Disposables

Trivial repairs.  My name brand casual shoes, GH Bass and Sperry have not done well.  I tend to keep items indefinitely.  My Thom McCann K-Mart shoes last until they wear out.  Their low price makes them disposables, but they fit well while I have them.  Rockports and LL Bean indestructable.  New Balance too.  My dress shirts when worn for work, will eventually have sleeve ends that fray.  And ties have a loop in the back to capture the thin end.  It will sometimes separate.  I can sew it back, but usually don't.  In my mend collection or two pair of staple long pants whose belt loops have separated.  My attempts at home repair expose my lack of skill.  A tailor could mend them easily but I wear each infrequently enough to not justify the costs.  Same with leg hems that have separated.  

Moving clothing manufacture overseas has brought us American consumers to a branch point.  Price has come down.  So has much of their durability.  While repairs are possible in principal, they are not alway worth the cost.  And for my GH Bass bucks, which need only a heel cap that I could do myself if I had the part, three shoemakers cannot get the part, nor will the company sell it to me.  The agent who responded to my inquiry suggested I buy another pair from their wonderful collection.  Let me see if the more reliable Rockport has something akin to that.

Tile Repair

Some things they never taught in junior high shop.  The New York State Regents required all tween boys, 7th and 8th grades, to take a half year of shop, while the girls took home ec.  It would not be open to intergender elective for another seven years, when girls started not only opting for shop but winning awards for things they created.  I went involuntarily.  The requirement had a purpose, though a stereotypical one.  Girls would manage the household.  Boys would do the handyman stuff around the house.  Boys who really never got the hang of grammar or fractions might find their talent with their hands.  Starting in 9th grade, an industrial arts program's availability might be to their liking.  We needed and still need plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, and flooring installers.  In those days we also still needed TV repairmen.  It would not take that many years for the price of TVs to become disposables by a combination of plummeting price, solid state design, and performance enhancements.  We learned how to use tools, some requiring real safety precautions.  First year wood shop, second year metal.

At the risk of second guessing educational experts who probably had our interests in mind though with a element of groupthink, I never owned electric tools other than a soldering kit, sander, and a hand drill.  Everything else in my basement and garage runs by hand.  Saws, hammers, tape measures.  I created nothing from its elements, not wood, not metal.  I assembled many things that others made: bicycles with instructions written by people of a different native language than mine.  A lot of shelves and bookcases.  Painting.  Quite a lot of that in my young parental, new homeowner years.  I glued broken things together, mostly with superglue that also caused fingers to adhere to each other.  And to be fair to the Regents, I did master staining and varnishing items I bought with unfinished wood.

Big projects got pros.  They never taught us tweens how to fix a faucet that dripped, let alone how to install a disposal unit.  Even the smallest electronic installation was worth the electrician's fee to me.  Extermination of pests never made it to the NY State curriculum. My guess is the principals objected to bringing experimental roaches into their classrooms, not even live mice for biology labs.  It wouldn't even cross my mind to replace a broken window myself.  

Meanwhile, those kitchen skills the girls learned, I more than mastered.  I can do hand sewing.  While I once bought a used sewing machine at a moving sale, I never used it.  Yet if I had committed myself to sewing from a pattern using a machine, I'm confident that I could teach myself how to do it.  Clothing alterations, even hems, still go to a local tailor.  

Now I find myself with a nudgy repair that I should be able to do but don't know how.  My house, approaching sixty years of age, lived in by my wife and me for 44 of those years, has held up rather well.  A few plumbing leaks, new siding, some mice, replacement of the air conditioner and roof on  predictable life spans.  Now I find bathroom tiles separating from the floor where it abuts the wall.  Not a lot of tiles.  Only seven, and I've lost two.  One inch tiles.  We have cleaners mopping those two floors on alternate weeks.  I fear that they will start losing some of the loose tiles.  

Like modern handymen, I looked up what to do online, then went to a tile store.  Replacements for the two missing tiles will require a larger purchase.  Not an exact match but close enough.  I looked at my collection of adhesives which I keep together in a first floor closet in a bin.  Nothing specifically marked for replacing tile.  Internet said apply with Thin Mortar.  I went to the tile store to inquire about adhesives.  For floor replacement, thin mortar is what the tilers use.  This emporium deals with contractors.  They sell Thin Mortar in forty pound powder bags.  Online tells me that other adhesives may suffice, some in small quantities at Home Depot.

For now, I lifted up the loose ones, seven tiles from one bathroom with two squares unaccounted for, one beige tile from the main bathroom with none unaccounted for. They now sit in a fold-lock sandwich bag in a safe place.  Let the cleaners do their next mopping.  Glue what I can easily glue back.  Try to find a small sheet of off-white one inch tiles to replace the missing two.  Perhaps just replace the floor tiling in the smaller bathroom.  I have two other floor projects worth doing, so maybe do this one as well.

For now I want it quickly patched.  Significant skill not yet needed.

Unexpected Repairs

There is a reason why we retirement geezers find our fondness to our homes and communities fraying as we age.  In my home, I work at my desk and sit in my recliner next to the desk essentially daily, watch the big screen TV most days, though my interest has been waning.  I use about half the bedroom and the adjacent bathroom.  In the living room I recline on the couch.  Fleishig is eaten at the dining room table.  The Family Room has a nook for my treadmill, to which I have been faithful to a set schedule.  I do my laundry when it needs to be done, use the powder room when I am downstairs, and regard my upgraded kitchen as a destination.  Parts of the house that I don't use comprises a lot more floor space.  Could duplicate all with 2 bedroom condo, though a little tight with a mobile home.  Stuff not used goes to yard sale.  I'm not the first senior to think of this.  And then there is where.  I like where I am.  State of Delaware may need to rename itself from The First State to Conscience of America as our voting pattern was one of the few to reflect concern for Derech Eretz and kindness in a meaningful way.  But having driven through Trump pockets of three states this month, there is something appealing about their spread out nature with space between neighbors. Rhetoric about protecting us from those neighbors, or from the people like me from elsewhere has less appeal.

But changing housing and location by seniors also suggests that time to be Lord of the Manor has come and gone.  I have a nice yard, but it wouldn't be a nice yard without a lawn service.  I do the garden myself, never taking a disappointing harvest that could have been improved with better attentiveness as a personal failure.  But as my FB friends nudge themselves to city condos or planned 55+ communities, it seems less about space and more about divesting themselves of maintenance responsibilities.

Got an unexpected jolt of kitchen maintenance last night.  To manage a Kosher kitchen amid my interest in using the kitchen, I needed more easily accessible storage space than my cabinets had available.  Many years ago I found a pair of wire grids at a small department store, long since defunct, and installed them on a dominant wall.  Using S-hooks one became fleishig, the other milchig. It remained static and trouble free for decades.  When I remodelled the kitchen I took them down to enable new wallpaper, but the brackets back in the original holes and reattached the grids.  It took minutes.  Suddenly my wife comes upstairs late at night to inform me that the fleishig side had collapsed, scattering pots and pans everywhere.  On inspection, there was surprisingly little serious damage.  One of the screws holding the upper left bracket had dislodged.  I figured an easy repair, just insert a plastic anchor and screw the bracket back on.  However, the plastic anchor did not go into the hole evenly.  When I tried to hammer it in a little farther the bracket that held the grid snapped so I would need new brackets.  Finding one proved impossible, both at local big box and hardware stores and and online.  Instead I got a new set, one with premade drywall anchors and installed those, but in order to do that I had to hunt my basement for a drill and a 0.25 inch bit.  Not as easy as it looks but done and should be adequately secure.

And it's leaf time.  The bane of my existence in my young parent years.  Delegated in my empty nester years.  Need to clean gutters too.  Reputable contractor came, gave an estimate for about twice what I think it should cost.  Thanked him for coming by then got more estimates, settling on one from somebody we hire for other outdoor things for $200 less.  

And there is all that stuff that will one day find its way to a clean-out service which parcels some to an auctioneer for the estate sale, the rest to landfill, and the structure to a realtor, all to do what may have been better to do myself while I still had the vitality to do it.

The rack has been rehung.  Not exactly what it was before but serviceable.  There is some cleanup in its wake to restore the kitchen to its previous function.  Just need to set my timer to the estimated time needed and do it. 

The question of setting an endpoint for these responsibilities drifts along, to be reconsidered at the next event.