The Importance of a Pick 'em Up

Tres, thanks for the note (previous post). It pleases me greatly to find other people out there who are collecting 'junk' and rehabbing 'junky' homes. Sometimes I wish I could find other people around here who had the same passion on such an obsessive basis.

My fiancee's father is a car guy. He has his welders and oxy-acetalene torches. He has his sand blaster and his tool-outlined peg board. He has his 48 Ford with a Dodge Chassis and a 350 monster hot rod engine, all custom built. And he has his pristine, near mint pick 'em up truck, as my fiancee loves to call it (must've gotten ingrained during childhood). He won't even drive either of them if it's precipitating, and in Chicago, chances are that something like that is happening during about 8 months of the year.

I'm a house guy. I have my hammers and my screw drivers. I have my cheap, $79 table saw and my Mikita hammer drill. I've got my $500 dewalt cordless drill-circular-sawzall-light pack and my $600 dewalt compound-miter, radial arm trim saw (*sweeeeeeeeet*). BUT I DON'T HAVE A GOD DAMNED PICK UP TRUCK.

What was I thinking? Since I've been renovating my current property, I've bought 2 vehicles, niether a pick up truck. Where were the smart family members, relatives, and friends who should have told me "Get a pick up truck, you idiot. Cars are for women and seniors." So instead of a pick up I bought a 94 Nissan Pathfinder, which just two months ago I gave to the Kidney Foundation as a donation because it crapped out. That was a nice net loss of about $6k.

People, if I mention one thing that is acutally read, as of right now it is this: If you're doing any kind of construction on a constant or hobby basis, GET A GOD DAMNED PICK UP TRUCK! Make it a beater, buy it for a couple thousand and don't drive it florida (unless you're going to get that historic mantle from some mansion in "Gior-Gia.") It's a tool just like all the other ones you've accumulated. And you'll thank me for the advise.

Ouch, My Back!

Ouch. Pain. This weekend was painful.

As an urban rehabilitationist, one must every now and then sacrifice one's self for the good of his / her project. This was one of those weekends.

I had the distinct pleasure of tearing out a crap load of trim from a building about to be demolished on the near west side. While I had a great time doing it, the laborious nature of wielding a crow bar for four hours is enough to give you serious cramps for a couple of days. Combine this feeling with that of "Ouch, my back is broken from the damn elliptical trainer at the gym yesterday," and you have a serious rash of the Mondays come the morning.

I love tearing crap out of old buildings. Yeah, I said crap. Wanna know why? Because that's what everybody else calls my treasures. So I want to take the old broom handle home. You never know who you'll have to beat later one. So I want to salvage the old crappy sink fixtures? You never know when I may install a sink in my basement. Those are the sorts of things that go through my head when I see a load of someone's crap.

The real goods this weekend, however, were doors, trim and five two by two fluorescent light fixtures. Oh, I also salvaged a bunch of kitchen cabinets, a utility hanger on the back of a door and some ice melt. What a take!

One day I'm gonna make a business out of this . . .

Urban Rehabilitationism -- WTF?

"WTF is rehabilitationism?" some of you are saying! It's what I'm doing with my house in Fountain Square.

It is forraging through the old, half-way run down neighborhoods in your city and rehabbing some "worthless piece of crap" into something worth mega-bucks! Well, maybe not mega-bucks, but definitely enough to pay a few bills, get out from under "Da Man," and move your home equity into something more equitable, like a family or vacation or whatever, man!

It helps that I'm in the industry, both by the education I receive as a result of my urban rehab work and by the connections I have to get cheap (but good) plumbers, roofers, etc. But that shouldn't keep anyone from trying. Everyone should be doing this.

Anyway, this blog is the start of a little house chat as well as a little "life chat" from an urban dweller in Downtown Indianapolis, Indiana.