Construction Material

When working on a project, no matter what it is, I have found that the most important accessory you can carry with you is a good cold beer. Being a home brewer, I prefer whatever it is I have in the keg. Today, it is SJB2 Honey&Spice Beer. It is one of my favorite recipes and is one of the beers on which I regularly get good reviews from friends.

I am writing about it now because, after many weeks, I finally have this beer pressurized to the right amount. It has been waaaay too foamy and it requires several days of fidgeting with the pressure to get the balance correct. One must also sample the results of the fidgeting and then fidget some more to make the required adjustamencations.

Anyway, the result is this nearly perfect pour which I offer in photographic evidence. Now all I need is a project to work on. Fortunately, there are plenty of those.

Finish Work 01

Now that we are getting down to the Finishing Work of our project, we spent a few days trying to decide how exactly to proceed. We are down to painting the walls, wallpapering the bedroon ceiling and sanding the floor. After that, it's trim work, touch up and we're done.

We didn't know whether we should sand the floors first or paint first. If we sand first, then we don't get all that sanding dust covering the newly painted walls. If we paint first, then we can be sloppy about the painting, letting stuff drip and drizzle where it may, and then wipe down the walls with a vaccuum and tack clothe after the sanding.

We chose the latter and I think it was the right choice.

We began painting the bedroom yesterday and it looks great! I'm going to get the second coat up tonight and in the next couple of days while Susan works on some of the wood trim around the doors.

In the meantime, I have posted some pictures that show a progression of one of the bedroom corners.

We've come a loooooong way, Baby!

Spindles, Ballusters, & Rails

What a difference a Spindle makes. I'm not going to say much and let the pictures do the talking.

I guess I should point out that I combined three pictures into a low resolution file that pretty mush looks like crap. Let me see if I can add one good looking high rez photo.

Ah, that's better. Now I have to get back to work!

Staircase Update

We made some significant progress last night and all we really did was get started. But remember, a journey of a thousand staircases begins with but a single stair.

We got the main post into place at the bottom of the stairs. Then, we more or less got the rail into place. We are using the old rail because it is a nice wide, substantial piece of wood that is no longer available in the same style. Because of all the new regulations and codes, stair rails are much thinner in order to allow a hand to securely wrap around it.

With the rail in place, this allowed us to cut and place one of the new balusters. I think they are going to look great.

Small Update

I haven't written in a while so I thought I had better get something on here just to keep current.

Work on the house is progressing at a snail like pace but we are very close to starting to sand the floors. That's our next big hurdle and I'm hoping it will go semi-smoothly.

I have been playing Racquetball with my friend Rob for a couple of months now. It is our one little workout regimen. Rob has been regularly beating me since we started playing. He is quite a bit better than me and his stamina is far superior to mine. I'm just soooooo out of shape.

Anyway, I finally beat him yesterday. I thought it was important to get it down with a date in a place where I can refer to it often. . .since it's not likely to happen again soon.

I should also add that I recently turned 50. No presents please!

Another Accomplishment

At this rate, the house will be finished 40 years after I'm dead.

This weekend, I worked on the Master Bedroom Closet. I found this modular closet system by a company called ClosetMaid. It's a pretty cool set up and I have half the closet done already. I had to go back to Home Depot three times before I got to where I am, but I am happy with my results thus far.

I have a couple more pieces to add and then it will be done. I'm most pleased by the amount of storage space we have in there. I wasn't sure it was going to be as practical and useful as it seems to be turning out. And all for less than $300.00. Of course, my original plan had it costing about $200.00.

Remodeling Re-Continues Again

It took until the Fourteenth of January but we are finally back to working on the house. Today we did some more priming on the ceiling and walls upstairs and I did some patch work on a nasty hairline crack on the stairway wall. It will be a few more days before the patch is complete. I want to take my time letting the various layers of plaster dry completely before I apply the next layer.

Once the patch is finished and I am satisfied that there are no more little cracks to deal with, we can get the wall primed and ready for painting. This project is dragging on too long. We need to get it done and get on to the next project.

I just did a little blog search and it appears the last time we did any work on the house was back around November 12th. So, if you consider that we only work on the house 10 months out of the year, I think we're doing okay. Susan would disagree.

Happy New Year

It's 2007 and Susan and I rang in the New Year at the Spokane International Airport.

We have just returned from 10 days in beautiful Des Moines, Iowa. Why? Because when you think Christmas, don't you naturally think Des Moines?! Me neither. But that's what we have been doing for the past several years and will keep doing for a few more years to come.

Des Moines is where Susan is from and her Dad, Gordon and Sister, Margaret live there. It has been the only long distance trip we make for the last few years. In the past, we drove. You can get from Spokane to Des Moines in 22 hours and 37 minutes. That's pretty grueling though, driving straight through and changing drivers every 4 hours.

But yesterday's marathon flying session took us all day (Over 13 hours) and we feel about the same amount of fatigue as if we had driven.

Now, to be fair, we only spent a total of six hours in the air. The rest was spent in various airports around the United States, which are lovely facilities to pass through, but who wants to linger there.

We started our day at Des Moines International where we had a civilized departure time of 11:20 AM. We went smoothly through check in and security and the plane left on time.

We knew in advance that we had a three hour layover in Cincinnati. When we arrived, it had turned into a four and half hour layover. This posed a problem for our final connecting flight into Spokaloo. They were able to get us onto a later flight so that seemed to solve that problem.

After many hours of beers and nachos at "Max and Edna's", we made it on board Flight 1541 to Salt Lake City. This was our longest and best part of the trip. We had first class seats, right up in the front row. We were able to recline in spacious comfort, drink copious amounts of alcohol of all kinds and watch a movie, "Scrooged".

When we finally landed in Salt Lake, we had about 40 minutes before our next flight which turned into an hour and a half cuz we don't got no plane.

That earned us a $14.00 food voucher which we spent on "beer and nachos."

When it came time to board, they threw one more monkey into the wrench by informing us that there were possible weather issues in Spokane and we might be landing in Pasco.

Fortunately, the weather cleared and allowed us to land in Spokane and get out of the airport by 11:30. That gave us time to stop by a friends house who was having a New Years party. We were both beat but we wanted to be festive for the New Year. The party must have been moved because when we drove up, Carine's house was dark and there were no cars in the street.

So, we came home and arrived just as everyone within a 200 mile radius found the illegal fireworks they had left over from the Fourth of July. We each enjoyed a shot of Peppermint Schnapps, enjoyed the artillary and went to bed.

May auld acquaintance be forgot...blah blah blah

How to Draw a Holiday Window

After nearly two weeks of painting, we are almost done. As of today, we have two and a half Skywalks left to paint. The half is because I have one skywalk that Susan and Laura have painted snowflakes on but I haven't got any skating figures up yet. I'm going to take care of that tonight.

In the meantime, I thought it would be nice to describe the process of creating beautiful Holiday Window Scenes for fun and profit. Mostly profit!

Start out with a window and some kind of design. When one is painting skywalks, it is not hard to find a window. Suddenly, they are everywhere. You see them in your sleep after a while.

I use tempera paint. That's the water based paint that comes as a powder that you used in Grade School to paint posters and other students. It cleans off very easily with soap and water. But be warned, If your window is exposed to the elements at all, a good rain will really mess up your artwork.

I started this process by free handing my design from a picture, but I found it was much faster to create a large stencil on butcher paper and then trace my figure using a white China Marker...a grease pencil.
This year I found a water based Spray Paint that cleans off as easily as the tempera. I spray the image with paint as evenly as I can and then roller it out to fill in the gaps. Because of the free form style of this particular design, I don't have to worry about staying within the lines. In fact, the over spray adds a nice touch to the design.
Once I've got the whole image filled and it has had time to dry, I come back and hit it with some highlights. It's just a line that I paint down the leading or trailing edge of the image that helps define an arm or leg and makes the image a bit more interesting.
Finally, I outline the image in white. Again, the style of these figures allows me to be inexact with the outline.

Now that I have the system down, I can paint 12 different figures in about three hours. I usually finish before Susan.

So there you have it . . . a complete guide to Holiday Window painting. Don't even think about invading my territory.

A Reason for my Absence from Blogging

I haven't posted anything here in a while because Susan and I have been busy with another project that has kept us out of the house. . .almost completely for over a week.

As a Starving Artist and Cartoonist, I have always looked for new and different ways for me to express myself in Art and make a buck while doing it. I have been painting Holiday Windows for over 20 years now. It's a great way to make some extra money just at a time of year when I can really use it.

Susan and I have had a deal going with a local Real Estate company for the last few years to paint some Christmas characters on office buildings and one of the skywalks downtown.

This year, my name was referred to the office of the Downtown Spokane Partnership, which is a local booster organization that promotes downtown. There is a big Ice Skating Championship coming up in January and they wanted to promote that in a fun way that would also help decorate up the downtown area.

So they asked us to paint a wintery skating theme in ALL THE DOWNTOWN SKYWALKS. For those keeping track, there are 15 skywalks downtown.

We started painting last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and we have been going strong ever since. To date we have completed 11 skywalks. I don't care to divuldge the amount of money we are making in this process other than to say it will be a very Merry Christmas.

The Final Leaf

Did I say 28 bags of leaves. Ha Ha HA! I could have made it to the Dump in one trip if I only had 28 bags. I ended up making two trips. I hauled a total of 47 bags for a grand total of 1800 pounds. The part that really gets me is that after all the rain we've had, I probably paid a tidy sum of cash to haul and dump 700 pounds of water.

But at least that chore is done for the year. Thanks to my friend Jerry for the loan of his Gas Guzzling Chevy Mombo-Cruiser Deluxe.

Now we can move on to other more pressing jobs. Remember the house. We were doing some remodeling on the house. But now that we are entering the Christmas Holiday season, that will take a back seat. . . . . again!

As an artist, one of the good paying side jobs I have been doing for years is painting Holiday Scenes on windows of local businesses and the occassional house. Susan and I have been doing just enough the past couple of years to give us some extra spending money at Christmas.

It appears we are going to have a very Merry Christmas this year because I have just landed the gig of painting in ALL the skywalks downtown. If you've been keeping track of the skywalks, there are 14 of them.

There is a big skating competition coming to town in February and they want to hype it as much as possible. That will be the theme we will be carrying through the whole downtown skywalk system. Did I mention there are 14 of them?!

Yard Maintenance Part Deux

Susan and I have completed the Leaf Pick Up Program for this year. It took most of Sunday and it didn't help that the wind was swirling around us with Gale Force Intensity. You rake a pile of leaves and then before you finish stuffing them in a bag, they are spread out across the lawn again. Now I have to spend another Sunday hauling my 28 bags out to the Compost Pile at the Waste to Energy Incinerator Plant.

Sunday Morning Fun

One of the nice features of living next to a city park is that there is a certain "Entertainment Cache" that one would not ordinarily expect. There is always the crazy antics of the various animals in the neighborhood. The squirrels here are quite active, somewhat friendly, and always very entertaining when the cats are stalking them. The cats think they are being cleaver and stealthy and the squirrels know where they are at all times. I've never seen a cat get even close to a squirrel.

This morning as I let the cats out and grabbed the morning paper, I noticed this guy out in the park. He was in his early twenties. He was unusual because he was wearing nothing but his pants, hanging low enough on his waist to expose his underwear and a bit of butt crack. It has been raining for days and it can't be more than 40 degrees right now, so this is definately an odd sight. He's kind of walking aimlessly through the park and then stops and then walks in a different aimless direction.

Suddenly, a darts over toward the edge of the park where he sees a shoe. He puts it on and stomps into the intersection where another shoe sits. Further up the street he sees a clump of something that I assume is a shirt. At that point he is out of my view. I didn't really feel like walking off the porch in my bathrobe and slippers to further investigate. Then I would be the odd sight.

I can only surmise that this guy has been dumped in the park by his friends after a night of extreme alcoholic consumption and then, being the good friends that they are, strip him of most of his clothes. Ah, to be twenty and stupid again.

I'm not feeling terribly bright this morning myself. I went to a hockey game last night and then to the re-opening of a local bar that closed 15 months ago due to a fire in the building it was located in. We had a few beers and I'm feeling them now.

By the way, Susan did some priming yesterday. We're ready for a second coat.

The Efficacy of Power Tools

The weather dried out enough on Sunday for Susan and I to get out into the yard for some much needed Grounds Tending. We decided to leave the leaves until Halloween was over in order to create the proper "Autumn Atmosphere". Unfortunately, it rained like Noah all week long and left us with lots and lots and LOTS of wet, decaying leaves.

I had been looking forward to this Fall and the Leaf Eradication Procedure because earlier this year, I had obtained a Power Leaf Vaccuum. I have had only a couple of opportunities to use it and it seemed to work pretty well.

Well, I can tell you that it is totally useless if the leaves are plentiful and wet. We had both those things going for us. I tried using my lawn mower as well but once again, if the leaves are plentiful and WET, it too is useless.

It all came down to manual labor, which Susan was doing all through my attempts to use power tools.

The front yard is complete and we have many bags of leaves. I would estimate that we must have about 120 bushels. That's pretty good for a .24 acre parcel of land. Heck, in Canada, that would be over 700 hectars of maple leafs. (Is it leafs or leaves?) Now we have to wait for the leaves to fall in the back and side yards. Then we will do it all again.

I'm trying to remember why we moved here.

Post Halloween Depression

I would like to say that we've been working on the house but that would be a lie. We have just been winding down from Halloween. Today was Garbage Day and I was able to get about five or six of our 27 pumpkins into the garbage can before it was overflowing. Sunday is our one day off together so we will be doing the bulk of our Halloween Clean-up and Decoration Stowage at that time. I also have a crap load of wet leaves to rake up. "Sunday is going to be fun", he said with his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Well, at least Halloween is out of the way for another year and now we can concentrate on the house...and Thanksgiving....and Christmas....followed by New Years, Valentine's Day, Ground Hog Day and St Swithins Day. Perhaps I should consider becoming a Druid. Do they have holidays to contend with?!

Halloween Statistics

The early returns are in and all the numbers indicate that it was another big year of Trick or Treating around the park. The only way I can keep track is by how much candy we start with and how much is left at the end of the night. I ended up with none. The first kids started showing up just after 5:00 and we were turning people away by 7:45 P.M. That means we had gone through over 700 pieces of candy in less than three hours. It seems hard to believe but the traffic was pretty thick all night long.

Officially Historic

I thought it was time that I got an official picture posted of our Official Historic Marker which officially proclaims to the world (or at least the people walking by) that this house is on the Official Register of Historic Places. You know, I think that George Washington once slept here. I can tell you for sure and quite officially that I have slept here.

All of the houses around the park are on the Register and most of the houses have this same plaque posted somewhere near the front door. We haven't had one and just recently purchased it as a Wedding Anniversary present to ourselves.

Stairway Update

Let's talk about what little work IS occurring here at the Ranch. We have been working on the stairway. We are kind of stuck on exactly how to proceed. At some point in the past, the bannister was changed to raise the handrail. In doing so, we have two different spindle designs holding up the bannister railing. I would like this to be uniform but we have had very little luck finding spindles that match the ones we have and like. That leads us to the possibility of having them made. I will not go into all the details, but I think we have found a guy with a Duplicating Lathe that will manufacture the 30 to 40 spindles we need. What we don't know yet is the price and that will be the deciding factor in whether we preceed that way.

Here are a couple of pictures to see our progress. On the left is the stairway that we started with. On the right, is the stairway as it is today. You will notice that we have removed all the wallpapering on the wall. That's where we have been skim coating and all that remains now is a little touch up of a couple of areas that insist on cracking and then some more primer.










The most dramatic feature is the wanescoating going up the stairway. We are going to cap it with railing and then stain it the dark walnut color.

You can also see that we have been trying to sand the steps and remove the stain. The problem is that the stain doesn't want to be sanded. We've got it a little on the sides but it's holding strong in the middle of the steps. I can't wait to see it when we're done...if we ever get there.

Research Project Results

I pretty much struck out yesterday with my research project. I went through all of the Sunday Spokeman-Review's for 1909. They were in the habit in those days of printing pictures of newly completed houses. It was amazing to see huge three story houses built for $5,000.

Anyway, I was not able to find any pictures of our house. Then I went to the Museum to look through the collection of historic photos they have. Supposedly, they have the complete archives from Libby Photographers, THE major photographer from the early years in Spokane. Well, I found the collection to be pretty sparse. It was much better organized than I had been led to believe, but again, no picture of OUR HOUSE. I'm sorry to be selfish here but that's what I'm looking for.

The Heart of the Problem

We've had a bit of a setback in working on the house in the form of health issues. My health issues. I woke up Saturday morning with a familiar discomfort in my chest. I woke up Susan and told her it was time to visit the Emergency Room. This feeling has been building for a while and I had an appointment to see my Cardiologist on Monday for a Stress Test, but my body couldn't wait.

I had an Angioplasty procedure on Sunday and they placed a stent in one of my arteries. Now I'm as good as your average 80 year old and I have a week off from work.

This is not my first brush with heart problems. I think it's boring to talk about so I'll just say I had a mild heart attack about 12 years ago, followed by a double by-pass about eight years ago.

So now I feel fine (except that I wear out easily) and I have a week off. I have done a few little projects around the house but nothing that requires a lot of exertion. Today, I'm going to the museum and the library to do some research on the house.

My main goal is to find a picture of the house around the time that it was built. The museum has a large haystack of photographs from the that time. The trick will be in finding this needle.