On Christmas Lights and Roof Leaks

We’re pragmatists in our house, for better or worse. More times than not its for the better, as this tends to lead to a lot less bickering than I have engaged in in my day, but I saw the other side of the coin the other day when I was ordered, and I use that word specifically, to take down our Christmas lights. I can only be thankful that this weekend saw an unseasonable warm streak for January, which didn’t much help for all the struggling and pulling I did on a silver ladder older than my grandmother. The next day, I could have very well appeared in an Advil television advertisement.

On Hot Water Heaters and Gustav the Plumber

Today, at the office, my post yesterday brought up a few questions about a related subject: hot water tanks. The funny thing is that as compared to boilers, which are prone to more damage and problems, hot water tanks are relatively simple in terms of diagnosing problems and fixing the entire mechanism. One of my first jobs as an apprentice, in fact, was installing a new hot water heater with Gustav, one of those old-school Greek NYC plumbers that fill the stereotypical “crank” role so well that you’re forced to love them.

On Heating Problems and the Lesser Concerns of the American College Student

Talking recently with the daughter of a family friend, who just moved out to Long Island to attend Adelphi, I found myself wrapped up in a conversation about cheap winter living. For her, this meant loading up on a variety of Ramen packets, cutting down on showers, and spending as much time as possible at her boyfriend’s house in Astoria. For certain, these are all scrappy, if ultimately small-scale ways to live one’s winter on the cheap but for most of the people I know, including a great deal of NYC handymen and other service providers, the way of living cheap in winter is locating the essentials and knowing they are all budgeted.

On Hangovers and the Perils of Unlicensed Contracting

First things first: Happy New Year! How did you ring in 2012? Me? Well, I spent the night with my girlfriend at a friend’s small party in Astoria and unwisely took not only a magnum of champagne but a great deal of a bottle of Dewar’s to task. My payment for such foolishness came in the form of day-long hangover gleefully watched over by my better half, who was all too happy to dole out the told-you-sos as we made our way through the first season of Boardwalk Empire.

A Painter's Promise

Earlier this week, I was glad to hear that a close friend of mine, a NYC painter, had started to see a tremendous influx of work after a particularly dire dry spell. We met years ago, at the retirement party of a colleague of his that I apprenticed under for a summer, and we kept in touch, even worked on a few jobs together. He’s been around for a while and has some experience and, as such, I was glad to hear about the work but was woe to hear about the circumstances that brought him the job.

Garage Sales

There was work going on at my mother’s neighbor’s house while I was home in Albany last week and I couldn’t help but inquire with my mother’s neighbors about what the trouble was. In the suburbs, electronic garage doors are a far more regular sight than they are in the city, even in the outer boroughs of NYC. One thing that distinguishes electronic garage doors to manual ones is that the electrical ones can get into what any electrician, NYC or not, would call “phantom operations.” Apparently, this had happened to my mother’s neighbors right after the installation but they were unable to contact the man who had installed it to do a check-up. My mother’s neighbors, The Matthews, had even driven to their offices, only to find it closed, in the middle of the day, on a weekday.

My Christmas Clean-Up

As we slog through that often near-comatose period that exists between Christmas and the New Year, it’s a bit of a chore to concentrate on the job at hand. Luckily, my holidays (which went very well, thank you for asking) included at least one incident that made me think of home solutions and common things that homeowners find themselves dealing with even when they are attempting to be festive and care-free.