Permission Granted

The permit is in, and there is nothing but the sweet release of shaving cream between me and a construction timeline beginning early April and ending Summer-ish. Not too much more to say than "stand by".

True Grizzled; a bureacratic playoff

Further to last weeks post, we continue to wait patiently to begin work on all the un-finished fixes around the back of the house. It's not that we aren't motivated, quite the contrary, we are over motivated - a motivation that comes in the form of contractual agreements and financial deposits. We are about to finally hire someone to do some of the heavy lifting and we have placed deposits on the material orders. So we're actually in a very good position to begin un-doing all the duct tape solutions that surround us save one slight hold-up.... the permit has not yet come in. Yes, applied for months ago and follow-up weekly it continues to sit on one man's desk at the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs untouched. I know this because i've become quite familiar with the process of paperwork within the backrooms of the District and I built in plenty of extra time... you see we applied for this piece of paper in September. Given the Zoning work and the requisite system misplacement we gladly surrendered 3 months to the process... but we left that behind back in January. It's an unusual feeling of futility to stare into the eye of a well practiced bureaucrat and blink. It's enough to make a man question his own sanity, and probably the reason I've given up on most personal hygiene in a half-assed attempt at a 'playoff beard' to rally through. I feel like one of those contestants on "Who's More Grizzled":

"I've buried wives, but a father should never bury a son."

Personal beard 'curation' is always on the list of goals for most men but mine sadly lies somewhere amongst the rustic dandy:

and less within the full blown gentlemans garibaldi:

eventual winner of 'Who's More Grizzled'; Mr. Robert Duvall

But there is an upside to all of this as beards do have their place amongst the home craftsman and their stand in television counterparts. Take for instance the paladin of personal home improvent and garage-built shaker furniture Norm Abrams:

Tim Allen stand-in and the caricature of know-how Mr. Richard Carn:
And of course the late '70's Bob Vila (whose visage I'm sorry to report just made most of you women schedule your next bikini wax)

Solutions temporal; Duct Taping the Lusitania

That should buff right out.

As I awoke this morning and put the kettle on to perform my daily ablutions (I wash my hands in warm Earl Grey and sip from a carafe of diluted epsom salts) I took a moment to survey the daily arrangement that we manage around the stove:

It occured to me that there are a number of common and not-so-common stop-gaps that we've become well accustomed to managing and ignoring. I realized this because the third step in beginning my day (after the tea rinse and regurgitating the epsom) is to empty that blue bowl sitting next to the non working half of the stove. That bowl is a catch basin for the leaky pipe right above it - something we were very easily able to notice because the previous homeowners thoughtfully ran the plumbing on the outside of the finished surfaces in the kitchen. It's almost as if they knew that the sub standard plumbing work would fail and thus made it easy for us to diagnose the leaks! The fourth and fifth items in my morning ritual are to follow up with the other 2 plastic catch bowls in the utility closet - and empty as required. The green one catches a leak from the roof and the orange one services the over-functioning pressure relief valve of the worlds greatest craigslist deal. The color coding of the bowls helps so I just refer to an overflow as a 'code blue'.

It's not all drip management and esophageal enemas... stepping back, the stop-gaps or 'duck tape' solutions abound. Here's the washing machine draining into the kitchen sink...

That sink drains into another kitchen sink.

and a second floor window subdivided by bathroom that has remained since 2007. we gave up long ago and painted to match.

Add to that the growing number of unfinished painting projects and the handrail that won't stain itself and you've got the image of a lifestyle that's ripe for quick fix solutions peddled through DIY networks and networking DIY'ers.

Unfinished paint stares back with an un-blinking eye

And so these unfinished parts have come to symbolize our approach fairly well. We're willing to wait for the final solution. There's a patience (and cost) to doing things the right way balanced with a quick fix... I just hope the quick fix outlasts our patience -it's raining today and someone will need to manage the 'code green'.