Memorial Weekend Day Three

Because one of us, whose name is Susan, likes to sleep in when the opportunity presents itself, we did not get started on the stairs until about 10:00. Again we made progress but it doesn't seem apparent when you look at the stairs. Because we had a Memorial Day Barbecue to attend, we only had about five hours to work and we made the best of them. We really only have about seven or eight steps to go and then the newel post at the bottom. Then we can begin varnishing which we anticipate will take at least three coats. Once that is done, we have the arduous and tedious task of painting the balusters. I think we are still two weeks away from calling this a done deal. And that is an optimistic two weeks at best.

The barbecue we attended was at the home of my Mom's friend, John. John has been mentioned here before. He helped us cut the hardwood when we began the Entryway tile project and he helped me to router the pieces of trim that I just placed in the newel post.

John lives in a wonderful house he built some 40 years ago overlooking the Spokane River and Riverside State Park. In keeping with Memorial Day tradition, it rained like a burst sewer line all day. John did a fabulous job on the barbecued ribs. They were as tasty as any I have ever had. During dinner we got to enjoy a cloud burst that lasted a good five minutes. The picture below is a view from John's backyard about half an hour after the storm.
Also in keeping with Memorial Day tradition, the sun came out tonight just in time to set.

Memorial Weekend Project Day Two

It is now clear to us that our ambitious plans to complete the stairs over this three day weekend are not going to happen. We have not even completed the staining after two days and we are a long way off. We should have had a lot more prep work done in order to complete this in three days.

However, just because we aren't going to finish according to our plan doesn't mean we will not forge ahead. Frankly, I can't think of any project we have done that we finished as planned.

I'm not going to inundate this entry with pictures like I did yesterday. I'm just going to show off a couple of the quasi-impressive bits of progress we made.

Susan held the paint/staining brush all day. She completed this little shelf that is on the middle landing of the stairs.She also got a good start on the railing and the newel posts on the upstairs end of the stairs. I guess one might call that the landing if one where so inclined. Below shows the right side newel post with a fresh coat of stain while the left side newel post needed some attention from me in the trim replacement department.While Susan held the stain brush, I held the chop saw and brad nailer to inlay the trim around the Main Floor Newel Post. This picture makes it look much better than it actually is. Thank God for wood putty and lots of it. I mentioned earlier that I had to replace some trim. The posts upstairs had some missing pieces and this one showed below on the mid-landing had been devastated over the years by railing reconstruction and then more reconstruction, ending finally with our re-purposing that started three years ago.

I am pretty happy with my work here and I think that once it is stained, it will hide a lot of the little imperfections that glare at me. I think it is like any project anyone does. They see the problems that others do not.

Tomorrow we will continue with staining and wood puttying and assorted other unforeseen things that will pop up along the way. It will be a short day for us as we have a Barbecue to attend in the afternoon. Our progress tomorrow will govern our evenings fro the rest of the week. It's a good thing that all our TV shows have finished for the season. It's time to get to work on the damn house!

And So It Begins

Pictured below is our nemesis. This is the thing that will occupy our weekend. There will be no camping for us. There will be work and pain and misery. And we will revel in it because that is our lot in life. One of the difficult parts of any project we undertake is the cat problem. We have had painted cat paws decorate our floors. We have had cat paws in wet grout. We have cat hair floating about at all times...that's a given. But Susan devised this clever barricade that we believe will work for us. That of course remains to be seen as the night goes on.
Susan has started us out on our first day pretty strong. She completed the first leg of our journey and got from the top to the middle landing.

Below is a picture from this morning and from after Susan finished for the day. She did all this today while I was working my second job at the bar. Now it is my turn to accomplish something while she works one of her second jobs...or is it her third.

The before and after is nice and this overhead of the middle landing shows the progress she made.....and how far we have to go.

Now let me take a moment to talk about what a tunnel visioned bonehead I can be. I was thinking I was going to have to put a ladder up to the balcony so I could get to my clothes and then we would sleep on an air mattress in the living room while we allow the stained stairs to dry.

Susan looked at me with the incredulous eyes of a mother watching her stupidest child. "Ya know," she started. "We do have a back stairway!"

Oh yeah!

We never use it and plan to build it out of existence but in the meantime, this is a pretty good argument for keeping it. The problem is that we have rendered it useless due to the transition of the screened porch off the bedroom into a closet. There is very limited head room in the back stairway right now.

But it is good news that we can still sleep comfortably at night.

I will show off my handy work with the things I accomplished in tomorrow's entry.

In the meantime, I totally forgot to mention the cool thing I found on line. There is a website that will take your blog and turn it into a book. I have wanted a hard copy of this for a long time. Every once in a while I will start printing off a bunch of entries. But I came upon this cool feature and turned the first four years of this blog into one volume.

I surprised Susan with it on Mother's Day and she thought it was pretty cool.

Hereafter I will make a new volume each year and the intention is to leave it with the house so future owners (providing I don't blow this place to smithereens) will have a pretty good record of what we did during our tenure with this house.

By the way, I was looking through it last night and discovered we started the stairs in May of 2007. So we are three years into this particular renovation.

A New Record, A New Goal

While driving into work this morning, I heard on the radio that we set a new record for rainfall within a 24 hour period yesterday. Point nine four inches. That beats the previous record of point eight five inches. It rained a lot yesterday but it had not seemed to be anything unusual or heavier than I had experienced before. At any rate, it does not exactly bode well for the coming Memorial Day Holiday weekend.

We have set ourselves a goal for the coming Memorial Day Holiday weekend. We are going to complete the task of staining and painting the stairs. This is a project that has gone unfinished for too long.

I have tried looking back through the archives of this Blog to determine how long ago it was that we replaced the balusters on the stairs. I haven't been able to find any entry that tells when we started. That is quite frustrating to me because the whole reason I started this blog was to track the projects we do on the house. Now I'm looking for a specific event and it is not to be found.

I think we did the balusters in 2007 and I did find some pictures back then that showed the old balusters still in the stairway. One would think that I would have documented the baluster replacement as it was a rather significant event. We had the railing off for a few days and we spent a crap load of cash on the new baluster's.

I will look through my old receipts to see if that yields any clues. I'm not hopeful because we are talking about dealing with my record keeping.

At any rate, we are documenting it now and it will be documentation intensive for the next three days of the Memorial Day Holiday weekend.

Stay Tuned!

Sign of Improvement

I have been checking out the Corbin Park sign every morning to see if it has been graffitiated. So far, it's a clean slate. I drove past it last night on my way home to discover it was a cleaner slate.

Here is a picture of the sign after we finished removing the old decal.And here it is after the paint job.Mac had a painter friend of his stop by and hose the whole thing down with some nice fresh green paint.

Now we have to get the main part of the sign removed because we are going to cut a vandal proof Plexiglas cover and then apply the pretty new decal. Here is the decal laid out at work trying to get flatter.

On an entirely different note, I had to go up to Sandpoint on Monday to finish a decal install. I had forgotten to include one little part of a decal when we shipped it up with the installer. So I drove up with another guy from work. It took about a bit more than an hour to drive up, about half an hour to apply the decal, and then we decided to goof around town before making the return drive to work.

It was a beautiful day so we drove down to the City Beach where we came upon the Statue of Liberty. It serves as a Navigation Light on one end of the beach.

I kind of like my styling shot with the sun right behind the flame/navigation light.

We got back to town just in time to go to lunch.

Chainlink Firestump

I have reported in the past on a tree at the back of our property that was allowed to grow next to and into a chainlink fence. The stump had actually grown around the fencing and after I cut the tree away, the stump remained embedded in the lingering trunk of the tree.

In an attempt to remove it, I have drilled through it, sawed through it, and chiseled it to pieces. And yet, it still clings to the chainlink.

So it finally occurred to me (when my inner pyromaniac was allowed to speak) to set it ablaze.

I would like to state at this point that I had my hose at the ready as well as a shovel. This fire is in close proximity to my neighbors garage...but not so close that having a fire there would place the garage in imminent danger. (He regretfully said to the jury)

I got out my lighter fluid and gave it a good soaking and threw a match at it. The problem with this approach was I had to keep adding lighter fluid. Then I had the idea (again from my inner pyro) to build a small fire below the stump and let it burn the stump away.

I got the most flammable material known to man, pieces of lath from inside my former walls. This stuff will light if you hold it and just think about fire. I broke several slats into smaller pieces and added a little lighter fluid to coax it.

The pieces of lath didn't really require the coaxing but it didn't hurt either. I soon had a lovely little fire going right next to my neighbors garage. Shhhhhhhhh! Don't tell them!

After about half an hour, I was able to bust away agood portion of the stump. Unfortunately, I cut a couple parts of the chainlink when I hit it with the shovel. It was hot and soft and probably cut pretty easily.

After the fire was out, I was able to twist the last remaining piece off the stand of wire that it had grown around.

By the way, my mowing was successful and I harvest about 15 bushels of grass.

Neighborhood Clean Up Day

Spokane has 27 Neighborhood Associations throughout the city. We live in the Emerson Garfield Neighborhood. I was chairman of Emerson-Garfield last year. My reign ended last month. Now I am the secretary and the only reason fer that is eyam the goodest speller we gots. Not gud with gramer, but speeling eye can doo.

One of the things the Neighborhood Council does is distribute Free Dump Passes to the residents. We are given a budget from the city. In the past, the dump passes are worth about $25.00. So, if I take my free pass into the Waste to Energy Plant and dump my crap load of stuff and the bill comes to $10.00, they take my pass and subtract $10.00 from the Emerson-Gafield budget. The remaining $15.00 stays in our budget to be used later.

A lot of the time, we have money left over that just rolls back to the city if we don't use it.

The guy who took over the dump pass committee is Karl. He decided he wanted to change over to a Neighborhood Clean Up Day where the city would bring large dumpsters to a central location and residents of the neighborhood could bring their crap loads of stuff there.

Yesterday was that day. And a very successful dump day it was. Below are a couple of pictures of the line o'folks waiting to dump.

All in all, we were very pleased with the turn out. We filled nine of those dumpsters. I think they hold 30 square yards of waste.

It went from nine to one. I got there early with my first load because I was going to help work the site, directing traffic and helping to unload. But I had also volunteered to haul garbage for people who didn't have a way to transport it.

Susan and I ended up picking up some stuff from a very nice older lady who lived outside the border of our neighborhood. I didn't realize it until I looked a the map this morning. Anyway, no biggy.

The interesting thing was that at first, I went to the wrong address and was driving down this very bumpy alley. I could have spent the whole day collecting crap from the backyards of houses in that alley. There was one place I really should have gotten a picture of...but the person living there was peering out a window as we drove by and they probably would have shot us.

I ended up taking two loads of stuff just from our yard. The first load involved the tree that fell a couple weeks ago. My goal was to get all the debris in one load which ended up making it comically high.

I didn't worry about securing it because the dump location was only three blocks away. I think I could have gone higher but I ran out of debris...& that's okay!

I have to go out now and mow since the mower has been at the tune up shop for two weeks. I'm going to be stopping often to dump grass because it is so tall. After that, I am going to attempt to re-organize the garage. Actually, that makes it sound like it was at one time organized, and that is not the case.

Hops Report for May

The May Hops report is brought to you by Beer. Beer! It's good! And so good for you. Try one (or two) today!

The sterling hops plant is really chugging along. When it gets a good dose of morning watering, there is major growth seen at the end of the day. This mornings measurement is 116 inches. It is lush and leafy on the bottom portion and there is only one vine that has reached the 116" mark with about three of four other vines 12" below. The Hallertau is at 105 inches. It is in a similar state and the progress looks encouraging.
Once again, this report was sponsored by Beer. Get some!

In other neighborhood news, the Corbin Park sign has not yet been vandalized. More reports of no crime are expected to end soon.

Weekend-A-Rama

Another semi-effective weekend has come and gone.


Susan got some sizing on the walls she wants to wallpaper in the entryway. She needs to get measurements in order to know how much wall paper she will need. I don't think she has even pick a pattern yet.


I got some yard work done although the grass is really needing a trim. No word yet on when the mower will be ready.


We bottled wine last night and got a solid 29 bottles out of the batch. That's a good harvest in my book. This wine will be our Solstice Red that we serve in just over a month at the annual Summer Solstice Extravaganza-rama. Save the date of June 19th. I know I will. That reminds me, I better get some beer brewing.

Getting Egdy

It has been an eventful couple of days here on Corbin Park. I borrowed an Edger because I don't have one of my own. I mean, come on! If I had one of my own, I wouldn't need to borrow one and my sidewalks need a trim...a buzz cut in fact. It seems odd to me that the places where my lawn grows the best is over the sidewalks.

After working with the Edger and getting to know the nuances of operating it, my legs were spattered with scars, cuts and bruises from Edger shrapnel. Then there was the clean up. I set about the task of tossing several long thin lines of grass into the wheel barrow. Susan came out to help after her run and then my friend Mark, from whom I borrowed the Edger, stopped by. As we were working, this guy pulled up in a big ol' Dodge pickup. He walked over to me and asked if we had any plans for the arborvitae. I said we really didn't have any plans other than to have them and keep them. He said he would trim them for $50.00. The last time I had them trimmed it cost $700.00...so I was obviously interested.

By this time it was approaching 6:30 or 7:00 but he said what he didn't finish today he would come back for tomorrow. As we talked more, we added more work for him until the price was up to $100.00. Still a bargain! Then my neighbors saw him working and we added the arborvitae going down their driveway for another $25.00.

He even allowed me to dump all the crap I was accumulating into the back of his truck. He had to move a pile of stuff out of the back which led me to believe that he was living out of his truck.
In the end, I paid him $75.00 and told him there was $50.00 more when he returned on Saturday.

It is now 5:00 on Saturday and I haven't seen him. I did get his phone number so I'll call tomorrow and find out wazzup.

I took the day off from my Bartending gig to do some community minded work in the park.This is the sign at what we, the residents consider the entrance to Corbin Park. It is located in the middle of the park at the end of Washington Street. The picture above was taken a while ago but I think it is good enough to click on and enlarge and read. It describes the origin of the park when it was a horse racing track and fair grounds.

You can see that it is rather badly beaten up.

When the area became an Historic District, the home owners association built and installed the sign. When the decal was printed, they made five or six. This one is number two and it was applied over number one so it was really a number two kind of job removing it.I had arranged to do this with Mac, a guy who lives down the street and is largely responsible for the Historic District becoming reality.We used a vinyl buffing pad to remove the decal. It's a wheel you put on your drill and then you spend two hours running over the whole sign area until you are really really tired and grimy and have a sun burned neck. (I always burn early in the season because I forget about sunscreen)Anyway, we finally got it cleaned off. We still have to repaint the sign and we are looking for some sort of way to make this one a little more vandal proof. I think we are going to lay a plexiglass laminate over it.

We do have a lottery going to see how long it takes before this sign is hit with graffiti. I said three days. Mac says by the end of the weekend. Ted, our third neighbor to help on this project and whose ass is shown above had no opinion.

Finally, I would like to give a hops update. This one is half way up the post and about 8 feet tall from the ground. They are really growing this year.

One last thing, mark May 15th as the day I shut down the furnace.

Capt. Dumbass

I was out in the front yard last evening tending to some minor branch clean up and watering the lawn. I nice shiny new Mustang was rolling toward me and as it got closer, it looked like the driver was slowing down to ask me for directions.


He was a guy about my age and he said that he planted all our Arbor Vitaes about 30 years ago. He said his friend lived in the house and hi father was Jim Banks. We talked for a few minutes and it was evident he had some knowledge of the house. He had since lost track of his friend and he now lived in Tacoma.


As he drove off, it suddenly occurred to me that I should have gotten more info from this guy and probably should have invited him in to see what he remembered about the house.


DUMBASS!

I have already been chastised by Susan and I am beating myself up pretty good as well.

Historic Home Tour

Every Mother's Day, the Spokane Preservation Society has a tour of homes. They get about four older historic homes that have been renovated or kept up well and offer tours.

Susan and I went on the tour today. There were four homes on the South Hill in reasonable proximity to each other. We were not allowed to take pictures so I offer them to you here.






The best house on the tour was the first one we went to and it happens to be for sale. It is nearly 100 years old and in that time has belonged to only two families. That is pretty amazing! They are asking 1.2 million dollars for this house. Frankly, I don't see it. It is a wonderful home in a very prestegious area of town...Rockwood Blvd. But Rockwood is a fairly busy street and for 1.2 mill, I could build a pretty nice house damn near anywhere in Spokane.

We returned home and Susan did a little work on the entry way while I mowed the lawn. Tomorrow, the mower goes in for a tune up, which it badly needs.

Then, we set about the task of cleaning the house. It is so bad that even I notice it. Susan worked on the kitchen and I took on the Dining Room and Living Room. I have to figur out something to do to the carpets in those rooms. The damn cats are destroying them. I'm going to lay down ome spray that is supposed to deter them from going on the carpet. The problem is that you have to keep applying it and the cats always wear me down.

I should mentin that there were no Mothers Day activities for us as my mother had the good sense to leave the country. She is in Mexico for a week or so. We will try to catch up with her and have her over in a couple of weeks but it's possible everything will get a way from us and we'll have her over next Mother's Day.

The Wind Storm of May 2010

The local forecast called for a blustery day with rain and wind and death. The forecast pretty much calls for death all week.

The day seemed to live up to the forecast. It was very windy and extremely rainy and I think a motorcyclist died due to high speed and wind blowing him into a guard rail. I was concerned because we had a mildly windy day a few weeks back and a section of shingles on the roof tried to blow away. I got them tacked down in my semi-slip shod manner and therefore, you can understand my concern.

I was quite pleased to drive up to the house and see that the roof was in tact. I moseyed out of the car and sauntered up to the back door. Something to my right caught my eye. I looked and saw this.As you can see it is a massive trunkal portion of the tree. It brought down a crap load of branches and major trunkal portions of wood like material. It came from the empty space in the picture below.There are any number of ways this chunk o'wood could have fallen that would have caused devastation and major power outages...to us. It turns out that our God fearing ways are paying off in weird and mysterious ways because it fell in the direction that caused the least amount of damage. It brought down the power line that feeds the Carriage House. No big deal! We can live without power in the Carriage House for now. It brought down our Cable TV line. Again, no big deal as we have Satellite. A huge branch end up leaning against our large kitchen window. No broken glass. There is some slight damage to a rain gutter and the chain link fence that Susan hates.

Here are some other pictures.

I stepped out of the house around 5:45 to begin my cleanup and my neighbor Ted came around from the alley. He said he saw it happen. He was in his driveway about 4:00 and he heard this big crack. He looked over just in time to see the whole thing attack my chain link fence which Susan hates.

Ted brought over a set of Industrial Strength Clippers and together with my semi slip shod set of small business clippers AND my electric chain saw, we started tearing into the mess.

Susan showed up shortly and joined in the fun.

By 7:15, it looked like this.

I just love being a home owner.

Another Weekend of Nuthin!

We did no work on the house this weekend as we were busy with Bloomsday stuff. Bloomsday is now over and we are glad. We are also quite sore. I'm much better than I was yesterday but all my immense and intensive training (which was virtually nothing) didn't seem to keep me from being sore. You can read about my Bloomsday adventures, complete with pictures at http://www.porkymccorpulent.blogspot.com/


We got home after the event, got in the hottub and then commenced to napping.


Even with our lack luster housing work weekend, we were pretty industrious over the week and got some stuff done.


Susan is still working on the door and I got the new wooden door stained. She has to finish up here front door project and then I am told there will be a concentrated period of house cleaning. The house is pretty messy right now and I know it drives Susan crazy. I'm not terribly neat and am capable of living happily in a great deal of squalor but even I recognize that the house is a pit.


A good deal of the mess is dust from sanding and it is everywhere. I don't think there is a single room that doesn't have a significant coating. Susan wants every surface cleaned and sterilized.


It's much easier to make the mess than clean the mess.