Deck Demolition the Final Chapter

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When we were tearing apart the deck on Saturday, parts of the process made noise. (Hitting a crowbar with a sledge hammer does that.) Several interested neighbors came by to see what the project was. One did even more than that. He asked how we planned to haul away the wreckage. When we confessed that we hadn’t figured that part out, he said “I have a truck you can borrow.” We said we’d probably take him up on it, but the day ended and we hadn’t yet gotten to the point where we were ready to haul.

For us Sunday is a day of rest, so we looked at the mess remaining, but we did no work. At church our neighbor came up and asked again if we needed help hauling. This time he offered not only his truck, but his scout troop to help with the hauling. I’m no idiot. We said “Yes. Thank you.”

I made sure I was outside working before the crew was due to arrive. I wanted to get the last bits off of the house before they arrived because I wanted to be sure that we did as little damage to the siding as possible. While I’m certain that teenage boys would be happy to wield the crowbar, I wasn’t so sure how carefully they’d approach the task. I’d barely stepped outside when I noticed something interesting. The sprinklers had run during the night and our work site now had a wet canal running through it.

More specifically, there had been a slight divot in the ground underneath a major support beam. Overflow from the sprinklers had run into it until there was standing water. You can see the water more clearly after we’d cleared away the debris. That metal bracket in the foreground of the picture is what held the support beam in place.

That water would have showed up three days per week during six months of the year. It soaked a support beam causing it to swell and contract. It made the air under the deck wet and fed all the fungus. I don’t think the canal was there when the deck was built. It was a thing that formed over years as ground shifted and run off patterns changed.

It took three trips to the dump to get everything hauled away. While some boys were helping with hauling, we handed shovels to other boys and had them start digging out the cement footings. Those metal brackets were sunk in cement.

They were big and heavy. But we needed them out before we can use this ground for anything else. One was particularly interesting as they poured the footing right between a concrete pad and a sprinkler pipe. When I first discovered the pipe, I worried that they had poured the concrete around it, but fortunately that was not the case.

There were no further exciting flora or fauna discoveries. I’m fine with that. Though we did manage to unearth the dryer vent.


We’ll need to clean it off and put a vent cover on it so that rain and snow don’t get inside. We also found out that Doritos bags can last a very long time.

The boys of the scout troop were great. They worked hard and didn’t complain, not even when they had to help lift concrete into the back of the truck. I offered to pay money into the troop fund, but my neighbor said that the troop needed the service hours. So we fed the boys donuts and Gatorade. The ground is cleared, ready for whatever comes next. I really didn’t expect the job to go this quickly. I’m feeling very grateful for good neighbors and good young men who are willing to donate their time and effort on short notice.

Howard thinks we should throw down grass seed and just add the space to our lawn. I haven’t quite given up on the idea of a patio. Either way, it is a project for a different week and probably cooler weather.

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Deck Update

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I am so very tired, but I completed what I hoped to do. We now have a small deck with salvaged railing.

Obviously we still have a lot of clearing away work on the old deck. Not mention the massive pile of rotted wood which now sits in my driveway awaiting a trip to the dump. But we can now safely exit our house and it is sturdy enough to last us a few more years. We checked underneath and the combination of a concrete pad and being out of the line of fire for the dryer vent means what remains is still sound.

It is enough for one day.

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Demolishing the Deck

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Some time before we bought our house, a previous owner built a redwood deck in the back yard.

I took these pictures of it three years ago when we made a family project out of pressure washing and re-staining it. Look at how lovely it was. Particularly note the even-ness of the deck planks.

Having seen what is underneath, I’m certain the trouble had already begun, but none of it was evident from the surface. It seemed solid. Then last year we started noticing that the planks were uneven. Some of them were pushing up. Others were sinking.

I took the picture after we’d already spray painted a warning line on a particularly bad spot and after I’d removed some railing. Most of the deck was still solid underfoot, but some of it felt…soft. We figured we had a rotten beam. Howard and I discussed options. We don’t have the money to replace the deck. To get at the bad spot, we’d have to pull apart everything. We knew once it was apart, we probably couldn’t get it back together. We decided that demolition was what we had to do, because it was going to be a safety hazard otherwise.

It was hard to decide that staring at the surface. Everything I could see looked nice. I felt bad making a mess of all that beautiful wood. But I got out the drill and pulled off the railings. Then we pulled off the trim.

You’ll note there is still a section of railing close to the back door. We’re hoping to save that portion of the deck as it feels solid and we need some sort of landing for the back door lest we step out and fall two feet to ground level.

It doesn’t look so bad in that picture. There were an abundance of spiders and bugs as we removed boards, but most of the structure seemed okay. Until you looked close.

There were spots of dry rot. And every single trim board was partly rotted away at the bottom. You can see where the ends of the boards had dissolved back into dirt.

With the railing and the trim out of the way, we started pulling up the planks.

That support beam was not one of the soft spots. It was under a spot that felt solid. Note the underside of the plank.

I’d imagined that perhaps I could give all the wood to someone who could use it. But pretty much every board had some kind of rot or fungus on it. When we got all the planks up, the extent of the rot was apparent.

The entire sub structure of the deck was on its way to becoming dirt.

There were beams we could crumble with our bare hands.


In fact, Kiki did crumble one up, just for fun.

We used a crowbar and a 4′ wrecking bar to get the planks up. Except usually we only had to get one end loose and then we could yank it up with our hands. Either the boards were rotten or the screws were so rusty that they just broke.

We were careful as we proceeded, because bugs, spiders, and weird things. Fungus is weird.

I don’t even know what this thing is, except it is growing out of one of the major support beams.

It’s about the size of my hand and looks like a face hugger alien. But it doesn’t twitch when poked with the end of a crowbar.

As we got closer to the house, we found the jungle of lint.

You see, the people who built this deck did a really good job. The deck was very sturdy. Built to last, and that is why it survived for almost twenty years. Unfortunately they also did something very stupid. The dryer vent blows into the enclosed space underneath the deck. It supplied warm, wet air into the enclosed space for twenty years. No wonder fungus grew and the wood rotted.

Here the narrow two inch slit for air to vent from the dryer.

That was all under the deck planking.

So, whatever we decide to do with the space that no longer has a deck, it will be something that allows the dryer to vent in open air. I bet our clothes will get dry faster too. I admit I’m also excited that the hose faucet will also be in the open. We used to have to reach into a hole in the deck in order to reach the faucet. It was half-jokingly called “The Spider Hole.” It was excellent spider habitat, particularly for widow-type web spinners. As we were demolishing we only spotted one that might have been a black widow. The others were brown, but every bit as creepy.
The square part around the faucet is clear because I removed the spiderwebs in order to detach the hose. It looked pretty much like the adjacent square, with all the webs and egg sacs.

The planks are all removed. Later this evening we’ll tackle removing the rest. All of it is going in a big pile on my driveway. We’re going to have to borrow a truck to take it to the dump, but I think that’s a job for another day. For now I leave you with a picture of our cat who is confused by this project.

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Projects in Process

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These are the projects I’m working on right now:

Business:
Re-doing the layout for Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance to make it work as a pdf. Then I need to put it up for sale in the store. It is an experiment in format and delivery. Schlock books in electronic format are long overdue.

A Schlock-related layout project which may become new merchandise that is launched at GenCon.

Layout for Massively Parallel. I’ve been in a holding pattern here, but Howard has started pounding through the bonus story edits. My instinct tells me the project will kick over into high gear soon. Probably toward the end of next week. I’ll be better off if I start refreshing it in my brain ASAP.

The Challenge Coin PDF. Already overdue.

Learning and setting up Patreon for both Schlock and me.

Reorganization and post convention clean up of both my office and the warehouse.

Assisting Kiki with another art show and with setting up her Etsy shop. She’s ready to step up her business so that it can help pay for college. This means lots of work setting things up. I think most of my part is done, but things pop up randomly. Right now her income has about half of one semester covered. We’re hoping to be able to at least double that. The more that she can come up with, the less I have to wiggle out of the family budget.

Preparations for GenCon are under way. This next week will include us hustling to make sure that we’ve got everything in order. Then there will be a brief lull before we send Howard off to the convention.

Preliminary preparations for Salt Lake Comic Con are underway. I’ve been communicating with programming, Dealer’s hall, ordering electricity, reserving a hotel room, speaking with booth partners, and generally trying to picture how to make it a more positive experience than we’ve had the last two mega shows. I’m feeling optimistic.

Household and Family:

The deck needs to be taken apart. Then I’ve got to arrange for all the wood to go to the dump. I thought more of it would be salvageable, but pretty much every board has had some hidden rot. At least it can go to the organic section and chipped to be turned into mulch.

Diet adjustment, particularly for Howard and myself. We’re taking steps toward healthier. We’re dragging our Hot Pocket and Frozen Pizza eating children along with us. This is for both budget and health reasons.

Along with the diet adjustments, I need to inventory our food storage and be restocking again. We spend a lot less on groceries when I stock up as things go on sale. I need to be doing better at that.

I ought to be doing more to provide enrichment activities for my kids. Mostly they’re quite content to play video games all day. It was a good break for them, but the restlessness is building. They need to have some summer activities.

Tree trimming. We’ve got a tree with branches that brush the roof. I have to find out if there is a reasonable and safe option for me to cut them off. Something like a pole saw. If I can’t find an option that feels safe, then we’ll have to pay an arborist who has the proper equipment. Not sure I can afford that this summer.

I need to not neglect the garden clearing work that Kiki and I began this summer. I’ve got to keep the ground clear so that we can plant in the Fall.

I need to finish the 2013 Family photo book and get up to date with the 2014 photo book.

My projects:

Writing The House in the Hollow. I’m at 30,000 words out of an expected 60,000. I just hit the midpoint crisis. I just need to keep laying down words until I reach the end.

The 2013 One Cobble at a Time book. I need it to go with the others on my shelf. I usually have this done by February. I think I’ve been avoiding it a little because re-reading 2013 is going to be hard.

Book of Memories. I’ve decided to take all the old photos I scanned while I was at my parent’s house and put them into a book. In that book I’ll be free to ramble about the old curtains and toyboxes. Creating it will make me happy because I will have told all the stories. Yet no one is obligated to sit through all the stories and be bored as I attempt to make clear why that ratty old chair is important to remember.

Cobble Stones book of holiday themed essays. I’d hoped to have this ready by November. It is low enough on the project list that I’m not sure that will happen. Maybe I’ll find a burst of forward momentum in September…

A long list of blog posts that I’ve been intending to write. There are at least a dozen of them.

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Schlumpy Summer

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Summer is when I lose track of days and hours. I get to the end of the days feeling all muddled and like I didn’t get enough done. So I finished off my day by taking a crowbar to the deck. all of the decorative trim has been removed and we can now use a flashlight to see underneath. Since most of the trim was in contact with the ground, almost every piece has rot on the end. There were many places where wood had turned back into dirt. Yet because of the construction of the deck all of that was hidden from view. The deck still looked sound. Also there were spiders and bugs everywhere. Not my favorite. But beating things up with a crowbar was kind of fun.

I’ve really got to get a grip on my schedule. I need to put some structure into days that have gone all schlumped. I need to declare work hours and tell the kids not to interrupt during them. I need to prioritize and get some things complete so that I’m not trying to juggle so many things in my brain.

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At the End of a Day that Feels like it was Wasted

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I wish the list of “things I did today” made me feel better about the list of “things I did not do today, but should have.” It isn’t that I wasted my time. I mean if I spend all day watching cat videos over and over again, then I would be justified in feeling like I should have done better at the end of the day. Instead I have a day where pretty much every moment was spent on something worthwhile, yet it all feels muddled and interrupted. I can very quickly point to the big failure of the day (a missed appointment) and I can’t point to anything that feels like a counter balancing success. The appointment wasn’t even particularly important. Yet the fact that I missed it is evidence of the normal summer muddle that our lives always fall into. Everyone wakes at different times. We eat on different schedules. The kids spend far too much time attached to computer screens, to the point that I feel like a bad parent. Yet to make them do otherwise would take energy which I then would not have available for the work that I need to do.

This was supposed to be the week when I dug in and wrote fiction every day. I was supposed to do that all through the month of June. I didn’t. I was supposed to have the challenge coin PDF completed. There’s a package I said I’d mail two days ago and I haven’t yet. I could keep going. The list is long. Here’s another should: I should focus on the things I did get done and not beat myself up for the things I didn’t. Also I shouldn’t assign myself so many “shoulds” and thus I spin myself into a recursion.

What did I do? Some laundry. Some dishes. I worked on the PDF of Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance, which we hope to put in our store as an ebook if I can get the file size small enough. 160MB seems really big and I’m worried that the store provider will hit us with bandwidth fees. I cooked some food as Howard and I are trying to shift our diets toward being more healthy. I helped Keliana write a contract. Listened to her as she bemoaned the challenges in setting up an etsy shop and having art under contract. She loves the art, but the business side was feeling burdensome today and she needed an ear. I read scripts for Howard. I took a shower. I read for writer’s group. I answered some email. I filled out extensive panelist forms for both Howard and I. There were two conventions and both had a field for “tell us why you’re qualified for this panel.” So I wrote a dozen little sales pitches which I hope will allow Howard and I to participate in programming. I attended writer’s group. I fed a fish.

It really seems like there ought to be more things to account for how I spent my time today. That doesn’t feel like enough things. I look at the list with logic and it has a lot of things, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Whether or not it is enough, the day is mostly gone. I will try again tomorrow.

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Clearing Away the Mess

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This morning I looked around my house and saw all the accumulated clutter from the past five weeks. During those weeks I packed for a trip by pulling things out of their usual places. Then I unloaded my suitcases, but not everything got put away. I was too busy preparing for a convention, which required me to pull out a completely different set of things. Also there was an art show, which strewed another set of paraphernalia about. While I was away on my trip, Howard brought home a drawing table and assorted gear from Dragon’s Keep, because he’s drawing at home now. Some of the gear is duplicates, most of it is sitting in boxes waiting for me to have time to decide where it goes. Then I came home from the convention bringing back piles of things which need to be put away.

One of the troubles with having so many piles of things, it means that even when I know exactly where the item I’m holding belongs, there is probably a pile between me and that location. So instead of putting the item away, I set it on a pile to put away later. Piles beget more piles until the entire house is full of piles which must be moved out of the way in order to accomplish anything useful.

This morning I looked around and realized that the most important business task I could accomplish would be to clean house. So I spent many hours of my work day organizing and putting away. There is much work yet to do, but it is begun.

I’ve also begun dismantling our back deck. The railings are off and we pried up enough boards to shine a flashlight underneath. That part was a little bit scary. I really did not know what we would see. I feared hornet’s nests and massive spiders because I swear that there were bugs or webs in every single join of every single board I removed. I no longer consider it a nice deck. It was a massive bug and spider house. Apparently. Underneath was actually pretty boring. There was dirt. We started at the far corner from where the rotted support is because we’ve seen leaf cutter bees flying in and out over there. If I have to deal with angry insects, I want to have time to know that they are there first. I’ll probably do a post with pictures, but it’ll probably wait until I have pictures of every stage.

Now I need to rest so I can have a similar work day tomorrow. We’ve had five weeks of running around. The next five weeks we’ll all stay home. I’m looking forward to that.

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At the End of Westercon

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I have so many thoughts in the wake of Westercon, but they are all fragmentary. When I try to pull one into coherence, it slips away from me like a colorful fish in murky water. I can tell they are lovely, but I barely get a glimpse before they are gone. A part of me is afraid that they will get away, vanish in the gloom never to be seen again. Tomorrow, when I have slept all the sleeps, I will try to coax them out where I can see them.

For now I write the fragments that may help me coax full thoughts tomorrow.

We had a wonderful time.

Keliana sold 3/5 of her art show pieces and many of her prints. She earned a significant portion of the money she needs for her tuition payment in August. She also won “Best Use of Color” for one of her pieces. She got invited out to dinner by professional people who wanted to talk to her, not her parents.

All of my panels were excellent. I learned things and I felt like we gave good value to the audience.

I had many wonderful conversations.

I need to write a post on the power of witness.

Mary and I visited an antique store, one where you have to ring the bell to be let inside. Unfortunately the owner had firm opinions about the use of photos so I couldn’t take any to share. But I was struck by how needlessly beautiful these objects were. We make things to serve a need. These things fed the need for beauty. I put my hand to the surface of a two hundred year old table and realized it had a story, probably many stories, and I will never know them. Not even if I bought it and took it home. That building was packed with untold stories. I wonder if I sat quiet for a long time if they’d whisper their stories to me. Certainly my brain tried to create them. I could not afford a single thing in the store.

I’m excited for LTUE next February. I think it is in some very good hands.

Commuting forty five minutes to and from the convention each day significantly increased the fatigue and reduced pretty much all of my evening social opportunities.

My kids who stayed at home are amazing and were absolutely fine while I was gone.

I have ideas to increase the fun and reduce the burden of SLCC in September.

I have ideas for Gen Con.

I had a dozen things that ought to go on the to do list, but can’t remember what they are. I hope they come back when I’ve cleared the murk.

The Shadows Beneath anthology is beautiful.

Sometimes you see behind the scenes to how an event is put together and it is like watching a train wreck, you can see the crash coming and cringe in anticipation. At Westercon I saw an event which was repeatedly saved from disaster by people who stepped in at the last minute to solve problems created by communication issues and other errors. The con com was full of heroes. Then there are other times where I see behind the scenes and the more I watch the more I respect everyone involved. Watching the Writing Excuses crew is like that.

Traffic and sales were really slow in the dealer’s room, but we still did better than I thought we would.

I never did make it across the street to Fantasycon. I’ve heard there were many things worth seeing. I was happier staying in the smaller space.

I have a deck I need to start dismantling this week and Apricots which are going to fall off the tree unless I can entice someone to come collect them and take them away.

I really want one of Jessica Douglas’ little dreaming trees with either fish or butterflies, but I can’t decide what colors or theme I want. It needs to mean something to me. A dreaming tree has to have symbolism in the colors and objects. I’ll wait patiently until my brain tells me what the symbols are.

A set of blog posts, getting onto panels, being a good panelist, being a good moderator, being a good convention guest, things conventions can do to make life easier for their guests.

And those are the glimpses I have right now. Time to sleep

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Good Things on the 4th of July

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My youngest two kids do like fireworks, but I think their favorite Fourth of July tradition is when I buy a pack of 50 glow stick bracelets and they run around in the dark backyard way past the time when I usually make them go to bed. If I were less tired, I would write up a post talking about the evolution of our 4th of July traditions. Some other time perhaps.

I’ve spent the last two days up at Westercon. I’ve got two days more. It is a convention with more than the usual quantity of organizational snafus, but none of them have truly impeded our ability to do the things we need to do nor have they reduced our enjoyment of the show. I’ve had so many conversations today which warmed my heart. It is good to be among friends. I’m tired, but happy. Tomorrow morning I get to go back.

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Westercon July 3-6 Salt Lake City

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I’ll be at Westercon this weekend. I’ll be there mostly as support crew for Howard and Kiki, so I expect that if you want to find me and say hello, the dealer’s room is the best bet. Please do stop by. I’ll have Hold on to Your Horses, Strength of Wild Horses and my Cobble Stones books for sale. We’ll also have Howard’s books and Kiki’s art.

I do have a few times where I’ll be on panels.

Thurs 4pm Deer Valley I&II
Schmoozing 101: Making the most of your convention experiences.
Mary Robinette Kowal, Sandra Tayler, Dave Doering.
I’ve been part of a similar panel with Mary before and I’ll bet this one is worth your time.

Fri 10am Salon A
Writing Assistants: What do they do and when do you need one?
Sandra Tayler, Isaac Stewart, Peter Ahlstrom, Chersti Nieveen.
I know all of these people and they know their stuff. It should be a good discussion.

POSSIBLE Friday 2:30 Salon B&C
Women in Fantasy Art
J. Zoe Frasure, Keliana Tayler, Emily Sorensen
Keliana was told that I’m on this panel too, but I haven’t seen that reflected on a printed program. It looks like an interesting discussion whether or not I’m part of it.

Friday 5:30pm Salon B&C
Sparks in the Blood: Insights from a creative family.
Howard Tayler, Sandra Tayler, Keliana Tayler
They’ve put three Taylers on one panel and given us an hour to talk. If we do this right you’ll laugh (a lot), you’ll cry (maybe, just a little), and you’ll learn something useful. Hope you join us.

Saturday 2:30pm Salon A
Writing Children and Juvenile Characters: From Classics to Today
Sandra Tayler, Mikey Brooks, Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury
I get to talk about writing for this panel, which makes me happy.

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