Obliging My Fanbase

There has been a Great Clamour from teh Interwebz that I should update the houseblog.  OK, it was one friend on Facebook.  But yes, I am hip-deep in a project or two that warrants recording.

But I'm viewing that last post from November 2014 and thinking how pathetic that wallpaper photo looks, with the final piece not trimmed at the cornice, and it's only right I should post something showing how the dining room came out once the trim was back up.

This isn't such a great photo, either.  It was taken with my cellphone camera, which doesn't have a wide angle setting.  But it should give some idea.

This is from this past January, and shows the new curtain rod that will hold the sheers--- once I get them sewn together and hemmed.  I bought them on clearance from the Big Blue Box Store maybe two years ago, and it turned out that the pattern on the lace panels doesn't align.  Never mind: it wasn't that far off and they needed shortened anyway.

Here's a better view of the curtain rod:

 It's actually a piece of copper tubing I spray-painted bronze and capped.  The brackets I appropriated from the actual drapery rod, since it needs ones with a greater projection to clear the lintel and its cornice.

I'd hoped to get the sheers altered and up by now, but stuff happens.

But that's not what you're here for, is it?  Bigger things are going on, but that will have to wait.  There is such a thing as sleep, after all.

EDIT:  Here's a recent photo of the dining room, with the trim up, in the daytime.

On the table you see the evidence of the "or two" project I referred to above.  But I'm saving that for later.

This Is What Is Known as "Existing Conditions"

My big goal after prepping the dining room last month for wallpaper was simply to get all the bills and receipts and tax documents entered and sorted out so I could have a clean Study for the first time in months.

Have I achieved this?

No.

I've  been Writing, and obviously not on this blog.

I've had the fiction writing bug for a few years, but not very seriously:  ideas rattled around in my head but I seldom got around to writing any of it down.  Kind of like a renovation project that always in the planning stages and never gets built.

And then one day you finally get out the shovel and start digging, and who knows what you'll find.  In my case I found writing obsession, broken by periods like the present one when I'm a little stuck and I'll mess around on the Internet for hours rather than do the work to push on through.

Last November I started a writer's blog where I could post my productions and moan and groan about the turmoils of an amateur fiction writer's life (what there is of it).  I put it on WordPress because for various reasons I didn't want my Google/Blogger name(s) St. Blogwen/Kate H. attached to it. But I have mixed feelings about WeirdPretzel (which I describe here), so a week or so ago I started a doppelganger Blogger blog, under a separate Google name and account.

All right, now I've revealed all that here, my cover is blown.  Obviously.  Never mind, there's a method to my madness.

Both blogs are named The Writer Sits Down, and you're invited to pop on over to your choice of platforms and see what my mind has been building while my power tools have been idle.  The novel I'm presently revising is about two architects, so that's renovation related, correct??

 But speaking of DIYers and existing conditions, may I present this:

"Human Remains Found Behind Home."

That is why contractors demand more money for Contingencies.

Lack of Resolution

Maybe one of my New Year's resolutions for 2013 should be to post more to my houseblog.

Why haven't I, this past autumn?

A lot of it has been because I've been so heads-down busy working on the house that, outside of work, I don't have time for much else.  I've gotta a great deal done, and the work goes on and on.

Part of it has been because Explorer.exe has gone wonky on my eight-year-old computer, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to sort my photos so they can be conveniently found.

A great deal of it is that the digital camera I bought last March has never worked properly; it gets stuck on 100 or 200 ISO no matter where I set it and takes fuzzy, badly-colored, under- or over (with the flash)-exposed pictures with very poor resolution.  And even though I've been painfully aware of this since I bought it last March, I haven't pushed past the hurdles I need to surmount to have anything done about it.

And maybe my biggest reason for not posting these past few months has been lack of resolution in myself.  For all the above reasons and from a childish sense of "I'm s'posed ta do this and I don' wanna!" I've let the rebellious feeling in my stomach prevail and when I do get to my computer I do ten other things rather than post to my houseblog.

Well, maybe I need to grow up and overcome that.

And maybe doing something about that crappy camera should also be on my resolution list.  I'm too house-poor to buy a new one, but at least I can take advantage of the one-year warranty I purchased on it, can't I?

Meanwhile, here's a bone, a picture of my living room fireplace with the wallpaper up and the oil painting rehung above it for the first time in probably three years.  This was taken about a week and a half ago.  Happy new year!

The Best I Can Do

Oh dear o dear o dear, I am so far from having accomplished what I wanted to accomplish by the time my friend from England arrives tomorrow evening.  Shocking how much needs to be done on a house before you get to the fun stuff, even when it's only finishes being worked on.

Well.  Frieda* came over around noon this past Saturday to help me remount hallway trim.  But I was up the ladder priming the north wall of the living room, and didn't want to stop before I'd finished it.  And the east wall, since I still had primer in the tray.  So she went in the kitchen and dynamited grease and pet hair off the stove and surrounding cabinets until I was done.

By the time we got upstairs to work on trim, we had time only to nail some replacement blocking into the rough opening for my bedroom door, put up the trim on the inside of the bedroom and find out that the lintel was cockeyed per the wallpaper and the level, put the bedroom door frame back together, attach the stop moulding at the guest bedroom door (successfully), and discover that something's weird about the relationship between the bedroom frame and the lintel on the hallway side.  Then Frieda had to leave and I had to change to go to Dick and Harry's Tax Service to finish doing my taxes.

Before Janet* comes I have got to get that door rehung, not just for my privacy but to get the bedroom door out of her way.  And rehang the closet door.  And reattach the stops to the bathroom door.

And if I can, finish shellacking the doorway and portal down on the first floor of the stair hall, so we maybe can put up wallpaper together, seeing that she's offered to help and is bringing her grubby old overalls.

But the cleaning still needs done, like the cat barf stains removed from the guest bedroom rug, and the mess in the living room needs to be cleared out. and I still have to wash the comforter and so on for the guest bed.  And here I am sub teaching at a local grade school, or rather, not teaching because the school's at sixes and sevens due to meetings and new-student assessments and I've turned out to be redundant.  So I have opportunity to work on the blog, but not on the house.

This is a situation where I need to do my best to do what I can to make things comfortable for my old friend, then depend on her friendship to overlook what I can't.

Some time I'll post some photos of what's gotten done.  But not now.  No access to the files, and it's 3:00 o'clock.  Time to go.

It Never Ends

It occurred to me that none of the pictures from the 29th showed both white walls.  There they are, though not with the floor repainted.

That got finished up last Thursday and Friday.  Ended up repainting about a quarter of the laundry room floor, so the enamel table can go back and stay back, not to mention the new brine tank.

(Here's a highly-instructive progress shot of the corner where the water softener used to be.  No more red and gray.  [Please disregard the smudges from the camera lens: it needs cleaned.])

To my massive annoyance, between the first and second coats of pale green floor paint, I noticed that iron water stains in the mortar were showing through here and there on my nice, clean new paint job.  Tackled them with a spray can of aluminum paint (as much as I hate to put anything nonbreatheable on my basement walls).  Of course that meant another round of primer and paint.  Of course.

It's taken care of now, so as soon as my friend's son gets back from vacation, he should be coming over and maybe we'll make some progress towards actually getting the water treatment equipment installed.

However.  However.  It's true, I spent Sunday through Tuesday in the garden, back and front, putting in the last of this season's annuals (yes, they are the last!  Haven't I said so!?).  But I've been going up and down my basement stairs past a very disgusting and grotty brick foundation wall, and I've been poking at that wall here and there, and chipping loose paint off that wall, and I've been thinking how awful that wall looks in comparison to the Two White Walls in the laundry room.  And yesterday I said to myself, "To hell with it.  Something has to be done!"

After scraping, before scrubbing

Scraped as much old paint off it as I could persuade to flake off.  I regret to say that was a great deal. Usual scrub-down with TSP and bleach, then another scrub-down with DampRid.  Dirty, dirty, dirty.

Primed it this evening, along with six brick courses of the wall perpendicular to it, which also looked a little grungy at the foot.  (Not doing that whole wall now.  Too much junk to move.  Too much junk that presently can't be moved.)  Looks a lot better with just the primer on, but I can't be surprised if this wall should need a spritz or two from the aluminum paint can as well.

I've sometimes thought that if and when I sell this house I'd refer prospective buyers to this blog to show them what I've done to the place.  And I wish I had nothing but a bone-dry basement to report.  A local dry-basement expert told me a few years ago that my biggest problem is humid air and not water infiltration, and what I need is to keep running the dehumidifier.  The fact that I had mildew stains on the perpendicular wall supports this position, since it's an inside wall-- my workshop is on the other side.  Still, I'd be a lot more complacent on the basement waterproofing subject if I could get all the brick joints repointed. I mean, it couldn't hurt.

One thing I know for sure is that the two places where the actual bricks show signs of water damage, they're  right under the outdoor water faucets-- or in the case of the backyard tap, where it used to be before the POs-1 built the screened-in deck.  Think of nearly 100 years of leaky hoses and insufficiently-closed spigots . . .  And at least the brick in question was hard and not spalling when I painted it.  I sure don't have any standing water anywhere.

I'm going on faith that the POs' can of gray floor paint is still good.

Anyway, as before, I'll gave the primer a day or two to dry, since I really had to glop it into the joints.  I've got a big nasty teacher certification exam coming up next Friday the 15th and another one on the 22nd.  So no telling how soon I'll get the paint on.  On the other hand, considering that I'm not exactly feeling encouraged about my prospects of passing, I may get the Pearly White on the basement stair wall just to know I've accomplished something.

No, the House Hasn't Eaten Me. Yet.

Have I been working on the house?  Yes.  Have I been working on the house as quickly as I ought to? No.

I had two doorways to patch where doors were removed, at the old entry door between the front room (former porch) and the stairhall, and at the bottom of the stairs to the third floor.  A couple weeks ago I cut old yellow pine to fit the hinge and strike mortises, planed them down, and sanded all round the casings.  They look nice, but pictures will have to wait-- I loaded them onto the other computer.

Sadly, there are no new shellacking pictures.  That's because I haven't laid on any new shellac.  I'm still cleaning up the dust mess, and the work is going very slowly.

First, because I'm changing Internet service providers and I'm dealing with the whole old-new e-mail address transition.

Second, because cleaning my Study meant more than sucking up the dust, it also meant going through my books, rearranging many, retiring some to the storage space, selecting some to give away, and even chucking a few.

And third, it's going slowly because I don't like deep cleaning the house, and I keep putting it off.  It's so much more fun to watch on-line videos that actually stream thanks to my new, faster ISP.

But as soon as I publish this post, I'm going upstairs to clean my bedroom.  The curtains and dust ruffle, which were filthy, are clean and dry down in the dryer, and until the room dust is gone and I can put them back, there's no going to bed for me tonight.

Blog Life Meets Real Life

One of the neatest things about publishing a weblog is getting to know people whose blogs you read and who read yours. Generally that acquaintance is sustained in cyberspace and that can be good in its way. But sometimes you get the chance to meet face to face, and that's best of all.

That happened for me this evening, when I was visited by Elaine and Dylan of Bless This DIY Mess and The Old House Web. They're fellow Pittsburgh area housebloggers (actually, they're Pittsburgh housebloggers; I'm the one who lives into the "area"), but we'd never met till now. This was one of those occasions when good things come out of not-so-good events like major surgery, for when Elaine found out I was going to be activity-restricted post-op, she promised to bring me her killer Mediterranean tuna noodle casserole. And tonight was the night!

I admit that she and Dylan might have gotten back to Pittsburgh earlier were my recovery not going so well . . . I had the energy, and a totally opportunistic lack of shame, to give them the ten-dollar tour of my own DIY mess. But it was irresistible to talk to a couple who know just what you're dealing with in renovating your house. Woodwork stripping techniques, the struggle to get the right color of stain when refinishing, second thoughts and redos of paint colors, dealing with uneven walls and floors, and all the other joys of working on an older house.

And really, guys, now that you've seen the Sow's Ear, I want to return the favour. Whenever it suits us all I'll make the drive down and feast my eyes on that gorgeous stripped and soon-to-be-reshellacked staircase of yours, the exciting glowing tin ceiling above it, and all the rest of your hard work.

Tonight, though, it was fun to have my transplanted black and white soapstone Victorian mantelpiece admired (as if I were the one who'd put it in, oh yeah!) and delightful to have my little town of Beaver appreciated. True, the neighborhood showed to special advantage this evening, with the neighborhood kids making a playground of half the lawns on the block as they ran around in the brilliant warm weather.

Elaine's cooking showed to advantage, too, when I dug into the reheated casserole after she and Dylan took off home. Tuna and noodles and red sweet peppers and antichokes, yum! My dog enjoyed it, too . . . the outer corner of it, as we were outside saying goodbye-- oops! And it was hard to keep the cats out of my plate: they know good as well.

So thanks, yinz guys. I had two big helpings with a bottle of Hornsby's hard cider. And in appreciation of your appreciation of my town and neighborhood, I took the rest of the bottle over and joined the next-door neighbors at the neighbors' on the corner. Sitting on their porch talking, we hung out and watched the kids play, till the full moon had risen high over the bluffs of the Ohio, the light of day was gone, and it was time to go in.

And to happily contemplate future meals of tuna casserole and how I hope my place will look next time fellow housebloggers come by.

Calling in the Reinforcements

Well, I said I was going to do it, and I did.

I hired a plasterer instead of redoing my DIY Drama disaster study ceiling myself.

Joe the Plasterer got started yesterday morning around 9:00 o'clock before I went off to the local hospital for a CT scan (please, God, could it please reveal that my tumor is benign!). By the time I returned a bit after 11:00, he'd chipped the rotten plaster off the flat part of the ceiling and pulled off the pieces I'd reaffixed crookedly to the sloping part over the stairs. The new metal lath was almost all up in both places, and it was time for him to mix up the perlite-enhanced gypsum plaster for the brown coat.

I came up and watched him for a time while he was putting that on. Funny, to me, to see plaster without hair, but the perlite performs the same function.

Having a noontime lunch appointment, I left Joe at the house to finish. When I returned around 2:30, he was gone and the brown coat was finished.

Last night, I got up there with my razor blade scraper and sliced off the glue nubs left from the Big Wally's plaster anchors. And scraped off some more of the loose latex paint.

Joe was back this morning and put on the first finish coat. Damn. It looks nice already.

And he put a finish coat on the places where I'd done my PlasterMagic work, yay! Hadn't expected him to; I have a whole bucket of joint compound and I'd hoped to get to that myself before he came.

He's to return tomorrow to apply a second finish coat, since today's will shrink a bit. Then again on Friday to sand it and do any final finishing.

I told Joe about the blog. "If I don't like a contractor's work, I give them a fake name. If I think they did a great job, I give their real name, if they like, and how to contact them. Free advertising."

He keeps this up, he gets the real name treatment. And yes, his given name really is Joe.

Plaster, Irony, and Other Truly Valuable Building Materials

A couple weeks ago, as my entry in the Houseblogs.net/True Value Hardware DIY Drama contest, I posted on the Sturm und Drang that is the ceiling plaster over my third floor stairway. Or rather, that isn't the ceiling plaster over my third floor stairway, since so much of it ended up on the stairway. Therein I confessed my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault of Procrastination in fixing said plaster--leavened with a lot of excuses as to why I fell into it.

A day or two after I made that post I thought, Hey, wait a minute. There was another reason why I didn't repair that plaster before it fell down; why, last March when I had my ladder and my Big Wally's PlasterMagic repair kit on hand, I didn't get right to it. It wasn't that I didn't want to, or was suffering from a compulsion to get all the wood trim stripped first. It was because, well, the Big Wally's website was (and is) running a contest for the best videos of PlasterMagic repairs. The prize was $250, and I was determined to enter.

But I can't repair plaster and run a video camera at the same time. Whom could I get for a cinematographer to document my Atlantean effort? There was a neighbor kid with a camera and ambitions in the filmmaking direction, but she never seemed to be around when wanted. And what if she were standing within range of the damage as I worked and something should, well, happen? Didn't want the kid to get hurt. Maybe I should think of somebody else . . .

Stalemate. I kept on desiring that $250 prize and not coming up with anyone I could ask to make the video; I kept on stripping woodwork and not repairing the plaster . . . until June, when I finally tackled the ceiling and it tackled me back.

When Houseblogs.net and True Value combined to open the field for entries in the DIY Drama Contest, I thought about entering. I mean, mah dramah, let mii sho u itt. And thought some more. And a little more. (Do we discern a pattern?) Then shortly before the deadline, I pinned myself down and got the post written and submitted.

Then, having read the other submissions (and there were some impressive ones), I promptly forgot all about it, since there was no way I was going to win any of the $300 gift card prizes.

So imagine my astonishment when I got an email last week from Aaron at Houseblogs.net saying I'd won the drawing for one of the prizes!* Unbelievable, but true: Today the gift cards arrived from the contest coordinators!

So, thank you, Houseblogs.net, and thank you, True Value. I will add the latter to my Useful Links list and I encourage one and all to click on it.

But the situation is so ironic magnets fly to it. For the sake of a $250 prize I put off repairing my plaster until it fell down, which led to a post that got me a $300 prize to help me put it back up.

Yeah, I still do have to put it back up. I wonder, can I get a nice bucket of pre-slaked lime putty at my local True Value? Or maybe they can order it? It's not the easiest thing to come by . . .

Never mind. There are lots of other things this house needs that they can fix me up with very well. Without the procrastination!
__________________________
*Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. The actual notices got hung up in my spam filter and it was through his comment on my Plaster Disaster post that he actually got the word to me.

Bathroom Dreames and Imaginacions

If I haven't posted lately, it's not because I don't have anything to post about, it's just that I've been too busy doing them.

Funny, it's so much easier to write about what I'm thinking of doing, and such a post this is.

My second floor bathroom needs work. That's undeniable. The bathtub is marred, discolored, and drains like an Amtrak train waiting for a freight to go by; the pedestal sink, while cute, is inconvenient and its plumbing was installed crookedly and leaks; the vinyl flooring is worn and curls at the edges; the linen cabinet is beat up, with doors that keep coming off the hinges; the tile is outdated and the wallpaper is absurd. A bathroom remodelling would be a glad and welcome event.

The other undeniable thing is that I am broke. Great credit still, but broke. I won't go into the gory details, but I do not have the funds lying around at the moment to redo my bathroom the way I'd like, or any way at all.

But it's spring and the remodelling contractor johnnies have emerged in force, attempting to drum up some work. So just for grins, I've made appointments with two of these businesses, to see what it's liable to run me to redo my bathroom, someday, maybe next year, when it might not be so laughable even to think about it.

Yesterday afternoon, then, a bloke came around from a firm I'll call First and Only Baths*.

This guy was enthusiastic, I'll give him that. I have an idea about making a cat litter box cubby under the stairs that are on the other side of the bathroom's lavatory wall, and he was so taken with it that I had difficulty in getting his attention on to what else I'd like to do. And he had no problem with my intention to do the tiling, painting, and other finish work myself, leaving the heavy lifting items to them.

But hmm, I have to wonder if this is a company I want to work with. When you've got drawings to show and the estimator still gets off on tangents about what you want to accomplish, what would you likely end up with? If you tell him you want something lined with Formica® or MDO plywood, why would he insist you should make do with stick-on shelf liner instead? If you've told him your tub drains too slowly, from what realm of fantasy would he import the idea to turn the head of the new one around so the drain line would need a greater fall from the plug hole to the soil stack? Why when you tell him repeatedly you'd need them to demolish and remove the tub, would he keep saying, "Oh, you can break it up if you want! We won't leave you with tub pieces at the top of your stairs!"

I can't imagine.

And then there was his insouciance about the floor structure as is holding the ceramic tile and clawfoot tub I want to put in. I have pictures from February when the kitchen ceiling was opened up to repair the bathroom sink plumbing. I showed them to him. It's obvious that the span between joists is too great to allow ceramic tile without sistering the joists or adding support to them somehow. But oh, no, he dismisses that; oh, it'll be fine just the way it is! They redo hundreds of bathrooms! They put ceramic tile on floors like that all the time!

I asked whether he thought the floor as it is would take the additional weight a cast iron clawfoot tub would add. "Why are you so worried about the structure?" he laughed.

"Because I don't want my bathtub in the kitchen."


He was very cheerful about simply taking up the existing vinyl flooring with its ¼" luan plywood underlayment, slamming down some HardieBacker® onto the 3/4" x 3¼" tongue-and-groove subfloor, then installing the ceramic mosaic on top of both. "Um," I ventured, "wouldn't you be putting down some exterior grade plywood first?"

"Oh, no, we wouldn't need anything like that! We've been doing these bathrooms for years!"

Yes, and I can imagine the cracked floors they've left behind. It'd be charming to think that First and Only Baths* can reverse the laws of statics to make it cheaper for me to redo my john, but me, I dunna think so.

But as Mr. Estimator burbled away, I got to thinking: How much, really, of this job can I not do? Demolition only looks formidable when you think of it overall. But if you've got a good crowbar, the tile comes out in pieces. Ditto the bad plaster (if it is bad, that is). Same with the old linen closet. The bathtub, being such a mess, probably isn't worth putting on CraigsList. Wearing suitable protection and armed with a hefty sledge hammer, I could knock the bejeebers out of it quite handily.

If I took things slowly and considered them well beforehand, I could cut and install the new cement backer board; maybe I could even sister the joists. Maybe, maybe, if I studied it out and got the right tools, I could also relocate the HVAC outlet and replace the plumbing lines for my lav and tub!

Well, no, maybe that's too fantastic.

I can imagine all that. What I can't imagine is hiring First and Only Baths* to redo my second floor bathroom.

As the kids a few years ago used to say, "In your dreams."

Good Intentions

Oh well phooey. I meant to make a post about digging two humongous holes and hauling tons and tons of old sandy dirt out and dumping tons and tons and tons of new compost and manure and peat moss and topsoil in, not to mention digging out the stump from the arbor vitae in the first place, and so getting two more roses planted yesterday (Wednesday) evening. . .

But it took longer than I thought to download the pictures (haven't done it for awhile due to the computer being on the fritz). And then there's something I don't quite like about one of the roses. I mean, they aren't supposed to have funny markings on the leaves, are they?

I have emailed the supplier. With photos.

So there won't be a post. At least, not much of one.

More Blog Redecorating

I'm marching onward stripping stair rail parts, which is repetitious and boring and doesn't bear writing about.

The really fun thing I've been doing the past few days is tarting up the houseblog.

As you may have noticed, I got the wide ad running (no, this isn't a shameless inducement for you to click on it). But I've also gone to town on Blogger widgets.

Want to see what I've accomplished on various rooms in the house since 2003? Check out the slide shows! I'm up to early 2008 with adding photos to the related web albums, and when I feel like doing something brainless, I go into Picasa and upload a few more.

Then, get a load of the House Progress calendar. It's not for my To-Do list; goodness, no-- it's for my Got It Done list. If there's a red-orange dot/rectangle on a date, that means I actually accomplished some work on the Sow's Ear that day. Ain't that keen?

What I need some friendly reader to tell me is, can you click on the dates and read what I've recorded there? That would be good. Or does nothing come up at all? That would be not so good. Or . . . can you, O Reader, click and fool around with what I've written on my calendar? That would be very bad indeed. Please. Don't. Do. It!

And I've changed my blogs-I-follow list so I can see when their authors have made new posts (and, I have to say, you guys are slacking off of late. Come on! Give me an excuse to click over!).

These features should make my blog ever so much more attractive and informative and entertaining!

Unless, of course, all these bells and whistles are making the blog take forever to load, so nobody wants to read it any more . . .

Oh, dear. "What your best friends won't tell you." But give it to me straight: Are the new features helpful or not? If they just get in the way, I can always delete them, no problem. After all, redecorating the blog is a lot less work than renovating the house-- not to mention more easily reversible.

Blog Housekeeping

I've finally figured out why the 300x250 ad block on my blog never gets used, even though my Adify account says I've got buyers for it.

It's because the template default size of the right hand sidebar is only 240 pixels wide. I kind of tumbled to that when I put on a new house photo a little bit ago and noticed it was chopped off on the right side.

So I went into the HTML and widened the sidebar to 320 pixels. Now the picture and the ad block have room to breathe, and hopefully pretty soon I'll be rid of that placeholding blank and have an ad above the fold.

However, you'll notice that I wasn't able to move the radiused corners to the new location. In the HTML window it says, "The images which help create rounded corners depend on the following widths and measurements. If you want to change these measurements, the images will also need to change."

Well, I did change "the widths and measurements"; can anyone advise me on how to change the "images" as well? The template is called "Rounders," but I can't find anything on Blogger Help to solve the problem.

Suggestions gratefully received! Meanwhile, we'll see what Adify comes up with now that my ad space is the right size.

Yes, I Know

. . . I should oughta post something.

My computer's been back and reconnected since last Friday, so that's no longer an excuse. But can I plead that I got so used to actually getting things done while it was away that I'm loath to go back back to spending much time on it?

Uh, guess not. Spent practically all night a couple times since then on-line dealing with stuff I Really Hadta Take Care Of.

Call my failure to update Overload Procrastination. Too darn much to write about. Such as:

Progress on the wood trim stripping to the point where I've finished everything in Stage One but the stair rail parts, the hall bench, and the casing around the doorway between the stairhall and the kitchen. This included having to remove and majorly patch the casing of my bedroom doorway, ineptly reinstalled during a 1980s remodelling job . . .

Getting over my queasiness over possible irreparable damage and starting to knock out the fillet stops holding in the stair balusters, so I can begin to strip them . . .

Realizing I need to strip the wallpaper over the stairrail before I start on its woodwork, so beginning the wallpaper removal in earnest . . .

Juggling and mistiming price increases and samples on the William Morris wallpapers I want, to the point that I've come out $160 on the wrong side of the equation and have to consider whether I'm going to get these papers or not . . .

Being offered and procuring a 1985 copy of my house lot survey from my PO-1's land surveyor, who's closing his practice, and what I learned from him when I picked it up . . .

Deciding I have to strip both sets of stairs and the 2nd floor hall floor before I can refinish and reinstall the stripped door and window trim, and making a start at that as I do the stair stringers . . .

Making a start-- sort of-- at finishing the drywall patches left over from the mid-February plumbing work . . .

Realizing I have to secure the cracked and sagging ceiling plaster in my 2nd floor hall and over the 3rd floor stairs before I can strip the steps and the hall floor, and so finally getting around (yesterday) to putting in an order for Big Wally's Plaster Magic . . .

Meeting with about a million masonry contractors to see if I can get an affordable price for replacing my scat-to-scumbaw front sidewalk steps, and researching on whether I can do it myself . . .

Going to the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show this past weekend (courtesy of Elaine V. at Bless This DIY Mess-- Thank you ever so much!!) and buying a cool tile scorer/cutter so I can break the tile I want in my first floor hall . . .

Consequently looking up information on the substrate I need in order to support said proposed first floor hall tile, and finding out that my joist spacing (not to mention the cold air return plenum) may forbid my installing tile at all, without I put in a lot of supplementary joists . . .

Keeping an eye on the bulbs and shrubs breaking dormancy in my garden, and feeling uneasy because I need to grind up last Fall's leaves that are presently parked on the beds and prep the beds for planting . . .

Oh, yeah, and being nosy about what my new neighbors across the alley are up to, as they've had heavy equipment in totally uprooting and digging out the back yard.

So I have a truckload load of post subjects to catch up on.

But now I have to go downstairs and strip wallpaper. A couple weeks ago someone I heard on the radio pointed out that until one has paid off the mortgage, one's house actually belongs to the mortgage holder. This being two banks, in my case. So as I hope I may term myself an honest and honorable person, I need to get busy restoring the value of my dear friends' the banks' property and make the intended silk purse out of this Sow's Ear.

Something More for the To-Do List

Today or tomorrow I have to send my computer processor away to be repaired. Which means for ten days to two weeks I won't be sitting in front of the monitor surfing the Internet.

The grand plan was to spend the time madly stripping woodwork. I still plan and hope to, but maybe not madly. I messed up my lower back muscles somewhat due to an intimate meeting between my car and a guardrail in early January, and they tell me at the chiropractor's office that if I do physical labor for more than a half hour at a time I'll tear them up worse.

But maybe with breaks (for the heating pad?) I can get something more done.

But as of this noon I have something else to put on my To-Do list. Last week's plumbing repairs left me with holes in my kitchen ceiling and the wall of my guest bedroom (Kitten Room!) closet. This morning, the drywall guy sent by the home warranty company came and did his work.

The plumber told me the surfaces would be left primer and paint ready. I was prepared to tackle that. But the plumber was wrong. Turns out the drywall guy's authorized only to patch the holes and apply the first coat of patching compound. Subsequent sanding and succeeding coats of joint compound are up to the homeowner.

Meaning me.

Could be worse, hey? I could be some helpless schlub with no clue about DIY or house renovation. I've got the ladder, the wet-sanding blocks, the drop cloths, and the plaster spatulas. I need to get another bucket of joint compound, but I've worked with it. I know how.

So even though I wasn't planning for this project in the next two weeks, I can do it.

As long as I don't spend more than thirty minutes at a time on it. Right.

And I learned something useful. The drywall guy used a product by USG, "Sheetrock Patching Compound," which can fill deep cavities without sagging on walls or on ceilings. It's said to be compatible with both drywall and plaster. It comes in 5-minute, 20-minute, and 40-minute workability grades. The 5-minute kind was used here today.

Hmmmm. I've got some places underneath the trim I've removed where the plaster or old patches to the plaster are in pretty bad shape. A product like this could prove to be very useful.

In other news, the concrete steps from my front walkway to the public sidewalk are crumbling so badly that I'm surprised the Borough hasn't come through and condemned them. I have to get them repaired before they give way under someone.

Of course, I have to be cute about it, even in this economy. Before I give in to the dismal reality of glaring white concrete, I want to get some bids on replacing them with stone.

Not sure exactly what kind of stone: the kind the house has as windowsills and entry stair cheekwall caps. I'm thinking it's Pennsyl- vania bluestone or else limestone that's gotten very, very dirty. The stoneyard guy who's coming Thursday afternoon to give me an estimate should be able to tell me what it is.

The tread edges would match the existing caps in thickness and cut. The risers, maybe in the same stone? Or maybe in soldier-course brick to match the house. That'd look good. All over a concrete base, of course.

That's the plan. Maybe I'll get on a computer at the public library and blog on what I find out. I do plan to update my woodwork stripping Project Tracker when I'm there, however. So keep an eye on it! 58% done now.

It's Progress, Ain't It?

Here I am again, come to announce (trumpets, please!) that I have Three More Pieces of Woodwork Stripped. Which brings me to 53 out of 330, or 16%.

Well, whoopty-do and wallop me with a cornpone, as some down-home philosopher I've just made up never said.

It doesn't sound impressive, does it? Or worth blogging about.

But I started this blog a year ago to document whatever progress I made fixing up the house, as an incentive to keep me making it. What's the point if I don't use the blog for its purpose?

Besides, these were three big, important pieces of wood trim. They're the inner jamb and header facings of the "archway" between the living room and dining room. They're the ones I didn't dare take down, because the plaster was so fragile I was afraid the whole house might collapse if I pried them free.

So they had to be stripped in place, with me sometimes working blind, with the floors protected the best I could with contractor paper, a plastic-backed drop cloth, and newspapers over it. I'm sure I've got some stripper spots on the fake Pergo, though. Rubbing that runny Western Wood Doctor refinisher on with steel wool can send the drips flying, whatever care I take.

I did the heat stripping part of the job Sunday evening. And managed to hold fire with the heat gun until I'd cleared out the excelsior and bits of Kleenex that various past owners had stuffed into the space above the header trim. I can sort of understand what the nose tissue was doing-- I suppose it makes a feasible backer material, if your mind runs that way-- but the excelsior I don't get at all. It didn't even pretend to be mixed with the plaster. It was just lying there.
Anyway, tonight (blast it, do I have to say "last night and early this morning"?) I got the pieces cleaned of their old finish, and that is progress. Even if I did run through three right-hand rubber gloves doing it. On one jamb I'm left with the mark where I removed the POs'-1 quasi-Victorian decorative bracket, and a piece of the trim came off with it. I'm hoping I can get the new finish dark enough to even that out.

That, however, is something I'll concern myself with down the road. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and all that sort of thing.

Book Me-Me-Meme!

I've been tagged (thanks, Sandy!) with the book meme that's going around. I'd been thinking it'd be fun to play that, and here I have my chance.

Here's how it works:

To participate in the book tag.............Pick a book at least 123 pages long. Open that book to page 123. Find the fifth sentence and post the next three. Then tag five other people.

I'm assuming this means a book I'm currently reading. Hmm, which one? I have books-in-progress all over the house!

But since I got tagged on my houseblog, I'll choose the one with the page 123 excerpt that's most house-related. Here goes:

"'You can order the coal.'

'Very good, my lady. I fancy there will be some time between lunch and dinner to effect a clearance of the kitchen chimney, provided there is no interference from the police.'"*

Or as it would be in 2008, objections by the EPA!

Now that I've completed the selfish part of this meme, I'm afraid I have to bow out of Part 2, the tagging. Just because I'm reading (and re-reading!) when I ought to be working on my house doesn't mean the rest of you are!

But if you are reading something to help you work on your house, to reward you for having worked on your house, or to distract you from getting round to working on your house, open that volume to page 123 and leave a comment. I'd be interested to hear what you find!
___________________________________
(From Busman's Honeymoon, a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, 1937)

"I'd Like to Thank All the Little People Who--"

Frequent commenter Sandy has graciously given this blog of mine an E for Excellent award.

These honors come with obligations, of course: In this case to pick my ten favorite blogs and give the award also to them.

Not all are housebloggers, so I played over here.

"I owe it all to my dad, who first taught me how to use a ShopSmith when I was five years old! And to my mom, who gave me the keen set of pine building blocks! And to my brother, who didn't scream too loudly when I beat him out of his Erector Set! And to the mean kids in class, who always got to the Legos and the Lincoln Logs first, so I had to go home and work with real tools and wood and stuff! And to--!"

Mental Remodelling

It having been suggested by our esteemed Houseblogs.net moderators that we make known to our audience our home improvement resolutions for the Year of Our Lord 2008, I take keyboard in hand cheerfully to comply.

. . . Well, actually, I've never been one for making New Year's resolutions. I favor New Year's Ambitions instead. As far back as high school, that's what I've been listing this time of year. "Find out where the elevator behind the Teachers' Lounge goes." That sort of thing.

Resolutions leave me squirmy. "I will never go out of the house with paint under my fingernails." They're full of "always" and "never" and "every day." Blow that sort of requirement even once, your resolution flutters down into the well of guilt and extinction. Resolutions tend to be all about changing oneself-- "I will stop coveting other people's antique furniture." That's hard to do-- and easy to give up on, by, say, January 10th or so. And there, you've ruined another year.

Whereas Goals and Ambitions-- those are fine, objective things. You accomplish your goal-- "Take wood whittling class"-- and you can tick it off your list and feel really pleased with yourself all year.

And in accordance with my usual custom, I could just set some rehabbing goals and join the merry throng of housebloggers who are listing the projects they want to complete in 2008. But I'm having to face the fact that it's my attitude and methods that've kept me from getting much done around this messy, torn-up house in 2007. And that if I'm going to tick any projects off my list, I'll have to do the hard thing and work on straightening myself out, first.

So with the help of God (gee, I feel like I'm taking my ordination vows all over again), in 2008 I resolve to:

1. Deliberately plan projects in terms of time, money, and materials.

I am so good at going off half-cocked! Do you have any idea how many different means and methods of getting paint off wood that I've invested in the past three or four years? I'll be walking through the aisles at Home Depot or Lowe's, and I'll spot some sure-fire tool or compound on the shelf, and "Oooh! shiny! shiny! That'll solve all my paint-stripping problems! I gotta get that!" And just as likely when I get it home, I find I have a can or carton of whatever it is already.

No. Cannot afford that. I can plan perfectly well in behalf of my architecture clients; it's time I exercised that capacity to benefit myself.

2. Accept my limitations and get done what I can get done.

Yes, I haven't gotten a heck of a lot done around here. And it's largely for the head-on-crooked reason that I somehow feel I should get it all done perfectly, all at once. Or at least, within the next month or so. But I can't. I know I can't. But I still feel I should. So it's just easier to go play computer card games and live vicariously through other people's houseblogs, rather than tackle my own house and, oh, no, "fail" to get the entire rehab done perfectly, all at once.

This "should" of magic-wand perfection is hereby hauled out and dumped in the trash can in the alley. The garbage haulers will charge me extra to take it away, it's so big, but it'll be worth the removal fee.

3. Avoid wasting mental effort and physical energy on projects that are not immediate priorities.

Face it, it's so much sexier to think about redoing the bathroom, which is a five-years-out venture, than it is to actually get downstairs and scrub the dormant mold off the basement walls. It's more fun to look at patterns for curtains, than actually to clean up the woodwork around the windows those curtains might someday go on.

But sexy and fun doesn't get me any forwarder. I spend a lot of time dreaming when I could be doing. "Come to meeeeee!" says the vampire-- but I gotta hold up the garlic and the cross and ward off his decadent, time-and-effort leeching charms.

There's more mental remodelling I surely need to do, but that's enough to tackle for one year!

Next post, I'll deal with what this will mean in terms of actual house projects.

Oooh, goodie, I get to make some New Year's Ambitions!

Checking In

Barring Wednesday's theological cyber glitch, I haven't posted for the past week.

And I haven't posted about productive work on the house for I think a week yet again.

That's because, barring routine housework and yardwork, I haven't gotten any productive work on the house done for the past week or two.

It's only partially because of the four-day-a-week AutoCAD class I started a week ago yesterday. It's mostly because in all my current projects, I've met some sort of check or delay or brick wall. And not wanting to do the bitch-and-moan polka, I've said nothing.

After all, you, dear readers (all two of you), want to hear how cleverly I'm solving the problems, not how they're making me wonder what was it, exactly, I didn't like about landlords.

But on the theory that it's more fun to read about the messes fellow-housebloggers get into before they emerge in shining and exemplary success than to plod through the self-glorifying sagas of those who never drive a nail wrong, I'll give a rundown of what I'm embroiled with and how I'm at least trying to take care of it:

Sanding and repainting the Adirondack chairs. Decided to use my Black & Decker Mouse sander to even out the old paint, but I was out of the Velcro (TM) -backed sandpaper sheets that go on it. Lowe's and Home Depot don't carry them. They're hideously expensive even online. But hooray, I found an outfit called Online Industrial Supply, that would sell me 10-yard rolls of fuzzy-backed sandpaper in my choice of grit for a very reasonable price. The two rolls I ordered came couple of days thereafter, and I'm using the last B&D sheet as a template to cut new ones to fit my Mouse. It's going to work great, and I'll get back on the job this weekend, as soon as I finish my AutoCAD homework or the humidity goes down, whichever comes first. Or last.

Reseeding the back yard. Got that done last Saturday. The seeding part, I mean. But the recipe I was using for repairing a dog-damaged lawn says to cover the seed with a quarter inch of compost. I was thinking compost would be too acidic, and I bought five bags of humus-y topsoil instead. It's lovely, rich, black dirt. It's also sopping wet. Quarter inch cover? An inch and a half, more likely! Not counting what sticks to my hands.

I tried emptying two bags worth into the garden cart, to let the dirt dry in the sun. But of course then the rains came. Dirt can't get very dry covered with a tarp . . .

Finally yesterday I said Oh, phooey, and scattered those two bags worth over the newly-seeded area as far as it would cover. It will probably just smother the seeds, but what can you do? The sugar maple tree has started its annual leaf dump, so it's all equal. I'll just have to try again in the spring.

Recovering my drafting board, etc. This is very annoying. The vinyl cover will not lie down flat, even with double-sided tape under it. You'd think after a week or more of resting, it'd behave itself. But noooooo! And it has to be flat, or you get those ugly gray smears up and down your drawing when you slide your parallel bar.

At least, when those of us who still think some architectural drafting should be done by hand slide our parallel bars!

I had an interview (yes!) with another hand-drafting architect this past Tuesday. While we were at it, I asked her about her experiences with covering her board. Told me, she doesn't try to tape the cover down. Just lets the parallel bar hardware hold it to the substrate. And I guess it flattens out eventually.

So I'll try that. But just in case I want to try the tape again, I gave the plywood board a coat of primer this evening. Maybe the sticky didn't work because it was absorbed by the bare wood grain.

Once my studio's put back together, I can get back to real house projects like woodwork stripping and floor sanding and redesigning the upstairs bathroom around the new kittens' litterbox.

That is, unless I'm consuming all my time trying to keep up in computer drafting class. If you don't hear from me before Thanksgiving, blame that.

Or you can blame the dog and the cats. Yes, you could assuredly blame them.