Flash back to last October.\u00a0 HomeOwnerMan and Wife Girl were minding their own business in stately HomeOwnerMan Manor when Mother Nature brought her wrath upon the northeast in the shape of an unseasonable snow storm.\u00a0 The wet snow clung to the heretofore unfallen leaves, bringing branches and trees down everywhere.\u00a0 Even the force field that HomeOwnerMan furnished with his highly developed brain was insufficient to keep the arboreal damage at bay, and eventually a large branch fell across the deck of HomeOwnerMan, breaking three sections of railing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The composite railing had been furnished Bate-n-Switch Industries, who just a few years ago promised a “lifetime warranty.”\u00a0 HomeOwnerMan was not astute enough to realize the “lifetime” was measured on the order of that of a Drosophila (about two weeks) , and so when he went to buy replacement parts was surprised to find the manufacturer was out of business.\u00a0 However, the Mom-n-Pop Home Center Store was able to locate some and graciously ordered it in.\u00a0 It arrived in time for the holidays, and HomeOwnerMan was too busy in his white, spandex “Pizzelle Prince” outfit to install the new parts.<\/p>\n
Flash ahead, now, to the current time when the weather had become pleasant and HomeOwnerMan again turned his attention to the broken railings and post.\u00a0 The post was affixed to the deck in 2004 by HomeOwnerMan with the intention of permanence.\u00a0 He had not considered that the post would ever need to be removed.\u00a0 Unfortunately now was the time to remove it.\u00a0 After disassembling the deck around it and filling three extra-large swear jars with quarters, the broken post was removed and its replacement installed.\u00a0 This required the strength, intuition, and an anti-swearing potion that only Wife Girl could provide.<\/p>\n
Installation of the railings then commenced.\u00a0 The sun was still high in the sky while the first two railings were cut to length, installed and fastened down, so it was time to tackle the stair railing.<\/p>\n
Comparing the damaged stair railing with the replacement material, HomeOwnerMan was quick to realize the humor that Bate-n-Switch Industries provided for free, because while the old material accommodated six balusters per 28 inch run, the new material only accommodated five.\u00a0 So the existing bottom rail would have to be replaced as well.<\/p>\n
HomeOwnerMan recognized the classic \u201crise over run\u201d type problem with cutting the stair rail to length, and instantly pressed the beacon on his utility belt to summon Son Boy.\u00a0 This was a classic teaching opportunity, and HomeOwnerMan was not going to let it pass without sharing his knowledge that really the only thing he ever learned in school of any use was trigonometry, oh, and the fact that the teen super-hero girls wearing the red \u201cCOH\u201d badges were upperclassman and would humiliate a fledgling male, underclass super-hero just for sport.\u00a0 HomeOwnerMan set up the problem for Son Boy thusly, \u201cThe stairs have a run of 25 1\/8\u201d and a rise of 10 \u00be\u201d.\u00a0 How long should I cut the piece of stair railing and at what angle should I set the miter saw?\u201d\u00a0 Son Boy made HomeOwnerMan so proud when he came up with the proper length (27.32816\u201d, we\u2019ll get to the significant figures lesson later), but said they had not yet gotten to arc-tangents in super-hero middle school.\u00a0 HomeOwnerMan gave him a pass on this (for now).<\/p>\n
Would that construction was as easy as trigonometry, however, and HomeOwnerMan knows this fact well.\u00a0 He therefore cut the pieces a bit long and began the process of running downstairs, trimming the pieces a little, running back upstairs to fit the piece, and repeating the process over and over again, also adjusting each baluster in a similar manner. \u00a0He thumbed his nose at the need for a device called a \u201cStair Master.\u201d \u00a0The sun was now low on the horizon.\u00a0 As he went to install the new section of stair rail, he realized that the new material was also slightly taller and would not clear the top step in its current configuration.\u00a0 This dilemma vexed HomeOwnerMan, who eventually made the daring decision to rout out a part of the offending stair so the rail could have clear passage.\u00a0 Assembling a custom routing jig for the occasion, HomeOwnerMan worked into the dark hours removing the material neatly and with precision.\u00a0 In the dark, he reassembled the stairs with the aid of his infrared vision and LED flashlights.<\/p>\n
HomeOwnerMan \u2013 making the ordinary extra ordinary.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Flash back to last October.\u00a0 HomeOwnerMan and Wife Girl were minding their own business in stately HomeOwnerMan Manor when Mother Nature brought her wrath upon the northeast in the shape of an unseasonable snow storm.\u00a0 The wet snow clung to the heretofore unfallen leaves, bringing branches and trees down everywhere.\u00a0 Even the force field that … Continue reading “HomeOwnerMan Reclaims Deck from Mother Nature”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeownerman-episodes","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/homeownerman.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}