I looked out my bathroom window yesterday to see the scene in the photo above of my neighbor’s house to the north.
Based on having been a homeowner myself for 40+ years, I’m guessing Brian tried to knock down some icicles.
Now YA and I have a pool going to see how long it takes for the balls to return to earth. I say four days; YA says two.
Any projects that with hindsight just weren’t going to work out well?
Trail Baboon 
He’s just lucky he didn’t break any windows 🙂
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Lol. I didn’t even think of that!!
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My first thought as well.
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Generally, at least half of the “shortcut” or “clever idea to make it easier” projects that I attempt end up in unexpected negative consequences or abject failure. You’d think I’d have learned by now (I’m 71), but I’m just too clever for myself. My poorly done repairs don’t make things better in the long run, either.
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“Nothing is as permanent as a temporary solution that works” – unknown
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I think something similar to this whenever I’m attempting any kind of a home project on my own. The people who owned the house before me, their picture is out in the margin of the dictionary next to the word, jerry-rig. The number of things that we’ve had to fix and or undo since I bought this house is legendary. So anytime I’m tempted to do something temporary to just fix it quick, I think of them, and then I rethink my project. Usually.
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One of my mentors in the theater always made a big deal about saying “don’t half ass it” and whenever I start half assing something I think of him. And if I do have ass it, I never like myself about it.
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At the risk of being pedantic, it’s “jury-rig”, from a sailing term, and “jerry-built” from an unknown Jerry who must have been a half-assed builder.
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Pedantic, schmantic… I love learning new stuff!!!
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Well, according to Merriam-Webster the term jerry-rigged, meaning “organized or constructed in a crude or improvised manner,” has been in common use since 1959. They give the etymogoly of it as “probably blend of jerry-built and jury-rigged.”
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Nevertheless, jury-rigged is rich with meaning and history whereas jerry-rigged is just a corruption and a relatively recent one at that. Granted, its meaning is understood in modern conversation.
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I agree, Bill. Irregardless (!) – see what I did there? – whether we like it or not, it’s a word and likely here to stay.
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Reminds me of something Red Green would try, except those balls look to be soft rubber, so not much danger of severe personal injury or property damage. Plus, the project doesn’t seem to include duct tape.
Our first house, back in 1980, was an old 1920’s era bungalow that the previous owner had tried to fix up a little but didn’t do a great job. It did, however, have a wood burning stove in the basement that was our prime heat source in winter. Rather than lug armfuls of split wood downstairs for hours on end to build up the supply enough to last for a few weeks, I got the brilliant idea to build an ice chute/slide from the wood pile to the basement window nearest the woodstove. So simple, slide the split wood down the gently sloping ice chute to the window, then chuck the pieces through the open window to the stockpile below. Yeah, right.
I built the snow part of the chute just fine, but couldn’t get a good ice layer on the top of the chute so the wood would slide easily. Plus, split wood is not prone to being slippery in the first place–all that bark and splinters and split edges. After about 4 days of spraying water on the chute hoping to create a surface akin to an Olympic luge track, I gave up and resumed lugging armfuls of wood down to the basement.
That was a season where burning wood warmed me three times, instead of two–chopping and splitting, building a failed ice chute, and then lugging and burning the wood in the stove.
😦
Chris in Owatonna (thankful to have natural gas heat now and forever!)
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That’s where a little conveyance—a plastic sled or toboggan might have been your solution. If you built the ramp right, you might have been able to get the sled to tip and dump its contents at the end of the run. Then, if you had a rope on the sled, you could pull it back up to the top.
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You’d think I might have been smart enough to figure that out, wouldn’t you? ;-( I was probably too frugal to buy a cheap plastic sled, anyway.
Chris
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That story really belongs in one of your books. Should get another laugh!
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My day job career…?
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Update— YA has won 50% of the pool. The green ball has lost its battle with gravity!
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Was it gravity or does YA have special powers?
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Well, she probably has special powers, but wouldn’t she bring them both down then to win 100% of the pool?
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That would be too obvious.
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How much money is in that pool, and who put it there? Hans and I bet on things from time to time, but when it comes to collecting the demand is usually brushed off with a “you can deduct it from the amount you owe me.”
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That’s kind of how it goes around here too. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the last bet I lost with her a week or so ago, I owe her a couple million dollars now.
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
We have needed many, many projects in our house. We noticed that there were few square corners or straight walls. Upon inquiry of neighbors who were original owners of houses in this development, we discovered that the builder, “Swanson” was quite an alcoholic who drank increasingly more as the development proceeded. Ours was the last house built, so according to the story, Swanson was drinking constantly during the build of our house in 1974. We found aluminum wiring (long since replaced by us) beer cans and cigarette butts in the attic mingled in the sparse insulation, and beer cans on top of a coat closet that was Jerry-rigged into the garage, and behind the front door, because he forgot to put in a coat closet. The one that was there was an after-thought. So why did we buy this mess? The yard is sunny and good for gardening, the location is superb, and the neighborhood is just terrific.
Recently we found the cupboards we installed according to manufacturer instructions, in the basement as part of the office area, were pulling away from the wall. We just hired our contractor to re-install them. He has the know-how and the equipment. $400 later they will never again go anywhere.
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I just can’t think of anything that stands out. There are innumerable sewing – think “altering”. converting a thrift shop item into something meant to be wonderful – projects that were abandoned when some grievous mistake was made.
I just remembered a cool “antique” shelf I found on someone’s lawn, left out for the trash – was painted an unfortunate shade of yellow. Scooped it up… Husband sanded and refinished the boards, we tried to put it back together as it had been, and because of warping, things didn’t fit right. We jerry-rigged it for a while, but it fell apart, and is now sitting in the basement awaiting a decision.
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“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
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I tried hanging a suet feeder on a 2nd floor window with suction cups. I had an idea that I’d be able to watch the birds every morning from the bedroom window. I never saw a single bird find it, though – they were focused on food sources closer to the ground. After a few days a squirrel worked out a path to it using branches and downspouts and vines. If the birds had been feeder there, I could have trimmed away some vegetation to hamper the squirrel, but it didn’t seem worth it at that point. I just took it down.
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