House of 42 Doors

2011 In Summary

2011-12-30T10:49:00.001-06:00

When we told our four year old today that tomorrow was the last day of the year and that it would be a new year in two days, she asked, "What does that mean?"

I could have said, "Well honey, it's a completely arbitrary day chosen out of the approximately 365 days it takes for our planet to go around the sun. It has achieved its significance solely through a long series of historical decisions made by people over thousands of years. People ascribe meaning to the day, when in fact there is absolutely nothing significant about it from a religious or astronomical perspective. Furthermore, not everyone in the world agrees that it is the beginning of a new year. Millions, maybe even billions, of people in the world don't believe that there is a new year in two days. They have chosen their own New Year."

Instead I said, "It's like the birthday for the world. It's the day the world turns another year older." That seems to have satisfied her.

For me, 2011 will be the year that I started to ignore the blog. I did succeed in posting at least once every month (February isn't really a month), but only just barely. I'm not sure if this is an indication of fewer and fewer projects completed, or if it reflects an increased level of comfort in leaving things the way they are.

So for the record, here's what 2011 brought the House of 42 Doors.

Early winter of 2011 was snowy, with entirely too much time spent blowing and moving snow.
We had an early melt and the promise of an early spring. Sadly old man winter came barreling in though, and pushed spring thaw out until early April.
In mid-April we had tornado warnings and sirens. The girls ran to the basement while I watched the swirling clouds from my front porch.
Spring involved the big project for the year - putting in the raised beds. It was significantly more time and money than I originally anticipated.
The local factory finally sold to a demolition/recycling company. While there's not word if they are going to demolish all of it, demolition has started on some of it.
I found out that we didn't have enough shingles to re-shingle our garage, even though we ordered them when we redid the roof on the house. Currently I have a promise from the roofer that he'll get me the additional 300 square feet of shingles. I owe him a call after the first to check on the status.
I also discovered that acorn flower is tasty, and a fantastic medium for mold. It's astounding how fast it gets moldy.
I put in external outlets in the dormers and heat cabled in the gutters. The winter these last few months has been so mild, I've had no cause to use them yet.
The dining room french doors are half finished. Only one more french door needs to be stripped and stained.
I've almost finished my first radiator cover. Pictures forthcoming.

Really, its been a much quieter year. Next year is looking to be very busy though. We have two roofs to replace.

Here's wishing all of you a happy and safe New Year.

Vintage Hubbell Brass Light Switches

2011-11-01T20:52:00.003-05:00

I have searched high and low online over the last four years for these light switches.

And I've had no success. My hope is that by putting up a few pictures, somebody out there there will find these and comment on them. As near as I can tell, these brass Hubbell light switches are original to the house. Harvey Hubbell designed these switches in the 1920's and was granted a patent around 1926.

I'm a little puzzled about the chronology though. Our house was built in 1921, so there is a chance that these switches were installed a few years after the house was finished. What I'd really like to do is get my hands on a Hubbell catalog from the 1920's in hopes of finding the first year these switches were sold.

When we bought our house, there were still about 10 functional in the house. The rest had been replaced by more modern toggle switches. When the house was re-wired in 2008, our electrician took out the remaining and replaced them with modern toggles. When he was done, I put back the functional ones in the public spaces of the house - the front entry, the living room and the dining room.

The problem is that the switches do break. They have one flaw in the design where metal fatigue causes a break after 90+ years. Two weeks ago, I lost the three way switch in the living room and now it's been replaced by a brown plastic toggle switch. It looks fine, but the brass ones look so much better. So I've decided to see if I can find replacements, or replacement parts.

Occasionally, unusual stuff shows up on E-bay, so that's probably my best bet for now. I did find these, as modern replacements, but they are still not quite the same. And using these are prohibitively expensive.

Here is a picture of the light switch outside of the wall. You can see that there is no visible screw or fastener for the plate.

The plate comes off by untwisting the round beveled ring around the switch. This screws onto the main switch and holds the plate in place.

The switch is screwed into an electrical box, similar to a modern switch. One difference though is the size of the switch. It's gargantuan compared to a modern switch. Also the wires are attached to screws on the front of the switch, so they have to be snaked around the switch to the front. One unfortunate side effect of all this is that there are live wires that are uncomfortably close to the brass metal plate that you touch when you turn on the light. When I installed the switches, a grounded the switch, to help with any stray current, but originally, they would not have been grounded.

Here is a picture of the internal switch. This is a three way switch.

And this is the switch itself. It seems rather clunky. The switch is a pivot point and there is a spring on the back half of the pivot. The switch offers resistance and a very loud "click" when the switch is thrown. As the bottom half of the pivot moves, it forces part of the teeter totter part on the right to move up or down and make contact as appropriate.

For many of the switches, I have all the parts and I might be able to solder them back together, but I'd have to be sure that the soldered joint was stronger than the original piece, otherwise it's just not worth it. So if anyone runs across switches like these and knows anything about them, please let me know.

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

2011-10-31T15:22:00.001-05:00

It's hard to not anthropomorphize the House of 42 Doors. I often think of her as a beautiful, temperamental model who just happens to have an addiction to heroin, shopping and small furry animals. The last few weeks she's been acting up again.

It started after I had begun an improvement (presumably unappreciated). Every winter the gutters freeze up, causing varying degrees of ice dams to the house. We haven't had any leaks since the new roof, but I'm not willing to risk the roof, integrated gutters, soffits or beadboard that could all be affected by year after year of leaks.

So I decided to install two external outlets on the sides of the dormers that I could plug heat cable into. These in turn are controlled by a switch on the inside of the house. When the snow comes, I just flip a switch, the snow melts, runs down the gutters and I'm done. When the southern sun shines on the roof and melts the snow, causing it to run into the gutters and freeze, again the heat cable can come to the rescue.

In the time that I spent running the wire and getting it all hooked up, the house decided to give me three mice in the attic, a broken cold water faucet in the bathroom and a broken 1920's Hubbell light switch.

The light switch saddens me the most. They are irreplaceable.

Acorn Flour

2011-09-30T14:35:00.001-05:00

A month has slipped by and every day that I look at my garage roof, it continues to look, well, the same. I've gotten in touch with the roofer that we bought the shingles from, and after explaining that according to my measurements, I was 256 square feet short, he suggested that he come out and measure it himself. After all, "I want to make sure we get you the correct amount. Too many shingles is no good either."

That may be true, but at least if I had too many, I could have started by now.

So for the last three weeks I've expected to see John climbing around my garage roof with tape measure in hand, trying to avoid the massive wasp next located in our inherited and defunct satellite dish. So far, I've been disappointed. I called today to remind him of the situation, but not surprisingly, he was not in the office.

I have other options of course. I did hunt down another distributor, but unfortunately, they are located just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. Hardly a hop, skip and a jump away.

In the meantime, we've been doing standard fall activities; tidying up the yard, washing windows and putting up storms, stowing the screens, chopping wood, etc. One new thing I added this year was acorn gathering. We have two very old (probably 250 to 300+ years) white oak trees in the back yard and this year was a bumper crop. Doing anything in the backyard in the last few weeks was dangerous. An acorn falling on your head, dropped from 40 to 60 feet hurts. A lot. Most of them have come down now, especially with the massive wind storms we've had in September.

I'd known for years that acorns were edible but never bothered to research. Thanks to Ye Olde Internet, I have made acorn flour. Acorn bread is quite tasty - earthy, nutty and mushroomy all at once. The smell of drying acorn slowly roasting in the oven is very pleasant.

The garden is winding down, and except for one very confused pea shoot, everything is dying and like us, preparing for winter.

Why Must I Do Your Job?

2011-08-26T13:30:00.004-05:00

This is a rant. Warning issued.

Three years ago we had the new roof put on the house. At that time I told the roofer to order enough shingles to shingle our garage. I also told them we would wait to re-roof the garage. It wasn't in the budget. The main roof, gutters, electrical work, sewer line and tuckpointing had tapped us out.

So for the last three years I've been tripping over 53 bundles of shingles in my garage, waiting for the job to bubble up on the priority list. I was set to do the tear off and shingling next weekend (Labor Day weekend), so I started to put together a list of all the items needed. When I got to the part of the list called "shingles", I put down a check and then started wondering...

My garage roof is 1,316 square feet. Each bundle of shingles covers 20 square feet. See the problem? I'm short 256 square feet of shingles, or 13 bundles. Can someone please explain to me why I must do everybody's job? Why do I bother hiring people when they can't even do basic [expletive] math?

20 * 53 < 1,316

Must I check everything?

Un[expletive]believable. So now I'm stuck with 53 bundles of shingles that I wasted money on and have been tripping over for three years. The shingles were special ordered from the west coast and I paid a fortune to get them shipped here. I put a call into the roofer to see if he has any ideas on how to make this work. Got his voice mail and I'm waiting for a call back. I'm not confident.

Hopefully he's learned how to do his [expletive] job in the last three years.

End rant.

What I Learned from AD

2011-07-22T13:19:00.003-05:00

I have been a closet architect for many years. That doesn't mean I dream up design solutions for Imelda Marcos' shoe collection. It means that I have an appreciation for art, design, space and synthesis; and also that I wish now that I had taken a different path in college.

I considered architecture as a major in college, but my university did not offer it. I could have transferred out after two years to pursue a degree in architecture, but for a variety of reasons, it didn't happen.

Three years ago my wife had the option of ordering a magazine as part of some promotional deal or charity event. Ever thoughtful, she chose a one year subscription to Architectural Digest for me.

I was over the moon, to say the least. I had never once seen a copy of the magazine, but the name made me think of something polished and professional, something that discussed the newest trends in architecture without losing sight of the historical foundation from which these new trends arose, something you'd find in an architectural firm lying around to prove how professional the firm really was.

About 10 months into the subscription, we ordered light fixtures from Rejuvenation, and they had a promotion which gave a free year's subscription to Architectural Digest for any customer's who bought over a certain dollar amount. About year after that we bought more from Rejuvenation, and again, it extended my subscription for a year. The upshot of all of this is that I've had the opportunity to see about three year's worth of Architectural Digest, without actually paying a subscription fee.

Finally, this month was my last issue, so I thought I would try and summarize what I've learned from Architectural Digest in the last three years.

White is a very popular color in good architecture.
Good architecture is mostly about interior design - the colors, the fabrics and the accessories.
Building placement is important. Good architecture is almost always located by a big body of water. The ocean is best. If you can incorporate an infinity edge pool, you get extra points.
If you own sculptures and paintings that are created by world renowned artists (Rodin, Picasso, Rembrandt), you leave them hanging on your living room wall, or sitting upon a credenza in your office.
Surprisingly, historic European estates are significantly cheaper than modern estates located near modern metropolises. I found a 17th century Scottish castle for about $10 million, while a 3,500 square foot, modern house near New York was $21 million.
If you live in New York city, especially Manhattan, and the opportunity arises for you to purchase your neighbor's apartment, do so immediately. You can knock down walls and have a stunning apartment. You get extra points if you can purchase and incorporate several adjoining apartments.
The majority of people who own good architecture do NOT have children, or at least do not plan their architecture around their children.
A good designer can be used to help re-decorate almost anything, e.g. houses, pool houses, guest houses, planes or yachts.
If you can't find a neighborhood to live in that suits you, sometimes it's just better to buy several hundred or thousand acres and start up your own gated community that reflects the architecture and values you'd like.
Only rich people can own good architecture. Also from what I can gather, many rich people who own good architecture are actors, directors, investment bankers, venture capitalists, or directors at charitable foundations.
Homosexuals make great designers and designers make great homosexuals.
Rich homosexuals are at the top of the heap when it comes to good architecture.

About forty percent of AD I really enjoyed, but it was not the magazine I thought it was going to be.

Local Factory Sold

2011-07-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

I haven't been blogging much lately. As I continue to complete tasks for the house and learn about all the things that I was so blissfully ignorant of for the first 30+ years of my life (calcimine paint, picture rail, asbestos shingles, double hung windows, lathe and plaster, etc.), all those topics that originally seemed fodder for a posting are now commonplace. I don't blog about them for the same reason I don't blog about changing the oil in the car or mowing the lawn. They are just part of every day life. But events still occur which are newsworthy.

After hearing rumors swirling for several weeks, I finally got confirmation - the nearby factory has been sold. When we bought our house in 2007, it employed 600 people, and then by the end of 2008, it shut down. Since then the parent company has been trying to sell it with one caveat - they would not sell it to someone who could use it to manufacture the same product.

Imagine that there's a factory that is custom designed to make widgets. Widget Inc. decides to close it and won't sell it to anyone else who makes widgets. Being highly specialized, it is difficult to convert the factory into making anything else. Its not surprising that it took this long for the factory to be sold. What really surprised me was who it was sold to.

It was sold to a Canadian metal recycling company who specializes in the demolition and recycling of building sites. There's no official word on what happens next, but if I was a betting man, I'd say the days of the factory are numbered.

Raised Beds Done

2011-06-15T08:15:00.004-05:00

Almost every day since my last posting, I've been thinking about posting. And everyday I'd say to myself, "I'll wait until the raised beds are done. Then I'll have something of substance to show and actually write about." And then everyday progress on the raised beds was soooo slow.

Monday I finally finished. We started digging the raised beds last April. I had hoped to be done by the end of May, so that we could put in the garden on Memorial day, which is our traditional time to plant the garden. Obviously, we didn't make it. The project took more resources than I thought it would.

180 linear feet of pressure treated 2 x 4's
7 yards of class 1 gravel
2 yards of river sand
1400 pavers
3 bags of silica mortar sand
576 linear feet of cedar 2 x 6's
288 linear feet of cedar 1 x 4's
200 linear feet of cedar 2 x 4's
4 boxes of stainless steel decking screws
Time to completion- 2 months

I knew it was going to take a lot of time to build - just moving that much dirt takes time. And we ran into several issues with the weather. If the weather had cooperated, we may have made it by the Memorial Day deadline. We also made the mistake of measuring the bricks incorrectly and digging the hole for the path to the wrong size. At least we caught it before we started laying the base and the brick.

We still have a bit of dirt to move around. Throughout the process, our strawberries have blossomed and started to set berries. We didn't have the heart to move them and lose this year's berry production. Once they have finished producing, we'll move them to one of the other beds and then fill in the hole they are currently in.

But now it is done and I have officially turned it over to Ms. Huis. It is now her problem to plant it and weed it. My job is to simply eat from it.

A view from the second floor of the house.

Same view from close up and the ground.

The Ultimate Enabler

2011-05-13T12:09:00.002-05:00

The glory and the damnation of the Internet is that it is the ultimate enabler.

At any given time there are at least five projects for the house that are rolling around in my head. I consider them from every conceivable angle, adjust them, re-examine them and then shelve them for later examination. In this way I work through what is affordable, what I have the time to do and what I have the skill to do. Currently I have two projects in mind that involve some very serious soldering. I won't go into detail about what they are yet. I'm still considering their affordability and time commitment, but it's sites like this and videos like this that convince me that it is feasible for me to attempt this.

After all, it can't be that hard can it?

Just an Eighth of an Inch

2011-05-11T11:59:00.002-05:00

My job consists of many different roles, but one of them is analyzing IT failures. What happened? When? Why did it happen? Were the appropriate processes and procedures followed? How can we prevent this from happening again? What I've noticed over the years is that disaster rarely happens because of one cataclysmic failure. Disasters often happen because of a large number of poorly made smaller decisions. All of these in aggregation create a situation that is tenuous and rife for failure. One one final mistake or poor decision is made and the whole system comes crashing down.

This means that small things do matter and details do count. Life gives us plenty of opportunities to self correct. When we repeatedly spurn these opportunities, that's when disaster strikes.

I have a friend who does a fair amount of metal working - machining and blacksmithing. He had a project one time where he needed to drill holes to match up with a mated set of pegs. The problem is that the jig he used was off by 1/64". A very small amount, but since he used the previously drilled hole as his reference point for the next hole, by the time he'd drilled his 48th hole, his last hole was off 3/4" from the peg.

When I measured bricks for our new pathway in the raised beds, I measured the bricks as 8 inches long, and Ms. Huis carefully (and painstakingly) figured out the exact dimensions of the raised beds to accommodate these 8 inch long bricks. We moved 10 yards of dirt to accommodate those figures. Two nights ago I laid out some bricks in the holes we dug, just to estimate how it would look. They didn't fit. So I measured the bricks again. It turns out they are 8 1/8" long. That 1/8" is not much, but compounded over 40 sets of brick, it adds up.

Looks like we're going to have to do more digging.

Dig This

2011-05-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

Digging. Why does it seem so many of my projects involve digging?

I put in a retaining wall and steps in our last house. That was about nine yards of earth. When we put in a new sewer line in the House of 42 Doors, the excavator left a nice pile of dirt that needed spreading out. That was probably three yards. The previous owner built a three car garage, and as part of that, there was a nice pile of dirt that he left next to the garage. That was another four yards. The compost heap in the backyard that had been there since time immemorial was four feet high and six feet in diameter, so another three yards there. The hundred or so yews I put in required digging, although only a little bit at a time.

And now we've started another project with more digging. This project started out as an idle drawing and an idea that I showed to Ms. Huis. She liked it, and grabbed it. We wanted a vegetable garden at the house, and cleared out a a 25 foot wide and 60 foot long swath of scrub (mostly buckthorn) to get it. Unfortunately, we discovered the land there was not suited for a garden. While the top 2 inches were nice black soil, beneath that was a two to three inch layer of compacted gravel. All of our root vegetables would grow two inches and just give up. Our carrots were like stubby, fat fingers. So the answer was raised beds. And what would go between these raised beds? Brick paths, of course.

So that means digging down about 12 inches, putting in about 7 inches of base, and then another 2 inches of sand. We have 276 square feet of path we're installing, so that adds another 10 yards of earth to the tally. I haven't done all the digging; there's been plenty of help from Ms. Huis, the in-laws and even our youngest. It's awful stuff though, with the old compacted gravel, and the tree roots from the scrub we took out.

I'll be glad when the project is done so that I can move onto other house projects. Progress to date can be viewed here.

Storm's a Comin'

2011-04-11T11:18:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was the first day of 2011 that it was warmer outside than it was inside. It was unseasonable warm - 74 F (22 C) - and followed by severe thunderstorms. Ms. Huis was about to go out running when the tornado sirens sounded. The womenfolk scurried into the basement while I watched the storm from the safety of my front door.

At first there was nothing, just clouds that looked like curtain swags, and the occasional bit of lightning. The bats were out feasting on whatever insects were around. It was dead calm. Eventually the bats took shelter and within 20 minutes, the real thunder and lightning started. It was 40 minutes of constant thunder and lightning. The rain came pouring down, but it was still calm. Then the wind came up all of a sudden; sudden enough that I went into the basement. Within 5 minutes it was gone, and the storm passed.

There was no damage by us, but a tornado did touch down close by, and on the way to work there were several missing fences and some twisted road signs. At work I heard stories of neighborhoods that lost siding, trampolines and small trees.

I know that thunderstorms are dangerous, destructive, expensive and life threatening, but I love them.

Spring Is Here

2011-04-08T12:51:00.001-05:00

About six weeks ago I was ready to write that Spring was here. The snow was melted, the garden was visible and I was looking at the garden with anticipation. Then we received a foot of snow, along with what felt like months of below freezing weather (I think it was actually 10 days). So I held off. But, I'm happy to report that Spring is here now.

The squill is a bit behind this year, thanks to the late snow storms. Usually we have a sea of blue by tax day (April 15th). I'd say we're a few weeks from that. I tapped our maple trees this year for the first time and they are now done. I pulled almost a gallon of syrup from them in the end. Not bad for just four trees.

I'd mentioned in the past that we had our door refinished. The last post is actually a good before and after picture. The sidelights show how bad the finish was compared to the door. Now I'll have to try and get them finished this year. We have a lot of projects in mind for the year, which I won't enumerate here. I'm not ready to make a list of stressors just yet.

Calling All Wee Folk

2011-04-01T15:10:00.001-05:00

I'm a strong believer in the little people. I'm not talking about the Irish (although I do believe in them too). I'm talking about faeries, pixies, sprites, brownies, elves and the like. When we lived in Ireland, we always put out a bowl of milk for the brownies and more times than not, we'd find it empty in the morning.

Lest you think I'm naive, I know that the neighborhood cat would occasionally drink the milk, but what about when it wasn't the cat? Can anyone prove that it wasn't the brownies? With all the work that the House of 42 Doors entails, I'm willing to ask for help from anyone who can provide it. If there were elves who could make shoes, then why can't there be faerie folk who can do carpentry work?

I also know that workers will follow the best working conditions and salaries. This is why putting milk out for the brownies works. You feed them and they come. Available food is a much better working condition than no food. So to that end I've started constructing small tools in hopes of attracting a little assistance with my carpentry work.

I'm hoping this sawhorse will be good for a new roof on the back porch.

I'll let you know if it works.

Double Agent

2011-03-07T12:33:00.000-06:00

Our family occasionally eats Boca burgers. For anyone not familiar with them, they are a meatless alternative to hamburgers. They don't really taste like hamburgers and when I've read the ingredients, I've always been a little uneasy. Not surprisingly, there seems to be a lot of processing involved in getting vegetables to look like meat. Still, I do think they taste fine.

Last night we had a new kind of Boca Burger - Grilled Vegetable Boca Burger. The package describes this as "The ultimate veggie patty. Tender chunks of grilled zucchini, bell peppers, and corn with hints of garlic, onion, mozzarella and asiago cheeses."

So let me get this straight - you grind up vegetables and soybeans, add cheese extracts, binders and vegetable oils to make a paste. Then you form this paste into a patty to approximate meat. And then, because presumably, you think that real vegetables taste better? look nicer? are healthier? you add them back into this pretend meat? Is this a product that is vegetables trying to be meat trying to be vegetables? I don't get it. It gets me confused trying to figure out.

Maybe I'll just go have some celery instead.

May December

2011-03-04T13:26:00.001-06:00

As I've grown older I've noticed several things about being a man. The older we get, the more delusional we become. This is no more evident than around young women. There can be 20 years difference between a woman and a middle aged man and he'll think he might have a shot at catching her eye. Put 30 years between them, and he'll be convinced.

Where does this hubris come from? Does it come from a society that assigns us more and more responsibility, stoking our egos, until finally we believe the impossible? Don't get me wrong, there is some value here. Without this sort of delusional belief, we wouldn't have conquered small pox, harnessed nuclear power or flown to the moon. And Harrison Ford wouldn't have married Calista Flockhart.

I suppose in the end whether the belief is arrogance or visionary depends upon our ability to achieve it and how it's viewed through the lens of history.

Also, no work has been done on the house for the last three months due to winter and life generally being busy. Blog updates have been and will be spotty for awhile yet.

The Last Page

2011-01-14T13:26:00.000-06:00

Winter is good for two things at the House of 42 Doors. First is considering ways to insulate the house. Second is trying to catch up on reading. Most of the books I read are not interesting enough to warrant a post. The most recent two I remember reading were 52 Loaves and Billionaire's Vinegar. I picked them up for $2 a piece and they were well worth that.

At the moment I have a book sitting on my nightstand that keeps staring at me - literally. It's The Last Page by Anthony Huso. I'm having a hard time cracking the cover. Tony and I went to college together and I have fond memories of being part of a role-playing group he put together. I also have many memories (not quite as fond) of Tony beating the pants off of me in countless Magic The Gathering duels (I still have boxes full of cards thank you very much).

One of the things that Tony gave to me in college was a very, very early copy of the Last Page. I read it and thought at the time that it was undoubtedly as good as anything published I'd read. I told him as much and in retrospect, a more critical response probably would have been more helpful. (Sorry Tony).

At the end of our senior year, everyone went around promising to keep in touch and trying to exchange whatever phone numbers or addresses we had, which is to say almost none. Most people were just looking for a job and we were scattering to the four corners of the earth. When I asked Tony for a phone number, an address, or even just a promise to keep in touch, he said to me, "What's the point? We go through life, encounter people, make friends, enjoy the time and then move on. If we run into each other in the future, we'll talk then."

I was put off by this at first, but the more I thought about it, the more wisdom I saw in it. No false promises, no expectations, just the freedom of knowing that time spent together was enjoyed and that if life sees fit for the two of us to meet again, there needn't be any awkwardness.

Tony and I have danced around each other a few times since college. I saw him once in the late 90's for a very short amount of time. We caught up, but I had to run to some other engagement and couldn't stay as long as I wanted. Then he was in France while we were in Ireland, and Ms. Huis and I discussed visiting him, but before we could, he moved back to the States. I've kept tabs on where he is and what he's been up to through mutual friends and his blog.

Now after so many years, I find myself pondering this version of The Last Page. In some ways it appears to be very different from the early copy I read, and yet I can also see from the jacket and from the reviews that it is essentially the same story. For some reason, I've made reading the Last Page into some sort of symbolic act, one that carries a host of past memories, years of lessons learned and ironically, exactly the sort of baggage that Tony's advice was meant to avoid.

New (Old) Car

2010-12-20T14:58:00.001-06:00

I'm still playing blog catch up. For anyone following my wife's blog, you'll already know a lot of this. Consider this a first person viewpoint.

I took the Monday after Thanksgiving off for a little extra rest and relaxation. I'd been doing little with the house for most of November. Work had been particularly stressful with a large project culminating on November 13th. I needed the downtime. The Tuesday morning after Thanksgiving was supposed to be back to life as usual. On my way to work though, life decided to try and destroy some of the R & R I had been trying to store up.

It was raining that morning and as I was coming to a busy intersection, the light turned yellow. I could have stopped, if I would have slammed on the brakes. I chose not to, as I was sure that I could clear the intersection before the light turned red. At the same time a woman started turning left. As she drifted towards my lane, it wasn't clear if she was in fact going to complete her turn, or if she was simply creeping forward, waiting for the intersection to clear. Considering that I was going 45 mph, I didn't have a lot of time to decide if I should take the chance that she was only creeping and I should keep going straight, or if I should swerve to avoid her. Just in case, I opted to swerve.

Wet pavement, speed and probably tires that were overdue to get changed all meant that my swerve turned into a skid, and before long, I was pointed the wrong way, trying to thread my way over a sidewalk and between two metal poles on the side of the road. One pole held a solar array, and the other was a traffic management arm, similar to the kind found at railroad crossings.

In my recollection, the whole event took place in three or four iterations of the same swear word. I swerved off the road, clipped the larger of the two poles, sailed over the cat tails in the ditch and thudded into the mud on the other side of the ditch. I took stock of myself, called my wife, work and the police. It was pretty clear that the car (a 2000 Ford Taurus) was probably going to be total loss. I was fine and so was everything else in the car. The metal pole was lying on the side of the road, also a total loss.

My favorite part of the whole experience was when Officer F arrived at the scene. I was in the ditch, on one side of a six foot wide pond of marshy water; he was on the other. After he asked if I was fine, we stared at each other for a few seconds, both looked at the water, then looked up at each other again. Each of us knew what the other was thinking. Then he spoke.

"One of us is getting wet, and I don't have to tell you who it's going to be."

"Well, since I don't fancy spending the rest of the day on this side, I guess I'll come around."

It was just the sort of light-hearted comment I needed to hear at that point. I'd just been in an accident, and I was worrying about getting my dress shoes wet and muddy. That's not so bad. Eventually, I found high ground and the shoes survived intact.

The lady who turned left stopped and gave a statement to police when they arrived. I wasn't there when she gave it to them, which was probably a good thing. "I was waiting to turn left and all of a sudden he just lost control and went in the ditch. I guess it's just slippery." Right. And as I told the officer, "I don't make a habit of making sudden swerves, unless I think someone is going to hit me."

Because the two vehicles didn't collide, the other driver was not at fault. Unfortunately, because our car was so old, we had dropped collision on it within the last year. Insurance would cover the cost of the traffic management arm, but we were on the hook for the car. Assuming no one would have been hurt, I would have been better off hitting her. Then she would have been at fault for failing to yield on a left turn, and our car would have been paid for.

The result of this was a few weeks of stress while we tried to live the life of a two car family (School, dance classes, work, grocery shopping, etc) with only one car. And then of course the joy of finding another car, which is not something my wife and I enjoy or excel at. We did find something, a 2006 Hyundai Sonata, which is really just a car - something to get us from point a to point b. And now plans for some of next year's house projects will need to be re-examined. Depending on a few factors, they may have to wait another year.

At the risk of jinxing myself, I have a week off over Christmas. And this time I'm hoping for some rest and relaxation that ends well.

New (Old) Front Door

2010-12-17T13:06:00.000-06:00

Some time ago I found a business that would strip paint and refinish woodwork here in our local community. I started by giving them small jobs; mainly stripping the trim in the dining room, so that I could refinish it and reinstall it. Excluding one batch of picture rail, they did a very good job. Strangely, I kept running into the owner outside of the business. First in a local Woodcraft shop, and then again at a local book sale put on by my company, for company employees only. It turns out that Dave used to work for the same company I currently work for.

As I got to know Dave, I found him to be a genuinely good person and one that I felt I could trust. Like most business owners, if I could get him to do the work, the result would be great. Its when the work is handed off that there is a risk of poor workmanship. So even though I was extremely nervous doing so, I approached Dave about refinishing our front door.

Our front door is the original wooden door. It's 2 1/4" thick and would probably cost several thousand dollars to replace, if I could even find someone to manufacture it. Replacing the whole front door enclosure (door, sidelights, frame, etc) to match the style of the house with a modern door, made of modern materials would probably cost between $5,000 and $10,000. If Dave screwed this up, it was going to be very expensive to fix, and that was definitely not in the budget.

The front door was in very bad shape, with cracked, gray, weathered wood across it's face. The trim on the door had lost all "crispness". Looking closer, Dave noted that the door was not, full, solid planks of oak, but was actually made up of a core of several smaller pieces of wood glued together (possibly pine). Over the top of this, there was a 1/4 inch veneer of quarter-sawn oak. This is actually a good thing. As the smaller pieces of wood expand and contract with the weather, they have a tendency to cancel each other out and the door doesn't swell or shrink as much as a solid wood door. Dave suggested removing the veneer, adding a new veneer and then finishing that.

Dave took the door away one day and we replaced it with the crack house door slab for what felt like forever (in actuality, I think it was about six weeks). During that time, Dave removed the glass and the wood trim. He pulled off as much of the veneer as possible. Planed the door to remove what remained and then glued on new veneer. He also had to fabricate new trim, as the old trim was too rotten to retain. Then when it was time to finish the door, he applied two coats of UV protectant, three applications of stain (to match the existing color on the inside of the door), two coats of sealant and five coats of polyurethane. And then reinstalled the trim and the glass.

How did it turn out? The door looks new again. There are two minor flaws on the door, which I won't point out. One is easily fixed next spring, and the other we're just stuck with. In the end, it's a fantastic improvement for the front entry. Unfortunately, it means I'll have to sand and strip the sidelights next summer. They look terrible next to the front door now. And then every few years we'll need to lightly sand the polyurethane and apply another coat. It's the price we pay for having a real wood door.

Platitude 2

2010-12-01T10:38:00.002-06:00

I find humility an easy virtue to practice. Learning it is difficult beyond all measure.

Wordless Wednesday - Xmas Bows

2010-12-01T09:32:00.000-06:00

(Photo cross-posted to Musings & Mutterings.)

Quintuplets

2010-11-18T13:46:00.002-06:00

It's been a long time since I've written about mice, mostly because the mice have been absent. This isn't to say that we haven't had other animals to deal with. This spring and summer we had problems with squirrels and a bat. These days, we just take these visitors in stride.

One night in September, my wife woke me up at three o'clock in the morning to tell me that I'd best put out the traps. And sure enough, I heard the sounds of a rodent party in the attic above our head. What followed was a bit out of the ordinary. The first night we caught one mouse - fairly normal. The second night we caught two more. And then the fun started.

Over the next six hours, five baby mice found their way out of the attic and proceeded to wander around, presumably looking for mom and dad. It's one thing to set a trap and let "the machine" do the work. It's another to be the actual executioner. Isn't this one of the reasons why the French invented the guillotine? So we carefully caught each one, showed it to the girls and took it out to a timber pile and let it go. I hope they have a long happy life, far away from our house.

So that means since we took possession of our house on August 30, 2007, we have caught 63 mice. What always puzzles me though, is why we never catch them in the basement and why we never see them in the living quarters of the house. They only seem to live in the attic. That's a long way up for a little mouse.

Chisels

2010-11-17T10:16:00.001-06:00

I keep staring at the 3/4 inch long gash through the tip of my thumb for two reasons. One, it hurts. Two, I have no idea how I got it. Well, that second point is mostly true.

I've been slowly acquiring tools as I complete house projects. One basic set of tools I wanted was a set of new wood chisels. I have an old set of wood chisels that I inherited from my dad, but they are in pretty tough shape. As I child of about 9, I mistook them for stone chisels and carved out the year in a rock by our deck. Surprisingly, my dad never said anything about the rock or the chisels.

These days, I almost always turn to the Internet when buying anything. And did I get an education on chisels. The chisels at the store are not ready for use. They need to be sharpened. And sharpening a chisel can turn into another $150 purchase (or more). So after spending $40 on chisels and another $70 on sharpening stones and a honing guide, I spent several hours getting my chisels razor sharp.

Make no mistake, working with a razor sharp chisel is an absolute joy. Being able to slice off a piece of wood with just a gentle push is a bit of a power rush, especially when dealing with hard woods.

I've been working on winterizing the house and last night I was doing the last little bit on our back door. The latch on the door no longer fits into the strike plate (like many of our doors) thanks to 90 years of settling. I removed the strike plate and some very old spring bronze weatherstripping so that I could move the strike plate down about 3/16 of an inch.

As I said, a razor sharp chisel is a thing of joy. The only problem is that all of a sudden I found blood everywhere. I thought, "Where is that from? Is it mine? Nobody else is here, so it must be mine. Why doesn't it hurt? Oh crap! Blood on my new chisels!" At which point I forgot about finding the cut as I went to find a rag to clean up my new chisels. When I got back to working on the strike plate, my thumb started hurting because I'd succeeded in packing it with 90 years of dirt, coal dust and insect effluence.

I can't be exactly sure that the cut was from the chisels. The spring bronze is also extremely sharp and quite dangerous, so it could have been from that. Either way I can't stop looking at it. Every time I hit the space bar with that thumb, it hurts.

Storm's a coming

2010-11-11T10:49:00.001-06:00

Storm windows seem to be the topic du jour these days. I'm writing about them. Stucco House is writing about them. Even our friends in Amsterdam are writing about them. Our storm windows have been off and on my mind for the last three years, especially ever since we had one completely fall apart on us when we took it down in 2008. The corner had completely rotted through. The only thing keeping it together was a bit of paint.

I had hoped that buying replacement storm windows would be as easy as calling the local hardware store or lumber mill. I was wrong. I'm sure there is someone in the area that could make me new storm windows at a reasonable price, but I couldn't find them. The only person I found didn't really want to make them ("It's a waste of money. Just go to Menard's and get an Aluminum storm window."), and he quoted me $400, which did not include the glazing.

So being an independent, self-sufficient minded American, I opted to make my own. I spent the last three years acquiring a table saw, a router table and several router bits. And now I've finally finished the last four storms for the house.

I suspect that most wood workers would have found this a fairly simple project, but it turned out to be a challenge for me, especially figuring out how the mortise and tenons fit together with the routed ogee edge. I'm pleased with how they turned out, and I'm glad the hard part is done now. The windows are currently getting glazed and then they will need two more coats of paint to finish them off. If all goes as planned, I'll have them up by the end of November.

Platitude 1

2010-11-09T07:40:00.001-06:00

The human race is fortunate that incompetence is so often paired with laziness.

Front Entry Roof Part 7

2010-10-14T21:14:00.005-05:00

The roof is done. Roger worked part of the day Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday two other guys came out to finish up the seams and to rework some of the blobby soldering work Roger did. The carpenters (as usual) did a top notch job. Last night I put on the new porch light and I'm calling the roof project done.

Of course it isn't really. There's a bit of caulking that needs doing and bit of painting, but as we'll never really be done with the house, I need to draw a line in the sand somewhere. In all, it took about 70 hours of work from the guys, although it should have taken less, considering the roofing debacle.

Here's a shot of the front of the house now.

Here's what the roof looks like.

And here are two shots of the soffit. Notice how carefully Jake mitered the bead board corners. And compare to some of the original shots.

The original bead board needed replacing, and the replacement bead board found in stores today is not of the same pattern as what is found on the house. So I bought a few Freud router bits and made my own bead board to match what was originally on the house. They're not machined as precisely as commercial bead board, but I am pleased all the same with how they turned out.

And now, before winter comes, its on to the next project.

Front Entry Roof Part 6

2010-10-12T14:59:00.001-05:00

All weekend Ms. Huis and I fretted and worried, wondering what the result of our displeasure would be. Sunday night we received a mail from Matt indicating that he had forwarded our concerns to Roger and that he would be meeting with Roger early Monday morning.

After several phone calls between Matt and I Monday morning, Matt came back to us to say that while Roger was not admitting to any wrongdoing, he would tear off the roof panels and install them they way we wanted. That was it. No drama, no fuss. Just the way we wanted it to turn out. The only downside for us was the delay in the completion of the project. Roger wouldn't be out until Tuesday. Another day lost.

I did get a chance to test the gutters by filling them with water. There were no leaks and the pitch was sufficient. The weather the last ten days or so has also been unseasonably warm and dry. Here's looking on the bright side.

Front Entry Roof Part 5

2010-10-11T20:35:00.009-05:00

Friday was the day they started the gutter and roof install.

I took Friday off, because I wanted to be there when they installed the roof for three reasons. First, I really, really want to know how hard this is to do. Second I want to know how much time it takes. Third I have a history with the metal shop doing this roof and it isn't all sunshine and bubbles.

When we opted to get the front entry done, I went to the historical carpenter that did the carpentry for the main roof project. Of all the contractors we've dealt with - plumbers, electricians, brick layers, roofers and metal workers, he is the only one that has met my expectations every single time. Matt has never, ever let me down. He's expensive and worth every penny.

I told Matt that I was doing everything through him - roof, gutters and carpentry. We talked about options and what I wanted. It was his recommendation that if I was committed to keeping the look of the integrated gutters, a metal roof was going to be the best bet. He said he would get a bid for the roof and gutters from Roger.

Roger owns the company who did the gutters on our main roof. There were (and to a lesser extent still are) some issues with our main roof gutters. They look great. Unfortunately there was too long a list of things that they "forgot" to do. I had to call them back three times after the installation to fix various things. And they were fairly serious items; support brackets missing, seams not soldered and metal folded backwards that needed to be replaced.

When Matt told me he was going with Roger, I made it very clear that Roger had the potential to do good work, but he needed to be watched very closely. If we went with Roger, it was Matt's responsibility to deal with him. Not mine. I wasn't going to chase him up like I did last time. Besides, I figured that Matt would have more leverage with Roger. If Roger screwed up, Matt might stop using him in the future.

Roger's bid came in at about 60% of the only other bid we had, and while Adam did really, really nice work, he was even harder to get a hold of than Roger. If I have to chase a contractor down for a bid, I figure he really doesn't want the work. So we went with Roger. And I was not fully comfortable with it, which is why I took Friday off.

Greg and an apprentice showed up on Friday morning before eight. This was good. I like it when guys show up ready to work. I talked to them off and on in the morning. While they worked on the gutters and the flashing, I worked in the garage on storm windows. When it looked like there was room on the roof, I'd climb up a ladder, watch them for awhile and ask a few questions. I tried not to annoy them and wanted them to know that I was interested in what was going on. The apprentice knew nothing. He was a gopher. Greg was friendly enough, but only bothered to answer my questions. He volunteered nothing.

After a few hours I was comfortable with Greg, he seemed to know his stuff and to my untrained eye, the gutters and the solder joints looked good. I got complacent. I got lazy. And then all hell broke loose.

Once they were done with the flashing and the gutter, they started on the roof panels. To understand what they did, it's necessary to understand the way a flat metal roof is installed. In some ways it's no different than a regular shingle roof. The covering is made of panels, (18" x 24") that are over lapped and crimped together. The upper course goes over the lower course, so that water flows down the roof without obstruction. Courses are staggered, so no seams line up. Here is a great resource about copper flat seam roofs (and other interesting bits about architectural use of copper too).

Initially the two of them were crowded on a corner of the roof and there was little room for me, so once they'd moved to the middle and there was some room, I popped my head up. They were about 40% done and I saw that they had installed the panels backwards. The lower courses of panels were on top of the higher ones. And they hadn't staggered the panels.

I immediately called them out. "Guys, you installed the panels backwards. And aren't the panels supposed to be staggered?" I was told it would be fine. It would all be soldered and be water tight. No worries. And he went back to work.

I wasn't going to fight him. That's why I hired Matt. I went in the house and called Matt. Matt listened and simply said that he wanted to see the roof before he talked to Roger. Considering it was 2:00 on a Friday I could understand this.

After I confronted Greg, the pace of his labors changed considerably. He went faster. By 3:30, he and his apprentice finished up and left, leaving the bottom course remaining, and the other 20 panels installed the wrong way.

I showed it to Ms. Huis after Greg left. She immediately noticed what was wrong (with no prompting). She was furious. I was just depressed, because I knew it meant phone calls and discussions, and uncertainty and conflict. And ultimately, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I crafted a nice long e-mail to Matt on Friday night, along with some pictures, in a professional tone which more or less said, "This isn't going to work. Here's why. We may have to rip off the panels and start over."

And so we waited all weekend, wondering would Matt be able to get Roger to fix this? Would we get our roof put on correctly? Was Roger just going to walk away? Would we need to get a different roofer? How much extra money was this going to cost us?

We didn't get an answer until Monday.

Here are pictures of our roof from Friday. The first is from the top of the roof, looking down. The flat roof on the entry isn't completely flat. It does have a slight patch. Notice that the last course of panels is missing. It's narrower than the other 18" panels and still needs to be fabricated. The last full course sits on top of the next course. During a rain storm, Water would flow towards that hump. The solder job on that seam would have to be perfect. And as soon as it failed for any reason, rain (or melting snow) would sneak in. Even worse, in the winter, the freeze/thaw cycle would force open the seam even more. And notice that the up and down seams are not staggered. Water that enters at one course can easily slip under the next course.

This is a nice shot taken by wife. It's the "water's view". Look at that deliciously large hole I'd like to run into. Again, better hope for a perfect solder joint.

Finally this is the seam between the flashing and the the very first course of panels. Because they started at the top of the roof and worked down, they screwed up from the very beginning. In this case Ms. Huis' hand is the water, straight down into the roof.

I've had better Fridays.

Front Entry Roof Part 4

2010-10-11T20:22:00.004-05:00

I'm a bit behind, but that's mostly because I've been waiting to calm down before writing anymore. But I'm getting ahead of myself (even though I'm behind).

This post is about last Thursday. I wish I had pictures to show from Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, because that's when they fabricated the gutters and roof panels for the entryway. I would have loved to have shown the sheet copper being cut and formed in the brake presses. But I don't have those pictures. I wasn't invited to the shop (nor did I ask), and as I only have so many vacation days, I worked on Thursday anyway.

Two guys showed up on Thursday around 1:00 to dry fit some of the gutters and drop off some material. No installation took place. Here are some pictures of what they dropped off.

Here is the gutter ready to go. It hasn't been fastened in yet.

This is a full cross section of the gutter. I'm a little puzzled as to how they made the two 90 degree bends on the right so tightly.

And here's a picture of the roof panels (and of me too). Two sides have the edges bent towards me. The other two sides have the edges bent away from me. When assembling the roof, the over seam and under seam lock together and then are hammered flat. Finally solder is applied to make the seams water tight.

I'll write about the disaster that was Friday tomorrow.

Front Entry Roof Part 3

2010-10-06T22:19:00.007-05:00

I'm a bit behind on the days, but I will still blog the progress in the order that the work occurred. Wednesday, Matt and Jake finished up the carpentry required to prep for the roofing guys. The roofers came out today and took the final measurements for the roof after Matt and Jake finished up the carpentry and installed the ice and water shield.

I can't say enough good things about Matt and Jake. They are truly masters at what they do. They took the time to pitch the gutters. This was not strictly necessary as the pitch can be done by the roofers, but it's a nice extra touch.

This first picture shows the box gutters framed up.

Here's what it looks like from the bottom. The fascia is in place. The soffit will wait until after the roof is on.

And here's what it looks like so far. The roof line almost looks normal again.

This is the roof, waiting for the copper. Ice and water shield are in place.

Front Entry Roof Part 2

2010-10-06T22:13:00.003-05:00

When we replaced our cement/asbestos main roof and gutters a few years ago, I did not take off enough time. Looking back now, I realize that things would have probably gone a lot smoother if I had been around more often to keep an eye on things.

I resolved not to make that mistake again even though this is a (relatively) small project. So when Matt (our contractor) told us that he had us down to start work the week of the 4th, I took vacation for a half day on Monday, all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Foolish, foolish me.

When I arrived at home at 11:00 am Monday, imagine my frustration when no one had shown up to work on the roof. I called Matt and that's when I learned that in contractor speak, "the week of Monday the 4th" means any day during the week that begins October 4th, EXCLUDING the actual day of October 4th.

Matt volunteered the following schedule. He and and Jake were coming out on Tuesday/Wednesday to work on the carpentry. Thursday, Greg (the roofing guy) would fabricate the roof in the shop and Friday/Monday Greg and company would come on site and install the roof. Matt and Jake would be back Tuesday/Wednesday of next week to do final tidy up.

So I rearranged my vactaion schedule and took Wednesday and next Monday off, to be around in case of questions, but also to learn how the were going to build up the roof. I have a side porch and a back porch that need roof work as well, and watching these guys might save me some dollars in the future (although in the end it will cost me a lot of time).

Matt and Jake did tear off Tuesday morning and found pretty much what we suspected - a lot of rot at the edges. The roof decking and framing that were away from the gutter were fine. Here's the corner framing that was under the gutter.

The decking though was still in good shape and nothing needed to be done with it.

Again, more rot, this time at the end of the gutter, where it butted up against the house. This is actually where some of the worst water damage in the house was. Water flowed through the gutter here, along the brick and then down into the dining room window, where it saturated the interior wall and damaged the plaster. When we tuck pointed the house a few years ago, it solved the water intrusion issue, although the water still leaked out of the gutter and along the outside of the house. Now finally, the water issue will be solved at the root cause.

Goodbye old tin gutters.

Here is the front entry denuded. The roof looks little and out of proportion to the entry way.

When I got home from work on Tuesday, this is what I saw. Matt and Jake sistered new framing next to the old, rebuild the rotted corners, pushed insulation into the space above the entryway (there had been none), and put the floor of the new gutter in place. I was thrilled to see that they had even pitched the floor of the new gutter appropriately. Technically this isn't necessary, as the roof guys will do this, but it's a nice touch and will certainly help. As I told them, the extra hour or two they took to get that pitch in place means I (or someone else likely) might get an extra five years out of the gutters and roof.

Here's one more shot of the framing, along with the blue tarp thrown over the top to protect the roof for the night.

Front Entry Roof Part 1

2010-10-05T12:10:00.004-05:00

After my last post, you may be forgiven if you think that I had in fact
s
u
n
k

No such thing. Progress is being made. Windows have been painted and re-assembled. Trim and bead board are painted. The front door has been removed. Storm windows installed. Windows cleaned. Garage cleaned. And there are contractors on site today to start replacing our front entry roof and gutters.

I have been aching to pull down the rotten bead board since we first lined up our contractor Matt. If you've ever felt the need to pick at a scab, or pull at peeling, burnt skin, then you know the feeling. Yesterday I finally succumbed to the urge.

First take a look at this and take a guess as to what it might be.

Ignoring the leaves, this pile represents what is left of the corner framing of my entry roof. And after seeing this, if you are wondering what is left, take a look at this picture.

The red, metal bit in the corner is the underside of the integrated gutter. There is no wood left. It has all turned to mush. Here is one more shot of the framing.

You can see the wooden trough that the gutter sits in, and then the fascia board on the outside. If you didn't understand what an integrated gutter is, then this is a good way to see it.

We also had Dave the furniture refinisher come to take away the front door. The oak veneer on it is de-laminating, so we've opted to have him remove the existing veneer and add new. This means we needed to replace the front door with something. I call it my crack house door.

Lovely ehh? I'm hoping that when he is done, it will look like the interior door.

Check back again soon. I'm hoping (expecting?) that the roof construction will go on all week and I'll post pictures and comments as the work progresses.

Crunch Time

2010-09-14T14:20:00.001-05:00

Winter is coming and if ever there was a time when I felt like the little ant, its now. I have double hung dining room windows that need to be painted and re-assembled. I have transom windows that need to be painted, hinged and installed. I have contractors coming to replace my front entry roof and gutters. I have bead board and trim that needs painting for the front entry. I have a furniture refinishing contractor coming to take off my front door and reface it. A lawnmower to winterize. Storm windows to make and install. Lamb bits to bury. Windows to clean. Yard and garden work. Tools to put away. Garage to clean.

I think I'm
s
i
n
k
i
n
g
.
.
.

Bits and bits

2010-09-10T14:37:00.001-05:00

Several weeks ago we had one of the neighbors over for supper. It was a nice evening, so we ate outside on the porch. As we were enjoying the food and the nice weather, Charlie turned to me and said, "So I know this guy who raises lambs for the fair. The fair's over. Interested in lamb chops?" It turns out that Charlie and his family have never had lamb and were looking to us for "expert" advice on how to have it butchered. Since our experience with lamb consisted of going to the butcher in Ireland and asking for lamb chops or leg of lamb, I'd hardly consider us experts. Still, he saw the opportunity and thought of us.

Charlie has taken over all the hassle of this. He asked at least three different butchers before he found one that would butcher the two lambs. He met the farmer at his work one day to pick up the live lambs and then took them to the butcher (in a trailer? his trunk? the back of his truck? I didn't ask.) The one thing that he left us is, well, the bits.

It turns out the butcher contracts with Sanimax to dispose of animal remains. It also turns out that Sanimax won't take lamb remains. I don't know why, but I sure would like to. So in addition to approximately 40 pounds of meat, we'll also be getting about 30 pounds of bits. And we'll need to dispose of them. Depending on our our solution, we may also be getting the bits from Charlie's lambs. That's sixty pounds of bits. That's a lot of bits.

On the upside, its only costing about $3.50 a pound for the processed lamb. If I can reproduce some of the leg of lamb that we had in Ireland, it's well worth it.

We haven't told the girls yet about the lamb. It turns out that Charlie, in a somewhat perverse manner, took pictures of the lambs and named them in the hour or two he had them before delivery to the butcher. I have no desire to traumatize the girls, but they do need to know where their food comes from.

Eat Your Heart Out Mary

2010-09-03T15:15:00.001-05:00

We're getting a lamb. There's a story here, but I don't have time to tell it just yet. Check back later.

California Really is Smarter?

2010-08-24T15:52:00.000-05:00

Redoing the windows in the dining room is a time-consuming, multi-step process that just seems to be dragging on and on and on. I've been stripping the existing paint off of them (probably lead based), in hopes that the raw wood and a modern primer will increase the longevity of the paint. I don't relish repainting these. As I was working outside with the paint stripper, I read the back of the can. Among the many, many detailed instructions and dire warnings was a phrase that I've seen often, but never pondered.

"This product contains materials known to the State of California to cause cancer."

How does California know that the material causes cancer? Did they finance their own study with tax payer dollars? what about the other 49 states? Are we dumber? Do our states not know that these materials cause cancer? Did we not finance a study? Does my state not care that these materials cause cancer? Are the other states just taking advantage of the California law?

Are these paint stripper fumes making me high?

Squeezebox

2010-08-12T13:38:00.000-05:00

Some time ago I blogged about my musical dilemma. My existential music crisis started developing two years ago when I started listening to an online radio station of a college friend. I quickly realized that I really, really missed music. My wife and I had spent almost ten years getting married, buying houses, having kids, moving and living a fairly busy life. In that time, something had to give. I hadn't realized that I had stopped following the music scene. Last year my MP3 streaming DVD player died and I caught the tail end of an NPR program discussing Pandora. These three things forced me to re-evaluate the place of music in my life and I knew that I wanted (actually needed) to find a way to stream our MP3's around the house. I also started listening to Pandora. I've never claimed to be a music buff, but I realized that it's an important part of my life.

What I ended up finally buying was a Logitech Squeezebox and a year long subscription to Pandora. It's funny how technology changes our lives. I thought I was buying the Squeezebox to listen to our MP3's that we ripped from our CDs. But now I spend 95% of my music listening time on Pandora. I didn't anticipate that.

If you are looking for a means to listen to Internet Radio, I'd highly recommend the Squeezebox.

Skeeters

2010-08-11T09:43:00.001-05:00

Dear mosquitoes,

In case you’ve forgotten the rules, I’ll lay them out for you.

You do not like the sun. If I am in the sunshine, you are supposed to leave me alone.
You live in woods, tall grass and in shade (see point one above).
You do not live on shortly mowed lawns, driveways or any other hardscape.
A light breeze is enough to keep you from landing on me and feeding.
Regardless of location, the hours between 9:00 pm and 11:00 pm are all yours. Anyone stupid enough to be outside during these times is fair game. They go outside at their own risk.
If it is not between 9:00 pm and 11:00 pm or if I am not in the woods, tall grass or shade, then you are not supposed to be feeding on me.

Failure to abide by these rules will result in something drastic on my part.

Thank you.

Camponotus Pennsylvanicus

2010-07-30T10:28:00.000-05:00

Last week I woke up, got dressed, went downstairs, opened the cupboard for breakfast and saw something really, really fast, small and black running around. At first I thought it was a small centipede, but as I moved things around to find it, I realized it was an ant, and another, and another, and another.

Usually I don't get too worried about ants. Remove the food, put out some poison, wait a few weeks and they die. But these were carpenter ants. Besides that fact that they are big for ants and offer a higher level of creep factor, they also make their homes in wood. We have a house made of structural terra cotta, faced with brick, but obviously everything inside the house is made of wood - the joists, the floors, the walls, the ceilings, etc. I have no idea how entrenched they are in the house or how much damage they have done. Considering that we've never seen them before, we're hoping that this is the first year they've invaded and that it is related to the record levels of rainfall we've received.

So, we removed the food, put out some poison and now we're waiting a few weeks. I'm also kicking myself because this year, unlike past years, I didn't get around to putting down a good layer of diatomaceous earth around the house. That certainly would have helped.

We also went shopping for blinds for the windows, and I was more than a little surprised at how much money one could spend on blinds. I had once heard that the cost of drapes shouldn't exceed more than 10% of the value of the house. I scoffed at that as ridiculous. I can see now how it would be quite easy to exceed that for those disinclined to frugality.

The End of Forgetting

2010-07-26T12:45:00.000-05:00

I'm not on Facebook. I'm not on twitter. I post pseudo-anonymously. I limit my posts to very constrained subject matter.

Why? Read this.

I have enough things in my life to worry about. I don't need "Manage my online persona" added to the list.

Plastered

2010-07-23T14:15:00.003-05:00

The plastering is done. They did a great job on the dining room ceiling and a pretty good job on the guest room. Its a huge improvement over what was there. I don't look up and cringe every time I sit down to eat.

I was fairly certain we had overpaid the plasterers when they started the job, but once the ceiling of the guest room needed to be torn down and redone, I felt better. We got enough hours of work out of them to make the quote about right. In total, it cost us about $4 a square foot. That's a lot more than if I had done it, but I know what my plastering looks like. Oak bark looks smoother.

I also finally finished the screens I started eons ago. That project took entirely too long considering what was involved. Its good to have one more thing checked off.

We've had a lot of rain this July. Average rain fall in July is 3.31 inches. We've had 9.45 inches to date and they are forecasting more rain tonight and tomorrow. There's still one week left to July. The good news is that the basement is mostly dry. Some moisture is coming up through cracks in the slab, and hydrostatic pressure is causing dampness around the corners. The only way to fix that is to put in an interior drain field, and that's many years down the priority list.

I'm still waiting on a quote from our carpenter for the front entry. I think a little pressure is needed there. We also got back a quote for refinishing the front door. It looked really good, but now I have to figure out what to put in place of the front door while they are repairing the original. I don't think I'm keen on having no front door for a week or so.

Of course it might be an opportunity for some interesting stories for the blog.

Misery Loves Company

2010-07-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

It's an old platitude, but so very true. Here are two examples. One is not related to the house, but bear with me.

In the IT world, there is one profession so hated, so heinous, so reviled, it will make friends between developers, administrators, and IT evangelists of all types; the auditor. The auditor has the impossible task of interpreting overly vague government laws or industry standards and then validating that current IT practices adhere to them. In addition to that, auditor knowledge of the IT world is often a silk thread's width more than zero. They make demands that can't be accomplished, or ask stupid questions, following the letter of the law, but ignoring the spirit. I've had auditors grill me on who had access to the database, but completely ignore who had access to the server or the data center.

One of the divisions in our parent company came under the scrutiny of these auditors not so long ago. Their IT staff howled and moaned. They came over to us day after day complaining about the idiocy of the auditors; the processes the auditors were forcing them to put in place, the productivity lost, the money and time wasted. But in the end, all of these things were put in place and the auditors left satisfied. (Auditors never leave happy.)

And now it's our turn. The auditors have turned their Eye of Sauron upon our division. We howled and moaned. We went over to our comrades who already suffered through this, expecting some empathy and mercy. What did we find? They were the first to put us to the sword; to show us the error of our ways and the righteous path that the auditors had set them on. And now that we are forced down this road, and they are content knowing that we too have to suffer, their response has been, "See? Aren't their requirements stupid?"

We struggle with a lot of things in the house. It seems like every time we try and improve something, it leads to further repairs, or the part is no longer available, or the repair is significantly more expensive and time consuming than we had first estimated.

We have blogged fairly extensively about calcimine paint and our experiences with it, especially the time consuming process of removing it. We've removed calcimine paint from five of the roughly thirteen rooms in the house, but we have only removed it from one ceiling. My mom, who has done most of the painting in the house, has dealt with it too. In the guest room, she painted the ceiling and was appalled to see a huge bubble form. The probable cause? The water in the latex paint reacted with the calcimine and it started to separate from the ceiling. She left, came back the next day and thankfully, the bubble had disappeared. We left well enough alone.

My wife mentioned calcimine paint to the plasterers when they started work, but they had never heard of it. Little did they know. When my wife called me yesterday to tell me that the ceiling plastering the guys started yesterday was bubbling up, I could only smile. They had to remove all of the previous day's work - the adhesive, the fiberglass mesh tape AND the first coat of plaster. And start over. It also removed a good portion of the old latex paint and calcimine paint, which will allow them to plaster to the original plaster.

Just re-reading this makes me smile. Misery loves company indeed.

Before and during the plastering of the guest room & dining room ceiling

2010-07-14T14:29:00.004-05:00

Mr. Kluges taking down the original
lighting fixture in the dining room.
(Don't try this at home.)

These next 3 are from the guest room. See, I told you it looked awful!

(The chimney is the more white part of the wall
to the right in the above picture
and to the left in the one below.)

Close-up of our lovely lathe.

And here's what they looked like after the plaster guys left yesterday.

(Lovely shade of pink, isn't it?!)

(Pictures cross-posted to Musings & Mutterings.)

Catch Up

2010-07-13T15:08:00.000-05:00

Ms. Huis mentioned recently about pulling the trigger here.

It always amazes me how fast things can move when you get professionals to do the work, especially when there are no dependencies between contractors. Up until noon yesterday, I had no idea when our guest room plaster was going to be prepared and ready for painting. Now it looks like it will be done by the end of the week. Getting the guest room done was always higher on Ms. Huis list of things to do than mine, but it definitely needs to be done before winter. Thin as it is, plaster and lathe does offer some insulation against the cold. Gaping one foot by three foot holes in the plaster would have made the guest room unpleasantly cold.

And as long as they are there, we're having them repair the dining room ceiling too. It will be nice to see some non-structural improvements in the house. We've been in the house almost three years now and I'm anxious to start seeing some cosmetic improvements in the house. New gutters, sewers and electrical are great, but they are the kinds of things you take for granted. I don't go into the basement and gaze admiringly at the new breaker box or stare in rapt adoration at the new plastic sewer pipe. But new paint or light fixtures or a refinished floor? Those are the things a person notices.

We're still waiting on a quote for the repairs to the front entry. Our contractor says we'll get it next week. We'll see. He's relying on other contractors for quotes (see my comment above about time lines and dependencies on other contractors). We're also waiting on the quote for the front door. Ironically, when I went back to the Woodcraft store to find router bits, who should I find working there but the furniture refinishing guy. Clearly I'm not giving him enough business. I expect his quote soon.

I've toyed around with making my own beadboard for awhile now. The old stuff is not the same dimensions as the new stuff that you can find around here. For a long time I didn't know how, what the cost was or how much work it would be. After poking around at Woodcraft, I see now that all I need is a router table and $75 in router bits. That just leaves the time involved. The irony of lack of time is never lost on me. If I didn't have to work, I'd have enough time to finish all of these projects. Of course if I didn't work, I wouldn't have any money for all of these projects.

We had a bat in the house again last week. This one was very obliging though. It flew (or fell) into a large tote of blocks in the kids' play room. Ms. Huis heard it and woke me up. I tried to go back to sleep, but her insistence finally got me out of bed. I picked up the tote of blocks, set it outside and went back to bed. She stayed and watched it crawl out and fly away. I never saw a thing. I bet she imagined the whole thing.

I've had mouse traps set out now for several months and caught nothing. Either we're over our mouse invasion, or we've used natural selection with our house mice to remove a predilection for peanut butter.

Nostrils

2010-07-01T12:37:00.000-05:00

Last night I was looking at the sole survivor of the carnival fish (Mister The Conductor), and I noticed he had two little bumps on his nose.

I looked closer, really looked and noticed that he had nostrils.

Nostrils.

Why do fish have nostrils?

Four eyes

2010-06-30T15:30:00.000-05:00

June. Gone. *blink* *blink*

At this rate someone will have to politely tap me on the shoulder, "Sorry to bother you sir, but I'm afraid you've died."

"Oh well, I've been so busy, I hadn't noticed. I guess I'll just fall over then and oblige the laws of nature. But before I do, let me just finish up this one last thing..."

These days I'm keeping one eye on the landscaping, one eye on the house, one eye on the bids for work and one eye on our bank account. If anyone has any good tips on integrating spider DNA, I'm open to suggestions. The extra eyes would be handy.

I'm hoping tomorrow to get the bid back for the work on the front entry roof and gutters. I also spoke with our paint stripper about refinishing our front door. His primary business is furniture refinishing, so the door is certainly within his area of expertise. There are several options with the front door, including replacing it (although my bank watching eye starts to get twitchy at that thought). I also have a bid out to level the back porch, put on a new roof and new gutters.

Yesterday I found my way to a Woodcraft store. I was looking for some router bits to make picture rail. It was a fantastic store with enough tools and equipment to make me feel like a kid in a toy store. Of course while I looked at tools, the bank account eye went past twitchy and just rolled backwards into my head. I'll have to head back at some point with the picture rail in hand to get a good match.

It's 70 degrees today (about 20 Celsius), there is a light wind and only two wispy clouds in the sky - I counted both of them. Being at work is actually physically painful today. My eyes feel puffy and scratchy. My chest feels constricted. Maybe I just need my allergy meds.

I lost my access card to our building this morning, which was probably an indication that I should have just skipped work today and spent some time playing with the kids and working on the house. I'll be running for the hills soon...

Monopoly

2010-06-11T14:36:00.000-05:00

Chance Card!

Children come home with free goldfish from school Carnival. Pay $100 in new fish supplies.

Didn't see that one coming.

The Circus

2010-06-04T11:11:00.002-05:00

Last weekend we went to a circus. It was the first circus for our girls, and my first circus as well. I was struck by several things. First, how young and attractive many of the performers were. What happens to old, fat circus performers? Are they fed to the tigers? Second, by the large number of Hispanics. Probably more than 75% of the performers were Hispanic. I was expecting white guys. Third, by how clean and professional all the performers were. I was expecting carny level staff, with tattoos, greasy hair, gold necklaces and clothes that looked like they were cast offs from an aging auto mechanic. And lastly by the impermanence of such a life. There was a time when I would have really enjoyed the vagabond existence of circus life. One year of working at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and being around those kinds of people quickly killed off the romance of such a lifestyle for me. Having a house is a big responsibility, and there are times it weighs on me, but I certainly wouldn't trade it for circus life.

We're still focusing on structural issues for the house and I have two outstanding issues that really need addressing. The roof and gutters for the front entry and back porch need replacing. We've been trying to get the carpenter who did our main roof work to give us a bid, but he's torn his bicep and has been off for the last month. I took a few pictures of the existing soffit and roof for the front entry.

The first two pictures show the gutters from the top looking down. The gutters in place are the original 1921 tin plated steel gutters. They have been painted numerous times until finally the previous owner lined them in EPDM rubber. This extended the gutters lifespan a bit, as it covered over the holes in the gutter. Unfortunately, it also doesn't allow the gutters under the membrane to dry out, so it actually increases the rate at which the steel rusts. At this point, they are junk.

The next three pictures show the soffit of the roof. You can see several pieces fo bead board coming loose from the roof framing. This shows just how rotten everything is. It's literally falling apart. The previous owner put up some sheet metal in a few places to cover some of the holes. Some of these are stable. Some are not. My favorite is the single pieced of beadboard hanging over the front entry. Its sagging a good three or four inches. I'm just waiting for it to fall.

We've got several options we can go with for the roof.

Cover over the built in gutters and apply a rubber membrane as roofing. Gutters at this point are optional. We can hang K style gutters or add any kind of gutter we like from the fascia.
Rebuild the built in gutters (they are rotten underneath) and line them with new stainless steel or copper gutters. Apply a rubber membrane as roofing.
Rebuild the built in gutters, line them with copper and put on a copper roof.

In all cases, we'll rebuild the soffit as is, with beadboard. There may be other options for the project, but I believe these are the main ones. As you go down the list, the costs increase. We won't know until we get a hold of Matt and get back some bids.

This weekend we're going to Minnesota for a wedding. It will be a welcome get away from the house and a good opportunity to see family we haven't seen in three years.

Smell That Squirellosaurus

2010-05-27T15:53:00.001-05:00

My wife reminded me in one of her comments that just before (potentially) shutting in the squirrel, I had an exchange with my youngest daughter that went something like this.

"Come on honey. Let's go pound on the porch and see if we can scare that squirrel out of the roof."

"OK!"

"I hope he comes running out this time."

"Why?"

"Well, if I close up the hole before he gets out, he'll die in there and stink."

"Yeah. Just like the dinosaurs."

"That's right. He'll go extinct."

Shifting Priorities

2010-05-25T15:41:00.001-05:00

After this weekend, I'm happy to report that there is one less squirrel hole in the house. I hope there is one less squirrel as well, but I'm not sure. I guess if I'm wrong, we'll find out based on the smell.

I know I scared at least two squirrels away before I started repairs, but the third one found it amusing to peek at me through the holes in a junction box while I was repairing the soffit box. I got him back though. I reached through the hole with a needle nose pliers and pulled out some of his hair.

Hopefully he got the hint and left some time over the last four or five days before I shut him in.

I was hoping to put off roofing the back porch for awhile yet, but while repairing the soffit, the amount of rot in the corners became apparent. It doesn't look good. I guess we'll get a bid for the back porch too when we get our bid for the front entry. I hoped we'd have that bid already, but our contractor tore his bicep a few weeks ago and has been out of commission.

Evicted. Homeless. Eaten?

2010-05-14T12:58:00.002-05:00

One of the people I went to college with recently described blogs and twitter as "narcissistic banter." If anything, I'd say he's being generous. I'd call it narcissistic drivel. It's one of the reasons why I waffled for a very long time about blogging. What could I possibly say that would be so important or interesting that someone would want to read it? I thought that the initial experiences with the house would provide sufficient humor or interest, but now that we've been in it as long as we have, more and more it feels like the House of 42 Doors is turning into a giant to do list, with some items checked off and others not (see last week's blog to see what I mean).

While I struggle more and more frequently defining topics of interest, I do find a great deal of value with the blog as a historical document. When did the kitchen flood? How old was Pumpkin when she played in the cabog? How many mice have we caught? Does this make the content narcissistic? I suppose so, but so long as I find value in the content, perhaps I can avoid the appellation of drivel.

We've been having problems with a squirrel in the soffit of our back porch. The fix is easy enough - cover up the holes, but in the never ending list of things to do on the house, those holes were never high enough on the priority list. They are now.

Last night I saw said squirrel hanging upside down on the soffit, with its head poking out of the hole. I was able to scare it away and thought that was the end of it, until I heard ANOTHER scritch scritch in the soffit. More thumping on my part caused another squirrel to fall out, only much smaller. My immediate thought was, "Crap. She's got kids." Junior ran around on the ground before he finally found his way to the giant oak tree in our backyard and climbed to the first limb. He sat there yipping and crying for mom.

It turns out that the distress calls of a young squirrel also happen to attract red tail hawks, which we happen to have nesting in a pine tree not more than 100 feet from our house. I spent the next 15 minutes or so watching mother squirrel trying to corral her baby to safety while a red tail hawk sat in branches just above, waiting for its chance to snatch junior. The squirrels chattered and the hawk screeched, knowing it unnerved junior.

I didn't see the end but here's hoping that this is the end of the squirrels in the soffit. I'll pick hawks over poison any day. Regardless, I guess I need to board up the holes this weekend.

Marathon

2010-05-07T14:44:00.001-05:00

Intelligence is knowing the right thing to do. Wisdom is applying it.

My folks came out this weekend to visit and to help with various projects. We opted to have have my mom paint and my dad work on assembling the playground for the girls. We did a lot of work, but somehow it doesn't feel like we got ahead. I sat down after they left and compiled a list of all the things that need to get done.

Finish the playground - My dad and I made good progress, but the slide still remains, and until it's done we're paranoid about letting the girls play on it. There's a hole in the side of the playground that ends in a six foot drop. This also includes landscaping around the playground with mulch, grass and a few shrubs, flowers or bushes.
Assemble 18 screens - Our house came with only three or four full screens. Last fall I built frames for 18 more screens, so that every room would have at least one screen. The frames are assembled and thanks to my mom, they are now all primed and painted, but the screens still need to be stretched on them and then trim placed around the edges to pretty them up.
Mulch our yews - The area where I took out the honeysuckle recently is a large black spot that all the neighborhood weeds and buckthorn are eyeing hungrily. I've had to wake up a few times at two in the morning, just to go out and wave a torch or club at them. "Back, back damn invasives!" It's the only thing keeping them from walking over and transplanting themselves into the fecund soil. A little mulch and grass seed might keep them at bay.
Paint the dining room windows - I've refinished the majority of the trim, but the double hung windows are still shockingly off white. They need to be painted a nice shade of brown to match. Unfortunately the current paint on them is in bad shape and needs to be scraped or stripped. I had hoped we could paint them, but after looking at them I now see this is not an option.
Repair and reassemble the dining room windows - To make it easier to paint the windows, I took all the dining room windows apart. Now is the time to replace the old cotton sash cords with metal chains and add some spring bronze weather stripping. Two windows above the buffet were nailed in place. We'll be converting these so that they open.
Repair or replace the dining room picture rail - I wrote about this one recently. No more to say here other than that I can't make up my mind what to do about the picture rail.
Cut, split, haul and stack the various pieces of firewood that has found it's way into my yard - I swear I don't know where it came from or who put it there.
Make four storm windows - This has been extremely time consuming. I don't really know what I'm doing so it's a lot of trial and error.
Repair the plaster in the guest room and paint the walls - This was meant to be a winter project. Now it's looking like a next winter project.
Re-roof the garage - The shingles are getting old and don't match the new house shingles. I ordered extra when we shingled the house. They are sitting in my garage, waiting to be put on. That also includes new gutters and new fascia where it is rotting.
Do the spring trimming - Various trees, forsythias and honeysuckle.
Put in the garden - It's still too early, but in two weeks or so, it's going to be time. And as an aside, I've been reading Teaming with Microbes. If you are a serious gardener or just like microbes, pick it up. It's a fascinating read and will change the way you look at soil. Although, I'm not sure it's good party conversation - bacteria, fungi, slime molds and protozoa - yum!
Start the front entry project - This is the main house project for the year. This is the one project that must get done this year. The roof, gutters and soffit need replacing. We're hiring this one out, so it won't need any work from me - just a lot of oversight.
Set up blacksmith forge - My dad put the word out back home and he thinks he found me a portable forge. If so, I should have a forge within a month. That will open up a whole new list of projects for me!

There's an old saying, "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." I know this, but every time I look down, I always seem to have a shovel in my hand.

If I Had A Hammer...

2010-04-30T14:29:00.001-05:00

I mentioned my William Foster in a previous post and waxed romantic about the possibility that it could have been used by the last blacksmith in our family - my great, great grandfather. Something much more meaningful happened over Palm Sunday.

We went back to Minnesota to see the parents and the in-laws. While we were visiting my parents, my dad went out into the garage and came back with a three pound blacksmithing hammer. "I took this out of the garage at the old farm. It was dad's. It might have been the old man's."

We don't know for sure how old it is. There might be a manufacturer's stamp on it and if so, I might be able to track back the company that made it. But I'm not sure I want to. There are times when facts and truth should be researched and shared. But not always. I smile when I think that somehow the hammer of my great, great grandfather has been handed down to the very last of his male descendants.

My parents are coming to visit us this weekend; I expect them to be at the house in another hour or so. It should be an interesting weekend. Our youngest is turning three, so that should be a fine party. We also bought one of those overly large, assemble it yourself play sets for the girls. Assuming the weather holds, we'll be installing it this weekend.

The possibility of a blog posting coming out of this weekend seems high.

The Heartbreak of Picture Rail

2010-04-23T13:41:00.000-05:00

A few months back I found these guys. They have picture rail that almost perfectly matches our existing picture rail. I took down the picture rail in the dining room as part of the paint stripping project. It wasn't in good shape. It was broken in two places, dinged up and warped. So after agonizing about it for months, we opted to replace the picture rail with new. Actually, I'm the one that agonized over it. I'm not sure Ms. Huis lost any sleep over it.

Because our kitchen and entry never had picture rail and the previous owner took the picture rail down in our office, we also decided we might as well get picture rail for those rooms too. I measured up the rooms and called Ashland. They quoted us a price for several different styles of picture rail, and even sent out a few samples. Monday I called them back to officially order what we chose. They got back to me on Wednesday. There was a problem.

Getting the picture rail to us was going to be problematic. It ships in 14 foot lengths, which is great for reducing splicing when installing it. It also makes shipping it here difficult. Sending it to us was going to cost $450. Ironically, this is about the cost for our local milling company to create a custom knife to match our existing picture rail profile. Looks like we might be installing the original back in place.

I guess I'll just have to keep digging.

Ted the Ninja Buckthorn

2010-04-16T15:07:00.002-05:00

Wow. What a hiatus. Longest one ever. I'll just reference this and move on.

When we bought our house, it was seriously overgrown. European Buckthorn was the most prevalent species. I pulled it out, cut it down and chopped it up. There was one buckthorn near the property line that was actually quite nice as invasive species go. It was tall and straight, adopting a tree-like form, rather than the bush form. I named him Ted.

In my research of buckthorn, one warning that was frequently expressed was to NOT cut it off at the ground. Buckthorn freely suckers and cutting it off at the ground would just make the issue worse as the plant would turn into a messy bush. While I could appreciate Ted as a tree, he was still a buckthorn, so two years ago I cut him off at five feet and decided that I would wait until out tree guy came to visit. Then Ted would get cut off at the ground and chipped out. So last spring, we had our tree guy come out to chip some stumps. And somehow we missed Ted.

Two weeks ago, we decided to have our tree guy out again to finish off the last of the scrub. My wife and I went over what needed to be done. She went over it with the tree guy again. And we missed Ted again. At this point, I've dubbed Ted the Ninja Buckthorn. He hides in plain sight.

But no more. As part of the honeysuckle clean up, he's succumbed to the shovel. He's been dug out and Ted is now hiding in the backyard, propped against a tree, waiting for the fire ring. We'll see how long it takes for me to find him to burn.

WW - Mr. Kluges's Weekend Project? HoneysuckleBGone!

2010-04-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

Before...

During...

After...

(Cross-posted to Musings & Mutterings)

I'm Sorry, I Don't Speak Money

2010-03-26T11:27:00.001-05:00

In the majority of cases, does good design, or beauty, by necessity have to be expensive? I could have asked, "Does good design, or beauty, by necessity have to be expensive?", but we don't live in a black and white world. Beauty can be free, but do we usually find it expensive to create?

Last Christmas, Ms. Huis bought a present from some online retailer and shortly thereafter received an e-mail indicating that our purchase had entitled us to a free one year subscription to one of the following magazines. Nothing on the list really caught her eye, but thinking of her husband (bless her soul), she chose a one year subscription of Architectural Digest, which bills itself as The International Magazine of Design.

I'm on my third month of the magazine now. The first month was enjoyable, but mid way through the second magazine, I began to feel a sense of unease. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on. By the third magazine, it became obvious what was bothering me about Architectural Digest.

There was an article about the design of a theater room. The kind that has a big screen, fancy electronics and a few rows of raised seating. A home theater room is something that has become more common over the years. It's the kind of room that you can find in a middle class household. Getting a professional designer to decorate said room is something I would expect ot see from those in the upper middle class or higher. We don't have have a theater room, but it is something I could see. Someday.

What took this article over the top though, was that this was about the interior design applied to a theater room.

On a yacht crewed by nine people.

This isn't upper middle class. This is money the likes of which I will never understand. I don't even know how to relate to it. Having sufficient money to not only own a yacht, but to also employ nine people full time to run it?

And in reviewing the design, I'm not sure if I can sift through the ostentatious glare to find those design elements that I could afford to apply in the first place.

William Foster

2010-03-12T15:11:00.002-06:00

Sometime in the early 1860's my great, great grandfather, whose last name I bear, left his homeland. He boarded a ship bound for the United States. His ship's port of origin was likely Liverpool, Belfast or Dublin. He may have embarked in Dublin, which was just a day's journey from his native Wicklow county, or he may have journeyed across Ireland to the port city of Queenstown (now Cobh or Cove). The journey across the Atlantic was probably a long, unpleasant journey. Unlike many of my immigrant ancestors, John had two major advantages; he spoke English and had a skilled profession, blacksmithing.

John sailed across the ocean to work as a farrier for one of the many coal mines in Pennsylvania. This was at a time when mules were used to pull carts full of coal from the mines. The need to keep them shod and their hooves cared for must have been never ending. John probably also performed other blacksmithing duties as required. We have some evidence that at some point in his life he did some ornamental iron work. He didn't stay in Pennsylvania too long before he moved to Minnesota and started farming.

Several generations have gone by and now there is no one left in my family who knows a thing about blacksmithing. But that is going to change. As a teen I would often linger at fairs and festivals with blacksmiths. I remember in particular speaking with one smith and asking him if there was anywhere that someone could go to school to learn smithing as a trade. He responded that there was only one school he knew of in Kansas or Oklahoma, and that focused mainly on shoeing horses.

I realized right then that no matter how great my interest, there was no money to be made as a smith. And I moved on to other things. It never occurred to me that smithing could be a hobby. It seemed too big - too much to learn, too much equipment to buy and too much space needed. I guess I found it intimidating.

Then I met Yeti (not his real name) in college. He was a few years younger than I and had an interest in smithing. As the years have gone by, he's joined the local blacksmithing guild and has even been kind enough to host a few "Forge Weekends" where he invites people, gives them a hammer, an anvil and a forge and lets them try their hand at it. And he's good too. Ten year's ago he forged a massive unity candle stand for Ms. Huis and I for our wedding.

I went to Forge Weekend last year for the first time. I was hooked. Maybe it runs in our blood. Or maybe I'm just overly romantic about the past. In any case, last weekend I picked up this.

It's 103 pounds (roughly) and was made in 1848 by a company called William Foster. I am deeply amused to know that this anvil is old enough that my great, great grandfather could have worked on it. While the odds are a million to one, I can even imagine that this small portable anvil was one he may have used.

I'm still missing a few pieces before I can smith, namely a forge, a hammer and some iron, but I'll get there.

Scope Creep

2010-03-05T14:57:00.006-06:00

Most of my blog entries are written over lunch at work. This works great except when work is so busy that I have to skip lunch. Work has been very busy the last few weeks. I try to work regular hours (07:00 to 16:00) and when the workload piles on, it means something has to give.

In February I had mentioned a post about scope creep. If you aren't familiar with scope creep, then you are fortunate enough to have never worked on projects in the corporate world. The meaning will be clear soon enough.

About a year ago I came home and Ms. Huis informed me that she had heard a loud thud from one of the windows in the dining room. It didn't take her long to deduce that the thud had come from a broken rope holding the sash weight for our double hung windows. The rope was likely the original one and after 88 years, it had frayed or rotted to the point that it couldn't hold the twenty pound steel weight on the other end.

This broken weight was like the proverbial flapping of the butterfly’s wings. I could have run down to the hardware store, bought a few dollars worth of cotton rope, reattached it to the window and the weight and been done with it. That would have been the sensible thing to do. If I had done that, I wouldn't be writing this.

It so happens that somewhat coincidentally, about the time this rope broke, I had just ordered and received a copy of Working Windows by Terry Meany. It's a great book for anyone with double hung windows. I won't go into the merits (and drawbacks) of old double hung windows here. That's cause for a whole post in itself and has been exhaustively argued in other places on the net. I will say though, that book does a great job explaining double hung windows and how they are put together.

So one July or August weekend last year, I opted to take apart our window with the broken sash weight. I noticed that both sashes needed to have putty reapplied in places. And they needed paint. So I put on our wooden storm window and took out the top and bottom sash. I put them in the basement, where I forgot about them all summer.

When winter came though, and I was looking for inside projects, these looked like a great project, so after about six hours I removed all the putty from the bottom sash, took out the glazing, lightly sanded the frame, put down a bed of putty, put the glazing back and then re-puttied the glazing. It was not enjoyable. When I looked at the top sash, which had eight panes of glass instead of one, I winced at the thought of re-puttying all those panes. They still need doing.

One of the things that has always bothered my about the dining room is that the original owners bothered to install a quarter-sawn oak floor, but opted to paint the trim. The house was set up to give clues to visitors as to when they were in a formal or informal room. Formal rooms were installed with quarter sawn oak and stained. Informal rooms were installed with birch flooring and the trim was painted white. The fact that the floor in the dining room was oak, but the trim was painted white was inconsistent, especially when there was a stained buffet along the north wall.

So one December weekend, I started ripping the trim off from around the windows. I thought I would strip it and refinish it. Then I noticed that due to the location of the radiator, the only way to get some of the baseboard trim off was if the window trim was off. Before I put the window trim back, I had to remove the baseboard and trim. And if I was going to take that off, I might as well take off the picture rail.

Stripping all of this myself would have taken a long time and probably exposed me and my family to lead paint and chemicals. So I opted to get the wood stripped professionally. I had the trim from around the window stripped first.

Here's a picture of the trim the day we last painted the dining room.

Here's a picture of the window after the trim was off.

And a picture after I stained, varnished and reinstalled the trim.

During all this time, another sash weight rope broke and fell, which means I'm contemplating putting in chains in place of rope for the sash weights. And the sashes should be weather stripped with spring bronze to decrease air infiltration. And of course we don't plan on keeping the sashes white, so those will need to be painted.

The picture rail I pulled down was not in very good shape. It was warped, nicked up and had one break in it that had been clumsily repaired. On top of that, while removing the nails in it, I broke a section of the picture rail (doh!). The picture rail profile matched the more informal picture rail upstairs. The first floor was also missing picture rail in the office, the kitchen and the entry way. So rather than pay to have the old picture rail stripped, we're opting to replace it with new, and install it in all of the above rooms.

When all of this is finished, we'll have a dining room with stained wood, picture rail in every room of the first floor, and double hung windows in the dining room that operate smoothly and are as energy efficient as traditional double hung windows can be. My guess is that it will end up costing just shy of $1000.

I think now that replacing the cotton rope might have been a better choice. Scope creep.

Keys, Keys, Keys

2010-02-12T14:09:00.000-06:00

Yesterday in the mail I received my final Corbin P-Series key, a P-8 to be precise. I now have a key for every easily identifiable lock in the house. That amounts to 31 keys.

There are seven doors in the basement that also have mortise locks, but there is no distinguishable identifying mark on the mortise lock to indicate what kind of key might fit it. The doors are an older style door, so I suspect that the mortise locks are older as well.

Many of the locks and strike plates need additional work though. The house has settled over time and not all of the doors close correctly anymore. The mortise locks need to be disassembled, cleaned and oiled. Some need to be repaired. It's fiddly work and a good project for the winter months when I'm bored.

Oh, and if anyone needs or wants any bit keys (including Corbin P-Series), I have many, many extra that I acquired while looking.

Old Friends

2010-02-10T12:46:00.000-06:00

When I was in high school, Calvin and Hobbes were in their prime. I looked forward every week to the Sunday paper. I'd carefully cut out the strip, take it to school and tape it to the inside of my locker door. By the end of the year, there was a thick matte of paper that I'd take down, laugh at, and then throw away.

By the time I went to college, I stopped following Calvin and Hobbes. They were winding down. I'd pretty much forgotten about them until one day I ran into a few Calvin and Hobbes books that Ms. Huis owned. I looked through them and they reminded me of their absolute brilliance. When someone reawakens the love of an old interest and you share it together, it's divine.

So we have a soft spot for Calvin and Hobbes at our house, which is why we've let our five year old read those same books. She really enjoys them, although some of the subject matter is definitely beyond her. However, some is not.

Two weeks ago, we were talking about desert after supper, when Pumpkin piped up, "Oh, I'm a dessertatarian." To which I replied, "You mean you only eat desert? Where did you get that from?" And of course the answer was Calvin and Hobbes.

But the one that made me reconsider giving her access to Calvin and Hobbes at such an early age happened just before Christmas last year. We were playing in the living room.

P: "Daddy, is there really a bad Santa?"

K: "What? What do you mean a bad Santa?"

P: "You know, an evil Santa."

K: "Well, I...um...What does this bad Santa do?"

P: "If you're bad, he brings toys and things you want, but if you've been good, he punishes you with socks and underwear."

After a few follow up questions I discovered the source of "evil Santa" was Calvin. I have to say that as funny as Calvin was 20 some years ago, he's even more funny filtered through the eyes and mouth of a five year old.

It Could Happen

2010-02-05T12:33:00.001-06:00

In February, our current President will meet the Dalai Lama. I've been thinking about this for about a year.

Imagine that rather than a dog named Bo, Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha opted to get an Andean Llama. I relish the thought of hearing an introduction on a February afternoon, as the Dalai Lama is receiving a tour of White House.

President Obama says, "Dalai Lama, Obama Llama. Obama Llama, Dalia Lama."

Say it out loud. It's funny. Really. Well, it makes me smile anyway.

Back to the house. I've started putting trim back around our dining room window again. Once it's done, I'll post pictures and explain a classic case of scope creep.

Project 2 - Done

2010-02-01T12:56:00.000-06:00

Well, it looks like a I missed a week there. Big news at the House of 42 Doors these days is that late last week we received a mail from the Wisconsin Historical Society. Our roof/mortar/gutter project received final approval and is now closed out. What does that mean? It means we can claim back 25% of the cost of that project as a tax credit.

Thanks to this project and the electrical/sewer project of 2007-2008, we have reduced our state tax liability to as low as it possibly can be for the next five to seven years. We can't reduce our state taxes to $0, though. Wisconsin has an alternative minimum tax rate so that we'll always have to pay something.

I also just heard from Ms. Huis that the full set of Corbin P-series keys (1 through 12) that I bid on and won in E-bay came today. I'm now just three keys short of having a Corbin key for every Corbin lock in the house. That means I'm still short the seven doors in the basement, but they aren't Corbins and I'm afraid that finding keys for them may prove extremely difficult.

Projects on the house have been going agonizingly slow. I've been doing most of the work and that means slow progress (although it also means much fewer expenditures). I also happen to have a project going on on each floor of the house. So many projects at once means that while it takes longer to get through them, it also means that I can switch projects when I start getting frustrated. This is good. The house likes to oppose me whenever it can.

Money, Politicians, Judges and Picture Rail

2010-01-22T10:10:00.003-06:00

The House of 42 Doors is a narrowly focused blog. It doesn't include a good number of things from my life, which helps me stay on topic and steers me clear of the three things to avoid in conversations; religion, sex and politics.

But I can't let this one go.

Two recent decisions by courts, one national and one local are worth noting. The first is the recent Supreme Court decision (5 to 4) that overturns a ban on corporate or union spending on federal campaigns. A company is no longer prohibited from spending money to support or oppose a federal candidate.

That's any amount of money, any federal candidate. Here is a fairly balanced article that sums it up nicely.

Coincidentally, our state has just made a similar decision. The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ruled 4 to 3 that judges need not recluse themselves from a case whose plaintiffs or defendants made campaign contributions to the judge's election campaign (Wisconsin judges are elected). According to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, if I donate $10,000 to a judge's campaign, there is no conflict of interest when he (or she) hears my case.

Again, here is an article that explains the situation in depth.

Read the articles and make your own conclusions, but I am utterly dismayed at how these decisions have made it easier for those with money to influence our politics and our courts, especially at the national scene. Its no wonder why I spend most of my time these days researching moulding profiles for picture rail. It's a lot less depressing.

Hobbies

2010-01-15T09:34:00.001-06:00

While illegal, burning money is the only financially honest hobby one can have.

This week I finished The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. In it, the author buys a house and three acres of land and then proceeds to spend the next several years trying to reconcile his vision of a garden with reality. He hires a professional landscaper to put in his gardening beds. He installs electric fencing and drip irrigation lines. He battles a woodchuck he calls "Superchuck." He even considers installing a pink granite obelisk in his garden.

One day, his wife jokingly made an off-hand comment that he should enjoy his Brandywine tomatoes, because each one probably cost $40. Curious, William sat down and figured out what it cost him to grow a Brandywine tomato. He was shocked enough to title his book after the results. William didn't make all of his calculations known, but he did go through his process of figuring cost. It looked reasonable.

This leads me to my initial point. All of us have interests and hobbies; golf, fishing, hunting, dance, brewing, camping, reading, etc. Gardening is William's hobby. When was the last time you actually figured the cost of your hobby? If you knew, would it change how you spend your time and money?

For those of us with old houses, we live in our hobbies every day. Just like William and his garden, we try to reconcile our vision of our house with the reality that confronts us. Eventually, the difference between the two converges, with the result sometimes closer to the vision, sometimes closer to reality.

Books and Music

2010-01-08T13:59:00.001-06:00

It's hard to work on the house in winter. Many of the projects I have in progress could probably be finished up with another three or four hours of work each. Unfortunately, the days are short and my ambition is lacking. Instead of working on the house, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. I recently finished Soul Survivor and am right in the middle of Three Cups of Tea. The first one was interesting, but not one I would recommend to everyone. Three Cups of Tea is worth a read though, no matter who you are. I've been summarizing and paraphrasing it for my five year old daughter. Bath time is a time when we talk about Pakistan, K2, Greg and his schools.

I've also been struggling with technology the last few weeks. About ten years ago I bought a Gateway DVD player that would wireless stream MP3's, pictures and videos from a PC, so that it was accessible from my stereo/TV. That DVD player finally died and now I'm struggling to find an affordable replacement (under $150). I'm quite shocked to see that in ten years the technology has gotten neither simpler nor cheaper. If anything, it's grown more complicated and more expensive. Its disappointing that our large MP3 library (which we ripped from CDs we bought "back in the day") are sitting on our PC, mostly useless to us.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm open to them.

2009 Wrap Up

2009-12-31T12:59:00.002-06:00

Two years, 123 days. There have been eight hundred, fifty four days that we have owned the House of 42 Doors. My blogging has become more sporadic and less passionate. We are settling into the house and the house is settling into us. What originally seemed strange and wondrous has become normal and mundane.

What we accomplished this year pales in comparison to what we accomplished in 2008, but for the record, here is the list:

Finished up the kitchen ceiling (after the waste pipe replacement in 2008).
Plugged crack after crack in the basement with Great Stuff foam. Last year's basement temperature was 48 degrees. This year's its 58. Progress!
Stripped the calcimine from the bathroom and painted it.
Replaced the tub/shower drain.
Ripped up some of the attic floor and sealed some of the air leaks. More work needed here.
Painted and patched the office.
Distributed 90% of the huge compost pile to the garden.
Planted a garden.
Repaired, scraped and painted the beadboard soffit.
Built a storm window holder.
Put in 75 yews for a hedge.
Took out several honeysuckles to make room for said hedge.
Painted the dining room red (and interestingly, both Ms. Huis and I have gained weight this year).
Removed all the calcimine paint from the guest room. Patching and painting to follow.
Painted the back dormer.
Repaired and painted the back porch gutters.
Built an igloo (it only lasted a week - I'm no Eskimo).

Next year we'll be looking at repairing our last two roofs and maybe replacing the front entry gutters. When those are repaired that will be the end of the exterior repairs to the house.

Here's hoping you had a great 2009 and have a fantastic New Year's!

The Last Lecture

2009-12-19T09:49:00.000-06:00

Last Tuesday I started reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It was a gift from a co-worker a few months ago and I was looking for something short to read before bed. I didn't finish it that night, but I did get a good way through it. It is a good book and worth the read. It is a thoughtful book that can lead to self examination and life re-alignment.

The next day I received word that my previous boss had died Tuesday night/Wednesday morning from pancreatic cancer.

I had known he was sick and that his time was near the end, but the timing of it all only underscored the message in the book. None of us know how long we have. Remember your dreams. Try and achieve them. I've been blessed in the last few years to fulfill a few of mine. They don't need to be grand. Sometimes they are small.

Like building an igloo.

Igloo Update

2009-12-18T09:23:00.002-06:00

For all those people out there who have two properties, it doesn't take long before upkeep and maintenance on the other property begins to take focus away from the primary one. I'm sad to report that my igloo has some serious structural deficiencies.

Last weekend it rained slightly and reached 32 degrees. The result was that my igloo has bowed in appreciably on the north side. It has also shrunk. When I built the igloo, it was a little over six feet in diameter and a little over six feet high. Now the height is probably closer to four feet and with the wall bowed in, I have probably lost two to three feet in diameter. The door, which was never big to begin with is just barely tall enough for me to wiggle in on my belly.

My spacious igloo is feeling a bit claustrophobic. But the kids still love it. One of the neighbors told her husband that he wouldn't be granted a Dad of the Year award until he built his kids an igloo. :)

With the shrinkage, I'm now considering how my next igloo could be improved. Maybe made out of ice? Or maybe if I packed the snow tighter? Maybe I could make it bigger to allow for shrinkage? And of course all of this means I'm not thinking about the House of 42 Doors. I suppose its a good cautionary tale on why I probably shouldn't buy a rental property until after I have the House of 42 Doors fixed up. Maybe sometime in 2025.

[Ms. Huis Herself says: You can see bowed-in side here.]

My Other House is an Igloo

2009-12-11T07:24:00.004-06:00

It's rare that we get the chance to fulfill a childhood dream when we are adults. Usually we outgrow those dreams, or the impossibility of the dream becomes all too apparent when the naivete of youth is stripped away.

When I was a little boy I had a blue plastic block, about 6" by 6" by 12". There was a picture on the front of it with a little boy in a heavy parka. He had the fur lined hood up and had a huge smile on his face. In the background was a perfectly domed igloo.

I don't remember if that toy was a birthday present, a Christmas present or a "just because" present, but when I saw it, I immediately wanted to build an igloo. And for several winters I tried, but it never worked. The snow was either too dry, too powdery, too wet or too little. And the amount of work involved was probably too great for a six to eight year old boy anyway.

Tuesday night we saw 16 inches of snow dumped on us. We went from late fall to winter in the course of 24 hours. The first batch of snow was heavy and wet, followed by drier, more powdery snow. When I went out to play in it Wednesday morning, I saw that the bottom six inches had been insulated by the top 10 inches. It was still wet and sticky, even though the air temperature was around 27 or 28 degrees.

I knew this was it. The perfect situation to build an igloo. So I went inside and dumped the toys out of six bins our girls use for toys and set to building an igloo.

It took about five hours. I did the first half by myself, but the second half was a full family effort with Ms. Huis packing the blocks and the girls delivering them to me inside the igloo. The inside is about seven feet in diameter and it is just under seven feet tall. It doesn't look much like the perfect domed igloo on my long gone blue plastic block, but I'm still thrilled with it.

I get a smile on my face every time I think about it.

Standards? I scoff at your petty standards

2009-12-04T14:48:00.000-06:00

Here's hoping that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We did. It's why I didn't post last week.

I started a long post about blogging and Internet anonymity, but I've come to the end of the day and ran out of time so...

We have a leaky faucet. I took it apart to fix it. It needs a new brass nut because some moron put on a steel one a long time ago. Guess what? Steel + water + time = rusted and broken nut.

So I went to the local hardware store (and I mean local as in locally owned, not local as in the big box store that is around the corner) and went to their two aisles of various bolts, nuts and screws. They had about 12 square feet assigned to brass bolts, nuts and screws and guess what? I couldn't find one that fit.

Why is nothing standard in this house?

A Mopping Opportunity

2009-11-20T12:51:00.000-06:00

For me, late fall is a season of melancholic, pensive moods. A time punctuated by bipolar ups and and downs while I remember the beauty of previous weeks and adjust to the impending gloom of another winter. As we do not have any major projects in progress at the moment (compared to last year) I've considered many topics for this week's post including:

The True Opportunity Cost of Owning an Old House
Why Aren't My Rain Gutters Leaf Gutters Too?
How We Lost Our Souls to Mechanization
What is Lost in Keeping Online Privacy and Anonymity?
Accustomed to the Outhouse
Geothermal - Here We Come
Why Fusion Will Never Save Us

But the House of 42 Doors always has a few tricks up its sleeve, and has given me something to write about. Some time ago, I made the mistake of allowing our radiators in the sun room to freeze and crack in the winter. We have yet to repair those radiators. We've kept the pipes to that heating loop turned off and all has been fine, although colder.

We scheduled our annual boiler maintenance and tune up yesterday. John came out, checked the pump, the emissions, the intake valve, the overhead storage tank and did an overall tune up of the system. And then he opened up all the valves to make sure everything was working OK.

Meanwhile, several minutes later, my wife noticed a growing pool of black water growing in the sun room and leaking into the living room. She could see the water squirting out of the radiators. The floor in the sun room is tile. The living room floor is wood. She called me to find out where the shut off valve for the sun room loop was, ran down to tell John, turned off the valve, and then proceeded to mop up the mess (Thanks!). The water was black because of the years and years of coal dust built up in the walls, cracks and crevices of the house.

No damage was done, and we are only out the gallons of water that was spilled. The sun room tile floor is cleaner than it probably ever has been since we bought the place. The wood floor and living room carpet have dried out. It caused a good deal of stress to my wife (because she had to deal with it), but I found the whole incident somewhat amusing.

It's made me think about directly attributable causality and the interaction of temporal events across seemingly large amounts of time. In this case, all the months that occurred between the radiators cracking and this incident could never have existed, or for that matter could have been double, triple or more. Any time that those valves were turned on this could have happened. Its as if time does not exist, as if there were the equivalent of a spatial wormhole, but in this case a temporal one, connecting two events, regardless of the distance in time...

Autumn - a pensive season indeed.

Indian Summer

2009-11-13T13:19:00.000-06:00

Last weekend was a bonus weekend. It was the kind of Indian Summer weekend that makes autumn my favorite season. I finished a few projects that I never found time for during the rest of the year. It was the "Weekend of the Gutter."

We inherited a 26 foot fiberglass extension ladder with the house and it seems that several times a year I am climbing up it to clean out the upper gutters. I hate doing this. It is dangerous. One fall would result in serious injury. Anything I can do to cut down on the need for this is a plus.

Last weekend I finished putting gutter guards on the upper gutters, which turned out to be much more involved than I had anticipated. But it's done now and with luck, I won't have to clean out the gutters more than once every year or two.

I cleaned out the garage gutters. And I was able to sand, wash, paint and caulk the integrated gutters on the back porch. I really need to squeeze another five or ten years of functionality out of them. The previous owner replaced them with galvanized steel some years back and they are starting to rust badly. Replacing them is not in the budget any time soon. I also took down the railing on the back porch for repair. Sadly, it is mostly rotten and may require a complete rebuild.

And I was able to rake, level and seed in a few more areas of the "lawn" that need grass. Hopefully next year it will come up, more grass than weeds or buckthorn.

I should have definitely worked on buttoning up the house. I still have windows to finish, cracks to caulk, insulation to add and trim to stain. But when it is 65 and sunny the first week of November, the last thing I want to do is be inside.

The mad march of mice to the inside continues. We've caught two more in traps and this weekend I found one that fell down our floor drain in the basement. The poor thing swam around until it was too tired and then drowned. I'm not sure if that counts as a mouse for the count, but I'll add him in anyway. That puts the current count at 58.

I think that beginning January 1st 2010, we'll start a contest to see what the mouse count will be like at the end of the year. Guess the mouse count! Win a faux fur coat!

Stripping

2009-11-06T12:36:00.000-06:00

I'm done stripping. The hours are long, it ruins my clothes, it makes a huge mess, the smell gives me a headache and I can pay somebody else to do it for me. I am of course talking about paint stripping.

Yesterday I picked up the trim from the paint stripping place. They are in the middle of moving their business, so things are a bit chaotic for them right now. In talking to the owner, the current economic crisis has also hit the commercial real estate market. For those businesses that are still solvent, there are opportunites to relocate to bigger or better locations. They've moved from the middle of nowhere, sandwiched between a roofing company warehouse and a scrap metal business, to one of those locations off of a major highway that you can see, but you'll never be able to figure out how to get to. Thank goodness for online mapping.

The shop is a mess at the moment and just walking in gives me a headache from the fumes. It's a very good reminder of why I don't want to work on stripping the wood in the first place. Originally they weren't planning on getting my pieces done for another two weeks, but a few of the pieces of trim are 14 feet long, and they were getting tired of tripping over them in the chaos of the move. The shop has all kinds of beautiful pieces of furniture in various states of repair and refinishing there. We have a broken, vintage Morris-style chair that came with the house that needs repair and refinishing (looks like this). It may end up going to these guys.

So now that the window trim is back, it still needs staining, varnishing and then adding back to the window frame. And of course I need to put back the window I took out in the first place, replace the ropes with chains and add brass weather stripping. It sounds like a lot more work than it is, I hope. I'd post pictures, but several weeks back our digital camera met the ground a tad bit forcefully (dropping will do that) and now it's being repaired.

We weathered through Halloween just fine. We decorated the house a little more than last year and we were again asked about the ghost in the attic. My wife had a prime opportunity to perpetuate the myth, but missed it. She had been putting a strobe light in the attic on some nights to create a "spooky" light in the attic. When one of the neighbors commented that it looked creepy, the wife said thanks. I would have looked at them and told them, "What light? What are you talking about?" Ah well. Maybe next year.

We also caught mouse 55. So Great Stuff foam and I have been busy filling anything that even looks like a hole in the basement. I found several that I had missed last year, including two holes, one inch in diameter left over from when we upgraded our electrical service in 2007. From a mouse's perspective, all that was missing was a porch light and a little mat that said WELCOME!

Haunted Woods

2009-10-30T13:17:00.002-05:00

When our house changed hands in the late 70's, the family knocked down the old greenhouses to the north and partitioned the several acres of land into lots. A cul-de-sac was put in and houses built on those lots. They intentionally made the lots large, some almost an acre in size. Some of those lots have been partitioned again, but two houses on cul-de-sac still have large lot sizes. One is .44 acres and the other is .87 acres. Both lots are heavily wooded and they have no backyard neighbors. The land behind them is owned by the factory and is used as a maintenance road. It is essentially junk industrial land that no one uses. It's unfortunate as it runs alongside the river and could have been prime residential land instead of worthless, unused industrial land.

For the last 12 years these two families have hosted Haunted Woods on their land. Every two years the venue changes from one back yard to the other. This gives time for the woods to recover from the abuse they receive. The families create a maze-like path in the woods and decorate it with a seemingly limitless supply of cobwebs, animated spooks and props. They have landmarks like the "Wall of Severed Heads" and the "Tunnel of Terror." There are three tours that they offer. The first is early in the evening, while it is still light out and there are no live spooks. The second has spooks, but if the tour guide has a red light, the live spooks are put to sleep. The third is the full on, no holds barred, live spooks tour. The live spooks are mostly neighborhood kids dressed up in costumes who jump out you and try to scare you into wetting yourself.

The families have a suggested donation of $1 a kid and $2 per adult. They take any profit from the event and donate it to a local charity. It runs every weekend in October and then for a few days leading up to Halloween.

We took the girls to the no spooks tour one evening before supper and Ms. Huis and I went on the full tour a few nights later. It's amazing how jumpy we were even knowing that we were safe. It's a great neighborhood activity that helps pull everyone together. We haven't had much to do with it yet, but I can see that changing as the girls get older.

Oh, and for the record Mouse, LIV.

Epitaph

2009-10-27T14:34:00.001-05:00

This was really much funnier in person than it is in writing, but I'm still putting it here because it's close to Halloween and I want to remind her in the years to come what she said. This was a conversation at the end of supper with myself, our five year old daughter (Pumpkin) and Ms. Huis as she was heading upstairs to start the bathtub filling for the girls.

Ms. Huis: Pumpkin, you can't save everything. You have to throw that away. We don't have room to save everything.

Pumpkin (thinking): Oh...well, we won't throw you out, Mom...until after you're dead. Then we'll bury you in the front lawn.

Ms. Huis (heading upstairs): Most people don't get buried in the front lawn. They get buried in a cemetery.

Pumpkin: Why?

Mr. Kluges: Well, people think that digging up the dead is disrespectful and not very nice so we put them all in one place. That way we know where they are and we don't have to worry about accidentally digging them up.

Pumpkin: Oh! So we could put a big rock over them, and then we could write "Leave Me Alone!" on it.

Mr. Kluges: Well, yes, we could. Usually though people just write their name, the date they were born and the day they died on the stone. Some people also put on an epitaph.

Pumpkin: What's an epitaph?

Mr. Kluges: It's words on the gravestone that you want to be remembered for. Things like "Rest In Peace." Or "Here Lies Our Beloved." Sometimes they are funny, like, "I told you it was a bad cough."

Pumpkin: Mine could be "Sorry, I couldn't help it."

Mr. Kluges: Yes, honey, it could.

Mouse LIII

2009-10-23T11:40:00.000-05:00

Mouse 52. Yawn. Yawn. I was becoming immune to the horror of it all - the intermittent but ongoing maiming and killing of rodentia. Then came mouse number 53. He was small and gray with big black eyes, rounded ears and a sad little twitchy nose. I met him last weekend when he tried to "hide" by my foot in the basement. He ran away before I could catch him. And he was very cute.

Monday night I found him on the basement floor, near death. We don't put out poison, so I can only surmise that his impending demise was the result of disease or insufficient food supplies. I picked him up with a gloved hand. He breathed out a labored breath and tried to arch his back. I carried him up to show the girls and then took him outside near the compost heap. If he has enough energy to forage for food, he won't need to forage far. I don't think he's going to make it though, poor thing.

Sometime ago one of the ropes broke in a double hung window of our dining room. I took both the upper and lower sashes out (quite honestly, I think just to see if I could). But so long as they are out...

One of the things that really bothers me is the painted woodwork in our dining room. The original owners were very careful about how they choose the flooring for their house. The used oak flooring in the public spaces of the house (the entryway, the living room, and the dining rooms) and "cheap" yellow birch flooring everywhere else. The trim and woodwork in the entryway and the living room are stained oak. The trim and woodwork in the dining room though is painted white. It doesn't match. I have always wanted to strip the paint off the woodwork in the dining room and stain it to match the oak floors and the entryway/living room woodwork. It's funny how one small cotton rope breaking was all that I needed to convince myself (and my wife) that the windows needed a complete overhaul, including the window trim.

The problem is that having windows disassembled in winter leaves a gaping hole. Even in our case, where I have the storms on, a single pane of glass isn't nearly as good as two, which means the race is on to get the window put back together, along with the all of the trim I pulled off. In the interest of getting the job down quickly, I took all the window trim (about 100 linear feet of it) to a local paint stripping place. If people have any experience with prices, please let me know. This place charges $1.80 per linear foot for any piece that is 6" or less in width. And another $2.20 on top of that to finish. That was a little more than I was expecting.

The upshot is that in three or four weeks, I should have the window trim ready to be stained and varnished.

I'll Floss, I Promise

2009-10-14T15:26:00.001-05:00

I've never liked dentists. We started out on the wrong foot from a young age. But that's not really what this post is about.

Our dentist's office happens to be three blocks south of our house, on the main street of our town. It's in a one story, brick building that was constructed in the mid-eighties. It has a great roof of concrete shingles and seamless gutters (I notice these things now). Across the street is a small, local mechanic (our mechanic), a real estate office and a large, empty corner lot. Next to the dentist's office are the beginnings of residential housing that line the rest of main street.

I went through the standard procedure of a dentist's visit (x-rays and cursory dentist inspection) before I was finally shipped off to a separate room for cleaning. The woman who cleaned my teeth was in her mid to late fifties and had lived in our town her entire life. And she was absolutely fantastic.

Anyone who has been to the dentist knows that it is almost impossible to carry on a conversation while having your teeth cleaned. The good hygienists in the world understand that going to the dentist is like going to a psychiatrist in reverse - they talk and you listen, all while you lie down. Her monologue was mostly confined to Brett Favre and his hometown of Kiln, Mississippi. Typically this would have bored me to tears, but I guess after 36 years of cleaning mouths and performing hours of one-way conversations, she had found ways to engage her captive audience.

Naturally, she got to talking about our town, and through my occasional grunt and head nod, I was able to communicate that we'd only been here two years. She talked about the slow decline the town had seen over the last few decades. The closure of the city swimming pool and ice rink; the migration of downtown businesses out into malls and business parks; the bars that went out of business; the local hardware store that now sits empty; the motel that burned down; and of course the closure of the local factory by our house. It was sad to hear the resignation in her voice to the inevitable failure of our downtown. Its not what she wanted for our town, but I don't think she could see a way to stop our town from turning into just another soulless suburb.

She asked where I lived and I mentioned the neighborhood without explicitly telling her we lived in the House of 42 Doors. We talked about the neighborhood and the Halloween Haunted Woods there (more about that in another post). Then she said, "And then you have the ______ House there," referring to our house by the last name of the previous owners. At that, I let the cat out of the bag and indicated we had bought the place.

I never know what I'm going to get when I tell people that. Thankfully she was one of the people who thought the house was worth saving and that the house had little, if anything, to do with the factory closing. She's not the first to have told me that the factory would have probably closed one way or another. She said she was very glad the previous owner fought so hard to save the house and the entire neighborhood. Of course I invited her to walk down some time and say hi. We'd be happy to show her around.

And she jokingly replied that she would have to make a house call. Then her demeanor changed ever so slightly, "To make sure you are flossing more."

Ok. Ok. I get the message.

KISS

2009-10-07T14:49:00.000-05:00

Keep it simple stupid.

Repairs for the exterior of the house have proceeded from the top down, which meant a few weeks ago I needed to paint the back dormer. I took out the windows to perform maintenance on them, mostly just painting and a bit of puttying. In the process I succeeded in breaking a pane. In the past I had gone to the local hardware store for my glass, but this time I opted to visit a glazier who was a few extra miles down the road.

The store was set up with displays of mirrors and glass doors for shower enclosures. There was one small corner dedicated to modern windows that he was reselling. I found myself wondering what kind of sales he has seeing now that traditional windows with single pane glass were not the norm. I suppose if he was able to sell new windows, rather than repair old, he probably did quite well in the housing bubble of the last few years. But now that the housing bubble had burst...who knows?

The point of going to the glazier was to ask about all my options for fixing the window - single pane, double pane, inserts, low emissivity glass, tinted glass, etc. He threw in a few other options that I wasn't considering too, like replacing the entire window or putting on a new storm. We talked for about 15 minutes on all the options.

In the end, I bought a double strength pane of glass. Standard, single pane glass is about 1/16th of an inch thick. As you might guess, DS glass is 1/8th of an inch thick, so less likely to break, although twice as heavy. When I asked him how much for the 8" by 12" piece of glass, it came to $2.65. I'd say it wasn't even worth the time it took him to tell me about my options. On the upside though, I'll be going to him in the future, as I can't get DS glass from my hardware store.

Mouse LI

2009-10-02T14:23:00.000-05:00

September? What September? Where did it go? I find myself reeling at the month that never was. Suddenly we're in the middle of fall with Halloween looming and I'm not sure if I traveled forward in time or if I've suddenly awoken from a fugue.

Stepping back and looking at the House of 42 Doors, there are plenty of things going on, but in the interest of having something to write about in October, I'll limit each of my postings, rather than do one catch up post.

Fall means colder weather, a plethora of food and a search for shelter by our wee friends, the mice. I've set the traps in the attic again, and in the space of a week, we've caught two more, equaling a grand total of 51 mice since we bought the house two years ago. I knew we had at least one in the house. In the evenings, I could hear her sliding down the interior walls of the bathroom.

I had hoped that when we had the house tuckpointed, it would have solved our mouse problem. I guess that they are still finding a way in. We continue to fill in cracks where we see them. I know for a fact that plugging a hole in the kitchen has kept them out of our living space. Now they live solely in the walls and in the attic, which is an improvement.

The family has been pushing to get a cat for the last few months and I am hesitant for a variety of reasons that are not the topic of this post. I am wondering though if having a cat in the house would actually help with the mice. Not so much from catching the mice, but more from any scent that the cat would emit. Does anyone know of any evidence that cat phermones drive away mice?

Old and Green?

2009-09-16T11:09:00.001-05:00

So. Umm. Hi.

How are you? Good? Fine.

Well. Errr. Ah.

I guess this is bit awkward. I've been gone awhile. I don't really know what to say.

You didn't notice? Really? You've been busy too? Oh good.

Last night I attended a presentation put on by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is a non-profit, non-government funded agency that "provides leadership, education, advocacy, and resources to save America's diverse historic places and revitalize our communities."

It was about how green it is to reuse existing buildings rather than demolish them and build them new. The presentation was not what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a discussion on how to make old buildings more green. I'm already convinced that reusing old buildings is more green than building new, provided that they are kept up and improvements incorporated where appropriate. It's the "improvements incorporated where appropriate" that is the tricky bit and the part that I want help with.

Still, it was interesting to go to. I learned that one of the nearby cities has it's own historic preservation council. They organized the presentation by the Trust. Our village is entirely too small to have such a thing, so engaging with that council could be interesting, providing it isn't a bunch of little old ladies who are more concerned with what kind curtains people are hanging in their windows, or if the paint used on the house is an exact match to the color that was used in 1898.

I also came across this link about LED light bulbs in Japan. Would you spend $40 on a light bulb if it paid for itself in a year or two and lasted for 19 years?

I would.

The Time of Plenty

2009-08-28T08:37:00.001-05:00

We're approaching fall and there is produce everywhere. There are pumpkins on the vine. The squash are turning. The tomatoes are breaking their vines with the weight of their fruit. The beets are sweet and large. The carrots are long and crisp. Our CSA boxes are backachingly full of tomatoes, melons, onions and corn.

Last night our neighbor dropped off a brown grocery bag full of pears, apples and a peach. Today one my employees bribed me with a dozen ears of sweet corn.

I love fall.

Bricks

2009-08-27T14:05:00.000-05:00

Brick pavers are heavy.

This is an obvious fact. But if I asked you exactly how heavy, would you have any idea?

On Monday I saw a listing on CraigsList for 1000 brick pavers for sale. I contacted the seller and was thrilled to hear that they were still available at a very good price.

They were an hour away, and I opted to drive down to see them. I wanted to be sure they were real brick and of a color that would match the rest of the brick around the house. The directions to the place sounded familiar, but it wasn't until I was well on my way that I realized the house I was going to was on the way to our CSA, which we've visited three times over the last two years.

The bricks turned out to be perfect. They are 8" x 3.5", and I figured that as long as I was down there, I might as well load up the Ford Taurus and take some back with me. I figured if I could get a third of the bricks in the Taurus, then I could come back another time with my wife and our two cars and get the balance.

As it turns out, estimating weight is not one of my many skills. I loaded up the Taurus trunk, back seat and passenger foot well with as many bricks as I thought I could safely take - about 275. Other than bottoming out the Taurus once, the trip was uneventful, but I was nervous the entire way that something was going to happen.

Once I was home, I weighed a brick to see how close my estimate of two pounds each was. It turns out each brick is closer to five pounds and that I overloaded the Taurus by a few hundred pounds.

We were able to arrange for the sellers to deliver another quarter of the bricks last night (for a fee of course) and I think I'm going down tonight to load up another quarter. They'll be following me with the last 250.

I had no idea when I bought these that it would be such a hassle to get them here. The ironic bit is that the guy selling them pulled them out of a sidewalk for a lady who happens to live within 15 minutes of us, and then transported them back to his house an hour away.

If only we had known.

Not Strictly OSHA Approved

2009-08-26T07:51:00.007-05:00

The time off was fabulous, if perhaps too short. I have yet to find someone who will pay me for working on the projects I want to work on, but I suppose it's the same problem we all have.

The goals for the holiday were several.

1) Finish repairing, scraping, priming and painting the soffit.
2) Kill some of the weeds in the lawn with weed killer.
3) Scrape, prime and paint the integrated gutter on the back porch.
4) Take a day trip or two to see some fun things in the area.

As expected, not everything was accomplished. The only item on the list that was completed was number 2. We lost one entire day to Ms. Huis having the flu and one entire day to rain.

The soffit is mostly done with just the final coat of paint to put on two sides. I did not rent a lift or a scaffold and there's no doubt it would have gone faster, but the hassle of setting up and moving a scaffold, as well as the added cost just didn't seem worth it. Besides who needs a scaffold, when I can build this?

I didn't walk on this, only used it to hold my paint tray so I wouldn't have to go all the way down to the ground to dip the roller or the brush. The other sides of the house weren't bad as I was able to reach the soffit by standing on the first floor roofs. Once the soffits are painted, it'll be time to start working on winterizing the house.

Its hard to imagine, but old man winter will be here before I know it.

Giddy

2009-08-14T12:26:00.002-05:00

I've got all of next week off and nothing planned.

Well, that's not strictly true. I have a lot of things bouncing around in my head that I could do. Enough really for me to retire for a few years, but still nothing is concrete.

I'll let you know how it goes, but for now, it's a case of finish up the work stuff and fly out the door.

Summer Fun

2009-08-11T13:31:00.006-05:00

Hot. Humid. Sticky.

Perfect weather for the beach, the air-conditioned mall, or peeling paint off the walls.

We've gone on at some length in the past about calcimine paint. What we've noticed is that when it is warm and humid, the latex paint on top of the calcimine becomes rubbery and releases easier from the wall. Scraping in the winter results in paint chips. Scraping paint on a hot and humid day can result in pieces of paint coming off that are a square foot in size.

We took the opportunity that the weather gave us and almost finished pulling the paint off of the wall in our guest room in just a few hours. The one wall left is the one by the chimney and it's clear that it has suffered some serious water damage followed by some very poor plaster patching. Getting it to a decent state is going to be difficult.

The room was originally pink, then blue, then the blindingly bright yellow in the pictures. Over that was two or three coats of white latex. Here you can see a patch of white latex, over the sunny, cheery yellow and the gray of a washed wall. Good Summer Fun!

You'd Be A Lot More Welcome...

2009-08-04T07:51:00.002-05:00

If you'd come with your own bat cave, batsuit and batmobile.

We left the window open for you. Glad you were able to see yourself out.

Mystery

2009-07-31T15:23:00.005-05:00

The first time we saw the inside of the house, I saw these.

Something about these light switches really appealed to me. The solid click during operation , the mysterious way they were affixed to the wall and the well worn brass spoke to me of quality, endurance and sadly, neglect. If these light switches were in the entry, what else might we find in this house? In retrospect, I think that is one of the things that really drew me to the house - the mystery of what we might find.

We might find a box of depression era bonds, or a trunk of vaudeville costumes or maybe even the famed wardrobe of C.S. Lewis' story in the attic. It was a house untouched for years with an aura of neglected wealth, a patina that might reveal a glimmering treasure if only we cleaned it.

We've gone through the garage, the basement, the yard and the attic. Initially, there was a daily expression of surprise over some discovered item, some architectural or structural detail, or some way the house was affecting our lives. But in time, these tidbits of mystery occurred every few weeks and now it's every few months. Less and less the house seems like someone else's mystery. More and more it seems like our diamond in the rough, a diamond that needs so much shaping and polishing.

Still, I take pleasure even in the small surprises. Last weekend when helping the neighbor remove a tree, I saw several large pieces of limestone buried in the ground, along with a few old bricks. They were originally part of the farm that predated even our house. I have taken them to use as part of a limestone path. I wonder, what were they originally used for? Who put them in? How did they get so neglected that they came to be half buried under five inches of soil?

And if I keep digging, will I come across the rotted out stump of a lamp-post?

Beetastic

2009-07-28T12:46:00.002-05:00

Just bee-tastic.

Last Wednesday I was raking up the dead leaves and the dead weeds. The dead weeds have been the only silver lining in our cloud and rain free summer to date. There was one stubborn thistle that needed pulling, so I reached down and gave it a good tug. What I didn't see in the evening twilight was the large hive of underground bees buzzing around. My efforts gained me one large thistle and one large bee sting. I'd been stung once before, when I was around 10, so I didn't get too concerned about allergies, but it still really hurt.

Saturday the buckthorn infested city land behind ours had a box elder come down. We helped another neighbor finish disposing of it. And what did I put the same bee stung hand into while moving some lumber? ANOTHER nest of ground bees. I got two pokes in the hand that time around.

I guess the dry weather is making the bees cranky too.

Overstayed

2009-07-22T11:50:00.005-05:00

I think that the next time we buy a house, I'd like to see it NOT re-painted. Conventional wisdom says that before putting a house on the market, its a good idea to paint the interior a nice neutral color. We've repainted the majority of our interior rooms now and they look much better. The paint also hides all the flaws in the plaster. I think I'd much rather not know the true shape of the walls.

One of the houses that we looked at was in a desirable neighborhood and had the feel of a house where the occupants had overstayed. Overstayed houses are houses that were once lavished with love and attention. Then the occupants stayed well past their ability to care for the house, whether due to financial or health reasons, and the house slid into disrepair.

This particular house had late seventies decor. Wallpaper was holding loose plaster to the wall. The floor was uneven. The chimney needed to be rebuilt. There were signs of water damage in some of the rooms. It had a lot of potential, but the lot was very small and the house was built on the edge of a ravine, so it had no backyard. It wasn't what we were looking for.

We only saw a few "overstayed" houses, but ours was one of them. The most egregious example of water damage in our home at the time of purchase was this.

The problem comes from our built-in gutters over the front entry. (Ms. Huis thought it'd be great to get a picture of me too - I'm taking apart the dining room window, the one I don't know what to do with yet.) The gutters have been lined with black pond liner to try and increase their lifespan, but it's not working very well.

Unfortunately, the gutter (or the soffit) tilts towards the house. The water runs back towards the house and then along the brickwork. This had been going on so long, that the water dissolved the mortar holding the brick together. The water would travel through the brick to the window lintel and then into the house.

There was no point in painting or plastering this area right away, and the first winter we had a little bucket under the window to catch the drips. Then last year we had the house tuck pointed. Now that those gaping holes are plugged, the water running against the house stays outside the house. Last winter the window and wall were dry, even in the face of record snowfall. We finally felt comfortable painting the dining room.

The tuck pointing is only part of the solution of course. Getting the gutters and roof replaced on the front entry is on the list of things to do in the next few years.

Blitter

2009-07-17T14:23:00.001-05:00

Since my wife has started using Twitter, her blogging has decreased significantly. I didn't get Twitter at first; after all what's the point in trying to communicate in 140 characters or less?

But over the last few weeks I've had several ideas for posts and as I let them roll around in my mind, none of them had any real substance. They could have easily fit into those 140 characters.

Now there's no reason that I couldn't have still posted them on the blog, but there just seems to be a certain "weight" that blog posts have. I don't expect to read a one page story from my local paper in a copy of National Geographic. And I don't expect to find a tweet on my blog.

I was looking at one of my old posts and realized there was a solution for this. So, in the interest of combining these different types of media formats, welcome to my...blitter? twog? blogter?

When did they go to dimensional lumber? And what was the progression? My 2 x 8 joists are neither 2", nor 1 1/2". They're 1 3/4".

We ordered and bought enough wood to build screens for two windows in every room. The mill strongly suggested poplar as a more affordable alternative to clear pine. Didn't expect that. Went with it anyway (they're only screens). We'll see how they hold up.

I work with a guy who used to work at the factory near our house. He started to go on and on about "some house" on the National Historic Registry that kept the factory from expanding in the 90's. I stopped him before he ranted too long with, "Oh yeah. That's my house." The look on his face was priceless, especially when he asked if he could see it sometime.

It's really dry here. We've gotten 0.85 inches of rain in the last 37 days. That makes for a lot of watering of the 66 yews I put in this year. Didn't figure THAT into the cost.

Horrible, heavy, thick clay soil that holds water like a sponge is great for keeping plants alive in a drought, even if it does make my basement damp.

A weight broke in the upper sash of our double hung dining room window. I just bought a copy of Repairing Windows by Terence Meany. This gave me enough courage to take out both the upper and lower sash and the parting bead. OK Mr. Window, now what do I do?

We went to a neighborhood barbecue last weekend. I found out one of our neighbors is a marathon runner. She qualified for the Boston marathon this year.

Our neighbors to the south (who hate yews) have been at their lake cabin all summer. It's been wonderfully quiet - almost as if we've been at the lake cabin.

I've had no luck catching rabbits with the stick and box trick yet. But the girls talk about it.

The neighbor's sour cherries were ready this weekend and they let us pick our share. We canned about four pounds and took the other four pounds and added them to a mead I have brewing.

Our mulberry tree also fruited over the last two weeks. More fruit for the honey-ginger-cherry mead. Next year we'll have raspberries too.

Work has been insanely busy - not so much the amount of work, but the number of things going on is making it really hard to keep track of everything.

I think I vaguely remember a time in my life when I was bored a lot. I wouldn't mind a little more boredom.

WW - Pre-painting "Before" and a Very Red "After"

2009-07-08T06:00:00.002-05:00

(Thanks, Gramma Pet & Papa Pharaoh for the painting & kid-watching help!!!)

Cross-posted to Musings & Mutterings

Yewdaism

2009-06-30T10:34:00.005-05:00

Well, now that Ms. Huis has let the proverbial cat out of the bag, I guess I'd better come clean.

I'm a yew lover.

There I said it. I hope you can all accept me and will support me now that I've come out. I'm no longer a closet yew lover.

My path toward yewdaism began when I was 17 years old, before I even knew about yews. My mom and I took a trip to Europe for a month where we visited Blarney Castle, in Blarney, County Cork, Ireland.
Blarney Castle has extensive gardens attached to it with numerous old yew trees. I have a picture of me, at 17, in a black, stone-washed, jean jacket sitting in the limb of this tree.

At the time, I didn't know that this was a yew tree. I just knew that it was a really cool tree. Then as I grew older and started thinking about the tree more, I started wondering what kind of tree it was. I was able to confirm that it was a yew tree when I went back to Ireland with my wife in 2003. I was hooked.

This yew tree is a major pilgrimage site for yew lovers. We even moved to Blarney for two years where I lived within just a few miles of it. I have since returned to the rest of the world to teach others and evangelize about the joys of yewdaism.

If anyone is going to Blarney Castle, this tree can be found at an elevation of 127 feet at north 51 degrees, 55 minutes, 45.54 seconds and west 8 degrees, 34 minutes, 4.09 seconds. Once you get into the gardens, follow the main path through the tunnel under the road. Stay on the path, past the elephant ears and it will be on your right.

There are a lot of yews in the landscape of the current community we live in, but they tend to be used as accent plants. This is good, but there is so much more that can be done with yews! Too many people have fallen sway to the false Society of the Arbor Vitae (treasonous splitters), somehow believing that they make a better hedge.

I have begun my evangelical work by starting a yew hedge around the House of 42 Doors. To date, I've put 66 yews (195 feet) in the ground, and more are coming this fall or next year.

Long live the yew!

Sworn to secrecy

2009-06-27T21:29:00.002-05:00

I'd tell you how many yew trees Mr. Kluges has purchased this summer, a few at a time, both spreading (maybe this one?) and Hicks varieties, but he says I can't.

But I am going to tell you that it's more than the number of doors in our house... :)

Et tu, Brute?

2009-06-25T12:51:00.002-05:00

While I was in charge of the girls last weekend, I tried to make a point to get out of the house and do something fun with them each day. On Friday, we went to a nearby state park for the first time. My plan was to do a bit of hiking and have a small picnic before we went back to the house for nap time.

We found a nice, flat broad path perfect for a two year old, an almost five year old and an out of shape dad. We were really enjoying ourselves when I started to notice the local flora.

What did I see? Tartarian honeysuckle, buckthorn and garlic mustard.

I guess that when they say "invasive", they really do mean it. It makes me wonder though, what exactly is to be done about invasive species? Is it inevitable that the Wisconsin understory will someday be buckthorn, garlic mustard and honeysuckle? Will we lose all of our ash trees to the Emerald Ash Borer, just as we lost our elm trees to Dutch Elm disease? It's really very sad.

I Lasted 30 Hours

2009-06-23T11:48:00.001-05:00

Last Thursday Ms. Huis left for a four day vacation away from me and our two girls. I was left in charge. Since we've moved here, we have assumed the very traditional 1950's roles. I get up every morning and go to work. She takes care of the kids, does most of the cooking, cleans the house, does the laundry and generally runs the household. I come home from work, eat supper, help put the girls to bed and then often head out to the garage to tinker on things.

So for the last four days, I was Mr. Mom (which explains why there was no Friday update). The experience underscored for me what I already knew. That if it wasn't for Ms. Huis taking care of all the things she does (laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc.), I'd have no time to work on the rest of the house.

Her vacation was well deserved. It was the first time she's spent away from her family in over four years. I know I'd be a bit upset if my work told me that I was down to one vacation day a year.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to get things done in the house - dishes, laundry, cleaning, whatever. And sometimes there is a two year old and a four year old that are not playing together nicely. And that's when, against my better judgment, I ask the question, "Girls, would you like to watch a video?"

It took 30 hours from the time Ms. Huis left to the time my resolve wore out. I guess stamina is something you build up over time.

The Long Slide Down

2009-06-22T15:23:00.000-05:00

The days are getting shorter now. Enjoy them while you can. There are about six to eight weeks where I can still get things done outside after work. Then the days will be too short.

Ack.

Thump! Supper's ready!

2009-06-12T11:28:00.002-05:00

Summer is here and our first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share has arrived. We also opted to put in a relatively small garden this year, so depending on how much we end up feeding the bunnies, we may have an overabundance of a few things when combined with the CSA produce. We very much enjoy our CSA and I encourage you to look into it if you aren't already a member of a CSA.

On the rodent front, we've seen no mice in weeks, but the rabbits are eating our garden and a few of our hostas. This weekend we may try the old box, stick and string trick to see if we can catch one and relocate it elsewhere. If it works, the kids will talk about it for months. If it doesn't, they'll talk about it for days or weeks. Either way, I think it's worth trying.

A little known fact (to me) about bricks with recessed mortar is that they are laughably easy for squirrels to climb. Tuesday after work I found two squirrels busily chasing each other around the outside of my house. It appears love is in the air.

My wife succeeded in scaring one by opening a second story window, leaning out and yelling at it. [MHH says - Actually, it was the bathroom window that opens onto the second floor balcony. So I climbed out and yelled at him!] It took a 12 foot jump to the ground and ran off. The other one had the temerity to hang from the corner of my house and scold me for evidently getting too close to his home. I asked him for rent, but he just twitched his tail at me. Cheeky.

Wednesday morning, as I was brushing my teeth and looking out the bathroom window, who should look around the corner and peek at me through the window? You guessed it, my freeloading renter. I didn't have time to deal with him, so I let him have free rein for the day. That night though, I chased him off again, and there was another fabulous twelve foot free fall. There's something very satisfying about hearing the thump of a squirrel on the ground. Maybe it's an ancestral memory of the days when we were hunter gatherers and that thump meant supper had fallen from the tree. In any case, I haven't seen him since then.

I am of course concerned about the squirrels and the numerous holes in my soffit. I've seen no evidence that they are nesting in my soffit, but seeing them makes the soffit repair a bit more urgent. I'll have to get something over those holes this weekend, beadboard or no.

Guesses Anyone?

2009-06-11T07:45:00.004-05:00

Oh look! Its a...a...ummm...err...right. Anybody have any ideas what this is?

The house was far from empty when we purchased it. This happened to be in the garage on its side and was used as a shelf. It's made of wood. The picture above is the front. Or at least I presume it's the front. The three boards in the middle slide out completely and are grooved.

The holes throughout it are perfect ovals and extremely well done. The bottom of it is cut at an angle, which is why it is leaning so precariously.

At the top, written in neat handwriting across the four sections is Driver's left side, Driver's right side, Passenger's left side and Passenger's right side.

This is the back of it.

I'm utterly baffled. Does anyone have any idea what this is?

Back into the Fray

2009-06-08T10:16:00.000-05:00

There was no Friday update last week as we went back to my home town for a graduation (Congrats Mz.Blu.Eyez!) The graduation was in my old high school, which I haven't been to in almost twenty years. Very little had changed and short of the people attending, it could have been me up there so many years ago.

The event was cause for a good deal of reflection on where I was, where I've gone and where I'm going. The conclusion I came to was that I don't have time to wallow in melancholic self analysis that would inevitably lead to a mid-life crisis.

So it's back to the house, where I have soffits to repair, gutters to patch, porches to level, hedges to plant and piles of dirt to level out.