The Green Red Green (3 page)

T
he home handyman usually has between forty and sixty different tools in his tool box. A professional builder or carpenter carries as many as three hundred different tools in his tool kit. I carry five.

Those five tools have everything I need to fix a loose chair, rewire a socket, or add an addition to the house. Here’s a list of all the tools you can buy if you’re absolutely made of money. Beside each is the tool I use to do the same job.

I think you can see that my tool list proves a point I have always lived by: imagination costs nothing.

W
e’re friends with a retired couple who have turned their house into a bed and breakfast. So unsurprisingly, my wife and I end up discussing the possibility of doing the same thing. That’s a natural reaction. Whenever someone you know does something that you haven’t done, you start considering it. That’s why whenever you’re selling some product that’s completely worthless, the first sale is so important. Now, I don’t know if my wife is going to push this bed and breakfast thing, but if so, I plan to fight it all the way. I don’t like strangers in my house at any time, and letting them stay overnight is really asking for trouble. I’m going to hear strange noises and snippets of conversations and imagine what’s going on in there. And who came up with the concept of giving them breakfast? That’s not the high point of my day, either physically or emotionally. I’ll be awake all night listening to potential tribal rituals, and then I’m expected to greet these transients at the bottom of the stairs with a smile and an omelette. It’s more than a coincidence that the emergence of bed and breakfasts is concurrent with the increase in domestic violence.

E
verybody likes to have someplace they can go to get away from it all, or get away from the law or whatever. But not everyone can afford a cottage, so here’s a handyman project that will fit almost any budget. I’m assuming you have a piece of land somewhere, but even if you don’t, it’s a big country and they’re not going to check every square mile every year, so you’ll get at least one season out of wherever you build.

Call the biggest garbage collection agency in your region and ask them to drop off the biggest dumpster bin they have. It must have a heavy lid. Tell them you’ll be clearing a property and will have a lot of garbage for them to come and get when it’s done. In most cases, they will deliver the dumpster and leave it for no charge. Make sure they set it down between two big trees with high crotches. (High crotches are very important for almost everything you do outdoors.)

See Diagram A:

You will need two spare tires off a car or a small truck. (If you don’t have any sitting out on your porch, you can swipe them from the trunks of BMWs, because people who drive those cars would never change their own tires anyway.) Next, you must remove the tires from the rims. Gas stations have special equipment just for that, but you could try it with a crowbar and an oar. The easiest way is just to burn them off. Leave the area while
they’re burning. You should have no trouble finding your way back—just follow your nose. Scrape the residue off the wheel rims and attach them to opposite sides of the dumpster as shown in Diagram B.

I recommend that you weld them on or drill holes and bolt them. Or you may want to use the Handyman’s Secret Weapon—duct tape. These rims have to support the entire weight of a dumpster, so use lots of tape.

Cut a door and a window in each side of the dumpster that has a rim. I recommend using an acetylene torch, but you can use a tempered axe or even a chainsaw if you really like sparks. Once that’s done, move your living room furniture into the dumpster, set it on the floor, and bolt it into place. Lamps can be glued to tables. Next, wind your jumper cables around your appliances and hook them up to your car battery to magnetize them. Then bring them into the dumpster as well and stick them on the wall
as shown in Diagram C. Attach your bedroom furniture to the inside of the lid of the dumpster with self-tapping screws. The fourth wall can be done as a family room or den or whatever suits your particular lifestyle. Again, all furnishings must be fastened securely to the wall.

To lift the dumpster up into the tree, you’ll need a long chain or thick rope attached to the top. We tried it with a garden hose and I wouldn’t recommend it. Rubber can really sting.

Take the rope and swing it over something high and strong, like an overhanging tree branch or railway bridge. Attach the other end to your van as in Diagram D. As you drive away, the rope will lift the dumpster up in the air. Unless the dumpster is heavier, in which case it will lift the van in the air. To avoid this problem, invite your overweight relatives over and stuff them into the van first. Drive forward slowly until the dumpster is in the air with the rims over the crotches of the tree. Back up until the rims drop into place, securing the dumpster.

Get in and enjoy your summer. Sit in the living room and amuse yourself with your favourite television shows. When you need something from the kitchen, just walk toward it and the dumpster will rotate, bringing the kitchen to you. Same thing when it’s bedtime or you need some quiet time in the den. Just walk toward whichever room you want. It’s that simple.
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I
was doing something on my computer the other day when suddenly a notice popped up in the middle of the screen saying, “You have performed an illegal operation! This program will be shut down!” What is that? An illegal operation? I pressed a button on my computer. Is that against the law now? This seems way over the top to me. I think it’s a device created by the people who make these computers to cover their own mistakes. Obviously there’s a glitch in the software that triggers a problem, and instead of creating a sign that says, “We screwed up by selling you this computer before we got the bugs out of it,” they went with “You have performed an illegal operation!”