Safety first; a retrospective in handrailing

Well, it's been a long time coming. We have finished the handrail along the stairs. It's been about three years since we put the stairs in place and we finally have the handrail. Not unlike a first communion or an 8th grade graduation, this is a momentous time - so we look back through the magic of digital photography to relive the experience.

March 2007 - construction stairs went in weeks prior and remained in place for... well about 3 years.

March 2007 - one week later - the open stairs allowed alot of flexibility and were helpful in hanging a piñata from the dining room ceiling.

I think we know where this is going...


Yep.

and... it seemed like a good idea at the time

It was October 2008 before we finally got around to finishing the drywall, and i set about making the most amazing scaffold out of a ladder, a 2x8 and a half used bucket of joint compound

OSHA be damned

Summer 2009 - We became very comfortable in our unfinished ways.

But eventually by October 2009 we found all the final pieces, mocked them up and...

...promptly found a competent carpenter to put them all together

I did none of this

Once more unto the breach; a return to familiar ground

september 2009 that will buff right out

Before explaining the mess above, let me take you through the easy upgrades around the outside of the house. We made small stones out of larger stones to make a edging wall...

modern man gardens with the tools at hand

And we continued to make bad wires safe.

But the major work happened inside, as it always does, right in the middle of our livable area. This time we set our sites on the Master suite. Astute readers are quick to point out that this was the last place we were ever going to touch. We had staged our lives to allow the house around us to fall while the bedroom remained safe, clean and someone civil. If a house be a man's kingdom then certainly the bed be his throne (well at least a close second). And this was supposed to be the safe place. But sooner or later poor judgements and impulses can get the better of anyone and this throne room was looking damn nasty one day:

that panelling had to go

and so it did

fin. well, almost fin. just a little more paint...

renovations pending; the life pursuit

Hiatus is the appropriate term, a "break" sounds... well, accidental and I was never comfortable with the word sabbatical outside of a university setting or the pipe-and-slippers crowd. So a hiatus it is or rather was and it was a good one at that. But like a college pregnancy or the hangover that precedes... this was unplanned. We had high hopes for this summer like the years before with plans to tear into more complicated house work but instead we did this:

And this:

I'm a boat

and we learned the true value of our pick-up truck under the clause of clunker, or at least one of us did.

don't look back in anger

and we began to spread the love by helping out others. I helped this guy:

turn his bathroom into this:turnabout is fairplay

But the summer does end, and not unlike the television network's summer break, our hiatus drew to a close. So we look forward to this new season of home renovation not unlike the comfortable return to network prime-time broadcasting - like a warm hug from some returning relative to be captured on the film of our reality TV friends.

hearts

The indignity of D.I.Y. ;All of the Kings Horses, and All of the Kings Men

A new American tradition?

We have a long standing tradition of Doing It Ourselves here... and we rarely think twice about the entire complexities of most projects. As such the end-game is usually an after-thought - Yes i can disconnect and remove the tub, but where does it go when it's out? And worse than that, what path does it travel on the way out of the house? Skilled and practiced tradesmen draw upon their years of experience to help predict the pitfalls and challenges of the w0rst case scenarios, we rely on overwhelming optimism and ignorance.

So, buoyed by the confidence of ignorance we tore into the removal of the old bathtub in the down stairs Laundry room.The tub is actually a claw foot free standing tub cleverly obscured by hideous tile work.

And utterly confusing framing (that's a bottle wire tied to the framing as found supporting the tub surround??)

Was the tile chosen to match the tub or the tub painted to match the tile? Ahhh the mysteries of the chicken or the egg...

We've removed some bulky items in the past and what we've learned so far is that everything is a wheel. With that mindset we walked the tub out of the house end over end over end....
... All went well until, tired and irritable we made the quick decision to try to move the grill out of the way by moving it up a set of stairs. Normally not a big deal for the back yard weber but this is no ordinary grill. It is a large, grey, egg-shaped ceramic grill/ smoker made by Primo Kamado out of Georgia. It weighs over a hundred pounds and stands as the most shiny example of how we can't ever seem to do anything "normal" (as defined by my sister). Why buy the cheap indestructable weber when you can tip-toe arround this awkward ceramic behemoth? Well as anyone who's been over for dinner can attest, i've built a rather obsessive and unhealthy relationship with this grill and together we've slowly and steadily been leading a trail of converts like some kind of back yard Pied Piper of bbq -though i suppose the true pied piper of back yard bbq forgoes the flute for something a bit more rubust . Three steps up and the grill, like some Humpty-Dumpty doppelganger tipped and shattered on the concrete in an instant.

A trajedy in one act


moment of silence

Well, at least the tub is out.

The indignity of D.I.Y.; The road to antique

the thrill of the chase

As we now festoon the house in finished materials we've envisioned regular trips along the grand shopping avenues in search of authentic hardware and antique fixtures... In reality it's more like internet shopping the CB2 clearance bin. These "finishing touches" can quickly become the budget busters so we do try to stretch the budget by re-purposing something used. However, used means old, old leads to vintage and pretty soon vintage becomes this. So we were very excited to find some "old" lamps for sale in a tent on the sidewalk in New York back in February. It's been my assumption that if something is for sale in a building that can be rolled up and taken home then there is a good chance it's stolen and likely priced below market value. All these fixtures needed was a new bracket and they'd be perfect. And all it takes is 3 months of metal shop work to turn a table lamp into a wall sconce.