What I Wish I Would Have Said

We haven't done much on the house this week so I haven't had anything to write here. But I do have this.

I'm laying in bed, sound asleep when the phone rings. I stumble to the other room where the phone is and notice it's about 2:30. I answer and the guy on the phone says, " I saw what you did and I know who you are."

I paused a moment and said, "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"So you saw me with the Homeless Man?"

"Yeah!"

"You saw me kill him?"

"Um...yeah."

"You saw me cut off his nuts and stuff them down his throat?"

"Uh huh!"

"So you know that I would have no reservations about doing even worse to some Shit for Brains Scumbag who calls me at two-thirty in the morning?!"

"Click"

That's what I wish I would have said.

Instead, I kind of stood there in a haze and said, "Who is this?" Then he hung up. Then I lost the next thirty minutes of sleep running that first scenerio through my head and wishing I had the presence of mind for that witty banter.

I need to script my life better!

Storm Window Follow Up

It looks like all my worries and angst over fixing the Storm Windows was a waste of time. I took the windows back, and while they were concerned over how the far off the measurement was, the fine folks at Tormino's Window and Sash said they will have no trouble selling them as is and it will be about a month before the re-ordered, correcftly measured windows come in.

I went to the effort of taking a picture of the window and writing down all the critical measurements. Then I printed out two copies...one for me and one for them. Now I have definite proof of the dimensions I want. I should have had this last time. I'm learning...slowly.

In the meantime, we recovered the cushion on the window bench in the Dining Room last night. There was nothing wrong with the old one other than it not a color picked by Susan. Now the thing blends and matches very nicely with the over-all decor of the Dining Room, giving one a soothing and pleasing sense of well being as well as an urgent need to eat dinner and then get out of our house. Call it "Structuring the length of a Guests' stay through Decor Management."
It's a very subtle science that we are inventing as we go along.

Perhaps there is a book in it.

Beautiful Sundays & Bad Measurements

Indian Summer is currently in full swing. It got wet and sloppy last week and cooled way down. Then Autumn began at 9:03 PM Friday and the weather has been great ever since

I planned on getting a lot done but I had one major project I really wanted to complete. I ordered two combination Storm/Screen Windows for the Master Bedroom back in July sometime. I took the measurements to this locally owned Glass shop that has always done right by me. In fact, the owner is a High School buddy of my Dad's.

I finally was able to pick the windows up back on Friday, September 15th but I haven't had a chance to install them until yesterday.

You can see the picture to the left here that shows the window in all it's over-sized glory.
Yup! It's too big. They measure 36" x 58" and they should be 36" x 53". I don't know what exactly happened but somewhere that three was transformed into an eight and there is no way I can make it work at five inches over.

At this point, I cannot say who is to blame. I do not have my original note that I took in and I don't have the form that my Window Guy wrote the info down on. My only hope is that this will not be a huge hassle to fix. I'll be going to Tormino's tomorrow to discuss the remedy.

In the meantime, my comedy of household errors goes on.

First Response

I am excited to report that I have received my first comments from other people which means that this is actually being seen by someone other than me.

The first comment was from Dave, the former owner of our house. He said he liked what we had done in the Dining Room. That was a bit of a relief because he was very proud of his Venetian Plaster job that he did in the Dining Room and the Living Room. I admit he did a good job but it was a little too dark for us. Don't worry, Dave. We're not touching the Living Room.

The other comment I got was from Piss-Ant Spammer who wants me to know that I can earn extra money as a Secret Shopper. HEY SPAM FOR BRAINS! EAT SHIT & DIE!!!

The last thing I want is the purity of the Blogging experience sullied by some Dork with a computer but no life. And pal, I don't believe for a minute that you earned $900.00 last month being a Secret Shopper. I don't even think your Welfare Check was that big.

Now that I have tainted todays post with Gutter Language, I would like to present the
Waverly Vocabulary Place.

Todays Word: he-ge-mo-ny (n) hi-'je-m&-nE: preponderant influence, especially of one nation over others.

While the Wife's Away . . .

Okay, before I even get started...where's my drink. I left it downstairs. I'll be right back!










Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! That's better!

Now, let's commence, shall we.

Susan is working tonight. She has to be down at the Arena for some concert. It almost got canceled due to poor ticket sales but they must have had a surge at the end or a radio station gave a bunch away. All I know is that she has to wait on a bunch of ungrateful hip-hoppers for three hours and listen to some Rapper who can't even fill a thousand seats. That pretty much sounds like one version of Hell.

In the meantime, I am going to do some remodeling work. I have some new hardware for the windows but I have to patch some old holes first. Then I have some mudding to do in the stairway, the landing and the bedroom. There are some other little items but I'm burning daylight and I have to get going.

I'm not going to sit here and Blog all night.

I'm Digital!

FINALLY! After over a month of being digitally camera-less, I am back in the Twenty-First Century. It's not the camera I had, but it will do. I can say a lot more with a picture than I can with a Thesaurus.

Well, it has been a week now since we have done any work on the house. In our defense, we had a busy week. We were visited by Susan's cousin, Louise. She arrived just in time for us to put her to work for the big Surprise Party we had.

Then we spent the weekend showing her around town. Then we took her to the fair on Sunday and stuffed our faces with high calorie, high fat, high flavor Fair Food. It just doesn't seem like Fall until I've had my Elephant Ear.

The Wimp Report

At the first sign of a chilly day, we caved!

If you guessed Thursday, September 14th at 6:07 P.M., you are the big winner of our Contest. That's when I lit the pilot light to the boiler. It came right on and heated beautifully. The house is a toasty warm haven suitable for wimpy, thin skinned wimpy wimps.

We had a successful surprise Retirement Party for Susan's friend Sharron last night. She was totally stunned and caught completely off guard. I should have gotten a picture of her reaction when she walked into the kitchen, but of course, I don't have a camera. (See September Se7enth posting)


The other big event of the evening was the official unveiling of the Stained Glass Window. Everyone was very impressed with Susan and her newly acquired Stained Glassing skills.

There were several people at the party that were friends of Sharron's that we had never met, so we had a great time taking them through the house and showing off all our work. It was a good feeling to have so many people be impressed by what we're doing.

I'm quite certain they left after the party and said, "Boy, I'm glad that's not us! What a lot of work they have to do!!"

"Yes they do. But did you see that Stained Glass?!

Disjointed Thoughts of a Fuzzy Mind

darkness. . . . .what's that beeping. . . . .in my chamber, sleeping. . . . .rhyming. . . . .is it morning?! beeping. . .warning. . . .no more poeming...Crap! just went to bed. . . . . . . . . . . .it's getting louder. . . . . . . . . . . .maybe it's a truck backing up. . . . or my bladder backing up. . . . . .it'll be cold if i get up. . . . .don't get up. . .ignore the beeping. . .i bought a new wallet. . . . . . . . .. .'bout time. . . . . .what time is it? . . . .i just went to bed. . .i better get up or i'll wet the bed. . . . .why did i stay up so late. . . . .oh yeah, cleaning. . .mopping. . .sterilizing. . .the damn stained glass window wouldn't go in right. . .the beeping is getting louder. . . . .i sure like my new wallet. . .lots of hidden compartments. . .spiffy new leather. . .leather and whips. . .whip cream. . . . .cream in my coffee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C O F F E E E E E E E E E E E. . . . . . .will somebody answer the door. . . . .that damn truck is sure backing a loooooong waaaaaay. . . . .and it's getting closer. . .getting closure. . .why did billy johnson always take my lunch. . . . .i need analysis. . .or maybe just the pharms. . .life on the farm. . .kind of laid back. . .back. . . . .back. . . .TURN OFF THE EFFING ALARM!

ah. . . . .that's better

this is good stuff. . . . . .i should put this in the blog

seemed like a good idea at the time

Stained Glass & Heat Update

This should be very exciting today. We will be installing the Stained Glass Window. The picture to the right is of the inside of our Walk-In Closet. It used to be a Screened Porch and the other side of that window looks out on the top of the stairway. That is where the Stained Glass will go. I have purchased a piece of frosted Plexiglass that will go behind the window and then there will be a light to help illuminate the stained glass.

I find it amazing that in all the hundreds of pictures I have taken of the house, I can't find a good one to show the other side of this window. The best I have is the picture on the left, which was taken way back in March. That's Susan painting the closet.

The install will take place tonight. Susan is going to be a nervous wreck until it is safely in place. She is well aware of the many panes of glass I have cracked while fixing windows. If I do something to damage this, the marriage is over. Oh Hell...forget the marriage.....I'll be dead!

We made it another day without heat but the forecast for the next few days is not in our favor. I'm counting on built up inertial heat to carry us over into October.

Later that Day: It is just after 11:00 PM and the Stained Glass Window is installed. It did not go as planned. What a surprise!

You know, you would think that when you remove a window frame from a window hole that has held said window frame for over ninty years, the afore-mentioned window frame, upon returning to said window hole, would have the courtesy to, you know, FIT!

But Nnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I screwed the frame into the exact same hinges and it would not close. I had to plane the top of the frame. Then I had to do some creative carving. Then...gingerly, because the frame contains a stained glass window that could end my life if broken...I smashed it into place with a rubber mallet.

Viola! It fits!! Don't ask me to remove it though...EVER!

Susan is pleased and I am glad that it didn't break.

S.M.C.M.

We are hosting a Retirement Party for one of Susan's friends on Friday. That has put Susan into Serious Manic Cleaning Mode. Therefore, we are not getting much done with anything to do with Home Improvement...unless you consider Serious Manic Cleaning Mode as a Home Improvement. I believe Susan does. In fact, I think most women do.

It is nice to see the Landing getting cleaned up a bit. It has been a Bombed Out Construction Zone for so long, it is refreshing to see it tidy. Tonight, we scraped away the plaster that we have been slopping on the floor and the stairs and the walls and the cats and each other for the last few weeks. I can look at the newly scrubbed area and see a light at the end of our long tunnel.

So anyway, we won't be doing much on the house until after this party. I still have two and a half more days of S.M.C.M. to deal with.

This is when I am thankful that it's a big house. . .with lots of places to hide.

The Heat Game

The countdown is on to see how long we can go before we have to turn on the heat. As you might imagine, it takes a princely sum to heat this place in the winter. I have estimated our annual cost at somewhere equal to the G.N.P. of Bangladesh.

We have a gas fired boiler that was installed when the house was built. I assume that it originally burned coal, then was switched over to oil at some point and then eventually transformed to the wonderfully efficient and massively costly Natural Gas.

The system really does a nice job of heating the house but our bill in January is triple what it is in July.

So, as soon as we can stand it, the gas gets turned off for the Summer and we enjoy several months of trying to get caught up on our Hu-Normous past due amount. We could be even by the time next months' statement arrives...but I doubt we can keep the heat off that long.

This morning was the first morning that it was chilly when I stepped out of the shower. That's the worst part of the morning when it's cold.

I'm hoping we can make it to the Equinox, which is only a little more than a week away.

Send your best guess as to when we fire up the boiler, along with a check or money order for $7.26 to "Guess When We Fire Up the Boiler Contest". Closest guess wins a Gift Certificate to Starbucks valued at well over three dollars.

Stained Glass Finale

Last year, Susan took a course through the Spokane Parks & Recreation Department on Stained Glass. I am proud to announce that, as of today, she has completed here very first, totally independant Stained Glass project that will be used in the house.

The picture above (taken on May 25th) is an early version of the piece. Susan has a little bit of fine tuning to do and then we will put it in place, but she finished all the major work yesterday. Pictured below is the finished project prior to being installed into the frame and then, the window.

We are doing final touch up work on the Landing today. That work includes sanding and perhaps a bit of mudding. Then we need to clean the area up of all the superfluous tools and crap that have accumulated during the many long months of mudding and sanding and primping and sanding and touch up and sanding, not to mention the constant S A N D I N G ! ! !

A Finished Project

Here is a before and after picture of the one project we have completely finished. This shows the built-in Buffet in the Dining Room. Yup, almost two years in the house, and we really only have a finished Dining Room to hang our hat on.

Oh we have lots of other things we have been doing. There is the re-wiring project that is still on-going, the Living Room that only needs a little bit of work to be completed and of course, there is the daily grind of going to work to our various different jobs in order to pay for all this.

Bastard MoFo's

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING ENTRY CONTAINS INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE THAT IS TOTALLY APPROPRIATE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SUBJECT MATTER! DISCRETION IS ADVISED EVEN THOUGH WE DIDN'T USE ANY.

I would like to deviate from the main subject of this Blog to comment on Thieving Bastard MoFo's.

I really want to keep this accurately updated with current pictures of what we are doing. As I said in the last post, pictures are much more descriptive than anything I can write here.

I have been stymied in my effort to post current pictures by the night time activites of some tweeking parasitic Meth Head who stole my digital Camera.

Now I must admit that I am nearly as culpable for the loss of my camera as the turdish, nocturnal Trumpet-Fuck that took it. I left it in the car, over night, unlocked. I might as well put up a sign for every low-life piss-ant maggot who walks down the alley that there is another day of huffing in your future located right here in this car.

What really raises my hackles is the violation of my stuff by some Piece of Crap, Waste of Skin Shitball who won't even appreciate his plunder as quality stuff, worthy of keeping and using for his feckless self. He's going to turn it into $20.00 for his next fix and then move on to the next poor bastard who forgot to lock his car.

Okay, I've vented! I feel a little better...but not as good as I would feel if I caught one these Spaced Out little Drug-Monkeys with his hand in the cookie jar.

Ah, to dream. Perchance to plug the Bastard MoFo's sphincter with my 38.

The Landing

This is our current project. It is over a year in the making. What you see here is a picture of the landing at the top of the stairs on the second floor. The top picture shows the wall that was there originally. Upon tearing it down, we discovered that there had previously been a door into that front room. You can see the frame of the door in the second picture.

The third picture shows the completion of our Balcony with the door that leads to it, along with our spacious new landing.

These pictures are from August 2005. Since that time, we have dry walled the whole area, including the ceiling.

We are now doing all the finishing work on the walls and preparing to get a coat or two of primer paint up.

That more or less gets us caught up to where we are today. I'll try to get more pictures up cuz they are worth more than my flowery prose.

Summer is Over

The Labor Day Weekend has come and gone. Susan and I had a great three day weekend. We accomplished a lot on the house and we got to enjoy some of the festivities going on around Spokane.

We did not get to paint as we had hoped. We finished up the plastering that we had to do. Susan has one more coat of topping to do on the areas she was working on.

I was working on a couple of trouble spots that keep developing cracks. I had to tear out a big section of plaster, right down to the lath. Then I placed a piece of drywall into the space and covered it with plaster. I used hot mud for this part of the project. I had never used it before and I wanted to have some experience with it. It dried in 20 minutes. It was really fast

It's hard to sand afterwards but I didn't really need to do much sanding as this was just a filler coat to fill the hole with the drywall in it..

I have to do another coat with all purpose plaster and then I can begin my topping coats to finish it off. Then we should be ready for painting...perhaps next Sunday!

For the Entertainment portion of the Holiday weekend, we went down to Riverfront Park on Sunday to enjoy some food and music at Pig Out in the Park. The featured band was the Grass Roots. The sound was terrible. It was not near loud enough. And waaaay too many people were talking waaaay too loud. But, I got to hear "Midnight Confessions" so I'm happy.

Last night, we went to Comstock Park for the Annual Labor Day Concert by the Spokane Symphony. We always pack a picnic dinner and take lots o'wine. It was a beautiful, warm night. The music was fabulous. It was a great way to unofficially end Summer

Taking a Break

Susan and I took a break from working on the house last weekend and went camping. We made it a looooong weekend, leaving on Friday and staying away from work until Tuesday. The pleasantly unexpected result was that we get three 4 day work weeks in a row. (I would explain the reasoning behind that statement, but who really cares?!)

Our camping trip took us to Upper Priest Lake in Idaho. We had to boat our way in to our campsite as there are no roads to Upper Priest. That also meant that we had a very rustic campsite...no bathrooms. We had a great and restful time, consuming copious quantities of food and drink, but determined that we are now too old for that much rusticity in our camping experience. It's just too much work.

The highlight of camping was getting to watch a Fire Department Helicopter dip a large bucket into the lake and then dump the water on a fire burning on the ridge above the lake. The fire was quite a sight to watch at night. We had to decide between competing natural marvels. Watching the fire or looking at all the stars. Did I mention that we drank a lot too?!

We came home a day early which left us Monday to work on the house. The project we are working on now is the Second Floor Landing and Master Bedroom.

We have drywalled over the old plaster walls and ceilings. We have attempted to skim coat the stairway wall going up the stairs. I have run into a little problem with the wall because of cracks in my plastering.

Our present objective is to get all our mudding and sanding complete by this weekend (Labor Day) so we can get up a coat of Primer on all the walls and ceiling.

I don't think we are going to make it. We still have a great deal of finish work to do on the walls. Here is my first important mentoring advice for beginning do it yourselfers.

Quit NOW Dumb Ass!

No, that's not it. It is important to do all this prep work properly so that when we do get to the painting, it will all go smoothly. We don't want to have to go back and re-sand some area that we missed. If you have to go back and re-sand, refer to the paragraph above.