You Get What You Pay For

There is the old saying that you get what you pay for.   Every day I can be reminded of that.  It’s not hard when you’re a cheap bastard like me.  But should I say I’m a cheap bastard or a broke one?  A combination of the two would be fair.  I’m like a lot of Americans who are pinching pennies.  I can easily sell out a quality product for the so-called “bargain”.  The question is why?  Times are tough, but it doesn’t seem that the word “bargain” or “cheap” have much to do about doing with less because we have less to spend.  Instead it creates a positive image in our head that we are sniffing out the savings by buying more for less.  Something inbred into our psyche for the past 5 decades.  Give me more for cheaper.  I call it the Wal-Mart affect.  Give me the cheapest price and I’ll over look the actual quality of what I’m buying.  It doesn’t matter because when it breaks, there’s another cheap one I can buy, so just throw this one away.  Quantity over quality.  Once upon a time “Made in America” was thought of as the stamp of quality.  But as the words “bargain” and “cheap” metamorphosed and our belief that a brand name is worth more than actual quality, we began to accept some things.  Accept that in order to get those bargains, those things needed to be made in China or somewhere else because they would cost too much if they were made here.  As we make less money and we’re trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table we accepted that anything that might make a product more expensive is bad.  Who can blame us?  As we are looking for jobs we accept that quality control doesn’t need to be regulated. “Those damn regulations just make things more expensive and kill jobs”, is what we hear the politicians yelling.  But maybe what has killed our jobs is our acceptance that cheaper is better.  That profit trumps quality and a belief that the “market” will answer our demands for better quality.  “Give us a quality product made by people earning a quality wage and produce it in a way that takes in mind the quality the environment.  One needs only to take a trip to China (or Houston, for that matter) or a walk through the aisles of any Wal-Mart or Target to see what we must really be demanding.  We’re getting what we want to pay for.

I can preach and attest to this because I, like most, am a victim to this acceptance.  I go to Home Depot for the cheaper price.  I’ll pick the non-organic apple because it’s cheaper.  I’ll go to Arco and put crappy gas in my truck because it’s cheaper.  As I attempt re-focus the definition of “doing with less” back into the word cheap by attempting to re-build my garage on next to nothing, the temptation is overwhelming to overlook the quality of something when you are getting it for free. 

I wish I took a picture of how I stuffed this thing

I pulled the roof off my garage.  Generally when I have massed a pile of non-recyclables I put it into my trash can in small portions so I don’t have to pay the $30 dump fee at the transfer station.  That’s cheap. However, the roof was a big item and to discard it in my usual method would take about 3 years to have it disappear.   So I put a crow bar into my wallet and paid for a dumpster.  This was not only worth the $250 investment for the various pains in my butt it saved me, but also because the hauling company did the sorting of the trash for me.   (Marilyn’s recycling rules. They bring the dumpster on a truck with a claw and can gingerly place it where you need it rather than just drop it in the street.)  Of course I was too cheap to pay the extra $30 bucks for a dumpster with the locking lid.  I will not make that mistake again.  Where there is a dumpster mysterious trash will appear.  I naturally had to use every inch of this dumpster efficiently and get my money’s worth, so I tore down my deck as well.  That was a frightening thing to look upon.  The person who built it perhaps thought getting the treated lumber was too expensive.  Perhaps they made an environmental choice and wanted the deck to eventually break down and return to the earth.  Who can say?  What I can say;  is that it was getting close to that state and I confirmed my suspicions of where the carpenter ants where living.  The past owner of the house did a pretty good job of hiding the rotting beam under a layer of treated lumber.  When I tore the deck apart, I thought I’d hire the neighbor’s boys to help.  Give them a chance to earn some spending cash. I think they were pretty excited to help smash the deck apart, but the thing came apart so easily that by the time they picked up their friend and came back, I had the entire thing in pieces.  I didn’t even use a crowbar!  All that was left for them was to help clean up.  They made $10 each which hasn’t motivated them to help me out anymore.  Go figure. (What a cheap bastard!)  What frightened me most was how the main beam literally crumbled in my hands.  Think of all the BBQ’s I’d hosted on that deck… then again…  Let’s not.

Now you see it

Now you don't

So it took me two days to pull the roof off and clean up the debris. (This would have gone faster with the neighbor’s boys helping me.  But they respectfully declined.  Go figure!)  Now with my roof gone, the load was lighter but I still needed to keep what was left in the garage dry.  I needed a huge tarp!  I wanted to spare my neighbors the visual trauma of seeing a blue tarp sitting on this garage for perhaps the next year or so.  I wanted a brown tarp so it still looked like a roof.  To my excitement, a co-worker had just that.  He offered me a huge brown tarp his son left in his basement and that he wanted to get rid of.  I took it with great enthusiasm as a new tarp big enough to fit on the entire garage would cost upwards of $50 to $70!  It was a bit worn but I figured it would work.  Besides, who can complain?  It was free.  I marveled at my good fortune when I had it secured to the top of the garage.  That was until it rained.  The tarp had all the water repellant qualities of an old bed sheet.  As I said, “You get what you pay for.”  

A piece of advice if you are a novice scavenger:  Free is good.  Free is valuable.  But when you are receiving an item from a very willing donator, check the quality of that item before dragging it home.  I have stated before the old saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.  But there is another old saying,  “One man’s trash really can be one man’s trash”.

I am happy to report that I did procure a better tarp.  A green tarp to go with my yellow garage.  Go Packers!  (next season).

Now that the load is lighter, stuff emptied out and the structure secured, it's time to start digging!

The Box

 

So here’s the deal with the garage.  Its 80 years old.  It’s dark and scary on the inside.  Full of spiders, rodents and other creeping things that make you hesitate at the door before entering.  It smells of oil, automotive fumes and rat poop.  The interior walls are covered with 80 years of dust and soot and globs of old spider webs that create such a state of anxious flicking as you try to get them off you.  The roof is covered in layers of moss that has eaten through a hole.  The main issue is the foundation.  There really isn’t one.   Like an archeologist trying to uncover and understand the building techniques of the ancient Egyptians or the Mayans I unearthed the foundation of the garage.  What I found was not surprising in its bold attempt to be a foundation, but rather that the garage was still standing on it.  My understanding of what the original builder put down as a foundation was this; six large concrete blocks  or stones with a beam that was notched and placed over these blocks and stones .  From there, he built the rest of the garage on top of it and then buried it.  Under 12” of dirt in some places.  So after sitting under the dirt for 80 years, the beam was pretty much gone.  It was easy to understand why the garage doesn’t have a plum or level surface to it. 

My parents are pretty much the same age as my garage.  I find it humorous when I ask my dad how he's doing and he’ll list off a number of usual ailments of an 80 year old.  “Difficult to hear, can’t see, my knees hurt, my back is sore, I can’t pee… but other than that, I’m doing great.”   Same with my garage.  Other than that, it’s in great shape.  It still has strong bones made of real 2” x 4” tight grain old growth fir held together by cast iron 16 penny nails that can destroy a sawzaw blade in seconds.  It’s covered inside and out by a wonderful layer of tongue and groove beadboard cedar siding.  It would be a shame to abandon it to the wood pile at the transfer station only to have it ground up for who knows what. 

I spent many moments looking at this garage trying to come up with a game plan on how to save this structure.  I knew it needed a new foundation.  I knew in order to give it the new foundation I had to get the old girl off her feet.  But how was the question.  Then it came to me.  Like millions of aging Americans looking for that second chance at youth, she needed a lift!

I came up with a game plan.  I needed to build a box inside the garage to shore it up and stabilize her.  Once that was done I needed to dig a trench around her and expose old foundation.  With the weight of the structure on the internal box I can then cut the bottom 6” to 8” of the existing framing and pull out the old foundation.  I could then put in a proper concrete footing and stem wall and lower her back down onto her new concrete foundation and she’d be as good as new!  I stood there in the garage marveling at the ingenuity of my plan, then look over my surroundings and though, “this is gonna take me a while.”  But I had a plan that I was enthusiastic about and I knew could work.  Now I just needed to find some material.

My first find was a number of old pallets.  Under the office where I work is a metal fabrication shop.  They get shipments of steel plates on these huge pallets made out of 4x4s and 2x4’s.  They had a stack of them sitting outside their garage door.  When I ask them what they were going to do with them, they said they were destine for the dump!  Another chance to save something from an unnecessary demise.  Hammer and pry bar at the ready, I had those babies broken down and in the back of my truck in an hour’s time. (Not to mention the sweat I broke.  No need for the gym that day).

Scary Foundation!!

Next it was some old fashion dumpster diving.  The company I work for was doing a kitchen remodel on the house that belonged to the parents of a famous Seattle software entrepreneur.  I dug out a number of 2x4's out of the dumpster that were unceremoniously tossed away.  So now I have boards holding up my garage that were once in the walls of the house that one of the richest man in the world grew up in!  Given his and his wife’s commitment to green technology, I’m sure they’re good with it.

Ready with plenty of wood and a box of 3” screws that I had to buy ($12.35) I was ready to go.  But my excitement crashed when I thought, ”Oh shit!  The garage was still full of all my crap!”

I put plenty of thought into how I was going to tear this garage apart and put it together again.   However, many a good projects came crumbling down when logistics were not thought through.  Forethought on site organization, tool and hardware storage and proper staging of building materials so that it is not only accessible but out of the way.  A messy and disorganized construction site can not only slow progress but add huge costs to a project.  I was thinking this golden rule of construction management as I looked in utter discouragement at the mess that faced me.  Like most Americans, my garage is the place where everything one doesn’t want  to deal with at the moment but knows it has to stay dry goes to live.  I put down my box of screws and said to myself, “One step at a time.”  The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, right!   Then thought how I wished my buddy Keith was living nearby.  This step would be easier with another set of willing hands by my side.  But I have made this my own personal crusade.  So alone,  it was onto Craig’s list.

I found a free carport tent in no time.  I actually found 2 damaged carport tents and made one good one out of them. ( I have some extra poles if you need some.)  I thought my organization and storage skills to be quite superior, and I continue to think that.  It took me three solid days, one with my father-in law’s help, but I emptied that garage and packed everything into that carport tent.   I now call it the garage tent.  My old chicken coop now a garden storage shed, left me plenty a room in the garage tent.  (Larry, my father-in law, did an amazing job of assigning all my tools a place and hanging them into the outlined shape of each!)   I modified the tent so I could hang bikes and ladders, made a floor of old pallets to place in shelves with a small workbench between them and then struggled my boat into the tent. (I failed on plotting a wide enough path for the boat trailer to turn into the garage tent).  It was all contained into a neat storage area with easy access to many of my materials.  Now, I could turn my attention to “the box”.

The box is exactly that.  A wood framed box I had to create inside the garage in order to hold it up. I started with hoisting up two 4x4 beams and tying them off into position up against the joists.  I wedged in 4x4’s and 2x4’s in between them and a 2x4 on the slab, plumed and leveled it and VOILA! My box completed.

I could now sleep better knowing my garage has now been stabilized.   I could now cut the garage away from its rotting foundation.   My desire was to have this garage floating free over the foundation.  However, I was concerned by the amount of weight that sat on that roof.  A layer of wood shingles and a couple of layers of asphalt shingle made things heavy enough, but add a couple of square feet of moss and moister from various leaks and you can imagine my concerns.  The roof needed to come down… and come to think of it, so did my deck.  Unfortunately it was time to spend some money.

Time for that to go!

I Saved Some Door Slabs From Certain Death

I forgot to show you my fence!  I love the colors.  I helped the neighbor patch up his shed.

I saved a number of door slabs from certain death today.  Ten feet high, 1-3/4” solid core doors with a wonderful enamel finish.  I asked my wife Dana if I could have $50 to get some materials to build some storage shelves for the basement.  (She’s in charge of the house hold money)  after looking at our account and making a bunch of anxious sighs, she reluctantly approved the release of funds.  That’s when I remembered the doors I saw sitting in a pile waiting for their demise. I took them home, cut them up and turned them into a bunch of shelves.  I get great pleasure in taking someone else’s garbage and giving it a new life.  A new purpose.  Especially when it’s free! 

In our “throw away” culture it is amazing to me to see what is going into our landfills.  Seattle has what they call “transfer stations”.  Basically huge concrete pits about 12’ deep, 100’ wide and about the length of a football field where people back their vehicles up to and toss in their garbage.  (These are not apparently big enough; so two larger ones are currently being built)  A huge bulldozer pushes mobile mountains of trash into a hole where the garbage is compacted and transferred into a container that is then pulled by semi truck to a train yard.  There the container is transferred from the semi onto a train car (by a diesel burning transport lift) were it then enjoys a 5 hour train ride to eastern Oregon.  There it is transferred off the train car by a lift to another semi, pulled to a landfill currently the size of one of the larger mountains in the Cascade range, dumped and spread around by yet another bulldozer.  Talk about a carbon footprint!  That’s 8 fossil fuel burning pieces of equipment just moving our trash from one hole in the ground to another!

On any given day that I head to the pit it’s about a ¼ to ½ full with a colorful array of trash.  I watch one person after another toss in their unwanted items and think to myself, “Wow.  This is one moment of one day and this place is open 360 days out of the year!”  I also think “Wow, look at all that wasted material.”   Here my mood generally darkens at the laziness of people when I see what could be pulled out of the garbage and re-used or recycled.  But I will avoid the preaching.  (I do recommend a great 2o min video that can be found at www.storyofstuff.org I’m a big fan.  Great for video for the kids) But there is a big difference between what is truly “trash”  - i.e. that which really cannot be used again, and waste  - i.e. that which we throw away because we either don’t know what to do with it or we’re to lazy to deal with it.  So into the land fill it goes.   Old doors, furniture, plastic containers, usable wood, old clothes… You name it.

So what’s the point of my observation?  With a little creative ingenuity so much of this stuff can get a second chance at life to be something functional, useful and even beautiful.  

A couple of summers ago, I was involved in the demolition of a house in order to make way for a new house.  It was an awesome experience as we hand deconstruct the house and track every piece of material that came out of it to see where it ended up.  I am happy to say that at least 90% of the house was either re-used or recycled.  Less than 10% of the structure ended up in the landfill.  Bits and pieces went on to live in other structures.  Sadly (or fortunately depending on ones point of view) I was not an owner of a home at the time so I could not dig into the bounty before me.  A bounty of material that was ABSOLUTLY FREE!!  Oh, you can imagine the pains a penny pinching junk collector like myself was feeling as piece after useful piece of that house was hauled away to someplace other than my own back yard! (Which I didn’t have at the time)  

But now I have a house.  One that has endless possibilities for projects both big and small for me to practice my craft of salvaging, scavenging, storing and re-using what may be considered another’s trash.  GIVE ME YOUR JUNK, YOUR TRASH, YOUR UNWANTED ITEMS YEARNING TO BREATH NEW LIFE!!!!  O.K, o.k. I need not get carried away.  I try not to let my yard look like that on Sanford and Son.  But I have started a pretty good collection.

For what you ask?  I have a garage.  A small garage that was built some time in the 1920’s.  It’s pretty damn cute but ready to fall over.  Like a tired old lady still trying to look youthful with some blush and powder on her face.  The past owner put just enough paint on it to make it look adorable enough that I now have an emotional attachment to it. My friends, seeing the rouse keep saying, “Get rid of her!  She’s old and ugly.  Tear her down and build something new”.   But beauty is in the inside, right?  The old girl sill has strong bones and a cozy charm.  So I want to save the old lady and give her a new life.  Not just as a garage, but as a place that all can enjoy the beauty that I see.  As a guesthouse.

With this blog, I invite you to join in my endeavor to turn this leaning, rotting structure into a place I will want to place my guest for a cozy overnight stay.  I realize this is nothing new.  But I want to document my progress on this rehabilitation.  The exciting thing for me though, will be to see how cheap I can do it.  My goal: to fix this up on next to no money with that I find, scavenge and salvage.  I will track every expense and see if I can keep it under $1000.  As I pick up each piece of material and incorporate it into this structure I will be whistling, “Everything old is new again”. 

Ain’t she a beauty?                                   

JUST YOU WAIT AND SEE.

                                                                                                           

 

It Started With A Chicken Coop

It started with a chicken coop. Actually it may have started with a pile of bricks and a full dumpster sitting next to my house. My mom would say that it started long before that. Some guys were building a new house next door. As they tore the old one down I saw so much useful material just getting thrown into the dumpster to be hauled away and forgotten. I shivered at the thought. Not possessed by any kind of environmental outrage at what was going to end up in a landfill, but possessed by the excitement as to what cool stuff was sitting in that huge metal box. You could say that I have been a junk collector all my life. My mom would simply roll her eyes as I stepped through the door after an afternoon of neighborhood trash diving. Some kind of twisted piece of metal, tangle of string, chipped mug soon to become my favorite. My prized discovery was a life size plaster statue of a mother fox sitting watch over her pups playing around a tree trunk. An amazing piece of Midwest blue haired art. Both beautiful and functional. A prerequisite of midwestern sensibility. The tree trunk was hollow as to fit a potted plant or perhaps your half read newspaper. I was in love with the cheese of it and it held a place of honor in my room up to my sophomore year in college when the inconsiderate actions of my too cool roommates left the mama fox forever shattered and violently ripped from her babies. (As you can see I still have not fully recovered.) So knowing what treasures could be hiding in a mere thrash can, you can now imagine that the shiver that hit me by the sight of a 20 yard dumpster sitting right next to my house was unavoidable. The first haul was 286 bricks in various state of honeycombed crumble. A beautiful fire and chocolate orange breaking through a layer of black soot. Next was various 6 to 8 foot sections of an aged cedar fence that yielded well over 100 useful fence boards and 2x4's. Aged to a variety of dark brown, forest green and mellow silver-grey. Some just rotted to a state of interesting character and all in great shape for a second life. I stuffed everything under our deck to my wife's questioning looks. "Don't worry honey." I told her. "I have a plan... I have a plan." My first project was our chicken coop. Much to the humors of friends and neighbors I prided myself on how little money I spent on this structure. Scavenging what I could from the guys building the house. A few 2x4 scraps here, some roofing material there and "Voila!" I built me a chicken coop for all of $19. I did have to buy the wire. That ran me $54. So 73 bucks is still not bad. My next endeavor was a fence, of course. We had new neighbors move into the new house next door. (The guy building the house gave me a nice teak patio set he want to throw out, by the way) The new neighbors wanted to build a new fence between our yards. Not able to help out financially, I offered to tear down the fence to save them a few bucks in labor and dump fees. Instead of hauling it to the dump it ended up under the deck. Another 86 boards that my daughter Jaimie got to learn how to use a nail puller on. Quality father / daughter time pulling nails and talking over the days events. (I hope Jaimie has the same nostalgic memories of the event.) The fence on the other side of my yard was looking pretty worn out. As I tore it down, I discovered that it was not only a fence, but a retaining wall as well. holding up as much as 8" of my neighbors yard. Lucky I had those bricks under the deck and the number of half used bags of cement I stopped from being tossed at work. Roughly 56 feet of brick retaining wall with a cedar fence above it a gate and trellis for a total cost of $212 Jaimie had a friend over one rare sunny day this past summer. She was peeking under the deck and said, "Jeez Chris, you sure have a lot of junk under that deck. What do you do with all that junk?" I looked down from the ladder I was on as I fixed my gutters. I pointed out how I made that chicken coop with the junk under my deck. I pointed out the fence, the gate, the compost bin and the gutters I was replacing on the house all came from under that deck. Material that was not junk but pieces of structures that had run their time and now lay in wait for a chance to be reborn in something new. "Wow!" she said. "Everyone should have junk under their deck!"