duties. I have neither today, and only have to go in Tuesday to administer my World History exams.
Exam Week always reminds me of college. I would do a bit of studying for whatever exams I had coming up, which usually consisted of reading through my extensive notes (I was and remain a voracious notetaker), then play Morrowind for hours on end. It was pretty glorious.
Instead of playing Morrowind, though, I’ve been working today on those various, quotidian tasks that need doing around the house. It seems like it has been awhile since I have had a true day at home to get things done.
One major item off the list: getting an electrician to come look at a junction box that arced on another contractor last month. We wanted to replace the garish lighting fixture in the master bedroom with a simple ceiling fan—an easy enough job—but the handyman capped the wires, saying that he thought the wiring was broken. Naturally, we were concerned, and I had one of those name-brand electrical companies come out to look everything over.
The chatty electrician who came tried to sell us on a whole-home rewire. We have some of the old cloth-insulated wiring (but, fortunately, not the infamous knob-and-tube wiring, which is a fire hazard). The name-brand electrician wanted to charge us $50,000 to run new wire and conduit all over the house, with a team of seven electricians working around the clock for a week.
He had told us that some people tell him to get out of their homes when he gives them quotes. I can see why. We did not do that, but make vague noises about “talking it over.” Our conversation was, essentially, “Hell no.”
One of the downsides of living in a smaller town in an already-rural area is that it can be difficult to locate skilled workers. They do exist, but you have to “know a guy who knows a guy” or find out from a local. I resorted to asking CoPilot, telling it that the two prior electricians it had recommended either a.) refused to come to our town (only a half-hour away) or b.) never returned my calls. It recommended another electrician who actually grew up in our town.
I called him and he was at the house in thirty minutes. He inspected the wiring and told me everything was fine, and that the cloth-insulated wiring is good for “at least another thirty years.” That was worth fifty bucks for piece of mind. Of course, he tried to install the fan, but said it was missing a black mounting bracket, so there is still a gaping hole in our ceiling.
Fortunately, I also contacted the handyman who came the first time and explained to him that the wiring is safe. He’s going to mount the fan, and noted, “he couldn’t find the bracket because I already attached it to the fan.” My handyman skills are already pretty bad, but now I’m questioning the electrician, who apparently failed to see the huge bracket attached the fan. I failed to notice it, too, although I did almost tell the electrician, “is it that big thing attached to the rotor?” But I assumed he knew what he was talking about. Oops!
Another home maintenance task that has flummoxed me: reassembling our king bedframe. It should be easy: the headboard attaches to the frame via four thiccccc screws. However, the screw holes (that sounds like a slur—“knock it off, you screw holes!”) aren’t aligning, and not by a little bit, but by enough that I can’t brute force them together. So my obliging handyman is going to assist me with that dilemma as well. He’s also going to replace a side door to our garage, and take another stab at fixing our front door, which closes and locks more easily than it did before, but which still requires some effort to get closed properly. I can do it, but Dr. Wife struggles with it, just because it takes a bit pudge to push it closed.
I did have one home improvement success: installing a new door handle with a mortise lock. The main handle for exiting to the back deck had a screw that would not connect properly with the outer lock. The effect was that, every time we’d pull the handle, the screw would come out, bringing the handle with it. The “solution” was to pull to the right (the direction to open the door, anyway), but the force required was putting strain on the screw.
I purchased another door handle and installed it myself. The tricky part was getting the mortise lock to “catch” properly. Basically, a mortise lock works by pushing the lock up into the mortise pocket, a trapezoidal shaped bit of metal or plastic. The lock itself is a little L-shaped piece of metal inside the door handle mechanism. It took some trial and error to get the pocket and lock aligned correctly, but I did it!
Some readers are likely shaking their heads. “How far modern man has fallen—unable to install a ceiling fan! Can’t assemble a bedframe!” Yes, I’m one of those “weak men” that makes “hard times.” What can I say? When I used to work maintenance at the school over the summers, our late Building and Grounds Director (God Rest his soul) once told me, “Portly, you’re not very handy.” But I learned enough to do some very basic stuff, and I’m a pretty good painter!
Well, on to writing report card comments.