3 posts tagged “diy”

At 1:15am this morning--just minutes ago--I looked at my roommate and said, "You know, I always thought this place was crappy, but I guess you never know how crappy it really is until a ceiling tile caves in on the very spot where your bed used to be."

"Five minutes ago," she added.  We were sitting on her bed, surveying the damage.  You can see for yourself:

First Apartment: Things That Go "Bump" in the Night

It all began when I was getting into bed.  My roommate and I noticed a water mark on the drop-ceiling tile above the foot of my bed.  It was fresh; we both confirmed it was a new phenomenon.  I guess this is the first mistake we made: not calling the maintenance man immediately.  After his stellar performance on the last job we called him in for, we were less than thrilled at the thought of calling him in again.

So we went to bed.  Time: 11:30pm.

The tenant upstairs ran a bath; this was nothing unusual.  Last week at this hour, we heard a lady singing after the water stopped running.  This time, we heard the water empty about 45 minutes later, and a second bath was run.  (One just isn't enough for some folks.)  After about 15 or 20 minutes into the second bath, I heard and felt something drip on my comforter.  And again.

I sat upright and ordered, "Turn the light on--they're leaking on my bed!"

It dripped again, and I shoved my glasses on my face in time to see a yellow liquid seeping into my lovely white comforter.  "I hope that's not the toilet!" I cried.  (When you're forced out of bed by yellow liquid leaking on your comforter, your mind does not always use logical thinking skills.)  I ran to the kitchen for a pot and stood there stupidly, holding the it under the leak, shaking slightly with adrenaline.  That was the beginning.

First Apartment: Things That Go "Bump" in the Night

First Apartment: Things That Go "Bump" in the Night

This is when I decided to wake the landlord.  I have to give him credit: He did answer his phone.  He called "Gerry," the maintenance man, who dutifully assessed the damage, knocked on the upstairs tenants' door, and found a dry bathroom floor.  The problem, it seems, is with the tub drain.  (As it turns out, their toilet is right above where my pillow usually is.)  Gerry ripped down a few precarious pieces of tile and plaster, but the rest would have to wait for the morning.  He will return at 9:00am with a ladder and a plumber named Dan.

My roommate is snoring behind me, asleep on the living room couch.  I can still hear the people upstairs walking around, flushing the toilet, moving furniture (again, not unusual for this time of night, which is perhaps another story, another night--er, morning).  And here I am, proverbial pen in hand, laughing inside as I write.

I'm laughing because earlier, when I grabbed a garbage bag from the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, my hands felt something wet.  Apparently our kitchen drain has been leaking too.

Well, you know what they say: When it rains, it pours.  Sometimes they mean outside, and sometimes they mean in your bedroom.  But remember--you never know how bad it is until a ceiling tile caves in on the very spot where your bed used to be.

'Tis the season to carve pumpkins.  My jack-o-lantern, Carlos, sits on my desk and grins at me, toothy and lopsided, while I type.  More importantly, 'tis the season to eat pumpkin pie (sorry, Carlos).  I hate berry pies--though I recently learned that pumpkins are, in fact, berries (penultimate paragraph), so perhaps I need to adjust that statement--and apple pies are of no consequence to me.  But the pumpkin pie, I think we can agree, is one of the finest after-dinner triumphs known to Americans.  Of course, one need not wait until dinner for victory: breakfast, lunch, and midnight snacks give one an equal sense of satisfaction.

But not all pumpkin pies are created equal, as my roommate so aptly proved last fall when she decided to make a pie from scratch--from an actual pumpkin, that is.  None of this One Pie or Libby's from-a-can nonsense.  No, she was going to go for the gold: Short of picking out her very own Carlos from the patch, she wanted to do everything by hand for a truly homemade dessert experience.

I suppose this comes from a strange post-college desire to see just what, exactly, you can achieve as an adult.  The twenty-something years, I've discovered, are filled with this inexplicable and sudden longing to "do it yourself," to try new things, and to generally figure things out, even if it is through trial and error: What kind of an adult do I have the capacity to be?  Am I handy?  Am I lazy?  Am I creative?  It's about proving yourself.  Am I someone who buys canned pumpkin, or do I have what it takes to turn raw, orange guts into a stunning culinary delight?  (As if the latter somehow gives you a leg up.)

Some things, however, are not worth figuring out, no matter how attractive the challenge may seem.

First of all, making a pumpkin pie from scratch is a lot of work.  Carving oval eyes and the traditional triangle nose into Carlos was about as much as I could handle.  Heck, I struggled to chop and cook a butternut squash for soup last winter; I can't imagine attempting the same with a much larger pumpkin.  Once you get through the seeds and manage to hack the thing up into boil-able pieces (again--sorry, Carlos), you've still got to peel it and mash it and get it into a puree that's reasonably fit for a pie. 

In retrospect, this process probably would've been easier on my roommate if we'd had a food processor.  As I experienced with my butternut fiasco, a blender--a weak one at that--just doesn't cut it.  Literally. 

So the pumpkin pulp retained a bit of its original lumpy, mysteriously stringy texture.  I equate it to the sense you get from natural peanut butter: You know it's probably better for you because you can pronounce all the ingredients, but the texture is so darn weird; sometimes "organic" is a little too close to the ground for comfort.

The spices didn't help the situation, either.  Even now, no one quite knows what it was, but after the pie was baked, there were clumps of something white--a powder, maybe?--that hadn't mixed in all the way.  The other spices stuck to their own kind too, which created pockets of flavor, like merry little surprises in each mouthful.  The overall consistency of the filling was also wetter than usual.  This made for a slightly leaky slice on your plate and a soggy crust in the pan several days out of the oven.  Not only that, but a pool of condensation (presumably from the plastic wrap over the top) collected on the surface of the pie, glossy and admittedly unnerving.  We'd cut a slice and the water would drip down the side, only to soak into the bottom of the remaining pie.

We chucked it at that point with the understanding that your pie should not cry unless the face of the Virgin Mary is baked into it--and you probably shouldn't eat it then, either.

This year, needless to say, my roommate is baking her pie from a can.  Not that she's lost the do-it-yourself spirit, but after giving it her best shot, she learned she's the kind of adult that prefers product over process.  (At least when it comes to something as serious as pumpkin pie.)  As Thanksgiving approaches, I wholeheartedly support that discovery.

And, if his smile is any indication, I'm pretty sure Carlos agrees.

My roommate finally called our apartment’s maintenance man regarding the spidery corner of the bedroom and other significant holes in the ceiling and walls.  What “Gerry” did to fix the problems was not disappointing, not discouraging, and not at all disturbing in its lack of professionalism.  Ok, maybe it was a few of those things.  But more than any of that, Gerry’s repairs were—and continue to be—one of the funniest things about this apartment.  

To solve the problem of the giant, crumbling crack in the corner of the bedroom—the spidery fissure above my poor roommate’s bed—Gerry decided to go with caulking.  Excellent choice.  It certainly solved the problem, but now there are bulging globs of pale yellow caulk in the corner, floor to ceiling and several inches thick.  It’s as if meringue or marshmallow—or something less pleasant—were bubbling out from the walls, thick and gooey, now freeze-framed in mid-ooze.

This has inspired me to rethink my decorating tactics:

1) Don’t ignore corners as possible places for color or texture accents for the room; and

2) Consider the merits of repairs as art installations, which could serve as a charming history of the apartment for guests to view.

After all, there is no question about whether or not guests will view Gerry’s little caulking adventure; there’s no ignoring it.  When we rearrange the furniture in the bedroom, we’ll have to find something to cover the spot where my roommate’s bed is, since Gerry, in a well-meaning zeal of thoroughness, applied caulk directly to the baseboard and carpet as well.  My roommate scraped it up as best as she could, but spiders beware: the caulk in the corner isn’t going anywhere.

Except that it went all over the floor, as did bits of the two ceiling tiles Gerry replaced while he was here.  Also over my roommate’s bed, the drop-ceiling tiles Gerry replaced are a different pattern than the rest now, and he sawed a rectangular chunk out of the corner tile to allow the hot water pipes to fit through.  (I guess it would be unreasonable to shut out the spiders entirely.)  My roommate vacuumed the mess under her bed and across the room under mine, where bits of tile and miscellaneous fix-it debris had scattered during the flurry of repairs. 

Gerry’s note explains things:

HI, SORRY ABOUT ANY MESS – I FILLED THE CRACK WITH A FILLER & PUT IN NEW TILES – ALSO COVERED OLD LIGHT HOLE IN LIVING ROOM JUST IN CASE –

(I think by “any mess” he actually meant to write “the large mess,” but we’ll forgive this oversight.  He was very busy with the old light hole, looking, perhaps, to preempt any subsequent requests my roommate and I may have had.)

This brings us to the highlight of my apartment: the brilliant way Gerry covered the old light hole—“just in case.”

Like his other fixes, Gerry clearly had good intentions when he used the chunk of ceiling tile from the bedroom to cover the hole in the living room ceiling.  He meant well when he caulked it to the ceiling, being careful to use enough to make it stick, even if that caused the caulk to squish out along the edges like an overloaded PB&J.  The little spatters of caulk on the ceiling were only mild side-effects to this much-needed procedure.  And he certainly had our best interest in mind when he nailed the piece of tile in on both ends, ensuring a complete graft onto the existing tile with no chance of slippage, loosening, or complete rejection by the host.

First Apartment: Recent Repairs

But, as you can see from the picture, our best interest does not include such aesthetic luxuries as replacing an entire tile if it has a hole or finding the least obtrusive solution.  Our best interest—and I mean very best interest—is more basic than that.  It is a simple and organic line of functionality upon which the apartment must tread, gingerly, lest the caulking and nails give way.

When I first saw what Gerry had done, I said, “That is not a solution.”  I probably had my hands on my hips or snapped my fingers in an “oh no you di’n’t” kind of way (for dramatic effect).  But after looking at it for a few minutes and seeing what a clever, efficient reuse of materials Gerry came up with, I began to laugh.  I looked at the protruding chunk of tile nailed to the ceiling and laughed from my gut at the brilliance of the solution.  I looked at it and saw how beautifully it fit in with the rest of the apartment, and how natural a choice it had been for Gerry to make.

Whatever else it has going for it, I have to admit the latest fix is certainly in keeping with the whole “hovel” theme.