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.

Yard in a weekend; Temptation, Deliverance with the Marquis de Sod

Imaginatory portrait of the Marquis de Sade by H. Biberstein

Sure those crazy 18th century aristocrats knew a thing or two about temptation. But we know a temptation all our own... the forbidden fruit of hired help.  At this point, it's almost like admitting defeat to go outside the home for expertise or extra muscle.  But with spring fully sprung these weekends aren't getting any easier to devote solely to the house work.  So it was with trepidation that we drove the truck to the incorporated home construction materials depot  and the unofficial day laborer waiting station to find some help.  

For those uninitiated in day labor conscription let me provide some helpful tips as learned firsthand:

1. Only approach the labor pool AFTER you have done your shopping at the home depot - attempting to secure two guys from the pool of 50 before hand only results in driving a truck bed full of dudes to your parking spot and alot of disappointed faces.  Times are tight and our solicitation for help was met with a frenzy of attention. I had limited time and resources but I was able to produce this video of the event.  

2. Talking louder is not a substitute for spanish, or poorly inflected spanglish 

That's pretty much all there is to it.  Heed my advice and you will have access to a ready supply of helpful and willing extra hands - in our case two extra men to help skin the yard of the top 3 inches back to level.   

before courtesy of 2008

Hot and Bothered; newell posts, balusters and stair porn

P1010453
Originally uploaded by pscooke2006

In these waning weeks of winter the work is really heating up... and by heating up i mean cooling down to a familiar negative pace. George has put his final touches on the stairs leaving me to contemplate the rail - and that's where we've been for weeks.

We neglected to include this little bit in the work description so I gladly traded George's work on setting the newell post for my work applying the finish.

These stairs have come a long way... just a little finish and we're ready for their close-up

It takes a village; Painting the house in a weekend

We've been painting for years - just never our own house. Alli's keen to jump at any chance to help her friends paint because strategically she always knew there would come a day for payback. That day was a Sunday in February and that payback came in the form of 6 extra bodies - or 12 extra pairs of hands or 24 extra paint brushes assuming one paints using the Saratoga double-wide method of holding two brushes in each hand (or maybe that's just how I roll(omg a painting pun!)). Though true to my habit of documenting the after and ignoring the effort I present our helpers in absentia:

Stephanie


Jennifer


Cameron


Jeff



and Jenny and Paul


We're almost done (sans radiators, door and window trim...)and the work looks pretty good.

All that Glitters is Gold; Buying a stairway [to he-ea-ven]

Sometimes we declare success, other times admit defeat... in the case of these stairs we didn't even step onto the battlefield. Until last week a trip to the kitchen in the middle of the night required hard soled shoes and strong stomach. we've been without stair treads or rail for about 24 months exactly. If we look back through our colective memory we can see that it was Presidents day 2007 that we hauled out the old narrow stairs and built up the new (less narrow) stairs going the opposite direction.
we liked the house, it was just that the stairs went the wrong way. but as two legs and four legs alike have become used to the walk up and down the 2x8 temporary treads we've always danced around the future complexity of installing the finished product- you see the house leans a little and that means rectangles become trapazoids and squares becomes rhombuses-es and people like me become confused and cross-eyed at the scribing complexity. So we brought in a pro - our skilled carpenter, George, is worth his weight in block planes (those fancy german ones). For anyone who has met George he's not actually human, but rather equal parts:

craftsman
computer
and wall-e


He has been at work on these treads for the better part of two weeks and the work speaks for itself.

at least the D approves