Fall Home Projects

It seems with the gain in popularity of micro-blogging, and my lack of time due to having a 10 month old baby I haven't been blogging for shit lately. But I'm breaking that trend today...

Removing Some Bushes...

So the last two months or so I've been delving into two notable home projects. First, last month I got sick of pruning three large bushes on the side of the house. Well.. I'm not sure if they were bushes, trees, or just really gnarley weed-trees; all I know is they were of two different varieties, and they all grew about 6-feet, mostly vertically per month, during the summer months.

So I figure it would be a nice area for a clean birch tree, a bench and maybe a swing for the baby later on. So I went out one day and cut them all down at the base and piles them nicely next to the fence to cut up later. Then I see that these bushes have lifted the sprinkler system out of the ground by their roots.

"Okay I think, I just need to dig out the roots and relay the sprinkler system underground."

Much easier said then done. Long story short: I ended up buying a 16" chainsaw, going through 4 chains, buying an 8lb axe, breaking a shovel, buying a new 'The Excavator' titanium alloy shovel, borrowing a neighbor's pick-axe. It literally took me three weeks of going out about 3-4 times a week working them before I finally got all the roots out. So finally, last week I got it all out, and was able to buy new PVC and re-lay the sprinkler line. I still need to level the ground, and replant lawn seed before I'll be ready to buy a new tree for the area. Realistically I probably won't plant a new tree until spring to give it a good chance to take hold.

New Genie Garage Door Opener

So when I bought the house I quickly learned that though the existing, old-ass, chain-drive Sears/Craftsman garage door opener was working, neither of the remotes worked.

After doing some diagnosis, I came to realize that the receiver board in the opener must be bad. If I remember correctly the necessary board was out of production, and the few sites you could order one from were ridiculously expensive, compared to simply buying a new garage door opener.

But alas, I had never installed a garage door opener, and being that we use the garage mostly for storage anyway and it push-button still worked I wasn't about to pay someone $300+ to install a new one at the time.

Fast-forward to last week. I go out to blow off the driveway, push the button and, "ENNNGH!", nothing. It just started making a buzzing sound and doing nothing when I pushed the open button. It was dead. This was in the middle of my Last Hurrah getting the aforementioned roots out of the ground, and I was about 2-seconds away from just calling someone to come out and install a new one.

However, Saturday I found myself at Lowes and I figured I price them and perhaps try to install one as much as I could, myself. I opted for the Genie screw-drive that was on sale for $160 or so. I got the old garage door opened down and dismantled, and I got most of the head-unit, and main rail put together on the new one that night. Sunday we stayed home from church and I used the time to really attack the project. I was able to stack boxes to help me elevate the unit and finally get it mounted; installed the Safe-T eye sensors and new button.

It was a helluva lot of work and consumed a huge portion of the day but ultimately I got a new opener installed, with working remotes finally, didn't have to pay an installer, and learned a thing or two about how these things work.