Stupid Home Repair Tricks

I already mentioned in passing that I laid drywall on a ceiling. (You could only put it up in small pieces when you were working alone- it looked ok sort of. I never could get it all even and flat.)

Well, my other claim to stupid home repair tricks was the repair of our rotten eves on our little house in Venice. Only the outside edges were rotten, right? So I cut off all the rotten wood and then cut wood to make new ends to the slats (see picture- the slats running horizontally above the vertical beams coming down from the crown of the roof.) and then nailed them in place and puttied the cracks and sanded them all down to make them look even.

The neighbor next door (who did construction) said, ever so politely, that he'd never seen it done that way. It took forever. And it was still a little wavy. When we sold the house part the escrow was to have all of my handy work ripped out and real full boards replaced under all the eves. The guys that did it took one day.

In my new place, I actually built and framed individual panes of glass in windows on either side of french doors which I bought in one piece. But there was a method to my madness- I wanted to have a framework in place and individual panes smaller than a normal person could climb through, so no one would be tempted to break a window and climb into the fish bowl I built.

But I would never ever do it again. I'm still an amateur and you can tell. I made up a fancy ceiling for my rebuilt garage that has required repair off and on, which I am probably the only one in the world that would be willing to do. When I am 75, the entire ceiling will be hanging loosely over my head, flapping like great palm leaves in a rain forest, waiting for one last rain storm to make the whole thing collapse. Ah, but it was cool while it lasted.