Winterizing Season Approacheth

By Donald Holmes Lewis

Published  on July 17 in The Cheboygan Daily Tribune.  \

 

     O.K. Let’s be honest. We’re well past the Fourth of July. During the last couple of days, it dawned on me like a two by four to the forehead. Winterize now. We’ve moved to a summer cottage, we don’t have a lot of dough. We’re the leaky faucet of summer homes in Cheboygan County. Major insulation needs and our place on Mullett Lake is now our year round abode. A voice in my ear, that little guy inside who knows what he’s talking about, is telling me that killer cold weather is only four months downstream and my grasshopper days are numbered. Time for action. But what action?

     First things first. Plumbing. Pipes freeze at twenty below Fahrenheit. I called the plumber guys and they came right out. As they got out of their truck, they looked like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson with denim work shirts. Plumbing detectives on a mysterious case. Following them from room to room, from pump house to the garage, I noticed them shaking their heads, musing about solutions and following leads. Flashlights in their hands, they peered into my crawl space under the cottage, a dark and dangerous Middle Earth. In the bright yellow light of morning, they asked me questions as though I was the only witness to a crime.

     “Any insulation in the walls?” said the tall skinny man, the one obviously in charge.

    “I don’t know. I think so.”

    “Because you don’t have any in the attic or under the house either. You do have an extended family of chipmunks down there though.”

    When they drove off I had a prognosis. Trouble. And I had a list of recommendations: insulate everything, wrap the pipes in heat tape, and forget using the back cabin in winter because all the pipes run through an unheated garage. Cripes, I said to myself. The laundry room is in the back cabin. I got sudden visions of trips to the laundromat in town through howling blizzards. My wife is going to be absolutely thrilled about this.

     After an hour on the World Wide Web, I had a list of things I could tackle on my own. It was one item long. Insulate the attic. An article on Wikipedia pointed me in the right direction. Rent a machine that blows a mixture of recycled newsprint and a bonding material and shoot the stuff into the attic making sure not to get any on the attic ceiling which is the underside of the roof because condensation will soak the stuff and you’ll have a real mess. Don’t cover the vents at all.

     It was clear you had to be a pretty good shot with the nozzle or you could make matters worse. I took the pencil from behind my ear and reluctantly drew a line through my only do-it-yourself scheme. I needed some help. I remembered my mom telling me when I was ten years old ‘there’s nothing wrong with asking for help’ and my mom was always right.    

     I called my handyman Ken who’d said he needed whatever work he could get this summer and told him I had some things for him to do. He showed up just after dinner.     

     As the wind came up from the northeast and threw our words around the yard like confetti, he tried to summarize the situation.

    “What exactly does a consultant do?’ he asked sincerely.

    “You know, consult. Give advice.”

    “But you want me to insulate the crawl spaces and wrap the pipes with heat tape. I do that myself.”

    “Right. I’m just too big to slide around under there.”

    “And I go rent the machine for the attic and do that.”

    “I’ll be your assistant on the attic project.”

    “O.K. I guess I’ve been a consultant all my life.”

    Before Ken left, he did a walkabout through the cottage. He didn’t say a word as he looked around, popping his head up through the trap door to the attic, knocking on the pine walls with his ear pressed to the wood, opening and shutting the front and side doors. He stared at the fireplace for a few minutes and then crouched inside the sooty space with his neck and head cranked around like a great curious bird.

     Back outside again, he slithered on his back with arms tight to his side through the opening to the crawl space. He looked like a man sneaking back into a prison after a night on the town. He seemed to have trouble for a second like he was pinned down by the house as hard and fast as the wicked witch in Munchkin Land. He rolled over, toes in the dirt, and struggled back out.

     On his feet again, he smiled.

    “Piece of cake.”

    “Really?”

    “This will be fun.”

    “Fun?”

    I followed him to his truck where he scribbled some things on a coffee stained legal pad. The writing didn’t come easily for him. His knuckles were stiff and painful looking and I could tell he was fighting to get his spelling right.

    “Besides the attic and under cottage work, here’s what I’d do, Mr. Lewis,” he said, handing me his notes. “I’ll call you tomorrow. And thanks for the job.”

     As his old red pickup disappeared down my gravel road, I put on my reading glasses and studied his scribbles: new doors, new storm doors, fireplace insert, wood burning furnace, insulated vinyl siding. The last one I could barely make out but finally did. Snow Blower.