Kev-lar

In real estate industry parlance, our garage is referred to as a “tear-down.”  At some indeterminate time in the past, tree roots pushed the center of the concrete floor upwards, and now I keep thinking an alien is about to pop out.  It looks just like Sigorney Weaver’s stomach right before the monster breaks the skin.  The roots’ upward thrust formed spiderwebbed cracks and caused the walls to bow outward.  As the east and west walls separated by 6 to 10 inches and the roof stretched and lowered, the three crossbeams that had been nailed securely between the walls ripped away.  One tore from the west wall, the two others from the east.  Twisted, rusted nails reached from the ends of the dangling 2 x 4s in grasping desperation. 

In a successful attempt to save the warped garage from collapsing, some previous owner grabbed a mouldy 4 x 4 piece of wood and a 6-foot-long tabletop to prop up the unsecured crossbeams.  The 4 x 4 and upended tabletop must have prevented generations of owners from utilizing the garage properly.  It has become a den of spiders and discounted webs.  Rat shit is cemented on the rafters.  A healthy green blackberry bramble found it’s way throught a crack in the siding and lounges comfortably against the back wall.  It would be possible to cultivate vegetables on the roof if only the water didn’t pour right through. 

I had a very big problem, however, with actually demolishing and replacing the garage - a fifteen thousand dollar problem.  So, I decided to combine my zero years of experience in structural engineering with my inability to hit a nail squarely on the head in order to fix the damn thing myself. 

The first step was to corner our neighbor - some kind of handyman / contractor guy - wrap his brain with my tentacles, and suck out all his ideas about making the garage useful again.  His advice was brilliant; use a cable ratchet to pull the east and west walls into their original postitions.  Then, using wood screws, attach new 2 x 4s to the existing, hanging crossbeams and reattach the reinforced rafters to both walls.  Amazing, unbelievable, stunningly simple advice.

I ran into my first problems almost immediately.  How strong does the cable ratchet need to be, and how the heck do you attach it to the walls?  After a half hour of agonizing indecision at the local Ace Hardware store, I bought a one-ton ratchet and two super, mega, half-inch, ten-dollar-each eye bolts.

Excited to see the outwardly-sagging garage walls yanked back into upright position with my bare hands, I quickly got to work.  I drilled starter holes into the the top wall supports and screwed in the eye bolts with one strength-sapping half turn after another until faint splitting sounds caused me to stop else risk watching a full-fleged rift slowly spread across the boards from the bolts’ entry points. 

I attached the cable and began ratchetting.  As the cable tautened, a new thought crossed my mind.  What if the walls stayed put while the anchors suddenly tore from the wood, flinging one-ton cable and one-pound metal hooks attached to super, mega, half-inch, ten-dollar-each eye bolts around the garage, with me standing in the middle?  That would be bad.  Very, very bad.

I could not bring myself to turn the ratchet one more click, and I spent an entire night pondering the problem.  The next morning, I found myself at the castle of paralyzing vacillation - Home Depot.  After an hour and a half, I walked out with a box of nails, a box of wood screws, some work gloves, and three pressure-treated 2 x 4s to attach to the existing crossbeams, if I ever got that far in the project.

Back home, instead of dealing with the cable ratchet, which had been taut and dormant for almost 18 hours now, I decided to knock down the spider webs and sweep out the rat shit, decaying shreds of paper, corn cobs seemingly left over from Native American trading days, dirt, and dust.

With that job done and nothing else to distract me, I turned back to the ratchet.  I became determined to push the handle just one more click, to witness the walls move under my power.  I called Monica out to watch the walls from the outside, and she forced me to wear my bicycle helmet, like the weird child of the paranoid parents.  Still picturing a metallic cable flinging in my direction, I didn’t put up much resistance.  It’s a good thing my elementary school bully Dwayne wasn’t around, or I would have been in for an ass kicking.   I took hold of the handle and pushed.  Slowly.  Creaks emanated from indeterminate locations.  Were the walls moving inward?  Would the roof come collapsing down?  Were the eye bolt anchors popping out thread by thread?  I’d never know unless I pushed a little more. 

One twentieth of an inch did it.  There was a sound like a tree beginnng to fall in the forest.  The eye bolt wasn’t pulling loose, rather the beam to which it was anchored was splitting.  I hadn’t moved a whole wall myself.  I had moved one half of an ancient 2 x 4.

Back to the drawing board.