Posts tagged "Home Depot"

Don’t worry, I didn’t get rid of the truck.

My home is roughly 16’ x 6’, or 96 ft². That makes it a little smaller than your average bedroom. In other words, it’s in my best interest to optimize how I use my limited space. Two years ago, I talked about consolidating and defragmenting how I laid out my room. The diagram I used looked like this:

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By rearranging my things (all three of them), I was able to clear up some space. Not that I actually used that space for anything, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. Though as time went on, my tidy arrangement kinda…fell apart. I shuffled stuff around to help people move, I threw things away, I loaded and unloaded everything to make room for repairs, and just generally accumulated some cruft along the way. If I were to draw the diagram again as of last week, it’d look like this:

Truthfully, I’ve been doing a pretty awful job at keeping you guys updated with what I’m actually doing, truckwise. The last time I even showed off the interior in all its shanty glory was almost a year ago. In the intervening interval since my last Home Improvement update, I’ve completed a few fairly large truck projects. By “large”, I don’t mean anything that requires any real technical competence, but certainly larger than fixing the hole or doing arts and crafts.

It’s been long enough.

I took my sweet time getting around to actually doing it, and then almost another month on top of that to start writing this post about it, but we’re here now. And that’s what really matters, right?

So anyway, you might remember “The Hole” from that time that birds always insisted on pecking at it, or that other time that I MacGyver’d a drainage solution to avoid waking up in a truck-shaped rainwater swimming pool. Looking back, I had every intention of paying another human being money to fix this particular problem. That all changed once I received an email from Nancy (over at PK Safety), who, like BoscoBob before her, knows way more about fixing my problems than I do.

Desiccant.

I really enjoy the way that word sounds. It’s like a discount version of decadent, except that it hasn’t been soiled by rampant overuse in chocolate commercials. I was curious as to its etymology which, as you’ll see above, isn’t nearly as exciting as I’d hoped. I had never even heard of the word until a reader, known only to me as “BoscoBob”, brought it up in an email.

Gnat nightmares, spider sadness, moth madness, ant anxiety, bug barrage—ok I’ll stop now.

I’m not a fan of bugs. Generally speaking, unless you’re an entomologist or earthy-crunchy type, you probably aren’t either. I’m not terrified of them by any means, I’m not liable to stop what I’m doing if a bug decides to drop by and say hey, but I’m still likely to exterminate them all with extreme prejudice before going to sleep. After all, nobody is trying to eat spiders whilst slumbering. I’m happy to say that I haven’t had any full-blown infestations recently, though it hasn’t always been the case.

My first two Home Improvement Projects weren’t exactly the highest caliber works of craftsmanship. For example, putting more than two or three articles of clothing on the clothes rack caused it to bend, shake, and warp, and the rope around the bed came undone approximately once a day. So my third Home Improvement Project was setting right what I had previously done so, so wrongly. And it’s the weekend, which means that after my workout and shower, the sky was the limit as far as errand-running was concerned.

With the bed out of the way, I was ready to try bigger and better things. The next thing on my list was a place to hang my dress shirts and pants. In a real-world setting, this would be called a “clothes rack”. So I took another trip down to Home Depot, which is quickly becoming the most important place in my life, and I picked up some screws, a screwdriver, some clothes hangers, two mounting brackets, and a 6 foot long wooden rod. If I had done everything correctly, here is how the process should have gone:

When you move into a new home, a trip or two to Home Depot isn’t just likely, it’s inevitable. Turns out that holds true even when your new home is a box truck. Below, I’ve detailed the unfocused and wide-ranging list of items I found myself purchasing.

• Graffiti Remover. I didn’t quite find the truck in the most perfect condition. One tire was gouged pretty badly and the left side had been tagged up pretty good. The tire is all fixed, and the graffiti remover is surprisingly effective, but I’ve got a lot of area to clean - by my measure about 37 ft². A couple more trips to an empty parking lot to clean it and I should be all set.
• Work Gloves. To keep my hands from being coated in graffiti remover.
• Step Ladder. To reach the top of the graffiti, though I actually haven’t needed it yet.
• Rags. To wipe off and mop up the graffiti.
• Hornet Killer. Another pleasant feature of the truck, small hornet nests in both door crevices. Haven’t gotten around to taking care of this yet, mainly because hornets are terrifying. They’re like bees, but less fuzzy, more menacing, and can sting you until they’re completely sure you’re miserable.
• Rope. Until I start building/buying legitimate mounting equipment, I need a way to make sure big things (like the bed) don’t move around too much while I’m driving. I don’t want a few sharp turns or hard brakes to mean rearranging the furniture. I’ll post pictures eventually, but basically I tied sliding knots around the rails on either side of the truck.
• Switchblade. To cut the rope, and just generally handy.
• Broom. To sweep up the dust and trash that was in the back. I like to keep my truck dungeon clean.
• Trash Bags. To dispose of the dungeon dust and trash, though I actually need to find a waste disposal place in the area.
• Padlock. To lock up the back when I’m not “home”.
• Tape Measure. Generally useful, mainly for figuring out placement of shelves and furniture in the future.
• Battery Lamp. The truck actually has some built-in lights in the back, but I got an extra one for good measure.

The only reasonable theme to glean here is that I’m a serial killer. Between the rope, trash bags, switchblade, gloves, and padlock, I’m surprised Home Depot didn’t call the FBI as soon as I made it to the checkout area.