·:[ Jason On A Shtick ]:·
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Lindsay loves swings and slides. For as long as she’s been here, we’ve had one little swing mounted under the deck and she has to swing in it at least once a day. Whenever we go to visit friends who have a full fledged swing set, she is all over it. So, it came as no surprise that when we saw a “build it yourself” swing set kit at Lowe’s, she asked me when we were going to get one.

Jenny and I tossed ideas around for a while. We looked at several swing sets of all types and sizes. In the meantime, Lindsay would ask me almost every day “Daddy, did you get me a swing set yet?” Eventually, I decided to get the very kit at Lowe’s that started it all because, well, I don’t spend enough money at Lowe’s already.

The kit is designed so that you can add on different things as you go. The main tower comes by itself, then there’s the swing bar, monkey bars, a tunnel, a climbing wall, two different sized slides, a picnic table, and so on. I decided to start with the tower, swing bar, small slide and climbing wall. I wasn’t planning to mulch the area around the set just yet. I figured I’d start with the grass and maybe go from there.

There were about nine million pieces that came with this rig. First things first: lay out all the pieces so that you know what is what.

Our back yard has a slight slope to it, so I knew from the beginning that getting it level was going to be tough. My friend Leslie brought his trusty water level over and once we had roughed out where the posts should go, we used that to dig down and get the frame in line. We decided that it would be better to let the back posts on the lowest part of the yard sit on the ground and dig in the front ones, as opposed to trying to raise the ground to meet the back ones. That choice would have some consequences later.

Once the frame was level and ready, it took a few days to get the tower section built. Leslie and another friend, Mark, helped me off and on. I laid the parts out in the yard on Friday, May 18 and was cleaning everything up on Thursday, May 24. With the exception of the weekend, I only worked on it at night because it was just too hot during the day, plus the back yard is in the shade after dinner.

I decided not to put the climbing wall up yet because it was Thursday night at 9pm before Memorial Day weekend when I got to that. I figured saving it for later would leave me something to add on to keep the “newness” of the swing set going. I also need to finish the sandbox, which is the section under the lower deck where you see rocks in the pictures.

My brother would be proud of my use of “scabrication”, as he calls it, in dealing with the slope of the yard. Choosing to set the front posts of the tower in the ground meant that anything on level with those posts and further up the slope would also have to be in the ground. I cut four inches off the bottom of the ladder legs so that I wouldn’t have to dig them in too far.

As for the swing bar truss, the leg closest to the house is a good eleven inches in the ground while the back one is resting on a nice rock. I built up some dirt around that back one and I plan to build it up further and place the sod on top so that it stays in place. The crossbar at the bottom also had to be raised up or else dug into the ground, so I just cut the length of it down, too.

The kit came with small posts that have a hook on top for anchoring the set into the ground. Each post has a circular blade made onto it so that it would act like a screw and grip into the ground as you turned it down. However, getting those suckers to drill down into solid Kentucky clay was nearly impossible. Instead, I picked up some sections of angle iron and sledge hammered them into place. I don’t think this set is gonna move much now, but I need to cover those things up somehow so they don’t poke out an eye.

In the end, Paige, David and Lindsay seem to like it. Yes, sweetie, I did get you a swing set.

Less than two days went by before my little friend was back setting up a whole new shop in the dryer vent. Apparently, the belly of the Sarlacc did not deter him one bit. Chicken wire is pretty flexible and it looked like he had just muscled his way through it and bent it to his liking. I consoled myself in the fact that my hack job kept him away for a solid day, at least.

I removed the vent cover and played with a few ways that I might be able to stretch chicken wire tightly across the opening, but I didn’t like any of the options. I decided that it had been nearly 24 hours since I had been to Lowe’s, so I should go have a look around.

I came home with a completely new weapon: a vent with a flapper, a hood and a screen.

Now, I knew when I picked this thing up that I was going to have to make some modifications to get it to work. Fortunately, I come from a long line of crazy people that will rig stuff up to fit whatever situation arises, plus I am a man and our specialty is screwing things up, so I was up for the challenge!

The first hurdle was the lip on the back of the vent. I needed to remove it the same way that had been done to the poor old deflect-o SUpurr-VENT. The vent pipe is simply a little bent and is a smaller opening than the lip, so I would have to mount it flush against the brick.

Using my favorite pair of snips, I made cuts into the lip and bent the pieces until they snapped off.

For tougher ones, I used a utility knife to score them, then cleaned the edge up with the knife and a file. A much cleaner job than what was done to the old vent, I say!

Now came the really fun part. The holes for the new vent didn’t line up at all with any of the existing anchors in the brick. I busted out my masonry drill bits and goggles and prepared to drill some new ones. Here, you can see two new blue anchors below the old green ones at the bottom corners of the vent pipe along with a spot where I started to drill the brick near the top right.

If you have ever tried to drill into brick, there’s pretty much no doing it without a hammer drill or a really long stretch of time on your hands. That’s why you see most things anchored in the mortar. But, the size of the new vent wasn’t going to allow for holes that were all lined up in the mortar. Once I had the bottom two holes drilled, I had an idea.

Among the things I keep around “just in case I ever need it” is some metal pipe strapping. There’s no limit to what you can mount up with that stuff. I cut a section of strap and used it to tie down the top edge of the vent to anchors in the mortar above.

I even slipped a bead of caulk along the top edge where the mortar was uneven and might allow water to get in. Now that bird is going to have to tear off the screen and lift open the flap to get in!

Let’s see how long this keeps him out!

A few mornings over the last couple of weeks, we heard what sounded like a small animal scratching on the back of the house. Sitting in the living room, we’d hear this strange clawing noise and I would go look out on the deck. There always seemed to be a couple of birds prancing about (and defecating) on the deck rails, so I wrote it off that they were somehow making that noise.

In a seemingly distant part of my world, our clothes dryer was on the fritz. It was just taking way too long to dry things. I hadn’t devoted any time to investigating the problem yet, but it was in the back of my mind to give it a look.

These two unrelated events suddenly collided when I finally saw a bird wiggling out of the dryer vent on the back of the house. The scoundrel was probably building a nest in the vent pipe, which would explain the noises we were hearing, and the nest was probably blocking the dryer from properly venting, which would explain the dryer not working. So we had ourselves a squatter!

Step 1 – Kick the squatter out

Every good landlord knows you wait until a squatter is gone before you make your move. Then, you throw out all their crap and clean the place up. Here’s the tools I needed for the job. This photo makes it look like I was organized in advance. It was actually taken once the job was done and after I’d made at least a dozen trips back and forth to the garage.

First things first, I took off the vent cover. There are four external screws and four internal screws that can be accessed by holding the vent flaps open.

Once the cover was off, it was clear this guy had been busy making himself at home. I used a broom and a brush to remove what I could get to easily.

This next scene was just too good not to take a picture of. If you don’t own a Shop-Vac, I suggest you stop reading right now and go buy one. Mine hangs in the garage and gets a lot of use cleaning crap out of the floorboards of our cars. Luckily for me here, it has a twenty foot hose.

I had to jiggle the hose back into the tube over and over to get past a ridge a few feet inside where two sections of pipe connect. Several times, I had to pull the hose back out and remove some debris from the end or from the opposite end that connects to the tank. The mixture of lint and long pieces of straw were clogging it up.

Finally, I had a clean vent pipe. The flash on the camera treated me well for seeing further inside than with the flashlight.

Now, how could I keep that deadbeat from coming back?

Step 2 – Change the locks on the doors

My first plan was to wrap some chicken wire around the end of the plastic tube part of the vent cover that sticks back into the pipe. I chose chicken wire because it has bigger holes that hopefully won’t get clogged with lint too easily. However, upon inspecting the vent it was clear that the chump who installed it made a slight, uh, modification to it by cutting off the tube piece that would normally fit back into the pipe.

I thought about running to Lowe’s and picking up a new one, but seeing as this was a deflect-o SUpurr-VENT I figured I’d better try and hang on to it for the sheer amusement of the name.

I decided to roll up a small piece of chicken wire and stick it into the tube with lots of jagged edges pointing forward. I figured that no bird in its right mind would try to poke its way in with something like the Sarlacc Pit facing it. I attached some of the loose wires around the screw anchors in order to prevent a bird from just pushing the wire back into the tube.

Feeling like a macho man for having rigged up such a contraption, I decided to put the vent cover back on and test it out. I bossed the wife on the walkie-talkie and told her to fire up the dryer.

It was at this point when I discovered what was probably so inviting to the bird in the first place. A couple of the vent flaps weren’t flapping properly and would stick open once the dryer was off.

Again, I’m trying to hold on to a quality piece of material here, so I played with it for a bit and discovered that the pins on the ends of the flaps were somewhat warped, probably from all the ragged sun and heat that hits the house all summer long. I scraped them down a little and bored out the holes on the sides of the vent where they fit in, and that got them flapping much better.

Nothing left but the clean up at this point. That bird had been pretty busy. I will give him credit for making some good selections on evergreen pieces and rubber bands. There’s a little more crap in the pile because I raked a few leaves while I was at it.

In retrospect, I wonder if maybe the Sarlacc Pit was not what I should be going for with the chicken wire since things “slowly digest over a thousand years” in there. I’ll have to keep an eye on the vent and make sure a bird doesn’t get its stupid self stuck in there.

While I am not a big fan of mobile DVD systems, long car trips are rough on little kids without some form of entertainment to occupy them. When we bought our Honda Pilot, we were simply unwilling to pay an extra $1500 for a built in system. We didn’t think we’d use it that much and we figured we could buy a portable setup for a lot less.

Eventually, we got an Audiovox PVS3393 from Target. It has a 9 inch screen, rechargeable battery, remote control, AC power adapter and DC car power adapter. List price is $159.99, but Jenny got it for around $90 on special the day after Thanksgiving.

As Christmas travel approached, we started looking at the various cases that you can buy to strap the thing to the back of your car seat. None of them seemed like a good choice because they were either too bulky or didn’t fit the player well. We borrowed one from some friends that opens at 90 degrees as if you might use it sitting on your lap. I could strap it to the back of the seat but Lindsay loves to push buttons, so having the bottom half of the player folded out right in front of her like a shelf with fun things to push wasn’t going to work. I began looking for a way to mount the unit to the seat while opened flat.

A couple months earlier, I had bought a set of Kwik Twists at Lowes. I am a total junkie when it comes to shop tools and organizational goodies, so I can’t make a trip to Lowes without buying something. Kwik Twists are like long, thick, foamy twist ties. They have a metal wire inside to help them keep their shape when you bend them, but they are all foamy on the outside so you can pull them tight without scratching stuff. They just happened to be hanging in the aisle with organizational items and shelving and I couldn’t resist them. I paid just under $10 for the set of two.

I was sitting in the back seat of the Pilot with the DVD player and the borrowed case trying to think of a way to make it work. I just happened to look up at my workbench in the garage and saw the Kwik Twists hanging there. The idea popped in my head that I could use the twists to strap the player to the seat!

I love it when a plan comes together. It took me all of about five minutes to make this one work. Once you get the hang of it, you can install the player in even less time. Here are the steps to install your portable DVD player into your car using a pair of Kwik Twists.

First, take a twist and put it around the head rest in front of you like you are going to strangle the person in the seat. Pull it back snugly between the seat and the head rest, then bend the ends straight down. Bend the very tips back up to form little hooks. The edge of the player will sit down in these hooks.

Next, open your DVD player flat and sit the bottom down in the hooks that you formed with the twists. Our DVD player will not open flat with the battery attached so we have to use the power adapter when we rig this up, but that’s OK! Be sure that the hooks don’t obstruct the door or the buttons – just spread them out to make room. And be careful here as you’ll probably have to keep a hand or an elbow on the player if it won’t stand up in the hooks by itself.

Now, take the second twist and wrap it the other way, bracing the center of the player with it and folding the ends around the head rest in front of you. The head rests on the Pilot are fixed, so I can just tuck the ends between the head rest and the seat for a snug fit. I bend the excess back around to keep it from poking the person who will be sitting in this seat.

I’ve done this setup in our Accord, too, where the head rests move and do not sit so firmly against the seat. In that case, you might have to fold the ends of the twist around to the front of the seat and actually tie them together to stay in place. With a little effort, you can find a way to tie them and shove them up between the head rest and the seat so that they are out of the way of the passenger in front.

Now comes the best part. Since the twists are flexible, you can grab the sides of the DVD player and move it around a little to get it lined up straight. It seems like I never get the hooks on the first twist in exactly the same shape, so I have to push the player down on one side or the other to straighten it up. But, the twists happily assume the new shape that you push them into, so all is well!

Finally, pick out one of your favorite DVDs and load it up. Nemo, Cinderella and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse are all suitable candidates. Strap your child in and let the good times roll! If they can handle headphones, you might even get to listen to your own music instead of the movie. Hand the remote control to your spouse and have them practice the patented aim-around-the-back-and-hit-play move. Most importantly, when you pass a huge Suburban or Sequoia on the road with the built in DVD system that the owner paid big bucks for, slide right up next to them so they can see your custom rig and get all jealous.