Putting the Fear of God into Me

That is, if the god in question is Mammon.

But more on that anon.

I was going along, accomplishing a thing or two, but nothing ambitious or blog-worthy. Tied up the quince bush in the back garden so it wouldn't impale me on its thorns. Rigged up an arrangement with a bungee cord and a rock to keep the dog out of the Kitten Room while letting them come and go. Plodded along and finally, last Sunday, finished my file cataloguing and paperwork filing. Got the study dusted and vacuumed and put in order, hooray.

So did I immediately get back to woodwork stripping and other useful house renovation projects?

No. I made and canned tomato sauce (well, the fruit would have gone bad if I'd left it longer!). I spent a day or two trying to clean boot the operating system on my little laptop. I tabbed hanging file folders that needed it. I went to a lot of unavoidable meetings. I played with the kittens. I watched reruns of Rescue 911 on YouTube.

Anything but do anything significant to the house and grounds.

Until last night.

You see, yesterday morning I got a call from an appraiser. He's coming to look at the house this coming Thursday afternoon.

Panic in the streets!! The appraiser is coming in six days and my house is a falling-apart, torn-up mess!!

OK, Kate, think sensibly. There's no way the woodwork is getting stripped and refinished by Thursday afternoon. No way there will be new wallpaper up or decent tile or something down to replace the shabby vinyl on the kitchen and hallway floor. But there's a lot that can be and should be and must be done by then.

Like vacuum the blankets of pet hair and dust off the ceiling fans.

Check, did it last night.

And scrape the little tags of half-dissolved paint off the living room window and get the dirty drop cloth, etc,. cleared away.

Check, ditto.

And address curb appeal deficiencies. For example:

Today's task was edging the lawn, front and back. And yes, it was a lot faster and easier to do it this time, having undertaken the eight-hour marathon in June or whenever. And the Neutron edger attachment worked fine: once I'd put in a new string reel, I didn't have to stop and rethread broken edger string even once.

This is pretty, though I say it myself:

The Herbacious Border of the Future edged and semi-weeded:

I'd hoped to tackle my crazy bushes before nightfall. But sweeping up after always takes longer than you think, especially when you're working on cobblestone paving. Gotta get to those bushes before Thursday. And do something about the piles of landscape rock and fabric sticking up out of the front border. And clear the brush piles in the back away to the borough dump.

Why the sudden advent of an Appraiser? Not because I'm planning to put the house on the market; at least, not any time soon.

No, it's because my bank was eaten up by another bank, effective this past Monday. And I didn't like some of the new bank's terms and conditions.

So my checking account and I jumped ship to another financial institution. I also investigated transferring my home equity line of credit to said institution, since their ordinary interest rate is a good deal lower than what I'm paying now.

Buuuh-uht . . . ! If I can qualify, I can get 1% under current Prime, fixed. (Whoo-whoo!!) But going by the book, the value of the Sow's Ear falls short by a few thousand. The new bank is paying for the appraiser to come and see if the value might be scootched up higher.

Agreeing to that sure seemed like a good idea earlier in the week when I was on the phone with the loan officer. Now the appointment is made, I'm not so sure. There is so blinking much that screams out for attention around here. I think I'll be lucky if they don't appraise the house under the book rate, and refuse to transfer the line at all!

Whatever I can do to prevent that, I have to do. So for the next few days, I'll be sacrificing myself, my sweat, my muscles, and a great deal of money I don't really have to the great greedy god Mammon.

"Oh, great god Mammon, we bow before you! Grant us the blessing of a below-Prime interest rate! Salaamy, salaamy, baloney!"

There Goes the Neighborhood

About a month ago, my next-door neighbor casually mentioned that they were planning to put aluminum siding on their perfectly good (and recently-painted) wood-sided house.

Nothing happened for over two weeks. And I began to hope that maybe he was just joking. Or had thought better of it. Or something.

But no. The reprieve was due only to the steady rain we had all through the first two or three weeks of August. And two weeks ago, the sun came out and the vandals arrived, in the person of a crew from a nationally-advertised aluminum siding company. They proceeded over the next week and a half to hack off window mouldings, corner boards, and gable-end barge boards and brackets. They covered over storey-line trim, rafter-ends, and fish-scale shingles. Everything that made the neighbors' house interesting, distinctive, and even charming was gone, either destroyed or hidden from view.

I was shocked at how hard I took it. It made me physically ill to awaken at 7:00 AM to the sound of the workmen's pry bars and hammers. It was heart-wrenchingly painful to look out my stair hall window and see the desecrating strips of metal rise higher and higher in my field of view (They started on the side facing my house. Wasn't I lucky).

And what a joy (*rolls eyes*) it is to look out my kitchen window and be confronted with bad butt joints in the aluminum siding and inept mitre joints at the alumimum window trim, where before I'd seen the lively texture of the line and profile of the wood siding. And have you ever noticed how aluminum siding manufacturers press this ersatz wood texture on their product? It looks like something that's come unsanded straight from the mill, that no self-respecting old-time finish carpenter would ever allow to be seen on his work. Damn it, if you're going to engulf your dwelling with tin, make it smooth and sleek like tin and get it over with!

I wanted to vent my frustration in blogdom while the deed was being done, but I needed a telling After shot to make the point. And I wasn't able to get that until today. Didn't have the nerve to do it while the workmen were still there. Did not want to be asked what I thought of their job. Much less did I want the same question put to me by the neighbors.

But I got out with my camera this afternoon. Here's the exhibits in the case.

Front of house, Before:

Front of house, After:

From the rear, Before:

From the rear, (almost) After:

So here you have it. What can my neighbors have been thinking?

By now my distress has flattened out towards dull, fatalistic acceptance. It helps if I keep my glasses off while I'm on that side of my house-- I don't notice the tacky workmanship quite so much. And I tell myself that if my otherwise sane, sensible neighbors wanted to renounce their cute house with its character and live in a boring metal box just like every other metal box up and down this wide land of ours, that's their business and their loss.

It's my loss, too. But here's one bright spot, I suppose: I no longer have the ugliest house on the block.

Mea Culpa

No, I haven't posted for awhile.

As a close reading of this blog will have revealed, I have A Secret Identity. Two, actually. I not only am a hapless and not very efficient house renovator, I also am a Licensed Architect.

And an Ordained Minister in the Presbyterian Church USA.

Shocking, ain't it?

I got laid off my fulltime architecture job early last April; shortly thereafter, the head of my presbytery told me the ministry committee wanted to interview me for some fulltime pastorates in the area.

This would have been ideal. So I called repeatedly since then to bug the committee to put me on the agenda. Wait, I was told. Agenda's full this month. Then, oops, summer's come, we don't meet in July; maybe we fit you in in August.

Late July, I rang the presbytery exec. And he told me that the churches in question had gotten tired of waiting for the presbytery to act and had found pastors on their own. Didn't know they could do that, under their particular circumstances, but I guess they could. Learn something new every day.

So since the first week in August, I've thrown myself into sending out resumes for architecture jobs and going to the subsequent interviews. And I've adopted and am domesticating two semi-feral kittens some friends found in their new barn. And I've discovered the mindless joys of making lolcat macros (well, when you have cute kitties, it's ungodly tempting). So other than a fiddling and failed attempt to install a ductwork grille and clearing out space in my basement to set up my sawhorses for woodwork stripping, I've done absolutely NOTHING on the house.

Nothing, that is, unless you count cataloguing the contents of the numerous physical file cabinets in my study. I have files and papers everywhere: Papers I haven't sorted for years: items I brought home from my recent architecture job: brochures, warranty manuals, business cards; correspondence, notes, phone messages; receipts, statements, invoices; articles, clippings, web printouts. I'm tired of years of making new file folders and discovering I had one of that category already. I'm sick of not remembering where anything is, especially when I need that particular bit of paper now. I'm weary of toting tons of paper from abode to abode, when a great deal of it could just be thrown away. I have to get this mess organized.

So I'm cataloguing my files, and when I'm done, I'll know what to do with the mess. And no, the answer is not, "Throw it all away." Not yet.

The really important thing is that I clear up my study so I can do freelance architectural work in it. I go for a second interview at a certain area firm tomorrow. I may or may not finally want to work for them; they may or may not finally want me. Whether or not, I've got a line or two on some contract work, and a bit more income could only help.

Fitting a Simple Ductwork Grille, or, Let's Watch Kate Have Kittens!

As I reported on my cat-and-dog blog, a week or so ago, my friends Hannah* and Steve* rescued a feral kitten from the barn on their new property out in the sticks. Little pinky-yellow dirty fluffy thing. A lot more amenable to being picked up and held than you might expect. (Thank God.)

Couple of days later, they trapped and brought home (to their old house) its littermate, a stripey tabby.

Great fun for their young children, not so fun for Hannah and Steve. How can you properly domesticate a couple of feral kittens when you're a) trying to move out of your house in town before the closing date, b) working frantically to get your new 100-year-old country house habitable, and c) bunking with the in-laws until b) is accomplished?

The closing on their old house is tomorrow. Everything has to be out before 10:00 AM. So I've volunteered to get the kittens out from underfoot until the bathrooms and kitchen at the new house are in and my friends can get more settled.

I pick up the kitties later this evening. So this afternoon I had to tackle a project I've had on the To-Do list since I first looked at this house in June of 2003: Fit and secure the grille for the forced air duct outlet in the guest bedroom, soon to be known as the Kitten Room.

I'd realized soon after I moved in that the grille wasn't screwed on because the flange overlaps the top of the wooden baseboard. I was worried back then that my cat would go exploring down the hole, but she's never shown the least interest.

But kittens? Kittens are a different matter. The pinky-yellow one had already had to be lured out of a hole in the floor at my friends' new house. Kittens down the ductwork at mine? Kittens in the bowels of the furnace?? Do not want!

I'd been putting off cutting that baseboard because I didn't have the right tools. Two years ago, I pushed the bed up against that wall and forgot about it entirely.

But now I have a nice jigsaw. That should do it, right?

Wrong.

Get the extension cord, plug in the jigsaw. Nothing. Plug a lamp into the outlet. It shines. Plug the lamp into the extension cord. It shines on.

I check the saw owner's manual. No help. I call Black & Decker for tech support. They have no idea. Besides, the saw's out of warranty. Call somebody local? Damn! It's only two years old! It was working fine last time I used it a year ago!

I get an idea. Plug the saw directly into the outlet. It works.

Oh. It just doesn't like that particular extension cord!

Get a different, beefier cord. Jigsaw runs fine. Jigsaw does not cut the wooden baseboard. Bounces off. Dangerously. Not the right tool.

Do I need a reciprocal saw? No time to buy one this afternoon!

I then try the various little coping saws I find down in my cobweb-festooned basement workshop. No use, either.

So I resort to the Brute Force Method: My trusty hammer and chisel. And after a bit of labor, I come up with this:

Not bad, really. Edges need eased and the exposed wood needs sanded and painted, but otherwise, adequate. The flange of the grille fits in there just right.

But now I find that the grille won't fit into the duct outlet opening. The metal duct collar isn't big enough. How can that be?

Never mind. Hole has to be covered. Can't afford to have kittens over this--I'm going to have kittens.

I remove the collar and try to fit the grille in without it. Still too big! The heavy-gauge sheetmetal at the mouth of the duct is thick and wrinkled and won't let the grille neck in. Damn, again. That means a visit from the A/C and heating people.

But not today. So I got a piece of screening and my handy-dandy roll of duct tape and covered the opening over. Then I shoved the bed back against the wall and dropped a 12" x 24" plank between it and the duct opening. It rests nicely on the top of the baseboard. No kittens are getting in through there!

But why, oh why, do I have a grille that doesn't fit the duct opening?

Memory flies back to the day I stood there with the PO. I hear her telling me it'd been like that when they moved in and they'd never gotten it to fit, either.

Ah, yes. The dear POs-1 and their mania for Victoriana. Must've picked this pretty grille up at some antique shop or flea market sale. Thought it'd be perfect for the back bedroom. Got it home, discovered the duct was too low or the base was too high. Left it sitting there against the wall. "We'll install it someday."

Someday, for them, never came. Nor for the POs. Someday, for me, will be when I can afford to have the heating and cooling guys over. Or when heating season begins. Whichever comes first.

___________________________________

*Fake names!

(Yes, this is a backdated entry!)

Oh, Tragedy!

Somewhere on this blog I've called my house "the ugliest on the block." But oh, woe, my next door neighbors are competing for the (dis)honor!

They've got a nice wood-sided foursquare. They had it painted a couple years ago, and I respected them so much for doing so. The painters who came didn't take the tongue-and-groove siding down to bare wood, so true, the texture is a little rough. And I've noticed the color has faded a bit-- obviously they didn't use the best paint in the world.

But it's not peeling or flaking that I can see.

Yesterday, however, my neighbor was out till dusk ceiling the underside of his open back porch with cheap-looking aluminum strips. Well, maybe he wants to keep the birds from getting in.

Late this afternoon, though, I came outside and saw that he and a friend were replacing the side door. I asked, "What's up?"

He said, "Oh, we're getting ready to put siding on the house."

"Oh," I looked blank. "You have siding now."

"I mean, aluminum siding. We only painted the house two years ago, and . . . "

. . . And instead of letting it gently fade or getting a crew out to paint it properly this time, they're going to shroud their dwelling in cheap tin. It's bad enough having the dirty wide asbestos siding on the house on my other side. Now I get aluminum on this. Damn.

Officially, it's none of my business. It's their property, to do with as they will. But visually and emotionally, it is my business.

I have to look at it!!

Querying the Legitimacy of Back-Dated Posts

Tell me, is it the done thing to back date posts? So much happened at the Lime Plaster workshop at Howard Hall Farm a week ago, it's impossible to sum it all up in one retrospective post. So may I please "pretend" I posted during that time, and keep things clean and tidy?

Playing Queen Dragonfly in My Own Little Realm

This is going to be one of those self-indulgent posts that's more about keeping a record of what I have (or haven't accomplished) than about supplying edifying content for the Houseblogs community at large.

When we last saw our heroine early on the morning of the 19th, she was whingeing about the failure of a certain paint stripper to deliver on its promises-- or about her own inability to take advantage of its glorious potential.

Well. Later that day, I called a friend who took down and refinished all the wood trim in his house. How easy is that, I wondered, vs. doing it in situ?

Oh, much easier. And if you crack it, you can just kind of nail or glue it back together. If it isn't too badly cracked, that is.

Oh. Right.

So I made one little experiment into taking the trim down, the first since I tried it a year or two ago and ended up with a grievous crack in one piece. I think you'll agree that this casing, at least, needs to be taken down and reerected anyway. It's crooked, and there's a gap between the trim and the wall that's as wide as an quarter inch in some places. All filled with spackle or some other rock-hard goop.

It's got something to do with the front room and its conversion from a front porch. I'm not sure when or how this was done, but it wasn't the neatest job in the world.

So I took down one piece. One. And hammered out the nails. Then a friend came by and that was that.

Until later that evening, like, after midnight, when I finished removing the stinky old beige carpet from the first floor-second floor stairs. In time for Friday morning trash pickup, again.

I rather like this little detail on the bottom tread; so simple and elegant, the way it curves into the newell post.But alas, the edge of the curve is a butchered mess. I wish I'd counted how many staples it had in it. Little copper staples from the green plush carpet laid by the POs-1. Big steel staples from the beige berber carpet the POs put down. Staples, staples; staples on top of staples. It was a staple convention, a staple infestation! I was using a hooked dental pick to pull them out, and constantly rammed my knuckles on the hallway floor every time another vicious bit of pointed wire came away. You know how people simper about not cussing around the clergy? I must have tramatized my sanctified ears sadly, with all the cussing I was doing around my reverend self--Lord help me!

And Lord help this stair tread. I know I'll have plenty of use for wood filler here and there as I de-beige this house, but this piece will call for genuine wood filler artistry.

Friday proper was devoted to the lawn and garden. Nothing exciting, just mowing, mulching, weed-pulling, herbicide-painting on the spurge in the cobblestone path of the vegetable garden; that sort of thing.

Saturday, ah, yes, Saturday, I tackled the back porch. My POs used it as a lovely social space, with a glass-topped table and cushioned chairs and all the rest of it. Me, I've let it degenerate into a dumping ground:

It took all day and into the night to bring it to this:

No, that is not my idea of a great furniture arrange-ment. What you see there with the Adirondack furniture is another Project. Those pieces all need scraped, primed, and painted. I even have the paint. Now I have the room to do it. Let the games begin.

The hilarious thing is that now that the porch looks halfway nice (for the first time in almost three years), I keep going out there with the vacuum cleaner to keep it that way.

Don't worry. I'll get over it.

Tomorrow I'm off to Athens, New York, for the three-day lime plaster restoration workshop at Howard Hall Farm. I'll try to report on it when I get back.

(I'm not averse to doing it while the seminar's in progress, but out of the three laptops I own, not one is capable of a reliable hookup to the Internet. At least, I don't think so . . . )