How To Denail a Board

How to denail a board in ten easy steps.

Materials Needed.

2 hammers

1 crowbar

A bunch of lumber that hates your guts has lots of nails in it.

Painkillers

Gloves

Step 1.

Place board between 2 sawhorses. If you do not have 2 sawhorses, place board on a upside down 5 gallon bucket and the giant stack of boards you have yet to denail. If you use the second method your lumber will be at knee height.

Step 2.

Flip board over so that the pointy nail ends are aiming up toward you.

Step 3.

Using your hammer, try to pound the nails until they are flush with the surface of the board. At this point the nails will go as limp as a straight mans cock at a pride parade and smush over on themselves. Using the claw of the hammer, try to straighten the nails. Repeat until over half the nails have broken off into unusable stumps.

Step 4.

Once you have pounded the nails through, flip the board over again so that the heads of the nails are now visible. Using the claw of the hammer, or the crow bar, attempt to remove the nails using a series of short jerking motions. None of the nails will come loose. Proceed to step 5.

Step 5.

Use the trick where you use the head of the hammer as a fulcrum for the crowbar. The crowbar will slide off and cut you.

Step 6.

Apply band aids to bleeding areas.

Step 7.

Get really angry. Get plumb mad dog Clint Eastwood angry. Manage to remove a few nails. At this point you should consider taking the pain killers.

Step 8.

You will need to curse at the remaining nails like you have never cursed at anything before. 'Son of a bitch' ain't gonna cut it. You need to call these nails 'Son's of a whore cunt' or maybe 'bastard shit fucking motherfuckers' Really get creative with it.

Step 9.

Do the last trick in your arsenal use the hammer to pound the end of the crow bar until the nail pops out. Immediately loose nail on the ground. You will hurt your hand in the process. Take more painkillers.

Step 10.

Repeat steps 5-9 until almost all of the nails are removed*. Become depressed over how many more boards you have to get through. Place board in the I-will-get-back-to-this-later-pile. Restart process again from step one.

And there you go! Remember not to get depressed and start drinking early in the day. It's hard to aim a hammer when you are drunk. Really hard.

Trust me on this one.

* Don't take anymore painkillers though. That would be bad.

We Moved. It is Done. DONE.

We moved.

It all started when Scott went out for a walk came home and announced in his best I-am-serene-because -life-can't-take-anymore-from-me voice that the sewage line was broken. Ignoring the fact that the EPA might want to kill us, this would explain why the toilet was flushing poorly and the sink doesn't work.

I suggested moving. Scott said no on the bases there was no Internet over at the newer mobile home. What followed next was hours of passive aggressive bullshit. I knew the only way I was going to get to move sometime in my motherfucking lifetime was by driving my husband insane.

So the next morning, before he was fully conscious I rolled over and said. “Can we move?”

“Pack your shit.” Was his response.

So I god damned well did.

There was Scott sitting in front of his computer, happily listening to his pod cast. Not a care in the world and then I started parading by with books, and half my desk and my lamps. At that point I think he realized that there was no going back.

Our solution to the fact the dish, and subsequently the Internet are all located down a hill from us was to buy a shit ton of Cat5 and run along the ground from one structure to another. It was a pretty ghetto solution, but I live in WV so it seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do.

Scott made the Internet work, while I moved all of our possessions over. I was hoping that at some point he would make the Internet happen and then help me move, but sometime around 3 when he announced his need to make an emergency run to Lowes I lost all hope.

Now the thing I have to explain here is that I moved everything. My desk. Our nightstands. All the clothing. My computers. The TV. The food. EVERYTHING. This was all made worse by the fact that it was raining off and on all day. Which then turned into snow at some point. I was moving my electronic items whenever I saw a clear spot coming. I had no boxes and one plastic bin that I had taken out my closet and emptied. Also, everything I was carrying I had to be able to move with one hand, as there were two doors I had to open to get to victory.

Now let me state that my job involves moving heavy shit. Lots of it. I know how to lift. I know how to pace myself. All I can say is that I entered a zone that day. It was like all of my pent of frustration about living in a shit-hole had just built and built until I reached a peak of absolute drive and PMS driven anger that had burst over me like a tidal wave. I still have no idea how I did all that in one day. NO IDEA.

I was wiped. I was more tired then I had ever been in my LIFE. I didn't tell Scott, but I kept experiencing rolling pains that would run up and down my sides. I ate very little of dinner. This was when we discovered we were out of fuel oil over here and it was approaching witches teat inside. Scott made a fire. Which involved even more good ol' WV figuring. I did the only thing I could do at that point. I got drunk. Really drunk. Because that would fix it. Which it did. Until the next morning.

Which was also my Birthday. This is how I spent my special day crawling around like death was coming for me and being cold.

Chicken Coup 2: The Revenge

Okay so we got the roof plywood up, and the tar/roofing paper/whatever the fuck you call it up and on, so the roof should be able to withstand the rain. We also put up the most of the OSB on the inside, and cut it out for the windows and managed to install one.

Long story short, my whole body hurts. Let me tell you something about using a Sawzall while on a ladder that is sitting in about 5 inches of mud. It sucks ass. I don't seem to have whatever amount of upper body strength that is required to hold the thing and saw with it at the same time. Also, when you least suspect it, it will catch on something and push back at you violently. It is like the Sawzall is waiting for you to let your guard down so it can throw you backwards off the ladder. Kinda like that scene in the lion king where Scar throw Mufasa off the cliff face but instead of having a herd of wildebeest below me I have a bunch of rocks and old boards with nails sticking out of them.

I hate the Sawzall deeply is what I'm saying. With the passion of a thousand fiery suns.

It hurts to type. Also, I have a bunch of other projects I'm neglecting. Like you know, digging that Internet trench and getting some Mobile Home Insurance. Yay. Hope this place doesn't burn to the ground anytime soon.

I just hope that we can finish this thing before Friday, because I have a job I have to go to and it's an overnight thing meaning Holly won't be sleeping very much. After this week I think I'm going to laze around and play video games until my brains come out of my ears. And get fat.

I am going to lay around and look at he Internet now.

Want More Chicken Coup Adventure? Here's Part Three.  

The Chicken Coup: A Saga In The Making

I am not winning. After missing a golden chance to build the new chicken coup, when the weather guys swore up and god damned down that it was going to rain and then it totally didn't, we realized that there was another string of nice days coming up.

All of my pent up frustration over the sunshine and warmth when there was supposed to rain and cold led us to decide to rebuild the coup during this supposed stretch of nice weather.* This, in retrospect, was a bad idea.

We have been working on this god damned thing for 4 fucking days and we haven't even got the plywood on the roof yet, let alone the metal roofing. It might rain tomorrow and that would be bad, also Scott has a doctors appointment at 2:30, meaning we are going to be stopping working at about 1pm. Meaning that I think we are fucked. Can you put metal roofing on in the rain? You know it's going to rain for two freaking days and then be balls fucking cold? Here is a breakdown of how our days went so far.

Day 1. Lots of optimism. Went to Lowes and got shafted on on a bunch of lumber for the framing. Got back and assembled the front wall (the hardest wall) before it got too cold. The sun sets at 4pm, so that is when we stop working. And by set we mean goes behind the god damned ridge and the temperature immediately drops by about 5 degrees like someone flipped a god damned switch.

Day 2. Wait for frost to kinda melt off before we start. Finish framing. Slightly less optimism, a lot of 'wait did I measure that right?' Decide we should pick up the OSB and sheathing for the walls. Off to Lowes again for some more price raping. Come back and it's dark.

Day 3. Decided lack of optimism. Realize we need an 8ft A frame ladder to reach the highest point on the roof. We no not have a 8ft A frame ladder. All we have are 2 sketchy as hell hand me down ladders that my father had. We put OSB on. Got the back wall completely sheathed inside and out, as well as most of the outside done. Congratulations are in order. Drive to town to buy food and ladder. Can't find a an 8ft ladder. Eat cheese cake.

Day 4. Everything goes to hell and optimism is buried at the crossroads in a shallow grave. Framed all the windows and the door. I can tell you right now, strait up, that cutting windows out of the motherfucking sonofabitch sheathing is harder than fuck all. There are not enough curse words in the whole of the English language to convey how much this sucked. Got all of the windows cut out, and one of the two vents done, but now we get to do it all over again with the OSB, which was not been fully done on the inside of the walls yet. Got the roof rafters up.

So tomorrow we have to:

Install plywood on roof, add roofing paper/tar paper/whatever the fuck it's called.

Place on the metal roofing.

Place and cut the OSB.

Sand down the areas around the doors and windows because our cuts are not perfect.

Install windows.

Paint Structure inside and out.

I think were fucked. Straight up fucked and we will be lucky to finish the roof plywood before he has to leave for the doctors. I don't think we are getting all that done in 4 hours. I think we are going to be putting the metal roofing on in 36 degree weather.

Yay.

* Nice weather meaning above 50 Degrees.

Looking for more Chicken Coup Adventures? Here's Part Two.

The Barn Is Now My Enemy.

So today we attempted to demolish the barn. After of course fixing the brakes on our other car so we don't go careening off the side of a mountain because WV doesn't believe in guardrails.

First off we emptied out the barn, which was a god damned adventure. First off, my Dad believed that if it was free it was the right price. Even if he didn't need the object in question. Like his compulsive need to collect broken shelving. Not that he put anything on the shelves, mind you. They were laying on their backs and sides, presumably waiting for the slow release of death. There was also a large pile of doors, some of which were great, and others that were so flimsy I could move them by myself. Also there was piles of chains, horse tack, farm implements, roofing materials, trailer skirting, and enough rotting lumber to make a good sized pile of sadness.

However what you have to understand is that the barn was not really together anymore when we went to empty it. It was leaning at a very odd angle, and the only thing keeping it upright was a bunch of boards propped up on the outside and inside. Some of them were sitting on cinder blocks, others were just sunk into the earth. Tarps were strung up inside, which were the only things keeping the stuff inside dry.

Also, there is no floor.

When I say that I mean it literally. There was a sort of shelf on each side formed by the rotting remains of the floor, with boards slung over the chasm to create a place to walk. None of the boards were the same size, or evenly spaced, or secured to anything. Also, when I said there was no floor, I mean it. There was a good three feet or more between the boards and the dirt.

I boldly went in, passing things out to Scott. I waved him away many times when I was struggling with something, as he was the only one who could drive me to the hospital if I fell.

Then there were the rats. Plural.

The whole placed reeked of rat urine. Rat poo encrusted EVERYTHING. I moved a random cardboard box out of the barn, passed it Scott, only for him to look in it and say “there's something alive in here.” Right before a rat leaped out of the box, dodged my boots, and ran under the floor. So that was exciting.

We got it done, however, despite the many setbacks. We put things in trash bags, stored away the good lumber, tarped things, and made trash piles.

This was the moment we had been waiting for: taking it down.

We cut and removed the electrical lines running to the barn, and very carefully removed the outer supports. We then used a heavy rope to pull out the interior supports, holding our breaths the whole time hoping for the satisfying crash.

Nothing happened. We got impatient and smashed out the cinder blocks holding the back up. Nada. So it still stands. It's probably going to fall down while we are sleeping, or during the middle of a blizzard, or when we least suspect it.

If you don't here back from me, it means the barn got me.

Avenge me.