Category: Home Improvement

When I was a young boy, I remember watching my grandpa burn a ditch. It was fascinating to me, watching the fire consume the dry, dead weeds. Even more interesting to me was hearing Grandpa tell me that the fire would damage and kill the living weeds and that another burning in a week or so would finish clearing the ditch for the water.

I remember smelling the pungent, acrid odor and watching the little tongues of fire consuming the weeds. I also remember watching Grandpa, shovel in hand, as he guided the fire, ensuring that it went only where he desired it to go, extinguishing renegade flames with a spadefull of dirt.

Those memories came flooding back today as I burned weeds in my back yard. When I say "yard," I mean "patch of dirt behind my house." There is still a lot of landscaping to be done.

My wife had raked up the dead weeds and other debris that had littered our back yard and had made a couple of rather large piles. Instead of loading the piles into a wheelbarrow and trying to stuff them into our garbage containers, I decided to reduce the amount of material that would eventually end up in the garbage by burning a large portion of it.

Me manly man! Me make FIRE!

I initially lit the corner of a large pile, and immediately, I could see that I would soon have a raging inferno if I didn't do something, and FAST. I quickly shoveled the burning portion into its own mini-pile which, fanned by a slight wind, quickly burned all of the dry, dead weeds. I then continued to slowly add small piles of weeds to the burning embers left behind.

My sons watched the flames with delight and asked hundreds of questions and wanted to help, much like I did with my grandpa some thirty years ago. I hope that future smells of weeds burning will evoke happy memories of childhood for them like it did for me today.

We recently moved into a new home. It's newer, nicer, larger, and better than our old home in pretty much every way.

When we were moving in, one of the nice rounded corners in the house got bumped by the handle on our refrigerator. Nice, rounded corners don't handle bumps well. It dented and part of it popped free from the wall.

Tonight, I finally got up the nerve to try to fix it.

The first step was to re-attach the corner. That was easy enough. Four drywall screws took care of that problem nicely. The next step was to try to patch and cover the damage. I bought some drywall patching compound for that very purpose.

I now have new-found respect for drywall finishers. After I mixed the compound (powder) with water, it was a little bit on the runny side, but when it started curing, it started curing very VERY quickly. The result doesn't look too hot, but the nice thing is that with a bit of sanding and a second thin application, it's going to look nice.

The next step will be to paint it. Fortunately, the previous owners left some paint behind, so I won't have to figure out how to match the color.

As usual, I forgot to take a before picture, so I can't show off how good it's going to look when it's all done.

The previous owners also used a lot of drywall anchors, so I patched a bunch of those holes while I was at it.

When we finish the basement, I'll put up the drywall, but I'll have someone else do the finishing work. In the long run, it'll probably be less expensive to pay someone that actually has experience in this and can do it right the first time around.