If caulking is an art than I've found another art form that I'm no good at!

A few days ago I was presented with a challenge from my father. There was a piece of trimming at the bottom of a door sized window looking out onto his deck that had rotted out and needed replacing. He proposed that I should fix it and being a decent son, I accepted his challenge figuring what the heck it's not my house.

The first step was to remove the remnants of the existing board. This was simple enough. I used a utility knife to slice through the latex paint and a pry bar to pull the wood out. I didn't get any pictures of this because I didn't think about blogging this until after I screwed up the caulking procedure. Half of the board had disintegrated. Somehow water had gotten in behind it and wood rot had gone into full effect. Strangely, the other half of the board was completely sound, but I discarded it out of spite. If it's not going to take of it's other half than I have no use for it. If one half fails the whole fails. I know it's a stern lesson, but how else is that board going to learn that it needs to tend for the wood around it?

The second part of this labor was to find a replacement board. You would think this would be simple, but it wasn't. I went to a Lowe's Home Improvement store with my dad in search of the perfect piece of lumber. We were looking for a board that was one half inch wide, one and one half inch tall, and thirty one inches long. Unfortunately this isn't a standard size for boards in the exciting world of lumber. We weren't too concerned with the length because we could trim it down. It was the height that was the problem. There were one inch tall boards and there were two inch tall boards, but wouldn't you know it, no one and a half inch tall boards. This wouldn't have been a problem if we owned a table saw or other similar power tool, but we don't. So it came down to, do we buy a table saw for a couple hundred dollars and a two inch board, or do we just buy the two inch board, slap it on and call it done. Well we took our time and did the math, and after completing our price comparisons, my dad decided that we'd probably get the best bang for our buck by converting the window frame to a new two inch form factor. Sadly, I was forced to concur, though I still think that you really can't put a price on the joy of owning a table saw, yet somehow Lowe's found a way to put just such a price on their table saws and therefore I was left wanting as it was not my buck that we were trying to get a bang out of.

The third thing that had to be done was to kill the mold and mildew that was growing on the frame where the board would attach. This was accomplished with bleach! What would the world be like without bleach? That stuff is fantastic! I put some bleach in a spray bottle and spritzed away. I figured, what's the harm, I'm going to be painting the thing white anyway, so what if it bleaches a little. Of course, after I put the bleach on I had to give the boards some time to dry out. I originally thought I'd give it a day, but somehow I got distracted and this stretched into a couple days. During this time, I thought to myself, "Bleach is good, but what if it isn't enough?" At this point I remembered back to my time in the pest control profession that boric acid was often used in the treatment of lumber to make it resistant to molds, mildews and wood destroying organisms. So I diluted some boric acid dust in some water and treated the raw wood with my concoction. I then had to let the board dry again. By this point the exposed wood was looking much lighter than it had just a few days before and I took this to be a positive sign.

Finally, installation day arrived. I measured my board and cut it to the correct length. Actually I cut it a little long, only to discover that I had actually cut it to the correct length. This, of course, is in keeping with the old Carpenters adage, "Measure twice, add a little on, cut once, don't curse your life and those around you." Ah Karen, where would we be without you? As I was setting it into position and admiring my good fortune at cutting it so correctly, it occurred to me that I didn't currently posses any sealant with which to caulk the board. This necessitated another trip to my friendly neighborhood Lowe's. At Lowe's I perused the sealant section trying to look like I knew what I was doing as much as possible. I studied the various labels with great care and I only needed the store attendant to point out that I was looking at the wrong product once. Eventually I whittled down my choices to a product produced by GE and a product produced by DAP. This was made all the simpler by the fact that there were only two choices to begin with. I eventually settled upon the DAP because it had a name, namely ALEX, so I could relate with it, I also having a name. However there was a bit of advice on the GE tube's label that would have saved me some trouble had I heeded it. It seems GE knows a thing or two about caulking and they recommend putting down tape on either side of the area you'll be caulking so as to make cleanup a little easier. Oh, if only I had heeded that advice! However, I didn't and the rest is, as they say, history.

Back home, I nailed the board in place with some surplus nails that we had laying around. My dad has an excellent collection of old hardware, so finding the proper nails wasn't difficult. Then I began the caulking procedure. I cut the tip off the tube and inserted it properly into my caulking gun and away I went. Everything was going fine until I got to the first corner. At this point I had a big goop of caulk and I thought, "I'll just smooth that out." I first attempted the procedure with a putty knife which was a little futile. I then resolved to use the greatest of all tools, my finger. I smeared that blob out quite well, I then decided to even out the entire line I had just put down and try and blend it into the board to make for a smoother paint job. Bad decision. Before I knew what had happened I had caulk everywhere. To make matters worse, when I set the caulk to the side to focus on the board the caulk kept exiting the tube without my permission. It just kept pouring out. Several paper towels later I got the project to a point I could live with and decided to just paint over the mistakes.

Painting was an easy enough process. My dad had some spare paint laying around. I had to choose between two varieties, and of course I chose the wrong one. We had some Valspar American Tradition Exterior 100% Acrylic White, and BEHR Premium Plus Ultra Pure White Exterior Semi-gloss Enamel. I was seduced by the patriotism of the Valspar. I also wasn't sure about that semi-gloss concept. Is it glossy or not, make up your mind. So I opened up the Valspar and set to stirring it. It wasn't long until I noticed that there was a lump in my can, no not that can, the paint can! Anyway, I didn't let that initially stop me. It was only after I started painting that I allowed my doubts as to the paints condition effect me. I began to think that if it wasn't mixing properly then maybe it wouldn't last as long and I'd find myself back outside replacing another board. So I decided, out of self-interest, to switch to the BEHR paint. It wasn't until later that I noticed the bold lettering across the front of the can that read, "Ultimate Durability, Improved Hiding Power For Great Coverage." Had I seen that in the beginning I would have selected it, because if there was anything this project needed it was "Improved Hiding Power".

I painted the section where the board was and then I noticed it wasn't quite matching the rest of the bottom, so I decided to paint the entire bottom of the frame. My dad really liked that so he had me paint the bottom of the other side as well. He thought it was looking a little shabby and of course they all needed to match. This was all really uneventful. In the end I think I did a pretty good job and if you don't look to closely, you can't even notice any of the flaws, well except for the copious amounts of sealant that made its way onto the green parts. I think that could be a good life lesson, but what lesson is it? Don't look to closely or you'll see the flaws? Don't tell your dad a board is rotting? Use tape when you caulk? I'm not sure, but I'll think about it. At least, until another project or random thought comes my way.

Pumpkin carries the day, will LeBron do the same?

It's over! A winner must be declared, and that winner is the Pumpkin! Long rule Pumpkin, most beloved of the gourd family. I'll keep the poll up for a little while, but for posterity's sake, King Pumpkin won with fifty percent of the vote, a total of six people. Watermelon came in second with three votes, or twenty-five percent of the vote. Zucchini was third with two votes for sixteen percent of the total. Calabash received a vote for eight percent. Cucumber and "my favorite isn't listed" didn't receive any votes. Funny side note, if you add up all of the percentages you'll notice that we only get to ninety-nine percent. I'm not really sure how that happened, but maybe I'll just give that extra one percent to cucumber because I'm feeling a little sorry for the poor guy.

Now that the gourd issue has been resolved and order has been restored to the universe, I've placed a new question on the site. It's something I've been pondering, but I'm not really certain what the outcome would be, so I'm soliciting your opinions on the matter. Perhaps we'll reach some sort of consensus. So vote now and let your opinions be heard. The new question is, "If Godzilla fought LeBron James today, who would win?" I think this is a compelling and pertinent question. If you would like to comment on it or to lobby for an answer feel free to use the comment section of this post to do so. I think an argument can be made for all of the selections. Would it be the cagey veteran in Godzilla? The young phenom in LeBron? Would it be the residents of the great city of Tokyo who would most likely host the event? How about the viewing public, this kind of spectacle doesn't come around very often? You also know that wherever such a major event is, you're going to find corporations trying to exploit it. Would Nike be able to score a major advertising coup? Would ESPN be able to turn this into the ratings bonanza of the century? When contemplating this question, I think the best way to break down the problem is to think about who would be the biggest winner out of this whole thing. I think there can be multiple winners, but who is the biggest winner?

We could call it Jiffy-tooth

I was recently sitting in a Jiffy Lube in order to fulfil my civic duty to have my car inspected by representatives of the state of North Carolina. These representatives were of course Jiffy Lube employees and not, unfortunately, elected officials; though I might have paid double to see the honorable governor Mike Easley out there checking my tail pipe. That would have at least been entertaining. Instead of being thus entertained, I was stuck being bored in the traditional car place waiting room. The kind with the following standard accouterments: old magazines, a couple newspapers that had been read a few dozen times, hard plastic chairs, the two part gumball machine full of runts and nuts, the overpriced soda machine, the unisex bathroom (door slightly ajar), television mounted to the ceiling with FOX news on just loud enough to make listening to my iPod difficult, but not loud enough to be understood. It was this last piece of essential car place waiting room decor that got my mind to thinking.

I wasn't really all that interested in watching the FOX news program, but as a typical American I find myself drawn to the shimmering screen whenever or wherever it is. I've found in my life that even if nothing is on, I'll sit there and flip through channels aimlessly and be perfectly content to bask in the glow of mediocre programming. I discovered while I was sitting in the Jiffy Lube that the thing I found most annoying in this particular situation wasn't that FOX news was on, but that the sound on the TV was set at just the right volume to prevent me from understanding what was being said while simultaneously being loud enough to ruin everything else. It was at this point that I thought to myself, why not just broadcast the sound on bluetooth or something like that, so that if I didn't want to hear it, I could just turn off my bluetooth earpiece. Of course in my circumstance, I don't own a bluetooth earpiece, so my options would have been slightly limited if the aforementioned situation had it in fact been the reality. However, failing to hear the FOX program would have allowed me to listen to my iPod in peace.

After I left the Jiffy Lube with my freshly certified roadworthy sticker I continued to contemplate the magnitude of this thought. It occurred to me that this idea could go way beyond auto shop waiting rooms. It could extend to all waiting rooms and beyond! Imagine for a moment that you're at the airport, and you actually make it through security with time to spare before your flight. You're sitting there at the gate, doing what? Staring up at the TV showing CNN or something like that. Of course since the airport authority doesn't want to bother anyone in a busy terminal they don't play the sound, they just put it on closed captioning, so that you end up reading the lines to the story about a forest fire in California while the TV's showing video from last nights political debate (hold on that might actually work). What if you could just slip on an ear piece, tune in the TV and listen instead of having to go through all the work and effort of reading lines that seem to have been written by laid off Japanese film translators? That would be great! You could take this idea to anywhere you can see a TV, but not hear it. It could be at the gym while you work out, a bar or restaurant (especially sports bars), a break room, in prison, the DMV, wherever. In fact this idea might be able to expand television into more public areas, which is great because if there's one thing this nation is deficient in it's television viewing time.