Off to a Solid Start : It took around nine hours and cost $168.94. There’s more to be done. But a handy homeowner finds that with planning, he can in one weekend clear several hurdles toward earthquake safety.

As usual, my wife was right. I didn’t get it all accomplished in one weekend: It is my list of earthquake safety chores.

I decided several weeks ago to bow to the inevitability of another major quake and set about making our house as earthquake safe as my talents and budget would allow.

The goal is to reduce the likelihood of valuable possessions being damaged in a quake and to reduce as much as possible the chances that anyone in the house would be injured.

When I wrote here of my plans two weeks ago, I’d talked with a home safety inspection specialist to get ideas on what to look for and had made a tour of my home to determine what needed to be done.

With that list in hand--chores ranged from fastening the tall cabinet in the living room to bracing boxes in the garage--I spent several evenings at the local home improvement center, wandering the aisles and getting ideas for materials I’d need.

After listing each chore and what was needed to accomplish it, I went back and bought the stuff. In all, I figure that saved about four hours of weekend time.

Here’s what I was able to accomplish last weekend, what it cost and how the jobs turned out:

Job: Secure Knickknacks

What it took: Applying a small blob of sticky white wax to the bottom of each figurine and then firmly pressing each item back into place on the shelving.

Material used: Wax adhesive

Cost: $2 for two ounces.

Availability: Antique and collectible stores, some hardware stores.

Tools needed: A wooden stick to spread wax.

Time: 90 minutes (included is the time it took to dust and polish the glass shelves and mirrored walls of the curio cabinets.

Benefits: Collectibles are firmly anchored to the glass shelves and won’t tumble off or bang into each other in a quake. They also don’t shake or rattle when someone runs through the living room. And unless you lie on your back and look up under the shelves, the wax is invisible, so it doesn’t detract from the things on display. And the wax goes a long way. The two-ounce container I bought will probably do 200 figurines (or the same 50 four times each).

Minuses: Makes it harder to dust--you either have to clean around each piece, or pry them all up, wipe off the wax (at least it comes off pretty easily with warm water), dust, then reapply wax to each piece and stick it back down.

Hint: Short of a liberal dose of epoxy cement, nothing is going to prevent things from moving in a really big quake--even if the objects stay put, the shelves they’re fixed to might fall. So don’t knock yourself out sticking down everything in sight. Just fasten down the things you’d most hate to lose.

Job: Add Latches to Cabinets

What it took: This was tedious but easy. I simply attached plastic child-safety latches to the insides of each of our 19 kitchen cabinet and four bathroom cabinet doors.

Material: Child-proof latches.

Cost: $1.78 for a package of three--$15.34, including tax, for 24 latches.

Availability: At most hardware and home improvement stores.

Tools: Drill and bit for pilot holes; screwdriver.

Time: 2.5 hours

Benefits: Invisible, inexpensive and will keep cabinet doors from opening and cabinet contents from spilling out during a quake.

Drawbacks: Until your memory banks take over and the routine becomes automatic, you have to remember each time your open a cabinet to reach in and depress the safety latch. It gets frustrating to pull open the doors only to have them abruptly stop moving after the first inch or so.

Job: Secure Boxes on Shelves

What it took: It took some thinking--and some rethinking. I didn’t want to rebuild the shelving or hang full doors--the cost and weight both were prohibitive.

My first plan called for installing rigid 2-by-4 bars across the front of the shelves to hold back the storage boxes, but the logistics for attaching the bars so they would stay put in a quake but be easily removable to enable me to get to things were too daunting. Then, while pacing the aisles of my local lumber store, I saw the light--actually I saw the wire cables that they used to keep tall pieces of molding from falling down on customers.

So that’s what I adapted, and now the shelves at the back of my garage sport a system of blue, vinyl-clad wire cables stretched horizontally across the shelving to keep boxes from falling down. The cables--two per shelf, one a few inches from the bottom and the other just above the mid-way mark--are secured at one end to a thick eyebolt screwed into the upright brace; at the other end they terminate in steel latches that clip onto another set of eyebolts.

Material: To secure four shelves, each four feet long, I bought 40 feet of 3/16-inch diameter vinyl clad wire cable; 16 cable clamps, used to permanently fasten the cable-ends because they can’t be tied like rope; 16 eyebolts with 1 1/2-inch openings, and eight swivel snap latches.

Costs: $14 for the cable, at 35 cents a foot; $5.85 for the clamps; $4.48 for the eyebolts, and $9.76 for the latches. Total, with tax, was $36.76.

Tools: Power drill and bits for pilot holes; adjustable wrench to tighten cable clamps; wire cutter to cut cable; tape measure.

Time: Three hours.

Benefit: Lightweight, easy to install, easy to get to the storage boxes. Presuming the cable is strong enough and anchored properly, stretching it across the open fronts of the shelving will stop boxes and other large items from falling.

Drawbacks: Don’t know of any yet.

Job: Fasten Cabinet to Wall

What it took: Using two four-inch L-shaped steel brackets to fasten a 6 1/2-foot cabinet to the living room wall. I used a stud-finder to locate two studs behind the cabinet (studs are 16 inches apart if the house is built to code), marked the plaster wall over the studs to correspond to the holes in the brackets, drilled pilot holes and then used 1/4-by-three-inch lag bolts to secure the brackets to the wall.

Because our cabinet is three inches out from the wall, I was able to install the brackets so the leg on the wall runs down behind the cabinet and cannot be seen. If yours is flush, you can either move it out, install brackets with the wall leg pointing up--and probably visible--or install a lag bolt through the cabinet back and directly into the wall.

In order to drill holes in the wall with only a few inches of space to work in, I first bored one-inch openings through the back of the cabinet where each screw would go. That allowed me to use a power drill with a long bit to drill straight into the wall behind the cabinet and, later, to use a socket wrench to tighten the lag bolts.

Instead of screwing the second leg of each bracket to the top edge of the cabinet back, which is only 3/4-inch thick and would probably not hold the screws in a big quake, I took advantage of the raised back of the cabinet to make a more secure hold-down system. I used brackets that extended an inch over the lip of the back edge and attached a 20-inch length of oak between the two brackets. The oak (hardwood holds screws better than soft pine) forms a long lip that holds the cabinet in place, greatly increases the load that the hold-down system can handle and can easily be removed when we need to move the cabinet.

Materials: Pair of four-inch L brackets; four 1/4-by-three-inch lag bolts; two No. 8 1 1/2-inch wood screws, a one-by-10-inch oak strip.

Cost: Brackets, $1.86; lag bolts, 88 cents; wood screws, 35 cents; oak strip, about $3 (I salvaged mine from scrap stock in my workshop); total, with tax, $6.52.

Availability: Any hardware or home improvement store; lumber yard or home improvement center for wood.

Tools: Power drill, one-inch wood bit; 1/8-inch bit for pilot holes; stud finder; tape measure, pencil.

Time: One hour.

Benefits: Inexpensive, invisible and should hold entertainment center in place during a quake, keeping it from pitching forward and hitting someone or dumping TV and stereo equipment.

Drawbacks: It’s necessary to unfasten the hold in order to move the entertainment center to clean behind it; will leave small holes in the wall that must be patched when moving out or rearranging the furniture.

Tip: If you bolt directly through the back of a cabinet and into the wall, use at least two bolts and put a strip of metal or wood between them and the back surface to spread the load and keep the bolt heads from pulling through.

Job: Secure Refrigerator

What it took: I have a wooden floor in the kitchen, so this was easy. I removed the bottom vent panel from the front of the refrigerator and screwed a pair of small L brackets into the floor in front of the wheels. The refrigerator is in an alcove with a cabinet overhead that will block it from pitching forward, and the brackets will stop the wheels from rolling.

I wasn’t able to figure out a satisfactory and invisible method of latching the refrigerator doors to prevent them from flying open, but I figure you can’t have everything.

This job provided me the opportunity (that’s what my wife called it) to vacuum the dust that had accumulated on the cooling coils under the refrigerator--a chore that should be done every few months or so.

Materials: Pair of 3/4-inch L brackets.

Cost: 65 cents.

Availability: Hardware, lumber stores and home improvement centers.

Tools: Screwdriver.

Time: 20 minutes.

Benefit: Barely visible, stops heavy refrigerator from rolling into middle of kitchen where it could fall over.

Drawback: Brackets have to be unfastened anytime the refrigerator has to be moved.

Hint: Most people don’t have wooden flooring in their kitchens. If you have a cement slab or tile floor, you’ll either have to get a masonry drill and special masonry anchors for the screws or use a heavy-duty adhesive, such as Goop, to glue the brackets down.

An alternative is to make wood or rubber wedges and drive them under the front wheels, but make sure you leave enough sticking out to provide a place to grip when you need to remove them.

Job: Protect the China

What it took: Washing a whole lot of dishes (my wife insisted they get washed before being wrapped) and then inserting the various plates, bowls, saucers and serving pieces into quilted containers.

Material: A set of quilted, padded, zipper-sealed cloth china keepers for a service for 12. The set includes foam sheets to place between the dishes.

Cost: $99.13, including tax.

Availability: We got ours at a store at MainPlace mall in Santa Ana that specializes in storage containers; we’ve also seen them in catalogues, often for quite a bit less, but we didn’t seem to have the right catalogue. A week after we bought ours, one of my co-workers started unwrapping a mail-order package at her desk and pulled out a set of vinyl china keepers. She said they cost $12 plus shipping. I groaned and can only hope that the cloth ones last a whole lot longer.

Tools: None.

Time: 15 minutes (plus 30 minutes washing and drying the dishes).

Benefit: Turns shaky stacks of fragile china into solid, padded blocks that stand a much better chance of surviving an earthquake--and other jiggling and jolting--intact. Also keeps dust off your china between uses so you don’t have to wash it before you set the table for holidays.

Drawbacks: None, if you don’t count the cost (and at $12 or $99, its a lot less than a new set of china).

Job: Stabilize Home Computer

What it took: Affixing Velcro hook-and-loop fasteners to the home computer to secure the monitor against a quake violent enough to jolt it off the processing unit.

Materials: Two packages of self-adhesive Velcro strips and one package of self-stick Velcro squares.

Cost: $8.54, with tax.

Availability: Hardware, fabric, home improvement and department stores.

Tools: Scissors.

Time: 10 minutes.

Benefit: Our monitor sits atop a swivel stand that is on top of a power switching and spike protection device that is on top of the central processing unit on the desk.

It’s not terribly wobbly, but why take chances? I simply affixed strips of Velcro to the CPU and then ran a long strip from one side of the CPU up and over the top of the monitor and then down to the other side of the processing unit. It seems strong enough to hold the monitor down. If it works, we won’t have to clean up a lot of broken glass from the picture tube, and we won’t have to pay to replace the monitor.

Drawbacks: It isn’t very pretty, and it has to be removed in order to swivel the monitor more than a few inches.

*

That was it for last weekend. Total time, eight hours, 45 minutes; total expenses, $168.94. The rain, my native inertia and a few family matters kept me from finishing my list of chores. I’ll be doing them while you’re reading this installment.

In my next report, I’ll fill you in on how rest of the chores go and share a new batch of earthquake safety tips I’ve picked up while researching these articles.