the return of the chute

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving, if you celebrate, and an equally lovely Thursday, if you don't. We had a nice time at Don's parents, and I spent the rest of the weekend selling jewelry at a convention while Don, predictably enough, played World of Warcraft. Work on the house is pretty much stalled until January -- Don's dad has too much to do between schoolwork and holiday preparations, and our weekends are filling up with events as well. But some things have gotten done, as I mentioned before. The project in progress right now is the upstairs floor. Don and his dad have ripped up most of the floorboards -- everything back to the third bedroom, where we're staying, and a little bit of hallway so we can get to the stairs. I'll post a picture later this week. In any case, when they ripped up the floorboards over the front porch, they discovered to their dismay that the builders of the house decided to add a little weatherproofing by pouring plaster -- the same crumbly, messy, gross plaster that we ripped down off of all of the walls -- down in between the joists over the porch. Needless to say, since we need to replace or repair all of those joists, that plaster has to come out.

And so out came the dumpster chute, pulled from its retirement in the garage to fight the good fight once again. I'm glad we saved it -- we didn't realize that WE would be the ones needing it again, but we were sure SOMEBODY would. This time, we've hung it inside the house; the plaster is all at the very front and there's no sense carrying it all the way to the back window when there's no floor to walk on. The chute is attached to one of the few walls still standing upstairs, and dangles down through the empty space between two joists into the living room and thence over the basement stairs to the side door. When they're working, Don and his dad can open the door and place a large barrel or another garbage can at the base of the chute, work til it's filled with plaster, then run down and upend it into the dumpster. I'm told it works pretty well. Don's planning on getting the rest of the plaster out himself sometime before January so that they can forge ahead with the new floor; we'll see how that goes.

dumpster day again

A new dumpster was (I assume) delivered today. Don stayed home this morning to wait for it. So we're all ready for Sunday, except that I haven't yet decided what I'm going to cook. It sort of depends on who decides to come and what they do and don't eat. Not a lot else going on until then, so it's back to work for me.

how to make a dumpster chute

Finally, here it is: our photo tutorial on how to create your own dumpster chute. We did this last week; those of you coming over on Saturday will get to see it -- and fling things down it -- in person!

First things first: you've got to take out a window. This is the window at the top of our stairs; we built a scaffolding so that it can be accessed a little less precariously (pictures of the scaffolding are here and here).


Next, install a pulley above the window. If you don't know the physics of pulley-installation, I can't really help you. I was an English major. You'll note that we bolted a spare piece of lumber above the window for the pulley to be attached to so it would be even with the window.


Lean out the window to take pictures of the happenings below; get yelled at for endangering both expensive camera and self.


Buy approximately a metric buttload of sturdy trash cans (we cleaned out the supply at both Home Depot and Wal-Mart, which is why there are two different colors). Using a reciprocating saw or other useful implement of destruction, cut out the bottoms of all of the cans. (I had high hopes, but alas the bottoms do not work well as frisbees.)


Stack all your bottom-free cans together, and thread chain through the handles (one roll of chain per side turned out to be exactly enough). Make sure you've bought chain that is strong enough to handle the load; ours is rated for 300 pounds.


Make sure you've got a length of chain at the top of the cans to hang the whole shebang from; Don and his dad counted 60 links back and then looped the chain around the handles of the top can, using a bolt with washers and nut to secure it.


Tie or otherwise secure the other end of the pulley to the midpoint of your hanging-chains; make sure to leave the top section dangling free, as you'll bolt this to the window frame later.


Using the pulleys and some brute strength, maneuver the stack of cans upright.


Hoist the first can to your desired height; the bottom should overlap into the next can so nothing will fall out of the chute. Designate that useless person standing around taking pictures to hold the rope in place while you loop chain around the next set of handles and secure with bolts.


Do it again.


And again and again and again and again and again.


Once the top of your chute has reached the windowsill, run upstairs and bolt those chains into place so whoever your poor rope-holder is can let go. Then come back down and heave the end of the chute into the dumpster. We bolted the last few cans together still stacked, to provide a little stability and weight to keep the end securely in the dumpster.


Take a spare can and create a hood for the top of the chute. When you're not using it, you can just take the hood out and tarp over the window.


Ta-da!


There are a few extra pictures in the set here.

one thing has gone right this week

The new dumpster arrived this morning! As usual, we can't say enough good things about our friends over at Benjer; they are so, so helpful. All we do is explain what we want to the driver and it's done. Easy.

He showed up at about 9 AM this morning, with our new dumpster, which he dropped off temporarily in the street in front of the house (the "clang" is what alerted us to his presence). Then Don went out to explain the situation, and I headed to the upstairs landing window to take stealth pictures. The driver picked up our old, mostly full dumpster:


And dropped it off in front of the neighbor's house for safekeeping while the rest of the maneuvering went on (I'm sure they were thrilled):


Out with the old, in with the new:


It wound up right where Don wanted it for demolition day. He's quite pleased, which may explain why it looks like he's marching in a parade in this photo:

all kinds of news

The biggest news is that the new and improved Anapurna website is up. And, unlike the old site, you can actually successfully use it to buy things from us! Yay! Go check it out.

Other stuff going on, that I thought I'd get down before it drifted away in the massive cloud of to-do lists and scheduling I often find myself in:

Don got a call from the HVAC guy (who, incidentally, has the pointiest shoulder blades I have ever seen on a human being). Said guy is going to come over tomorrow night with a contract for us to sign -- with the original price they quoted us (yay!). He's really truly officially going to start work on Monday. It's like a dream come true! Air conditioning!

We're getting our nearly-full dumpster switched out for an empty one on the 13th. Benjer must love us, we rent so many damn dumpsters. This will be the third this year.

Demolition day, as you all know, is on July 21st. Don't forget to tell me if you want to come.

Windows will be installed sometime after that, hopefully in early August. All the paperwork has been signed for the financial stuff on that one, now we're just waiting through their lead time. Plus, we're getting the demolition done, which will make things easier for them (since they're doing all the framing for us -- they don't have to worry about the demo part).

At some point -- I am guessing next weekend -- we will officially Move Downstairs. I haven't made a lot of progress on cleaning out the office. This must change.

Don says that he'd like to have the upstairs subfloors done and all the final framing in place by the time school starts (August 29th). Considering that we're going on vacation for a week within that timeframe, it's a tight schedule. We'll see how it goes. I'm a little concerned about the plumbing for the new master bathroom, but Don seems to think it's "NBD".

shout out to the dumpster dudes

Today I just wanted to give a "shout out" to our dumpster supplier, Benjer Inc. We've been renting dumpsters from them for two years now (what that says about the pace of our project we won't discuss), and they are always super nice, super friendly, and super available. This most recent dumpster -- our second this year -- was delivered when we weren't home, and the driver accidentally put it down a little too far over into the driveway; we called them, and the next day we came home to a perfectly positioned dumpster. They are great, we love them. I think I mentioned these guys at about this time last year, but it's definitely that time of year for a lot of people. So if you're in Baltimore looking to rent a dumpster (please don't tell me why, I don't need to know), we definitely recommend Benjer (even if they did discontinue my favorite dumpster, the "Biggie Benjer").

it's that time of year again

That's right -- it's dumpster season!


Our good friends over at Benjer delivered this dumpster on Friday, in the middle of some very unpleasant freezing precipitation (thanks guys!). Now we know why most of their other customers cancelled their deliveries, though -- by Saturday morning when we went out to start work, there was a LOT of ice inside that dumpster! We cleared what we could and left the rest to drain or dry up as it gets warmer, and went ahead and started loading. That's right, you heard me -- we accomplished something! We actually cleaned out the garage! Can you believe it? After months of nothing interrupted by brief periods of pipe-related panic (broken pipes so far this year: three), we have started to work again. And in honor of this accomplishment, I submit unto you a list (I love lists!):

Things We Put Into The Dumpster:
-a cooler
-a fireplace grate
-fake logs (there is no fireplace anywhere in the house, so I don't know where this stuff came from)
-a broken table
-a lot of decaying plywood that was forming the quasi-floor of the garage, having been laid directly onto the dirt
-a wheeled drafting table
-some sort of electric bug killer
-a lot of broken plexiglass
-some mysterious platform things -- maybe proto-floors?
-a big plywood base which we think might have been from Pop-Pop's train garden (a family hobby Don hopes to start up again someday)
-a giant glass window pane (we just couldn't think of a reason to save it -- plus it was pretty scratched up)
-a homemade shelf thingie
-some old homemade weights
-a box of fishing weights
-two really long metal poles

Things Which Could Not, For Legal Reasons, Go Into The Dumpster:
-two window air conditioners, broken
-three car batteries
-approximately twenty four pint sized cans of transmission fluid

Things Which Did Not Get Put In The Dumpster Yet Because They Are Really Heavy:
-the staircase unit from the pool
-the deck platform the staircase used to lead up to
-a fifty gallon drum
-an old barbeque
-lots of really long PVC pipe
-the antenna that used to be on the roof
-a lot of rubble

Things We Decided To Save:
-the school lockers (certain people will be glad to hear that we decided to salvage the lockers -- they are in pretty bad shape but I love them too much to let them go, so we will build the floor around them for now and try to refurbish them someday)
-an ancient post hole digger made entirely of steel (VERY HEAVY and no I didn't know that until I tried to pick it up. Don laughed at me. A lot.)
-several other old tools (maybe we'll start a museum!)
-some cabinet doors, because they were pretty (maybe we'll use them as frames for something crafty! or maybe they'll sit around in the woodshop until the next generation decides to clean out the garage)
-spiders (really we're just wusses)