Archive for the ‘Daze in the Life of...’ Category

Spawn of Biggest Project Ever

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

So, there’s a small problem with my otherwise awesome new bay window.

Half of the view out of it is blocked by a partition wall between my breakfast room and my dining room.

Clearly, the partition wall must go. Spouse has been of that opinion for quite some time, but I’ve been dubious. However, when his sister pointed out how it affected the view, and how to solve the problem of fitting my grandmother’s dining room furniture in by simply closing off a totally unnecessary doorway, I could see it. We simply re-orient the dining room by rotating everything 90 degrees, combine the space with the breakfast room, and it’ll all fit much better than it does now. With extra bonus wall space in the great room (More bookshelves! Or possibly built-in desk or sewing area!) and maybe even some new built-in storage in the dining room.

Nobody will will be touching my nifty archway into the dining room, though. On pain of death.

And if we’re moving walls anyway, then we might as well adjust a second partition wall to fit an additional bank of cabinets into the kitchen and make the work triangle differently wrong by rotating the fridge. (In order to make the work triangle really right, we would have to swap the positions of the sink and the dishwasher, which would involve moving one of the new windows and more plumbing than I care to think about.)

Naturally, this will necessitate extending or otherwise altering the ceiling treatment in two rooms (dining room has a tray ceiling; breakfast room doesn’t), moving a couple of light fixtures that are installed wrong anyway, redoing the floors in all three rooms, and possibly having the kitchen out of commission periodically, which is a sure way to make me crazy (I am already suffering baking withdrawal pangs from having my stand mixer in the shop).

But it will totally be worth it, because while we have everything in upheaval anyway, we might as well paint, too. And nothing makes a room look good like fresh paint.

Right?

At we won’t have to worry about weather.

First things first, though. I need to find some nice pillows and a small tea tray for my new window seat.

Milestones

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

All siding that is coming down, is down. There is a small amount that is only removable with precision laser cutting equipment, so it’s not going anywhere.

All the new windows are in.

The entire chimney is completely sided.

The worksite is cleaned up (I am grateful beyond the telling of it to Shannan for this…)

The end is in sight.

I Can Has!

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

The bay window was finally delivered yesterday.

Work Proceeds Apace

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

We had to stop work on early because of imminent rain, however…

1. All of the siding, except for a small amount along the edge or the roof, is down. This means we have likely found all of the unpleasant surprises that will require additional repair work.

Such as this one.

That’s right. There was nothing underneath the siding at the peak of the roof.

2. Another window out—its replacement is not yet in, but the opening is a) covered by OSB, and b) in the garage, so I am less concerned.

3. The $300 nail gun was unjammed by Brother-in-Law (woot!), meaning he could use it to put up siding on the north and west sides of the house. Neither is complete, but the north side needs only to have the chimney done, and there’s a good start on the west side.

4. The dumpster was picked up yesterday, and a good thing, too…

We still have two more windows to replace, the kitchen window and the garden window (which will become a bay window, which hasn’t yet been delivered yet…tomorrow, they tell us. We’ll see.) But that shouldn’t be too much of a much. Certainly not in comparison to getting the siding out from under the electrical and phone boxes while leaving the utilities connected to the house…

Or the bits and pieces by the door that were trapped up against the cement steps (thanks to Phil & his persistent use of chisel and reciprocating saw).

And last, but definitely not least, nobody had to get a tetanus shot.

More Signs of Progress

Monday, July 12th, 2010

1. Second tetanus shot run of the project (Sorry about that, Bob).

2. One $300, two-week-old nail gun jammed. Still under warranty but must go back to the manufacturer for repair.

3. 18 empty cans of high-expansion spray foam. It turns out that the stone facade on the front of our house is a) not actually siding and b) not properly installed.

Let me elaborate on that a bit.

The stone in the picture above appears to be some sort of siding attached to the house, right?

Wrong.

That isn’t siding. That’s landscaping rock that was built into a thin wall in front of the house and attached with a line of caulk. Also, there is nothing behind it–no mortar or anything. Well, there wasn’t originally. By the time we discovered this amazing fact, there were bees’ and mud-dauber wasps’ nests in that space…probably at the maximum density preferred by bees and mud-dauber wasps.

So now I at least know why that wall was always so cold on the inside of the house, and where all the bees and wasps were coming from. We sprayed the area quite thoroughly, but survivors kept straggling in over the weekend. By Sunday afternoon, I found myself yelling at them “Your home is gone and everyone’s dead! Go daub your mud somewhere else!”

At least the nests left something for the 18 cans’ worth of high-expansion spray foam to affix to.

And, at least that wall was basically intact.

Not so much the wall pictured below.

An attempt to remove the trim along the dividing line between the wood and the stone resulted in this:

And another five minutes of crowbar work and swearing later, the entire stone wall was down…except for about three large pieces at the bottom that had been cemented in place. That required some serious maul work from Spouse (and more cursing of our builder and his orangutans). We’re planning to side over that bit of the garage, not in the least because Lowe’s is probably out of high-expansion spray foam for some reason. And we’ll reuse the landscaping rock in some sort of landscaping feature. No idea what, but it’s quite nice sandstone that won’t fit in the dumpster even if I felt like moving it, which I don’t.

On the positive side, we now have half of the new windows in—did I mention that the windows in the front of the house weren’t even nailed into place? They were held in by the trim— and most of the siding is down, thanks to Spouse, Bob, and Phil. There’s a bit of siding left on the east side of the house and the garage, and that’s all. Except for the little bits of siding trapped against the side of the house by the front door, because the concrete steps were poured right up against the house with no spacers.

sigh

On the other hand, fifteen minutes with a razor knife to trim the extra bits of house wrap, and the west side of the house is ready for siding, as is the entire back, except for the chimney, which wants only house wrap as well. Half of the front is also ready for siding, and most of what’s left only needs the oriented-strand board base and wrap put up.

I hope the rest of the siding gets delivered this week. Not to mention the bay window, which we had to special order.

One Way to Measure Progress

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

Biggest Project Ever

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

So, I think I mentioned previously that Spouse and I (and Spouse’s brother-in-law, and not  a few friends and acquaintances—thank you Tim, Shannan, John, Ryan, Andy, Evan, Bob, and anyone else who has done or plans to help) are removing the old siding an windows from our our house and putting in new. Last weekend was weekend #2 of what was originally intended to be a 3-weekend project, but we all know that no plan survives contact with reality.

The good parts of the project are a) by doing it ourselves, we can get windows and siding for 2/3 the cost of paying someone to install only siding; b)  by doing it ourselves, we can fix some problems that would probably just be covered over if we paid someone else, and c) we were able to afford fiber cement siding, so we won’t have to paint anything except windows and trim AND we won’t have to worry about the siding for 50 years. Which will probably be 25 years after I’ve looked at spouse and said “I’m sick of winter; let’s move.”

The disadvantages are a) it’s been unbelievably hot and humid both weekends we’ve worked, b) it’s physically demanding work, and c) it requires and occasional run to urgent care. (On the plus side, my tetanus booster is now current for the next nine years and 362 days. Naturally, the injection side is far more uncomfortable that the foot that had the nails in it.)

Still, it had to be done, and when it’s finished, we’ll never have to do it again. I present a before and after pictures for your perusal. The before picture is the front of the house, with the old gray siding, trim, and window. (The stone facade will be left in place). The after picture is the back of the house with the yellow siding, primed trim, and new windows (trim will eventually be slightly off-white, just enough so that it doesn’t look blue compared to the siding).

We also replaced one of the sliding glass patio doors (a.k.a., the cats’ widescreen nature channel) with French doors. We will probably replace the other one later this year, when it’s not quite so hot out.

There and Back Again, or, Where the H3ll I’ve Been Lately

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

So, when last I left you, dear Reading Public, I had just subbed a class at my gym. What I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning was that occurred the week after Spouse and I a) had our 2nd anniversary, and b) were at an attorney’s conference up in northern Indiana. I love going to these conferences because all I have to do is be Mrs. Attorney. Being Mrs. Attorney is not terribly demanding, and mostly involves showing up to meals dressed appropriately and socializing, with occasional hotel check-in and check-out responsibilities. This year, the conference happened to be close enough to Sharktank’s home that she was also able to attend, so we had extra bonus visit time with her, as well as several of the people we met last year. I’m helping with the party planning for our friend’s  son’s bar mitzvah, so he and I spent some time driving out to check out possible venues, talking party planning, and he also managed to talk me out of the hot tub and into the pool for a rousing game of catch.

I don’t expose a fresh manicure/pedicure to chlorine for just anyone, y’know.

We also celebrated Spouse’s *cough*fortieth*cough* birthday, in a very low-key way while at the conference. In fact, it was about as high-key as I could get away with, and involved chocolate cake and less than six people.

After that, we were home for a week, which mostly involved getting caught up from being gone and getting ready to head out again. Part of that involved a follow-up visit with my doc, at which I discovered that I’m even more overweight than I thought I was. Unfortunately, a lingering bronchitic cough is not conducive to exercise (hence the doctor visit), but the “eating less cake” part of my plan has been going well.

Anyway, we packed ourselves up and headed off to Palo Alto and watched Spouse’s brother get his Ph. D. in Materials Science Engineering from Stanford. The main commencement was in the stadium in morning, with the various graduate (and, presumably undergraduate) name-reading-biography-reciting-handing-out-of-diplomas done separately by department in the afternoon.  Snacks and more water are available en route between the two (and the campus is huge–lovely, but huge—so comfortable shoes are also eminently desirable) and the graduate department had a nice light lunch/heavy hors d’oeuvre spread after their ceremony. I highly recommend going to a Stanford graduation if you have the opportunity. The undergrads’ Wacky Walk is quite entertaining, and they seem to have a good track record on their speakers. They even hand you bottled water with your program, and trust me, you’ll want it. Also, sunscreen and a parasol.

From Palo Alto, we trekked up to Sonoma County, where we’d rented a house right on the Russian River with Spouses parents, Spouse’s brother and his wife, and Spouse’s brother’s wife’s parents.  We visited a couple of wineries, one small, and one large. In between, we had one of those meals I’ve read about and seen on TV, but never actually hoped to eat myself. (And we got terribly lucky, because we’d randomly put into the GPS a search for the nearest open restaurant. ) If you ever find yourself in Forestville, California, I highly recommend the place. Sit outside. Drink some Sonoma County wine. Try the brie and mushroom appetizer, if you like that kind of thing, and the Meyer lemon tart. It actually tastes like lemons, not lemonade concentrate. I’m sure there had to be at least a little bit of sugar in it, but you wouldn’t know it.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Russian River was the river itself. I tend to be like my mom, who’s a fan of the Great Indoors. Nature is so often full of bugs with an inexplicable attraction to my hair and skin, mud, funny smells, animals with nefarious agendas, and unpleasant weather.  From the deck of the house—or even the dock—the river was an opaque green that did not invite swimming, but once Spouse got me into a two-person kayak (we found out later that the river guides call those “divorce kayaks”) I could see that the water was actually quite clear and only ankle deep in many places.  I enjoyed kayaking enough that I’m going to look around for places to do it closer to home, although it won’t be the same without the herons, hummingbird, and harbour seal.

Yes, I said “harbour seal”. Apparently, when the water warms up, seals will swim up the river and fish along the shady banks. One morning, around 7:00 AM, I was sitting out on the dock, reading. I heard some splashing and saw a head pop up out of the water. I assumed it was an otter, but after a few minutes, I got a good look at the tail end, and realized it was no otter. I knew there are freshwater seals in Lake Baikal, so I assumed that this was a variation on that theme. About twenty minutes after the first appearance, the seal poked its head out of the water right in front of me, just the other side of the divorce kayak., no more than four feet away.

The next day, I was hoping to see the seal again, so I went back down to the dock early in the morning. Apparently, the seal had important pinniped business elsewhere, so I got absorbed in my book…until I heard a low humming noise beside my left ear. I thought “That’s the biggest freaking bee I’ve ever heard!!!” and veeeeeerrrry sloooooooowly turned my head. There was a hummingbird feeding off the flowers on the tree hanging over my head. You really can’t see the wings on them at all when they’re flying; it had this slightly disturbing look of a wingless bird body floating in the air.  (Seeing Hitchcock’s  The Birds in film school is yet one more reason I’m not much of a nature girl. Or a bird-watcher.)

From Monte Rio, we drove down to Oakland (which gave Spouse a graphic demonstration of exactly why Eddie Izzard jokes that nobody would pay a million-dollar ransom for any place in the East Bay) and caught a flight up to Portland, Oregon, where my brother lives.  The Oakland airport doesn’t look like much, but we did get through check-in and security with absolutely minimal fuss and plenty of time to spare, which is certainly more than I can say for the Indianapolis airport.

I love going to Portland, and every time I go, it’s a little bit harder to come back to Indiana.  Spouse and my brother were kind enough to keep me company while I did my bit towards stimulating northwest Portland’s economy.  We visited the Lan Su Chinese garden, had lunch at the Cheese Bar (mmmmmmmmm, cheese!), climbed to the top of the only volcano within city limits in the U. S. (it’s very dormant and doesn’t really look at all volcano-y; no obvious crater or anything, just a statue of Oregonian editor Harvey W. Scott), braved the den of the hipsters for supper,  and most importantly, got to see my brother and one of the groups he performs in do their thing with the Wanderlust Circus.

Then, we came home and started removing windows and tearing siding off the house. That’s another story, but if you find yourself  in Indianapolis with some free time the next few weekends, and a desire for destruction and mayhem, please let me know. We could use some help.

First Runner-Up?

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

Back in February, I auditioned to teach yoga at my gym. I didn’t get hired, because apparently there was only one spot for a yoga teacher and lots of good people tried out. I don’t feel bad about it, as there is no shame in losing out to someone more talented or more qualified, and I have enough private students to keep me busy.

Apparently, though, I did make the sub list, as I discovered when I got called at 4:00 PM to teach an 8:00 PM class the same day. So, on Thursday night, I taught a 75-minute hot vinyasa (flow) class and three people (out of 21) stayed behind to tell me that they’d liked the class. That was really sweet of them, and I appreciate it. But the really cool part was when I went to a cardio class yesterday, one of the people from the class recognized me and made a point of telling me she’d enjoyed the class, too.

The Appliance Strikes Back: A New Stove

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

New stove has arrived and is made of win. Love using the warming drawer to proof bread. Love the concentric rings on burner. Love the convection option. Bought a griddle to determine whether I love the bridge element feature (odds seem good).

Most of all, love that it will not be burning my house down.