Handyman Roger: Let There Be Air

As I wrote in an earlier post, I bought a window for the batcave last week. From that day until yesterday morning, that window had been laying on my floor doing nothing. For some reason I needed a little pushing to get the work started. Enter the Indians.

The Indians of property Alpha were getting cable, so the cable guy needed access to the batcave area of the basement to hook everything up. Because I didn’t want it to look like anyone was living in the basement, I purposely trashed the place and figured it was a good time to install the window while the cable guy was there.

The old "window"

The picture didn’t come out too well, so let me describe it. That is a very old rotted window covered by a plastic sheet with decades of dirt and filth on it. See that little covered hole in the corner? That’s been the only ventilation for the entire basement since I bought Alpha in 2006. So I ripped out the old window using the back of a hammer and squeezed in the new window. I also had to get a 2 x 8 piece of lumber to replace the old rotted base that the window rests on. I had it cut at Lowes for 32 inches, but I forgot that the base needs to be an inch or two more than the actual window width (33 or 34 inches) because it the frame rests on it as well as the window. Here was the result:

Window with gaps

There was still the issue of the gaps, especially the two big gaps at the bottom corners thanks to the short 2 x 8. So I had to fill the gaps with something simple.

This "great stuff" costs about $10

I used this spray foam on all the sides of the window and wherever I saw even a little space for something to get through. That spray foam is actually a lot of fun to use, but some of it got stuck on my skin and it's very hard to wash off. Once I was done, however, I realized that I had successfully installed my very first window:

A job... done

At last… air! Actual air coming into the batcave. It was such a great feeling. I actually did a slightly complicated repair job without help. No handyman! No one. Just the legendary handyman Roger Dodger and his mighty hammer. Now, for most people, installing a window isn’t something to gloat about. Right? Yeah? Well fuck them. I’m an idiot with a short attention span and an 86 IQ, and this is the highlight of my unspectacular handyman exploits. One man's preseason game is another man's Superbowl after all. I mean, the basement smells so much better now that there's an actual circulation of fresh air. To top it off, I got to play hookie from the bank job thanks to Sandra downloading the wand. And, since it was overtime, I left work at 8:00am and didn’t return until 5:30pm (overtime hours are 6:30am until 7:00pm). I’m thinking of doing that every week until the overtime ends. It’s like taking the entire day off.

Fixing that window made me feel like such a… man. A dumb and musky cave-dwelling mountain man. I really thought about having sex. It’s truly a good feeling when one does something on their own, and I plan to feel like that more often. Each month that passes, I’m gonna make another improvement to the batcave. A window here, some carpet tile there… little by little until everything gets done. Next month I’ll do another window. I still have  about $250 on my Lowes card after returning that lawnmower, so I should be able to afford two more windows. I’m taking little steps in the renovation of the batcave and, if each step produces the same end result, I'll truly have something to take pride in that I built with my two hands. Who knows? Maybe this is the start of me doing some of my own handyman work. Maybe...

P.S.: The only bad thing that happened yesterday had to do with Narish. He came downstairs to “ask the cable guy a question”, but I could tell he was really there to take a look at the place I’ve been living in that’s directly under his apartment. Sneaky little Indian… I’ll have to keep my eyes on him.