I Am Not A Carpenter

We made just a little progress on the house last weekend. We hung curtains and a rod in the master bedroom closet. The curtains went up without a hitch. Sorry no photos of the window treatments. It also illustrated what a genius Scarlet is when it comes to picking colors.

Me: "Wow, the curtains match the clawfoot tub! That looks great! Did you do that on purpose?"

Scarlet: "Thank you. Yes, I did."

Me: "Genius!"

Maybe I'm easy to impress?

We've been putting off hanging the rod in the master bedroom closet since we moved into the Queen. We kept hoping that we'd save up enough money to have it lined with cedar and have some built-in shelving installed too. Gasoline at $4.00 a gallon and rising food prices sucked up all of our financial slack a long time ago, yet the dream lingered on. Finally, we decided just to hang the damn rod so we could unpack all of our clothes and get all the freaking boxes and tubs off the floor.

Hanging the rod was pretty easy, and it went really well except for the part where stuck a 1 1/2 drill into the back of hand just below my thumb. I was drilling out a hole in a block of wood to hold one end of the rod. I'd already done the one for the other side, so this was the last one. At the very end, the bit hung-up in the hole, jumped, and slashed a checkmark shaped cut in my hand. It was a new bit, so it was a very clean cut. I experienced profuse bleeding and a moment of total shock as I convinced myself that I'd cut it all the way down to the bone. In truth, it was deep, but only skin deep.

This illustrates two important points. First, I have a great imagination. Second, I am not a carpenter. While I theoretically know how to use tools and occasionally do so with some success, I am not a carpenter. Instead, I am pretender at best or at worst, a man with a latent death wish and an inability to recognize his own limitations. To be honest, if I wasn't a damn snob who liked to build his own canvases for oil painting, I'd probably sell or give away all my power tools once we're done with this place. It's something to think about at any rate.

Unintentional Spy Camera

This is what happens when a technologically challenged DIY'er encounters a cell phone with a camera.

The genius that I am, I just now figured out how to email photos on my cell phone to my computer. It only took me a year.

I was sending off all my pictures and deleting them to free up memory when I found this. From what I can tell, around 50% of my pictures are taken on accident. There were probable a dozen pictures of the inside of my pocket (totally black), ceilings, up my nose, and such on my phone. I think this picture was taken while I was clearing out the dining room to putty the floor last year. I think I picked the phone up to move it and *CLICK.* At least you can't see up my nose.

Me? A Darwin Award? Never!

Even I am amazed by my total lack common sense and observational powers. For the last few days or so, I've been wondering why my arms have been so sore. I just couldn't figure out what I'd done to them.

Yesterday, the answer finally became obvious. They hurt because I've been shoveling gravel and ditch digging for an hour or two every couple of days after work. I figured this out because they started hurting while shoveling yet more gravel. Duh.

I have no idea how I managed to survive to adulthood.

Change At The Pace of Continental Drift

You can be forgiven for thinking this a picture of my wife's Persian cat. The whole point of this picture is what you are not seeing: daylight shining in under the front door.


Our front door has been an unrelenting source of misery and discomfort.

By the time we bought the Devil Queen, the door didn't have much going for it besides being original to the house. The roof over the door had collapsed, the floor had rotted through, the joists and sill plate were disintegrating, and the door was slightly warped. As a nice finishing touch, all the original hardware had been stripped with the exception of the hinges. I think the 10 coats of paint over them may have saved them.

Over the last four years, the framing has been redone twice. The first time it was done by idiots (not us), and the second time by a first-rate contractor who finally fixed it. Even with the wonderful job the second crew did, the door has never been quite the same.

The weather stripping I installed, a vinyl "tube" mounted on a metal bracket screwed into the jamb and flush with the door's face, was a disaster. The weather stripping pealed the latex paint off the edges of the door and it had to be mount so close to the door's face to seal that it interfered with the getting the door locked or unlocked. And, it still didn't seal well.

Then, there is the threshold. It was too close to the door for any of the bottom mounted sweeps or weather seals. However, the gap was big enough for daylight to shine in under the door in the early morning and there was always a draft. I tried stuffing all sorts of things under or behind the door, but they didn't help much and they were usually a pain to deal with as you opened and closed the door.

Apparently, I am not the only one with this kind of problem. While forlornly dragging myself up and down the isle at Lowe's I discovered a sweep which mounts on the interior face of the door. Ideally, the sweep is supposed to be flush with the top of the threshold, but ours is a bit too far forward for this. Still, it seals for the most part, you can't see daylight under the door, and the draft is nearly gone (definitely 90% better). I haven't done a true, empirical study, but, based on some readings I took with a thermometer, the main hallway is now 4 degrees warmer on average. Even close to the floor, the temperature is only a few degrees cooler than the thermostats setting. It may not sound like much, but this is a huge improvement.

In addition to mounting the sweep, I've replaced the vinyl-shit weather stripping with spring-bronze on one side and the top. Even though I'm not finished yet (one side to go), this has made a huge difference. The door seals much tighter and it locks and unlocks without a problem.

Sure, it sounds great, but there is still one nagging question. Why didn't I do this earlier?

The Underappreciated Fiscal Benefits of Cleaning House

A couple of weeks ago Scarlet and I watched the movie, Stranger Than Fiction. Most people who have seen it that I have talked to thought it was a so-so movie. Scarlet and I really enjoyed it. Maybe it something to tell us at this particular time in our lives? Who knows?

In any case, one of those background details that I noticed about most of the homes in this movie was how Spartan the furnishings were. Even the flat Emma Thompson's character lived in with its high ceilings and fancy moldings, was furnished with very little. I liked the look.

One, it makes the spaces seem bigger and more dignified. Two, your eye is really drawn to what is there. It makes it stand out. It also makes you wonder why that particular piece of furniture, book, et cetera is there. The lack of other things makes you consider what is important about that piece, why it was chosen while so many others were not.

I have since unleashed my inner-minimalist and been steadily cleaning out everything from the Devil Queen. A couple of hours of cleaning can easily produce four sacks of trash, an large box of items ready to be donated to Marva, and a small pile of items to be sold on eBay. The actual number of things which are really worth keeping is astoundingly small. To think, I've spent years hauling and storing all of this stuff just so I could dispose of it now. Genius.

Aside from the general sense of being unburdened, there have been some other underappreciated fringe benefits. The other night amid all the detritus of a thousand years, I found two un-opened cans of wood putty and a tube of tub & tile caulk for the seam around the hot tub. This find is easily worth $35-$40 which is pretty exciting since I already spent the money on it.

See, less is more.

Rim Lock Cock Block

The cold front and the accompanying rain killed my exterior painting plans. Then, I had house chores to do and phone calls to make and take. Since I'd spent the day psyching myself up for some real home improvement progress, I felt the need to do something. Anything.

As you may recall, we threw more than a few things together for our appraisal this summer. "A few things" would include most of the door knobs and lock sets in the Devil Queen. Aside from the fact that 90% of these never got a proper cleaning, oiling, and shellacking, they are going to need some work. The parlor door knob feel off roughly 30 minutes after the appraisal and needs to be replaced. Several rim locks don't have catches for the latch. This isn't too big of an issue except in the bathrooms. And, the master bedroom and living room rim locks are falling off the doors. Why? Well, since we were in a rush, I used the screws I had available to mount the locks. Unfortunately, these screws are roughly 1/4 an inch too short, and, as we’ve used the doors, the screws have worked their way out of their holes. The master bedroom lock is particularly bad.


Fortunately, I now have the right sized screws. So, since I was feeling ambitious last night, I though I'd fix this master bedroom lock at the very least. I figured that screwing in a couple of screws would be pretty easy, and it should have been. However, it helps if you have a screw driver. And, since I'm a narrow minded guy, I wanted a Phillips screwdriver for my Phillips screws. No such luck. Since our shit-in-storage has exploded all over the parlor and main hall, finding anything smaller than an armoire is impossible. I'm nearly as stubborn as I am incompetent, so I refused to accept defeat. I improvised.

At this point, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Then, as I finished mounting the first screw, I had a thought: "Maybe you should just go ahead a finish properly refurbishing the lock before you remount it for all eternity. What do you think?"

Son of a bitch. So, I left the damn thing hanging as-is and went to bed utterly unfulfilled.

Maybe I'll have better luck tonight?

Spank Me

That's right. Whip me, flog me, flay me. I have been an odious homeowner. While Julian Electric was inspecting our heating and cooling system, he brought this to my attention.

That's right, this is the homeowner's version of your brain on drugs. To clarify, you do not want your air filter to look like this. Ever. First, it's gross. Second, if you leave it long enough, it will dramatically reduce the life expectancy of you heating and air unit. You know, like heroin addiction. Third, it's extremely gross.

That's right, that is a close-up of a dead bug in the air filter. The strata of filth makes a positive ID difficult. June Bug? Beetle? Hell, maybe it's an atrophied squirrel mummy?!

Life, stranger than fiction.

The Monolith That Towers Over Me

How is this for stupid? I've been putting this scraping project off because of fear, fear of falling off the scaffold and breaking something. Something not as in an arm or my face, but a window or the water-feeds to the clawfoot tub because that equals extra expense and delay. Anything else can heal if you don't die, right?

Anyhow, once I finish the painting the the idiot hallway, I'll be tearing into this project.

Sorry the posts died last week. I got knocked down over the weekend by misfortune, moderate illness, sick cars, and lots of . . . well, I don't know what. About half of it sucked and the rest was pretty good, I think.

Anyhow, more later in the week if I can take some pictures. A few things will only make sense if you can SEE what they are and what happened.