Display by Label: House

There are a number of ways to bring on a divorce. One sure-fire method is to have an affair. As I've said before, I've never tried this approach, but if I did, ya'll would be the first to know. Another good technique is to spend entire days together doing something inherently frustrating ... like assembling IKEA furniture. C and I gave this one a go on Sunday. And, you know, there may have been a time, several years ago, when engaging in this sort of activity would have been peppered with snarky comments about our respective IQs, and endless repetition of the phrases, "Here, let me do that" and "No, no, no ... it's supposed to go THIS way." And the whole thing might have ultimately led to a day of silence and bruised egos. We are, after all, a couple whose dinner plans got thwarted once over an argument about my driving. (To her credit, C was right: it actually IS impossible to share food with somebody after they've been driving like a granny. And I admit it. I was ... driving like a granny. But in my defense, it was only because I was trying to tell a story. Geez.)

After eight years of marriage, though, you begin to figure out certain things about being with one-another. Like how to tolerate granny driving. And how to put together furniture. Over the last several months, C and I have tackled jobs from the Futon Sleep Shop, to Staples, to IKEA, and I'm happy to report that furniture assembly is no longer the divisive activity it once was. Much the opposite: I think this time it actually brought us closer together. I might even go so far as to say that it was borderline romantic. And yes, I realize that this fact is probably ... no, definitely ... a sad commentary on what we find "romantic" these days. The thing is, we each know our roles in the furniture-assembly equation. C likes puzzles, and she knows that I hate reading instructions of any shape or color. So she handles that part. I like using power tools, and I know C is delicate and girly and averse to calluses, so I do all the grunt work and turning of screws.

As she put it to me before we got started: "You screw and I'll do everything else." (God, I love it when she talks dirty.)

So we have another room mostly done. This time it's C's office which, thanks to a futon, will double as a second guest room for when we have lots of guests ... like this weekend. It's fun having a futon again. I like the way they smell. It reminds me of college. And I guess it probably says something about us that we have both of our offices very near completion and haven't yet a spec of furniture in the living room, aside from my piano.

But back to this weekend ... A bit of Texas is coming to New Jersey this week. Three bits, to be exact. A keg of Miller Lite has been ordered to make it more home-like for them. And there's plenty of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Jr. on the iPod. Oh, and there will be grilling. Lots of grilling. I'm hoping I don't scare the neighbors, which is why I've invited them all over for the 4th as a sort of North-South peace offering. Hopefully, just like with our furniture-building, just like Barack and Hillary, it will lead to unity. We'll see.

link to this | comments (8) | File:  House  Cath 

You'd think that on its second mow, a brand new mower would be hungry to eat some grass. You'd think it would just be getting warmed up.

Apparently, my mower decided it had had enough of this grass-cutting shit. It died on me yesterday.

My neighbor, Ax (not his real name), was outside later that evening and I walked over to our fence to tell him my bad news. He and I are establishing a relationship not unlike the one between Tim and Wilson on Home Improvement. I'm Tim. Things tend to break when I get my hands on them. I go to him seeking consolation and advice. He's Wilson. He's older and wiser and he just knows shit. And dammit he's got a great freakin' lawn.

Ax also owns a classic muscle car, which he showed me the first day we met. I have to admit, it's pretty sweet. And shiny. Ax works on it in his free time. Also, he drives a Ford F-350 4x4, a truck that continually lobs taunts over at Remington from Ax's driveway. Damn bully trucks. The only thing that's a little pansy-ass about Ax is he's got two Dachshunds. I mean one would be unfortunate. But two is tragic.

As I walked over to Ax, the two "dogs"—a term I use loosely—greeted me as they always do, with furious barking and yipping. Have you ever seen a Dachshund when he's furious? It's kind of like when real dogs are being playful. Because of the commotion, Ax didn't hear me too well when I said, "My mower died." I could tell by the expression on his face and the way he said, "I'm so sorry" that he had misunderstood me. So I bent down and offered the dogs my hand to sniff, which shut them up. Then I said, no not my mother, my mower. God, who walks up to his neighbor, who he's only known for a couple of months, and says with a sort of flabbergasted, aw-shucks, can-you-believe-it atttitude, "guess what, my mother died." Nice weather we're having, isn't it? He must have thought I was crazy. Oh well, it won't be the last time for that. He'd better get used to it.

So I'm not sure if I set a record for killing a lawn mower, but I was going to look into it. I brought it back to Fred, who doesn't seem like so much of an angel to me anymore. He went to start the thing, only to find that the pull-chord wouldn't budge. Like I said, it was fed up. He admitted that this definitely seemed a little fishy. "But don't worry about a thing!" he said. He would figure out what was going on and I wouldn't have to pay for a thing. He's damn right I'm not paying for a thing. It's a Toro. And I bought it last week, remember? I wasn't worried about paying for things. But I do want to get up all this thatch I raked up the other day so that I can get some seed and fertilizer on the lawn before it rains this weekend. I'm on a time crunch, here Fred. I can't deal with mowers that die on me on the second mow, brother.

So if I find out more bad news today, and I can't get my mower back, I'm going to ask Fred for a replacement. And if that one dies, then I'll know God is pissed at me for last week's post. Maybe I should go ahead and apologize now.

link to this | comments (11) | File:  Oogah  Lawn  House  Grunt  Remington 

O Lord, I give joyful thanks for the lawn equipment you have given me.

After bringing home the shiny new Toro Mower and the Stihl Kombi-System Trimmer yesterday, and putting them in my shed, I could feel Your grace wash over me. And I sat for a moment and basked in this glory and contemplated the fact that the trimmer's engine can actually power a leaf blower along with several other attachments, including an edger, a cultivator, a hedge trimmer, and a power sweeper, and my heart was filled with wonder by all of these glorious instruments and the thought that one day they might all populate my shed and how this hope was a testament of Your love for men everywhere, O Lord, and of Your eternal genius.

And thank you, Lord, for delivering unto me an angel by the name of Fred, who owns the lawn equipment store down the road a ways, and who, in his thick Jersey accent, patiently coached me in the proper way to use these divine instruments of lawn maintenance. When he revved the engine of the mower in the parking lot, I could feel Your power fill my heart and understood that enlightenment was near. I grunted to Fred. And he grunted back. Because in our heightened state of spiritual awareness, language no longer mattered. Words were only obstacles to the exaltation of Your magnificent glory. Instead, we communicated like our forefathers, directly through simple, mono-syllabic sounds. And it was good and it was righteous.

And bringing that mower home, O Lord, in the bed of my truck—it's handlebar raised high and tall and shining in the New Jersey sun—was perhaps the proudest moment of my life. Could a man hope for something greater? And later, as I was filling my new red gasoline jugs at the Exxon, the attendant actually let me do the honors—which I didn't think was legal in Jersey—and I spilled a little on my hand. But I didn't wash it off, Lord, because the sweet smell of it filled my heart with gladness and brought back memories of my childhood, mowing lawns in the armpit wetness of Houston town. And as I drove home I scratched my beard with that hand so that the smell would embed itself there and follow me throughout the day and let others know that I have received this gift of love. And that I had been blessed with Your Holy Mercy.

Finally, Lord, I ask that you keep my neighbor's hearts from filling with envy at the sight of my new powerful lawn-care tools. And in turn, I will do my best not to covet that which I do not yet have and to not be jealous of A---, my next-door neighbor with the amazing green lawn.

Amen.

link to this | comments (11) | File:  Remington  Oogah  House  Grunt 

A guy named Don came and installed my FiOS today. It took 6 hours. But Don was a good guy and we had lots to shoot the shit about. Like the tragedy of Comcast. And the wonder of fiber. Not the kind that cleans out your "inner plumbing." (Though that stuff is plenty wonderful.) The other kind. You know, of the optical variety. The stuff that allows you to surf porn—a-hem ... sorry—work at blazing speeds. And thank god it's finally here. Because it was getting really uncomfortable doing it at Starbucks. (Working, working. Geez, people.)

link to this | comments (3) | File:  Ho_Hum  House 

I keep looking in the wrong drawers. They aren't the wrong drawers in any existential sense. I mean, as a drawer, they're perfectly right. They are drawers and drawers are what they are. They just lack qualifiers. And that's the problem — we can't just say, "Put it in the silverware drawer." Because, so far, there is no "silverware drawer." There are only names like, "To the left of the sink" and "I don't know, baby, wherever you want to put it is fine by me." And those just aren't good names for drawers. It leads to a bit of the confusion. And so I keep opening the wrong drawers. Like when I want to find a spoon. Or the beer opener device. But I really don't mind. Because they're such awesome drawers. And opening them and closing them is actually kind of a beautiful thing. And yes, I'm surprised to find myself using the word "beautiful" as a way to describe the closing of a drawer. But I can't help it. I like the way that these drawers don't slam shut. Instead, they magically stop, just short of a slam, and then they sort of ease closed, nice and gentle. Like they're making love to the countertop. Just a love tap is all it is, really. Nothing hateful. Because even though our house is from the 1940s, the kitchen is all 2006, love. And, oh man, we've lived in a pre-90s kitchen for long enough.

And so, as you may have guessed, we're completely moved in. Which means we're now residents of the great state of New Jersey. In fact, Monday it became official: we got our driver licenses. And since we never wound up doing that in Maryland, and since Hoshi still has her DC plates, it kind of feels like Baltimore never really happened. And I'm okay with that, honestly. I always sort of felt like a foreigner there. And so when people here ask me where I'm from, I don't even mention that little post-industrial mecca of drugs, crime, potholes, and crazy people. I mention the diamond-shaped, 13 story tall, NPO-filled, power-political (yet ironically, non-represented) neighboring district just 50 miles south. (Which also happens to be in no short supply of drugs, crime, potholes, and crazy people.) Ahh. Yes, that one. Because in my head, I think maybe I'll always be from DC. And, who knows, maybe I'll actually reside there again someday.

But maybe not. Because, weird as it is for me to be saying this, I really dig it here in Jersey. Things are clicking here in ways they never did in DC . . . or Baltimore. First of all, the actual move was so smooth, I could have seen my reflection in it. It was that early-morning, only-boat-on-the-lake kind of smooth. The kind where you just throw your line in and watch the sun rise slowly and you just feel good in your gut and right with nature. If you ever need to move in NY or NJ, I've got the company for you. These guys were real pros. And since this was a relo (and we weren't paying for it) we had them pack and unpack us and, let me tell you, that's the way to go. These guys knew what they were doing. They packed and loaded us last Tuesday, then unloaded and unpacked us on Thursday. And Thursday night, after an early dinner, C and I even had time to get the bedroom somewhat organized. No wading through boxes looking for that one damn thing we needed but had no idea which brown, square, taped-up thing it was in. Because everything was all out and in plain sight. And so all we had to do was find a place for it. And put it there. And there are lots of places for putting things here.

But it's not just the move that's been smooth, brother. Or the kitchen. It's everything. Like the way the JCC is so close and new and modern and it's got all this great new equipment and, at the same time, is so reasonably-priced. And they even have a lounge, with a cafe and, get this, WiFi. Sorry Y at 17th and Rhode Island . . . this JCC has you beat.

But mostly it's the people: The way the guys at the Mazda dealership call you "Buddy" and resurface Hoshi's front rotors for free. The way the washer/dryer installers help you out with recommendations on a place to watch The Game on Sunday. The way the pregnant woman at the Shop Rite says to me, in her thick, slightly nasal, New Jersey accent, "Excuse me, very tall, un-pregnant man, could you reach that for me" as she points to the top shelf in the canned vegetable aisle. Then to C: "Do you mind if I borrow him for a second?" God, I wanted to kiss her.

Here, people have first names like Frank, Mario, and Sal. And last names that tend to end in "o" or "elli." And even though they may still need to know how to spell my own last name, they don't hesitate with the pronunciation of it, or remark on how they've never heard it before, as tends to happen in other parts of the States. They're completely unimpressed, in fact. Because here, Italian last names are about as common as "Smith." Here, the grocery stores stock dozens of brands of spaghetti sauce, not just Ragu or Newman's Own. Here, you can't drive five miles without running into a pizza joint.

This is the way the world should be. This is home.

And so I'm sitting here, my brain awash with blood and oxygen from my first workout at the JCC, the first good workout I've had since September, and marveling at how interesting it is to have my brain awash with something besides alcohol. (Did I mention I've started carrying a flask?) Actually, now that I think about it, maybe that's why I keep opening the wrong drawers.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  NJ  Moving  Ho_Hum  House 

Well, tomorrow, C and I will be closing on a house in West Orange, New Jersey. A lot has happened in the past month, so let me briefly get us up to speed. Since this post, we wound up putting an offer down on the above-mentioned place. Then we went through some negotiations in price, followed by inspections and contingencies, and settled on something pretty darned good, both for us and (I think) the seller. It's nice when everybody comes out happy on these things. At the exact same time, we wound up receiving an offer on our place in Baltimore, and that had it's own set of negotiations, inspections, and contingencies. I think everybody is happy on this one as well. But it was dicey for a bit, and all this made for an interesting holiday filled with back-and-forths between us and various agents and attorneys.

I haven't written much about the new house until now partly out of a superstition that once I type the words, the whole deal will suddenly fall apart. And I'd really hate for that to happen because it's a great house and we're even more excited than we were last time we bought one of these domestic abode type doo-dads which — wow — I can remember it like it was yesterday, or — oh, I don't know — seven months ago. But there, I've had these words on my screen for a couple of minutes now and . . . nope, no phone calls. Looks like we're still good. But just in case, why don't we all find a little wood and knock on it.

Nice. Thanks.

And so begins another frenzy of disruption and change. Utilities canceled at the old place and re-ordered at the new one. Addresses swapped out again, one by one, for a long list of magazines, credit cards, insurance companies, and other subscription services. And as this whole process did the last time, it once again alarms me how much my name and address is tied to. And, while I'm happy and grateful for all of the things I have, I've lately found myself longing for . . . nothing. Or rather, I do long for something and that something is nothing. Maybe nothingness would be a better word. Whatever. What it boils down to is this: I long to be off The Grid. Floating anonymously, far from the the dock of obligation or identity. In fact, this now holds the number one slot for "wildest fantasy" in my mind, which when you think about it, is a pretty sad commentary on the state of my imagination and, let's be honest, my libido.

But I can fantasize all I like. I'm firmly rooted in The Grid now. There's no getting around it. My name is already on multiple loan documents, and while it will be released from one of those at the end of the month, it will be added to another tomorrow. So it's a wash from that standpoint. Then, there are the legal identifications. I just renewed my passport (which is totally unrelated to the move, but still relevant to the theme here) for another ten years so that I can travel to Mexico in March without being detained on the way back in (my current passport is set to expire during the trip). And when we move to Jersey, one of my first stops will be at the DMV, where I will register with the state so that my identity can be firmly emblazoned on a piece of plastic, along with my photo. And maybe I'll receive another combination of numbers that people can use to identify me, in addition to the nine I already have. And I will tell the state — and by extension the federal — government where they can find me at all times, you know, just in case they need me. And I'll also let them know which cars they can find me in, in case I ever decide to skip town, because I'm helpful like that. And that reminds me: on Saturday, while I'm still punchy from signing a ream of papers and writing checks to people, I'm going to acquire a second four-wheeled A-to-B device. I'll do formal introductions later. For now, I'll just mention that it is a truck and I can't wait. At the same time, though, it's yet another thing to register. So while it symbolizes a certain amount of flexibility and freedom, it also chains me even tighter to The Grid. Damned irony.

And that's the central tension I feel in my life these days. That split feeling of excitement and dread at each turn. The excitement of new digs, new wheels, new jobs, new adventures. And the simultaneous anxiety these things create. And the way each of these things serves to "root" me . . . in place, in time, in a role. And I guess that's what life boils down to: a never-ending series of trade-offs between having the personal freedom to do what we wish and the compounding responsibility and obligation we assume as a result of those pursuits . . . our "rootedness." The more "independent" we become by acquiring the things and assuming the roles that make our lives easier and more "comfortable," — the more dependent we become on the network of utilities, services, and social constructs that keep those things going and the more fixed we become in those roles. Which makes things like moving, however exciting, a huge pain in the ass.

And now that I've ventured down into this murky, moderately depressing territory, let me step right back out of it and say, I can't wait to get on with it, already!

The next couple of weeks will be spotty with the Internet access. There will be the move, of course, and then once we get to the other side, it looks like it's going to be a week or so before our FiOS gets installed. (Speaking of being tied to The Grid, I'm totally psyched to finally be able to get FiOS!) Maybe not having Internet at home for those first couple of weeks will be good for me. It'll force me to get the new digs organized. It'll also no doubt force me out to a nearby Wi-Fi spot so I can occasionally do that pesky thing called "work." But hopefully there won't be anything terribly urgent to attend to, and I'll be able to just stay offline a bit. Off The Grid. Untied. Whatever. I have no doubt I'll gravitate back to it the first chance I get. Because I guess, when it's all said and done, I kinda like being tied up. Crap, how did this come back to fantasies?

link to this | comments (1) | File:  NJ  Moving  House  BMore 

One of the only times it's acceptable to look in a stranger's closet is when you're in the market to purchase their house. I've looked inside a lot of people's closets over the last several months. And since trading in tits and tats is way up against the weakening U.S. dollar, a lot of people have looked inside mine. But I've always been taught that if somebody is coming to look inside your closets, it's common courtesy to get out of the house while they do it. I mean it's just good manners. Otherwise it leads to all kinds of awkwardness. Those? No, those aren't my handcuffs . . . unless you want them to be, Love. And look, about those . . . all I can say is it takes a lot of jars of mayonnaise to fill up a bathtub, okay? But people in Essex County, New Jersey — Montclair and the surrounding townships — just aren't up on their house-selling etiquette. They stay home. And it's a bit weird — and not just because of the closet thing. It's difficult to be objective about a house — to really see it as "yours" — when the owner is sitting in the kitchen reading the paper. Or worse, when the owner is actually showing you around their house, explaining the history of everything in it. When you're in that kind of situation, you aren't free to say what you really think about a place. And even if you know the minute you step through the front door that this is not the house, you feel somewhat obligated to at least do the walk-through. And you find yourself saying the most incredible things, like, "Oh, I love what you've done with this room." When you most definitely do not love what they've done to it, or any other room in the house. And you have to stop yourself from saying things like, "Does it always smell this way in here?" Or, "You do realize that Walmart is not an art gallery, don't you?" Or, "Wow, this bathroom brings back great memories of my Freshman dorm." Because if you did, well, it might come across the wrong way.

These people just don't understand. They are not in sales. And they have no business being in their house if they actually want somebody to buy it. Because buyers have to be able to tear apart the house in their minds. They have to be blunt and say, "This room is terrible this way. I hate it. But it does have potential." And that kind of honesty doesn't work when the nice elderly couple who've lived in this place for 50 years and are on their way into a retirement community are telling you how proud they are of their 1980's-era "remodeled" kitchen. And just for the record, the MLS listings refer to that sort of kitchen as "newer." Because it's not exactly "new." And it's not exactly "old." Ergo: "new-er." Meaning "newer than old." You can do great things with the English language in an MLS listing.

But despite the people with poor house-showing etiquette, we really like Montclair. And it's a good thing, too. Because I was beginning to get deeply depressed by the thought that we might be doomed to an all-out suburban hell in New Jersey. But then we discovered Montclair and we were pleasantly surprised to find that people still do a thing called "walking" there. It feels a little bit like Takoma Park in DC, or the NDG area of Montreal, only with a bigger "downtown" strip. It's got much more of a "city" feel than any of the other NJ townships we've looked at. And there's even this thing called "diversity" there, too, which is always good and necessary. Like many of the townships we've looked at, the majority of households have children and the schools are good, and that's great in case things ever lead that way for C and me. But unlike a lot of the other townships we looked at, there is also a good percentage of the population that don't have kids. And that's nice too, because it means that the local coffee shops aren't crawling with teens and tweens and the restaurants have less in the way of crying babies. The commute is good too. It's only a 35-minute drive to C's office further west. And only a 30-minute bus or train to Manhattan.

So things are looking up. We've come close to extending an offer on a few houses. But in this market we have the luxury of being picky, and so we have been. We're playing tug-o-war with two opposing inclinations. It's the usual dilemma when you're trying to stay within a certain price range: 1) find the place with the best possible location but which still needs work done to it, or 2) find the house in the best possible condition, even if it means not being exactly where you'd like to be. But we're going to have to make a decision soon, or else find some temporary housing, which isn't appealing because it means two moves instead of one.

So later this week, like last week, and the week before, it'll be back up the I-95 to open some more closet doors. And hopefully this will all be coming to an end soon. Along with the relentless back and forth. And once we're settled, you're welcome to come visit — and open the closet doors — anytime you like. Just ignore the jars of mayonnaise.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  House  Montclair  Moving 

For the past couple of weeks, we've kept a rather spotless house. Not by choice, mind you. We've had to. Because of The Showings. And it's getting old, this incessant cleaning up after ourselves. We take a shower and immediately dry the tub with a towel so as not to leave any unsightly watermarks. Same goes for using the sinks. At night, we behave somewhat like normal people, leaving our bags on the sofa, or our clothes on the bedroom floor, or—gasp!—our toothbrushes on the bathroom sink. Then in the morning we hide everything and dress it all up again. Bed made. Clothes put in their proper, but still entirely temporary, locations. Decorative kitchen towel and area rug put back in their assigned, most photogenic, locations. The hand towels hanging on the bathroom rack stay clean because we never use them.

All of this tidying up has its benefits. I mean, it's kind of nice coming home to a clean house each day. It sort of makes you feel like you're walking into a Pottery Barn catalogue. But there are also some serious drawbacks. For one thing, I'm a slow-morning-routine type of guy. So when you add "cleaning and staging the house" to an already full AM docket of showering, big breakfast, a couple of cups of coffee, an hour of NPR, and sometimes a little plant-watering—well, you're looking at just over two hours prep time before you can reasonably get out the door.

I long for the days when I could just leave everything as it was and go. And we're not talking about anything that terrible here. I mean, we're not normally slobs or anything. But come on, it's normal to leave a shirt carelessly strewn on the dining room table now and then, isn't it? Or a dish or two in the sink. Or, I don't know, your underwear hanging from the living room lamp shade. I mean, that's normal, isn't it? Well, not anymore. It's all got to be put away, brother. Things have got to be tidy before we leave. Because, who knows, we may have a Showing.

And that word—Showing—has never held such high esteem in our hearts and minds. Was there a Showing today? Do you think there will be any Showings? The only other word that trumps it right now is Offer. But we only whisper that one quietly to ourselves in the cover of darkness, when only the cats of our neighborhood creep softly on the sidewalks outside our bedroom window. It's a word to treat with great reverence and respect. In fact, I think I may have violated some real-estate voodoo by even mentioning it here. Shit. Please forget I said anything.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  House 

There's no such thing as a mistake, only lessons. If you aren't making mistakes, then you aren't doing anything. Success comes from failure. If at first you don't succeed . . . you can blend your favorite and serve chilled, with salt on the rim and a side of chips. It feels real good going down. And after three or four of those babies, it's all good. Until morning. And you find it still kind of stings.

As clichéd as it sounds, it's true: We do learn a lot from our mistakes. And when it comes to acts of home improvement, I've done learned me a few gems of late.

Last week's mission was to hang some drywall to cover up this wall. There were several logistical steps along the way, beginning with the acquisition of materials. Thanks to Al and his pickup truck, which he let me borrow, getting the drywall proved to be no problem. However, getting those two 4' x 10' pieces up a narrow staircase and into the room where they would be hung proved to be much more challenging. C and I tried using sheer muscle (did I mention drywall is friggin' heavy stuff?). Then we tried tele-porting them. Neither of those methods worked, so next we tried prayer. We knew we were asking a lot of God, especially since the only religion we practice anymore is the twice-annual Christmas and Easter variety. As we thought might happen, God only laughed and told us we were on our own. Only not in so many words. Sure, God loves all of us equally, despite our faults, but I'm pretty sure he only does small miracles for those extra good, every-Sunday people.

So I wound up cutting the drywall in the living room, which wasn't the plan, but turned out to be a perfectly fine solution, or so I thought. It seemed fine at the moment, anyway. We had already planned out how we were going to cut the pieces for hanging, so we made our measurements, drew our lines, and made our cuts. Once that was done, the pieces were much easier to get up the stairs. It had taken us pretty much all day, but we had gotten the drywall and transported it to the hanging location. So far so good.

Mat came over on Tuesday to help with the actual hanging. (Thanks, Mat!) I thought with the wall cleared and the pieces cut it would only take a few minutes per piece. That was my first mistake: never make a guess on time. You're just asking for disappointment.

Shortly before Mat came over, there was an incredible thunderstorm that hit Baltimore. My electricity went out. Just my side of the street, mind you. Not the other side. I think God was still pissed over that request to miraculously transport the drywall upstairs.

It turns out there are several things that don't work without electricity. The A/C is a big one. Having no cool air in the house hurt something fierce because Baltimore was in the middle of a pretty thick heat wave. Even with the A/C on, our second floor gets hot in the middle of the afternoon. So with it off, we were in for some major sweating. Most sane people would have postponed the drywall hanging. But Mat and I reasoned we'd be okay. We were tough. We'd just use lots of fans.

Well dang it all if fans don't require electricity, too.

Once we fully absorbed what we were in for, I explained my strategy to Mat: we would hang the top piece of drywall, get it screwed in, then hang the lower half. Easy peasy. But as we were putting up the top piece, we realized that the ceiling wasn't really level, and the piece wasn't going to fit flush against the moulding as I had thought. So the moulding needed to be taken off. That would allow us to push the drywall to the ceiling and then replace the moulding to cover up the slant. No problem. Should have done it this way to begin with. Pulling off the moulding meant more dust and debris from old plaster. Add dust to a balmy, un-air-conditioned room and you begin to realize conditions that resemble hell. I swept up some of the debris then got the vacuum cleaner out to suck up the rest.

For those of you taking notes, another thing that requires electricity is a vacuum cleaner. Normally, I would have come to this conclusion before actually plugging it in and clicking on the button. Honestly. I blame the heat. It's hard to think straight in this kind of climate.

Alright, dust be damned. We were half way through. Time to hang the second sheet. This one would be easier. Just place it flush against the wainscoting, like this, and then it should fit up snug against the upper piece . . . unless - of course - we had taken off the moulding, causing us to move the top piece up. You know, like we had just done. In that case, there would be a big ol' joint between the two pieces. And I should mention here that the bigger the joint, the harder it is to cover up.

So even though it was necessary to cut the drywall before bringing it upstairs, ideally (and for future reference) I would have cut piece one, brought it up stairs, hung it right then, measured for piece two, cut piece two, then hung it right then. Oh well. Next time I'll know. For now, I'll just be applying a lot more joint compound.

Oh, and one final lesson I learned last Tuesday: if you leave your house while the electricity is off - and you stay away for, oh, about five hours. You know, to escape your non-A/C'd house. If you do that - and why shouldn't you? - then you should definitely unplug (or at least turn off) the vacuum cleaner you fired up earlier when the juice was off. Because the electricity might come on about an hour after you leave. And then your vacuum cleaner would run for four hours or so while nobody was home. And man, that would be stupid.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  Renovations  House 

One of the fascinating parts about moving into a house when you've always lived in apartments is the simple idea of multiple rooms. The fact that your bedroom no longer needs to double as your office. Or that your living room no longer needs to double as your dining room. All these books we have with titles like, "Living in Small Spaces" or "How to Fit 1200 Square Feet of Crap Into a Single 12' X 12' Room" are no longer as useful to us. I mean, we still have smallish rooms, but at least there are multiple smallish rooms. And a basement. And that makes all the difference. We'll keep the small-spaces books around, you know, so we can refer to them smugly and point at them and laugh from time to time. But mostly they'll be relegated to the harder-to-reach shelves.

It's hard to break old habits, though. And that might be one reason I'm currently officing in the dining room - some ingrained need to make the most efficient use of space. Or it might have to do with the fact that we don't have any dining room furniture. But if I had to take a guess, I'd say the main reason I'm officing out of the dining room instead of the room properly referred to as 'The Office' upstairs has to do with the large holes I made in the plaster walls only a day or two after we moved in.

The office walls were always a bit strange. We knew this before we bought the place. They were 'bubbly' and there was some strange particle-board wainscoting going on in there. We figured the bubbly stuff on the walls was painted-over wallpaper, and the wainscoting could probably be made a little more aesthetically pleasing with a good sanding/painting. We were partially correct about the wallpaper. There was, in fact, wallpaper on the walls. And it had been painted over. At first I thought maybe I'd just sand out the bubbles and paint from there, but then it became clear that the best thing to do would be to remove the wallpaper. There were a couple of tears in it, and when I pulled at it, I found it peeled away remarkably easily. I pulled off the old wallpaper on one entire wall in no time. It revealed a second wallpaper underneath, this one with cartoon images of Davy Crockett on it, the leftover artifact of a boy's bedroom. It was not pretty, but it had been applied to the wall much better, and I figured I could probably sand down this surface, prime it, and paint over Davy no problem. So I kept on pulling the outer layer of paper off.

That's when I discovered that the 'bubbles' and soft bits were about more than just the wallpaper. There was crumbling plaster behind this stuff. As I peeled back the wallpaper on one span of wall, I uncovered a soft spot about the size of a fist. No problem, I thought. I'd just spackle it up and paint over it. So I pulled some of the plaster out to make a neat square. But the more plaster I pulled away, the more the plaster around it crumbled. And pretty soon I had a 2' x 2' foot square hole which looked directly at wood lattice work beneath it. Hello, 1915.

I was now at the point of no return. I went on to find more 'treasures' in that wall. Creative carpentry. Patchwork from the last 90 years. Adolescent graffiti from a boy named Rich who must have lived there sometime in the 80's. On the one hand, it was strange and fascinating. On the other, somewhat macabre. There's a spookiness that comes from uncovering these remnants of people who have lived in a place before you. Perhaps it's because you don't know these people and so they seem akin to ghosts. Who was this 'Rich' kid? Where was Rich now? Was he still alive?

As I looked around the room at all this, catching whiffs of old house through my protective face mask, the realization began to sink in: this room would need more than a good sanding/painting. This room needed Work. With a capital W. Some drywalling, skim coating. Perhaps even a few carpentry repairs. Nothing too difficult, but enough to make it more than a simple weekend project. This room would need to be put 'on hold.'

And that's why I set up shop in the dining room.

At first C and I thought we might hire a contractor to do the work in the office. But this weekend we were inspired by C's cousin Alex and his father JR. Alex bought an old house in Montreal about a year ago, and they've completely gutted it and are in the process of putting it back together. It's incredible that they're doing it just the two of them (along with some help from family members.) Of course it helps that JR is an electrical engineer and Alex has a penchant for putting things together. But still. It's amazing. Of course, the downside is that since it's just the two of them, it takes more time. They've been working on the house for the past year, and there's probably at least six more months to go before Alex and his wife can move in. Luckily, they've been able to stay at JR's house until the renovations are complete.

Anyway, if Alex and JR can rebuild an entire house, C and I (and maybe some willing friends) can certainly put the walls of a room back together, eh? Pizza and beer offered to any takers.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  House