"Before" (when I moved in)

"After" (as of this weekend)

It's been a while since I've posted anything about the house.  Mostly because I haven't been doing much of note.  Renovations require both time and money, and I've been short on both for quite a while now.

This weekend, however, I started another major project: wainscoting in the downstairs bathroom.  This isn't some cheap paneling sheets, it's 3/8" solid oak beadboard.  The baseboard and chair rail were shaped from 1x6 and 1x4 oak planks (respectively).  I did the shaping myself.  All parts were sanded and stained, then cut to length and installed.

First of all, old houses suck.  There's not a straight line or right angle in the entire place.  So the corner joints don't match as well as I'd like.  To be honest, it would take a team of Amish master carpenters and theoretical physicists working off of plans drawn up by MC Escher to get the corners to match up perfectly.   But... considering what the room looked like when I moved in, it's a vast improvement.

If you look closely at the "before" photo, you'll notice that the floor is covered in crappy vinyl flooring.  In the "after" photo, you may notice the gorgeous solid-maple floor.  No, I didn't install hardwood floors (well... not entirely).  The previous owners covered up the hardwood.  They glued down paper liner (yes, they glued paper to solid maple flooring) then laid down masonite--being sure it was secure by stapling it down with about a bazillion staples--and then covered that with vinyl.

After pulling out the bathtub (so short my knees wouldn't get wet if I sat in it) I saw that they had cut a huge swath out of the floor in order to install the drain.  They cut completely through the sub-flooring and supports.  Under the toilet--which had apparently been poorly installed and leaked, causing the floor to rot--they took a skill saw and hacked out a square with they filled with cheap pine planking.

{sigh}

I salvaged what I could of the affected floor areas and had a professional re-install it along with new planks to fill the gaps.

Eventually, I'm going to have to pull out the trim on the door frames and window and replace them with new oak trim that's properly cut and shaped.  That will solve some of the issues I'm having around the window.  One of the doors (who needs 2 doors in an 8x9 bathroom?) will be removed completely and plastered over.   But that's down the road a ways.  For now, it's just sealed shut.

The only thing missing in the room is the full-sized claw-foot tub that's eventually going in there.

1. Me: Still alive.
2. Work: Big end-of-season rush, lots of projects keeping me busy. Building MySQL DBs & PHP interfaces (forms, reports, updates, etc). Looking to build more and more complex DBs soon. Really should actually learn SQL and PHP one of these days.
3. House: Still not done. Expected completion of Phase One.: Late 2010. Phase Two: late 2025. Phase Three: 7-10 weeks after my death.
4. Geek Stuff: Ditching the sub-par service of Verizon DSL (3M/768k) and moving to Charter Cable (10M/1M). Now running Kubuntu as my primary OS. Still making adjustments, but 80% satisfied with my progress so far.
5. Food: Been on a kick with sauteed shrimp and stuffed mushrooms. Latter may be a viable vegetarian/vegan option for when friends come to visit. Will check viability when I run out of shrimp. Been eating craisins by the cup-full. Also eating a lot more apples (Thank you Danielle!)
6. Health: Three weeks of rain have curtailed my bike riding. This is not good. Slightly offset by a better (and smaller!) diet and less wine. Upside of less food is better food (see point 4) Still not enough. Need to start biking again. Should start swimming again to work upper body. Weather recently has been hell on my bones. Hurt constantly, but mostly at low levels. Broke out the cane several times in the last couple weeks, but mostly just dealing with the pain.
7. Social life: Non-existent. Status quo. (What? You expect that to change?)
8. New Projects: Getting back into photography with models (as opposed to scenery and actors). New site up and running: Fotoaparat. WARNING: this site contains artistic nudes, "alternative" lifestyles, and sweeping landscapes. It is NSFW (Not Safe For Work). If you are uncomfortable with such images, do not click.
9. Garden: All onions harvested; kinda pathetic. Radishes pulled; total loss. Beans appear to be producing 2nd batch, haven't looked to see if they're worth harvesting. Carrots are ready to harvest; mostly small, though a few larger ones. Need to plant them better (in clumps, rather than a solid line) next year. Lima beans and chili peppers finally starting to grow; expect them to die from fall frost before producing anything. Need to start earlier next year. Herbs (excluding dill--dying off--and celantro--died off a couple weeks ago--are doing great. Basil is 2 feet tall and growing. Chives are doing well. Sage is full and growing. Parsley is apparently the result of some mutant growth experiment. Have twice harvested a full plastic grocery bag full, and the 2 plants are still huge and full.
10. Mysterious: Reassessing some changes attempted last year (delayed due to failure of others). Desire still exists. Recent situation casts doubt on whether I have the ability, however.
11. Conclusion: Still in Turtle Mode, but doing well.

This is basically just to let people know I'm still alive.

I've been keeping rather busy lately with work and house stuff. Work is still in overdrive (2 weeks and counting until the holiday deadline[1]), and the house is trying my patience. There's so much I want to get done, and so little time to do it. It's weird... most people want to win the lottery so that they can buy a mansion and a fancy car and stuff. I want to win the lottery so I can afford the time and supplies to renovate my little house. There's so much I want to do, and my time and funds are so limited, that it gets to be frustrating at times. Normally, I'm a very patient man. Somehow, I'm so wrapped up in this house that it makes me forget that.

"An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl she used to be. A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is, and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be, more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart."

Robert Heinlein wrote that in reference to one of August Rodin's sculptures. In the abstract, that applies to this house. When I first walked into this house, it was.... abused; empty, beaten down, broken. The yard was filled with weeds and a broken plot of garden left to die like the bastard child of a Greek king. The stucco was cracked and blistered like the skin of an elderly farmer. The paint was garish, peeling, and ugly in the way of a fad long since past. Her joints creak. She has scars--some deep, some only ugly.

But I looked at this house and I saw what she once was. I looked under the paint and behind the cracks, and I saw what she is. And I knew that, with patience and sweat and money, she could be that beautiful lady once again. And yet.... While I may--will!--restore her to her past glory, to the beautiful lady that she was in her heyday, she will always retain the depth and richness that comes from almost a century of existence. And that is what makes this tired, scarred, and abused house a truly beautiful home.

Every day, I look around me and see all the things that need to be done--that I will do--and I see how it will be when I'm done. If I had a million dollars, she would be in her glory again by the end of the summer.

And it's that which frustrates me. I see the end of the Path. I know how to get there. But my body, my schedule, and my bank account all hold me back. Behind this cracked stucco, gold linoleum, and quarter-inch of trendy paint is a house that remembers flappers and gin joints and Warren G Harding.

She's beautiful.

(In which I ramble on forever about things that most of you really don't care about.)

Yes, I've been gone for a while.

This strange concept called 'Real Life' has been taking up all my time.

1. First of all, there's work.  10-hour days 5 days a week (and occasional Saturdays).  Work is kicking my ass... and like a little pain-slut, I'm loving it!  =)    I accepted the job without there being a job description.  A week or two later, a job description was written up, and I agreed to it.   Right now, maybe 50% of what I do actually falls into that job description.  And things keep getting added!    But that's okay.   It's a small company and the new owners have a bold vision of where they want to be.  They're aggressive in pursuing it, but they also understand that things take time.   I've got so many irons in the fire right now that it's almost comical.  My duties include (but are not limited to) web design, webpage maintenance, e-commerce, print advertising, promotional materials, graphic design, newsletter writing/editing/layout, electronic advertising, writing copy, creating internal documents, tech-support, database admin, and procedural organization.     I get to be creative.  I get to have to use my brain constantly.  It's a continual challenge.  I'm having to learn new programs (Adobe InDesign & Photoshop among others).  I'm getting a crash-course in boats and marine motors. It's wonderfully and amazingly overwhelming.
2. The house.  When I bought the house, I envisioned a 5-year plan at the bare minimum.  It looks like it's going to be a 10-year plan to get it up to snuff.   However, there's a new twist to it.  I found out that my house is in a registered historic district and, by default, is automatically registered on the State Registry of Historic Places.  So, what does this mean?  It means that approved restoration work is eligible for a 25% tax credit.  YAHOOO!  New roof? Qualifies.  New furnace?  Qualifies.  New stucco?  Qualifies.  Repainting to period colors?  Qualifies.  Refinishing the floors?  Qualifies.    And....  *so* much more.   I have to spend $10k in no more than 5 years in order to get the credit, and I have to submit a 'restoration plan' to the state and have all the various bits approved.  However, the new roof (which I have to do anyway), new stucco and new furnace will eat up most of that $10k.  And all the things I want to do to the house involve restoring it to its original feel, anyway, so this is going to be easy.   I've started working on stripping and repainting the windows. This is my major summer project.   I *might* get half of them done this summer.  Maybe.   I've put in about 12 hours on the first two windows, and I'm still not done.  They need another coat of paint. They need the old putty broken off and new putty put in.  The mullions need to be stripped and painted the new color.  The upper windows need to be stripped on the inside so that I can break them loose (they're painted shut on both sides) and get to the top part of the frame of the lower panes, so that they can be stripped and repainted.  And then I still need to clean up all the paint spatters that got on the panes.   For the record--  This weekend's casualty count= ultra-sunburned head, smashed thumb (the nail is all purple), burnt knuckle (1k° heat gun), sore muscles (out of shape) and joints (arthritis), 1 toe nail torn off (not completely, but down to the quick), 1 toe cuticle ripped (different toe), and countless chemical burns from spattering Zip-Strip.    And you know what?   I feel great!
3. Geek N iche.  This doesn't take up a whole lot of time, but it's still something to which I must pay attention, and act when need be.
4. Freelance work.   Again...  not a huge draw on my time right now, but enough that it does impact other things.
5. Standard maintenance.  Y'know.... the normal stuff.  Mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, doing laundry, cleaning the house, updating the linux box to Feisty Fawn....   All the standards.

I know this sounds truly perverse, but ....   Thank God I don't have a girlfriend!    I don't know how I'd make time to spend with her (unless, of course, she was into renovation, too...  then we could spend our time together working on my house!).    Hmm....   any hot, intelligent, available, submissive babes with carpentry skills out there?  =D

There's so much that's been happening in the world that I want to write about.  So many views I want to express.  But I need to set my priorities, and right now it's often hard to find enough time to read all the things I want to online, let alone sit down and write intelligent posts in response to them.

So... that's my life.   I'm sorry that I haven't been posting the insightful and opinionated posts you may have become accustomed to, but rest assured, when things settle down again, I'll be back to piss off people in the ways you've come to expect from me.

Mission-style rocker. 'nuf said.

I've been busy.

Pictures 1 & 3 are from October 2005 (when I bought the house). Pictures 2 & 4 are from June 2006 (today).

That's right! I spent time... outside! Eeeek!

I spent 5 hours this morning working on my yard. Actually... just on the flower beds. You see.... the previous owners of the house were, shall we say, "less than traditional" in their ideas for how a yard should look. Basically, they planted a bunch of flowering weeds, then never touched them again. When I moved in, the yard was like something out of a horror novel. The fact that the house had been empty for at least 4 months (all summer) didn't exactly help, either. Last fall, Mom and I (mostly Mom) pulled out all the crap that was in the flower beds. This spring, Mom started planting new plants (lots of hasta!) and moving around the few things that were worth saving. I've been spraying for dandilions (part of my lawn is about 90% dandilion) and doing a little here and there.

Today, however, I broke out the big guns. I got out the shovel and the garden rake, bought 12 bags of red cyprus mulch, got down on my hands and knees and started yanking weeds. I put in edging (taken from another part of the yard that's been sodded over) spread out the mulch, bought grass seed to plant in the areas where I filled in holes, or reconfigured the flowerbed to a more sane shape and size (and for the spot where the neighbor let his dog piss, killing the grass), and moved a few plants around. It's not done yet, but it's certainly looking a lot better. I'm no longer quite as ashamed of my lawn.

Here's pictures (bottom of the gallery):

I was sitting on the porch this evening, watching the world go by, and I noticed an older woman stop and point out the stained glass windows in my attic to her husband.

The windows I have are, obviously, temporary. I need to beg ask my sister if she'll create a custom-designed triptych for me. The center panel will have some depiction of a dragonfly (in red), and the whole design will follow some aspect of my 3-fold theme of art deco, mission, and classic Japanese styles.

{sigh} So many ideas, so little time and money.

Time and money are holding me back. I really want to spend 8 to 10 hours a day working on my house. I have so many projects to do with it, but I don't have the time and I don't have the money. I can see what it will be like when I'm done (as much as anyone can be "done" with a house) and I realize that I'm working on a 10-year plan, and I get impatient. I'm like a kid waiting for Christmas; I want it to be here now!

The few hours a week I can put into it just aren't enough.

What I need is a beautiful woman to share my home: someone who enjoys cleaning and working on projects; someone who'd take pride in her work and make the place her own as much as mine; someone with enough of the same æthetics to like what I'm doing, but enough different to add details I might miss. (Someone who would have an appreciation for my mission-style bed and the many uses of the attic.) And, to be practical, someone who'll end up making enough money to let me quit my boring job and divide my time between web projects and house projects.

Hmm... I wonder where I could find such a woman (and how long I'd have to tie her up in the attic before she'd agree to my plans) ?

Now that springtime has actually come to Wisconsin, I've had the pleasure of sitting out on my porch somewhat regularly after work. This is something I've looked forward to since I bought the house. My house sits at the intersection of a state highway and a local road. I'm "above the T", as it were. Hwy 60 comes from the left (as I look out from the porch) and takes a 90º turn directly away from my house. From the right is a normal city street with a stop sign at the intersection. Downtown in a block to my left. The high school and middle school are off to my right. It's a mildly busy intersection for this small city.

It's warm enough now that I can sit out on the porch and watch the traffic--both vehicular and pedestrian. There's several regular dog-walkers, the random high-school hottie, and a steady (though not large) stream of cars going by. It's nice to just sit back and watch.

There's even a bit of nostalgia that goes with it. I'm sitting in my Grandma's "cricket rocker" (it works on springs, not on curved rails) with my glass of wine next to me on Grandpa's smoking table.

Yes, I'm wasting away my evenings. But you know what? They're my evenings to waste, and it's my porch I'm wasting them on.

Above the porch is the attic. I spent most of this past weekend putting in real insulation (to replace the newspaper and cardboard that had been there). It was a dirty and tiresome job, but the results are worth it.

The finished room will look a lot different. I'm going to drywall the ceilings (the slanted parts), leaving the cross beams (just visible at the top of the 3rd pic) in place and open. The "walls" (the short vertical parts)--as well as the whole side with the windows and as much as the opposite wall as possible--will be covered with horizontal pine planks. The pine is from 2 trees in my parents' back yard. I grew up with those trees, and now they'll be a part of my new home.

I'm going to do a basic sanding of the floor to take off the dirt and age and reveal the light pine underneath. I'll fill the spaces between the boards (though I haven't figure out what to use for that yet), paint a large compass rose in the center, with kanji of fire, water, earth, and wind at the cardinal points, and the kanji for void at the center, and then I'll put down a couple coats of polyurethane to seal it in and protect it.

I need to rebuild the window frames, and I'm going to ask my sister to create a triptych in stained glass to replace them.

I've been talking to my friend Michelle about her ideas for the room, and she's come up with a few ideas that I think will really bring it to life.

I have a few different plans for the room, but some of them require elements which I don't currently posess. However, none of the plans interfere with the others. At this point, I'm mostly looking at it as being a "sanctum sanctorum": a place to meditate and relax. As a way to facilitate that, Michelle suggested a tea table (I'm thinking of putting it under the windows).

Considering that I'm basically going to be leaving it as a big empty room, my plans for it are getting rather complex.

But when I'm done, it's going to be an amazing room.

I love my house.