Rain is Not News

When Jerry stopped by yesterday to help put up the power line to the Carriage House, he brought some bounty from his garden. Another example of an evil gardener foisting his over production on a naive non-gardener. He brought us all the ingredients to fresh chunky salsa.

So our first order of business for the day was to chop up all the tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and cilantro into a large Salsa Bowl.

Then we had fresh chunky salsa...which we hardly ever eat. We try not to have chips in the house cuz otherwise, we would eat them.

I'm taking all I can fit into a jar to work tomorrow.

Next, I went to work on the mantle in the living room, sanding the wood putty off and getting it ready to accept stain. I'm going to have a problem with a small piece of the mantle that was added to fill a 14" x 5" space. The piece that was there has bowed and cracked. I glued it together but when I tried to replace it, it cracked in a new spot. I'm going by Windsor Plywood to find a replacement.

Susan continued her work touch up staining the pieces of wood we left in place. Plus she cleaned the pocket doors and did some patching a re staining there.

We had dinner on the front porch and then watched an incredible storm pass through town. The wind came up really fast and the rain poured down for about half an hour while lightning flashed all around us. And then it was gone.

We went in to watch some television but the show we wanted to see was pre-empted by the local news coverage of the storm that had just passed through.

A note to local news...a rain storm with lightning is NOT NEWS!!! Even if some people lost power. It's weather and weather happens almost every day. Get off camera and let me watch "The Mentalist"!

Jeez!

Accomplications

We accomplish stuff, but usually with complications. So I have coined a new word. Call Meriam-Webster!

We started the day with a stroll down the block to investigate an Estate Sale at the home of our neighbors Ed and Sally. They own one of the largest houses on the park and have recently been forced to move to a care facility. Sally has been declining a lot over the past couple of years and that huge house just became too much for Ed by himself. So they are selling their stuff and eventually, selling the house.

Susan and I have wanted to get in it for as long as we've lived here and it was worth the wait. It is a fabulous house with some beautiful touches to it.

This stained glass on the main staircase has intrigued us for years. We first noticed it walking down the alley years ago. It is even more fabulous from the inside.

Another nice touch it has is this relief design in the ceiling of the living room. I've never seen that before.

We got out and returned home for a day of toil. One of my main goals was to get the power line re-attached to the Carriage House. With the expert guidance of my pal Jerry, it took just a couple of hours.

With power back in the carriage House, I went to the Living Room to sand. Here are some pictures of the area I sanded.

I have removed the rest of the mantle but have to work on this portion in place.

I also got some wood puttying done on some other pieces I'm working on and I transferred a batch of homebrew into its secondary fermenter.

Our neighbors Lou and Tammy have been getting their paint on and after several weeks of prep work, started painting their house today.

Friday Agenda

I am writing this post from the front porch. I have taken the afternoon off and have a few items on the agenda for the afternoon. 

Among them, a visit from an Arborist who is going to inspect the tree in the back and give me an estimate to take it down. I'm also going to get an estimate to give it a trim.

More importantly, there is an Estate Sale going on down the street in a house we have been dying to get into. The old couple that owns the house, Ed & Sally have moved to a care facility and are now selling the contents of their house to raise some cash. Since they are no longer in the house, it is the sensible thing to do.

They have been antique dealers for years and the house is rumored to be FULL of great stuff. The house itself is something I really want to see. Susan got in there this morning and told me it's amazing.

I am waiting now for the Arbor Guy but if he doesn't show up soon, I'm going to leave him a note directing him the the correct tree and have him call me later with the estimate.

The Arbor Guy is here. Back later!

1:28PM: The Arborist is telling me $1,200.00 to remove that tree. I'm going for a second opinion.

We have managed to do work on the house every night this week. One night it was just browsing on line looking at tile and drawer hardware, but that counts.

We ended the night with a lovely pit fire. And then, off to bed.

Ancient Chinese Secret

We have decided to follow the old Chinese Proverb that states that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Translated into our reality, the remodel of a single room begins with the single swipe of sandpaper.

We have decided we must do some work in the Living Room every night...no matter how small. We are trying for at least an hour. We have done it so far for the last two days and we are pleased. Not great progress. Just progress!

That'll do, pig!

Stan's Handy Tip # 347

How do you take a mess that looks like this...?

And turn it into this!

Since we are getting the new Fireplace Insert (hopefully this coming week) I have been on the lookout for things to burn for later in what will be, "the burning season".

So after doing some research on things that burn, I have discovered that newspaper burns. Coincidentally, I receive the newspaper daily. Do you see my point? I have something delivered to the house daily that burns. How can I exploit this?

At work we get rolls of vinyl on cardboard cores. We save a few to use as mail tubes or for packaging but they are essentially garbage.

So I have begun collecting them. I cut them in half, which is close to the width of a newspaper. Then I take a short stack of newspapers and roll them up as tight as I can. If I have the right thickness, they slide easily into the cardboard core and I have a StanMade Synthetic Log.

I made eleven of my synthetic logs with that stack of newspapers pictured at the top of this post. I realize these are not the same as burning hardwood but I'm hoping that the chamber of an efficient, state of the art fireplace insert will get maybe 20 minutes out of one. Heat is heat and I'm on a quest to effishansize this house. 

The insert is only a small cog in my overall wheel of efficiency. We shall see how it works. By the end of the week, I'll have enough paper for five more of these.

Ultimately, a fifty foot tower out back with a power generating windmill will augment our Thermonuclear Boiler, our triple pained, gas infused transparent aluminum windows, our 15 Megawatt Solar Garden, our quadruple insulated cooling unit and the cat treadmill that powers the television.

Treemageddon

The alarm went off at 5:41AM this morning. We didn't set the alarm but it went off nonetheless. 

The alarm shocked us out of a restful slumber to sitting straight up in bed and saying, "What the Hell was that!?"

It was a very loud noise that came from outside our bedroom window. I went to the window and saw that a sizable portion of the fifty foot tree in the back of the house had peeled away from itself and settled into the yard. It took down the power line to the Carriage House and screwed up some of the Security Cameras, but I don't ever talk about those here so...never mind.

So it is not hard to guess what I was going to be doing when I got home from work. I got out my clippers and my cheesy little electric chain saw and I went to work.

Just as I was heading out to begin my toil, my friend Ron called and said he has some time to kill and was coming over to help. I told him I welcomed his help and went to town with my nippers.

In no time I had cut a little path through to the backyard and when Ron arrived, he grabbed the cheesy little electric chain saw and made short work of that forest. 

Once he removed some of the larger branches, the end still attached up in the tree started to move and we realized it was going to be coming down. And come down it did. It hit hard! That would have easily crushed a ladder, squirrel or me.

It is more or less cleaned up although I have a lot more tidying up to do.

Horrible Poster Man

I was checking the posts for the last month and realized I haven't posted shit. I have done a terrible job of keeping things up to date. I have meant to post lots o times. I just haven't followed through.

Well, let's rectify that.

On top of working on the Living Room, which we really haven't been doing, we have lots of little projects going on.

I stopped watering the side yard a while back and now that the grass is properly brown, I started roto-tilling the area. It has turned into a major nightmare due to something I have brought up before.

There is not a square foot of dirt on our little chunk of heaven that I can put a shovel to and not hit a root. I'm not sure if I just created a double or triple negative in that sentence so let me re-state it. We have roots! They are everywhere and they are prodigious.

I'm about one third of the way through the whole grassy area and that has taken me four hours. 

You can see by the pictures that the roots are just big horizontal trees that grow underground.

I'm looking forward to completing this soon and reseeding. It seems a long way off.

Four Thousand Dollar Day

It's muy bueno excitement around the hacienda today as we are having a new fireplace insert inserted into the fireplace. I have taken the day off work in order to be here and get in the way...an essential element of any installation by professionals.

Since we have lived here, we have occasionally had fires burning in the old fireplace but the old fireplace is so inefficient that it did not result in extra heat in the house. In fact, I considered the fireplace to be an open window. It had no damper and no cap. The only thing that prevented cold air from blowing past it and into the living room was the flimsy glass doors loosely wired to the fire box.

It is my hope that today, we are sealing an open window...and getting a reasonable return on heat when we burn.

We spent some time last night removing the glass doors and the old log rack and cleaning out the fire box. We then tried to clean up the tile as best we could.

So they will be placing an efficient insert into our fire box hole and making us an official wood burning household.

The other part of the install is a chimney liner. We had a guy come last year to sweep the chimney and upon his initial inspection, he told us not to burn until we had a chimney liner. The old masonry was deteriorated to such an extent as to make burning a fire a potential hazard.

It is 10:24 right now and Travis and the other guy of Accent Pool &  Spa have just arrived and to start their install. I shall report their progress as they progress with their progressions.

11:45AM: As with everything with this house, it never goes according to plan. If one has a plan, it should include an accordion built into the plan for when is goes un-accordionly.

Our fire box requires some structural masonry work that will delay the installation by a week. There is a curve to the back wall of the firebox (as shown in the picture above) that needs to be cut out. Otherwise, the insert will not fit. That will require a metal plate to be installed in place of the removed bricks to return the structural integrity. That metal plate must be manufactured to the specifications of our little space, which means they will be back next week. 

And so, I have the rest of the day to myself. I have things to do and so, I shall go do them.

DAMN YOU, FLARED CHIMNEY!!!

Here's how it looked after the first round of Crown Molding.

Here is what we ended up with after our fix today.

I can live with this. It is by no means perfect. It's not even in the same dictionary as "perfect". But we can make this work and look good.

We have closed up the gap by adding an extra piece of molding  below the crown. It allowed us to hide the imperfections and it adds a bit more substance to the overall look of the crown.

The corners are a bit rough but even here in the after picture, you can see it looks much better.

All in all, we are pleased! The crown molding portion of the living room is almost complete and now it is time to move on the the wood.....and the radiator.....and the wall papering.....and the chair rail.....check back in August.

Gardeners Corner

We have determined that our house is where plants go to die.

The hydrangea's we planted back on Memorial Day weekend are not looking well. It's not from lack of watering and I can't believe it's from too much watering.

I think one of the things we need to do next Spring is rototill some compost into this dirt. It turns rock hard once it settles and dries.

Susan bought a bunch a flowers last weekend and finally got them all into the ground last night. It was the first chance we've had as we have been painting skywalks all week.

The areas I seeded with grass are coming in nicely. Compare this picture with the one from the May 30th post and the transformation is semi-dramatic.

Editors Note: We have since found out that we are over watering the hydrangea's. We have knocked that off.

Different Forms of Accomplishment

Accomplishment was my middle name yesterday as I tore around the yard and accomplishmentized all over the place.

I have completed Phase One of my Arbor Project. I have installed caps over all the lengths of beams that form the arbor over the deck. The next phase is to place the caps over the cross beams at the end of the arbor. And I need to get it done before the hops gets any larger.











Then I got to cleaning the yard and couldn't stop. That little area at the end of the Carraige House and next to Ted's garage has been an eye sore for many years. I got to work cutting up the boards that have been rotting on the ground. Then I pulled out the roto-tiller and really did some damage. I cleaned it up enough that Susan and I are now in talks about laying down some sort of patio in the area. We are discussing cement, paver bricks and large pieces of slate.

I had a piano lesson at 1:30 and barely made it on time due to my inability to stop. I just kept wanting to do one more thing. That was my last piano lesson for the summer as I have too much going on to stop in the middle of the day and take a lesson.

The perfect end to a perfect day of accomplimentation is the tradition Pit Fire of Accomplishment.

It was ferocious and I used up a lot of the wood that I cleaned up from the yard. Fret not...there is still plenty of house to burn.

Today has turned into a bust in relation to Accomplimentoring. We went to church and then charged home to plant a bunch of flowers Susan bought Saturday. We planted one side of the front yard garden.

Then we went to a Graduation Party for my friend Lee's son. It was a grand event at the Spokane Club with beer and wine and pop for the graduates. There was great food as well. 

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long due to a prior commitment we made with our church. We volunteered to answer pledge calls at the local PBS TV station. That ate up four hours of our time on an otherwise beautiful Sunday. 

We're working on figuring out how to get the deduction.

The Problem of the Flair

It is another day of toil for the Living Room and to highlight that fact, displayed above is my compressor and my 100 year old custom needlepoint workbench upon which my air nailer rests. As soon as I get my Fine China Plate Hammer Rest and my taffeta doily staining pads, I'll be all set to go.

Today, we (and when I say "we", I mean Phil) must confront the most tedious part of the crown molding project. The Chimney Outcropping.

This area flares at the top as one may note from the photograph. The crown molding is designed to adhere to two flat surfaces. I'm not sure how we (Phil) are going to accomplish this. I presume it will require some filing, sanding, sawing of the bottom portion of the molding in order to allow it to rest properly into the flare.

Later that Same Day: It is evening now and day is done. So is the crown molding. Although, as with everything we do with this project, it did not go easily.

Filing, sanding and/or sawing did not solve the problem of the flair. It turned out that the molding would be too thin were the dentil features are.

We have a problem with squareness! It's a 100 year old house and it has settled somewhat over the hun. Plus, we have that damn flare you see above on the chimney portion of the walls. 

We are going to progress to another thin line of molding to be placed below the crown. I'm hoping that another strip of molding will help to hide that gap around the fireplace. Stand by for news as it happens.

At this point, I will say that I am not exactly happy with this molding we purchased on-line. You will notice from the picture above that we used pre-fabricated inside and outside corners. They do not match up well with the contours of the molding. 

I'm sure this will all look better once it is painted. That will help to hide some of the imperfections and the intense sanding I intend to do to make things match.

Four Project Saturday

I woke up around 3 to the sound of someone shouting outside. I think it was coming from the neighbors yard across the alley from us. There was definitely a party going on when we shut down our pit fire around 11.

It was to be a busy day and that meant getting up and getting right to it. Whatever it was, we were to it.

Project Number Most Important was getting up the crown molding in the Living Room.

It is not complete but what is up looks good.

While Phil worked on the crown molding, I went to work to restore workability to our front window. The house is loaded with all the old style windows that employ weights hidden within the sill. The weights add ease of opening to the heavy windows. As with many of these old style windows, the weights have long since ceased to work. The ropes have broken and the weights fall uselessly into the abyss.

I have recovered the weights and am attempting to reattach them.

The weights in the front window have to be 50 pounds each. They may be more. I suppose I should have weighed them. I am attaching a new length of rope, which I estimate to be about 36 inches.

I got them in and Phil helped me get them attached to the window. The picture above shows the 80 pound weight sitting quietly in its place gaining weight. 

The problem is the window barely opens. I new it was not going to open completely but I was hoping for a nice opening to allow a breeze. I'm going to shorten the length of my ropes and hope I get a bit more breeze space.

While all this was going on, Susan was busy planting more flora in the front garden. It's really taking shape out there. I got some peet moss down over the grass seed in hopes of protecting it from birds and having something moist over the top.

I also got a good start on capping the arbors on the deck. Above is a nice before and after shot. I'll be installing these over the next several days. I think I got four up today.

You must excuse me now as I have to go rest.

Sowing My Wild Oats

We managed to apply one more coat of paint to the ceiling on Tuesday night and since that used up the rest of the paint, we decided we were finished. This weekend, we will start putting up crown molding.

I had some puttering around to do this evening and it was nice enough to putter out of doors. So I did a little soil prep and planted some grass seed. Whether or not it take remains to be seen but I have done my part. Now it is up to God to remind me to water and to keep the bird away.

We were thinking of planting small shrubs or something along the walkway but ended up going for more grass.

This area here is just a corner that we haven't paid any attention to. I'm hoping this will come in nice here as well. I used a grass seed that doesn't require a lot of sun light which describes our front yard.

I'll keep tabs on it here. The important thing is that I have a post for the day I planted so I can have a reference next year when I have to plant it again.