Category: Tinkering

The act of making some small changes to something, in an attempt to improve it or repair it.

Fixing up the country place

In 2012, about a year before the Cyprus bankers stole their depositors’ money, we decided to move cash out of our European bank account. We purchased a 5+ hectare chacra about ten kilometers inland. For what? That was to be seen. We chose to fix the little disaster of a house, going against everyone’s recommendation. You can see my various posts about the chacra here.

It has been unoccupied almost entirely since. A couple from Namibia stayed there in the summer of 2016, and a local guy and his family the summer a couple years ago. We spent New Year’s Eve 2017 there, only to be awakened at 5:30 AM by 35 dogs barking—boarded for summer holidays by the veterinarian next door (happily, she no longer has that business). We have thought about selling it, realized it needed a lot of work, and I started making lists….

Last few days, bathroom: replaced bath/shower faucet to get it working, replaced float mechanism to get toilet working, needed to remove sink faucet. Close to impossible, so I decided to remove the L-shaped counter with its two drawers. The flexible drain pipe broke as soon as I tried to move it, which was just as well since the counter construction made it impossible to remove except by detaching it from the wall, where it was glued (?!?) to the wall plumbing. I don’t recall how that happened. Anyway, got the whole thing home and took it apart this morning.

My god what a mess! 50+ screws, all kinds of little bits and pieces of wood cobbled together. Who was the idiot who designed and built this thing?

Of course you know the answer.

Encouraged by an American woodworker, I had bought a pocket hole jig from the US (now sold here a dozen years later, I notice) and decided it would be fun and creative to build cabinets for our country place! Well it wasn’t.

(Actually, the pocket holes are cool.)

So what now? Well, I see all kinds of bathroom furniture for sale online. Not particularly expensive, not particularly challenging. And at a certain point that appeals.

Take 2

When we replaced the rotting roof of the cochera (carport) I ended up with lots of scrap wood. Instead of the expense and hassle of getting proper windows installed―after all, all I wanted is to keep rain out―I slapped together a frame with some sheet plastic (“nylon” in the local parlance).

Well, Uruguay is nothing if not windy, and they quickly succumbed. So: Plan B, sheet plastic with plastic netting on either side. I’m only doing one, as a test, for some reason.

Not perfect, but not bad

I noticed an awning support outside our kitchen window was rotting. I thought, I can do this!

After measuring, I went to Aserradero Rocha in nearby Pinamar, where you can rummage through off-cuts for any length of wood you need, an unusual and welcome feature.

Leaning against the window is a temporary support pole I kluged together. The little piece at the top the remaining length of the piece of lumber I purchased for the project…which I find oddly satisfying.

This is kind of neat.

When we arrived in Uruguay in 2009, we started buying the only yogurt that came in glass jars. After a couple years, they switched to plastic, but “nice” plastic – as in, clear and convenient to reuse.

Today I was removing labels and saw for the first time that they actually leave a space for you to label the contents when reusing their container – sweet! (Acá guardo = “Here I keep.”)

Nonetheless, I prefer them the labels removed, which requires only a couple minutes with an old kitchen scouring sponge, some turpentine, and cleaning up with dish detergent.

And yes, we do have a yogurt maker and do occasionally remember to use it 😉

Re-purposing gutters

Long ago, somebody gave me a couple of pieces of plastic gutter. Then at a job I supervised, a delivery included excess downspout. So I bought a few more pieces and put a gutter on our barbacoa.

The problem is, I didn’t do a very good job and the fascia board was not in good shape.

As you can see.

I had another long, narrow board left over from a remodel, so I installed it. I have enough of the originals to rip a piece to fit the gap. The fascia boards should cover the rafter ends, but hey: not perfect, but not bad.

One of today’s projects was reinstalling the cutter as a planter. The 2% grade is probably overkill, but the way I’ve installed it with wire, that is easily adjustable. Note how the downspout is cut perfectly to rest on the tile zócalo. I did not cut any pipe. That just happened.

Awesome!

After 12 years, I decided it was time for a new table saw blade. Little did I know that the holes in the middle of blades are not uniform. The washer (arendela) / spacer from the old blade was too big for the new one. While in Maldonado a couple weeks ago with some free time, I wandered into a hardware store and entertained five bored employees for a while, none apparently aware this was an issue, so I didn’t bother to go back to the local hardware store where I bought it. A few blocks away, for some reason, we have a tornillería, a shop that specializes in screws and bolts (seriously, how is that a viable business outside the bowels of Montevideo?). The guy had an almost-but-not-quite washer, and referred me to a nearby tornero, who I could find by looking for two blue doors on the frontage road of the Ruta Interbalnearia opposite Maudy, the electric-stuff shop. No sign, of course.

Long story short, a few hours later I stopped by and picked up the freshly-manufactured spacer that made the new blade functional with my saw. It cost 300 pesos, which is significant compared to the cost of the blade (990 pesos), but begs the question (I being from North America): where in North America could you waltz into a machine shop and get a precision metal part fabricated the same day for just over seven dollars? 

Mini greenhouse

Finally finished my “weekend”project, a mini greenhouse outside the north-facing kitchen window.

We have a large pine tree in the back yard, so during winter the hours of direct sunlight are limited.

It’s built of 100% recycled wood, and 99% recycled nails and screws. For some reason I already had plastic. My only cash outlay was for two small hinges, less than a dollar.

I was sweating, shirt off, installing the plastic, so looked the thermometer: 78°F/25.5°C in the shade. In late April, equivalent of October in the north.

A small selection of my basura screws.

My basura nails. The ones on the right I salvaged from the wood that came off the casita roof. There were many, many more I simply chucked.

Now to figure out what I want to grow….

The heavy lifting is done.

I probably have 45 minutes more of cleanup. Then a trip to the firewood place to change all the pieces with metal embedded in them (why?).

Since you probably don’t know too many 67-year-old guys in a position to move and stack 6,000 pounds of firewood in under three hours, I’ll give you a little backstory: I accidentally got strong during a year off from university, working a job that, well, made me stronger. I didn’t realize it until I got to Maine for summer camp season. Unloading the campers’ trunks from a truck, I noticed that my fellow counselors, fresh from classes, were struggling with some of them. I, on the other hand, was flinging them onto my shoulder like they were nothing. As an artist, I had never interested myself much in physicality, but that, I thought, was cool. So I’ve tried to stay in shape.

Thirty years later, waiting for the ass-dragging Canadians to approve our residence (we finally gave up on it, for which I have been very grateful recently), I drove from Spokane to Las Vegas to meet an old friend coming from New Jersey for a conference. He was, as usual, overweight, and commented on how fit I seemed. He took a picture of me with my shirt off as we wandered around in the desert.

I thought I looked pretty good, so posted it, where smart-ass Jewish high school senior MySpace friend from San Diego responded almost immediately: Eww! Old. (jk).

At that point I saw a reality of being middle-aged, that in the absence of actively building muscle mass I would be losing muscle mass with each year. I joined the YMCA for a while, only to discover how incredibly boring gym machines are (and got ringworm from the sauna). Then I found and bought The Miracle Seven: 7 Amazing Exercises that Slim, Sculpt, and Build the Body in 20 Minutes a Day.

I could feel change in my muscles after a week, and I’ve been doing them ever since. Move and stack 6,000 pounds of firewood in under three hours? No problem.

(I solved the sauna issue by buying one through our company as a medial write-off.)