Timothy Birdnow

So I went into our upstairs bedroom to change a light bulb...

Our upstairs is a finished attic space, and has a low ceiling so it shouldn't have been a problem. The accursed LED bulb was flickering strobe-fashion, and I didn't want my poor wife to stroke out from the stupid thing, so I took the globe off and as I was pulling it down the whole fixture came with it!

DRAT! The fixture had apparently been attached with drywall screws into - drywall. The drywall began crumbling and the whole thing came down, hanging by hot wires and nothing more.

There was no good way to resecure the offending fixture. At a minimum I would have to rip it out and put in new drywall over some sort of board. What should have been a thirty second operation was turning into a major production.

Now, I used to do all that stuff when I was younger, but since my health issues I do very little home repair and improvement. But I do still have the skills gleaned from my cabin-building days, which means the ability to jury-rig any sort of construction project, and most of the time it even worked, sort of.

So I got out the tape. I used standard duct tape and taped the whole fixture up (sans globe, the heaviest part). It fell within minutes. So I got out the superglue, and squeezed glue all around the edge of the fixture. Since it wouldn't stay in place long enough to stick I got some Elephant Tape and taped the fixture up along with the glue. it took quite a bit of tape and when I was done the thing looked utterly horrid; a bunch of black tape in a crazy pattern holding the thing up. But it worked.

Cathy needs that light. She spends most of her time in that room and has vision problems and needs to be able to see. So I got the thing fixed, sort of. It looks like Frankenstein's monster, mismatched, ugly black patches holding it up, but it hasn't fallen. It even has electric contacts much like Frank's neck.

I know eventually I'll have to hire someone to come in and fix it. But for now it'll have to do.

My whole house is getting that way. It was built in 1927 and is really starting to show it's age. I used to maintain it pretty well but find any such effort increasingly difficult. So it is becoming a mass of jury-rigging. I had a bunch of cracks in the foundation and by the back door which I imagine let the mice in, for instance. My solution? Spray foam insulation. So I have a bunch of orange bubbles all around the foundation of the house. It's going to be tough to resell this place.

I just pray the toilet doesn't go; not sure how I can rig something to get by without THAT!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:23 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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