Handy little tools for humble chores
THIS is the season of great labors. There are leaves to be gathered and mulched, branches to be pruned and chipped and, in a good year, whole trees to be felled, sectioned and split for firewood. My garage sends forth all its engines, and my chain saws sing.
But once the fun is over, more humble chores call for attention: clogged rain gutters, loose patio tiles, weed-filled cracks in the driveway. These are the thankless, messy and frustrating jobs of late fall and early winter. And, because of them, I now pay homage to a few simple and inexpensive tools that greatly ease their burden.
One of the most versatile tools in my garage is the Gutter Getter made by Working Products Inc. of Portland, Ore. At $3.99, this one-piece polypropylene scoop has paid for itself many times over. Though I’d gladly trade the fuchsia color for a more serious gray or black, the lines are inspired.
Reminiscent of the streamlined trains and airplanes of Art Deco murals, the long tongue, tall, raked sides and narrow, rounded heel make a perfect match of grace and function.
As the name implies, the Gutter Getter is designed for scraping sodden leaves and roof muck out of rain gutters. But it does many fall chores better than more expensive tools offered for the purpose. Take the unpleasant job of cleaning the fireplace. The cherry-handled shovel in the standard hearth kit may look at home, but it isn’t much good at digging out ash. The flat, low design ensures spillage and the long handle can’t negotiate around fireplace fixtures. The Gutter Getter does it better.
Its companion on almost every outing is a 40-pound chlorine tablet container. The large size makes a better bucket than most regular buckets and, in particular, the faux antique slag bucket sold for the hearth.
Moreover, the deep chlorine tub captures most of the dust clouds that rise from each scoop of ashes. (Anyone fortunate enough not to own a pool should be able to get a chlorine tub free from a less-fortunate friend. They multiply like vermin.)
The same pair of tools is indispensable on the asphalt detail. It’s a good idea to seal off those little cracks now, before the rains open them up like the San Andreas fault. That means squeezing a lumpy tar solution out of a gallon plastic jug through a tiny nipple into fissures that vary in width from a hairline to half an inch.
Ideally, the filler should form a bead above the crack and then shrink into place. In reality, it spills over the little cracks like a flood just before the wife drives up, distributing the excess across the driveway in a repeated tire tread pattern.
The antidote -- I stole it from a crew of professionals in a grocery store parking lot -- is sand. It made a surface that cars could drive over immediately. The crew carried it in a bucket loader and spread it with a shovel. On my scale, the Gutter Getter does the job.
For cracks of half an inch or larger, a heavier, sand-based tar works best. I apply it with an inexpensive plastic spatula sold in auto stores and made for spreading Bondo.
Sand has other uses, such as for setting bedding pavers. I buy it in 60-pound bags and store it in a chlorine tablet container. I also keep a 60-pound bag of mortar on hand. In a sealed chlorine tub, it can sit for years and still be powdery dry.
Around this time of year I break the mortar out to patch any loose patio tiles or separations in decking or block walls before the hard rains make them worse. My aid in this precision work is a $2.49 tool called the grout bag. It squirts out mortar the way a confectioner’s bag extrudes cake icing. Unlike a trowel, which tends to spread mortar uselessly all around a crack instead of in it, a grout bag can get the mortar inside openings almost down to a quarter-inch.
I make a soupy mixture, squeeze from the back and adjust the width by squeezing the plastic nozzle. The concrete must be thoroughly soaked or it will absorb water from the mortar too fast. Any excess can be washed away with a light solution of pool acid.
These tiny repair jobs require me to mix small quantities of mortar at different consistencies. The Gutter Getter has proven itself best for this. In contrast to a shovel or garden trowel, it leaves no trail of spillage, and its wonderful design gives me an almost intuitive sense of how much is needed.
With all these distractions, I haven’t gotten to fall’s most important job, the gutters. I’m fatalistic about this job. I’ve tried the wire mesh that wedges into the gutters. I have concluded that anything man wedges, nature will soon unwedge. The downspouts are always clogged. This year I’m experimenting -- skeptically -- with a new and improved substitute for those exasperating wire bulbs that need constant cleaning.
Ultimately, this is a duty requiring vigilance and timing, both of which I lack. If I clean too early, the leaves come back. So I wait. I know the time has come when I drive in from work one night to find a cataract flooding out the impatiens.
