Ursonate, Distilled

Karl Lind of In the Can posted his great pics of Leo & Marko Whens doing the Ursonate on January 9 at Distilled, the Performance Works Northwest fundraiser in the Alembic series.

More pix here.

Зеркало

We’ve become avid porch hunters in the last few weeks, traversing the neighborhood on foot or on pedal in search of porches of a certain vintage from which we may draw inspiration. We’ve taken column designs from here, stair details from there, color organization from the other, and so forth. Today we saw a very simple balustrade in the crafstman mode that we’ve decided to emulate. (To be revealed in a near-future porch post.)

Did you know, BTW, that porch is a Catalan word? It comes from porxo, in which you’ll want to pronounce that x as in xafec — i tant.

Meanwhile, on today’s porch safari Anna found a mirror in a recycle bin. How’s that for a nice recursion? It too is of a certain age, not unlike three or four others we have throughout the house. Where to put this one? We’ll have to think, contemplate, ruminate, cogitate, meditate, muse… on that.

Paint Removal Finished!

Paint Removal Done

We always thought the people we knew who complained of going crazy trying to wrangle contractors into place — trying to keep them remotely on task, on schedule, on planet — we always thought they must be exaggerating. Surely it can’t be that bad! Well, after 3-1/2 months trying to get the paint removers to (A) answer our phone calls and emails, (B) commit to a completion time, and (C) actually come finish the house not too long after that deadline, we have torn out enough freshly-grayed hairs to appreciate the craziness endured by those who have gone before us. And that was dealing with the company that returned our initial inquiries in the first place! I can’t help thinking there’s a killer business model in being Contractors Who Do What They Say They Will.

But, there it is — the last wall of the house, paint-free! Pinch us.

Sleepy the Raccoon

The gutter guys pointed out this sleepy beastie curled up in the crook of our backyard Douglas-Fir. It was watching them work, but then decided on a nap.

More raccoon pics here.

In the gutter

The guys from Co-op Gutters came today and cooperatively installed new gutters. The old ones were a disaster, which became especially obvious once the new ones went up.

The old gutters (as they showed me) had been hacked (literally) to make them easier to install, with the result that any overflow flowed backwards toward the house and the rafter tails. The new ones are properly set up to overflow outwards, if it comes to that.

The Gutter-O-Matic

Hard to see, but they have this big roll of white sheet metal (top center) that feeds into the Gutter-O-Matic, or whatever they actually call it, which forms it into gutters on demand. Everyone should have a few of these machines around the house.

More thrilling gutter pics here.

Evergreen Dogwood

Woof.

After a lovely morning spreading black plastic on the ground under the porch and weighting it down with giant rocks, I took a few delightful hours with a pickaxe and shovel to dig a 97-foot deep hole for our new Evergreen Dogwood tree. Strictly speaking, the hole was about 3 feet deep. But given that the planet in these parts is composed of high-density neutron-star clay stuffed full with rocks, the apparent depth of the hole was 97 feet 4-1/2 inches. It’s like wind-chill factor.

But we have great faith in this little tree, which has already been doing great work with ambient carbon.

More tree pics here.

Porch Reframing

Painting is Fun!

Anna succumbed to some kind of Tom Sawyer thing, and found herself priming the undersides of all the new porch floorboards. The undersides, blue? Well, it’s the same protective porch & deck paint as will be on the top. It doesn’t care whether it’s blue or fuchsia.

On Oct 9 the guys from Sampson Painting came and did the first priming of the north and east sides. The west side is all porch-repairy, and the south side is still not paint-removed. The primer is actually something called Permanizer, which will be followed by a second coat of regular primer, then 2+ coats of good paint.

Yesterday Paul finished framing the new porch.

More pics here.

Porch Removal

Paint gone, porch gone. Our builder Paul Naylor discovered that the old square columns were hollow! Nothing holding up the house but a few worm-eaten 1-bys. Nice we didn’t know that earlier; we would have lost sleep. Now he’s got it supported by half a dozen temporary 4×4s.

More pics here.

Paint Removal

Paint Removers

Bring on the hazmat guys! Amazing and infernal work, heating this nasty lead paint just to the melting point and scraping it off “como mantequilla.” They wear full suits and respirators, thankfully, but man, they earn their keep. These 5 guys spent 12 hours doing the very complicated west side. A couple of days later they got the north and east sides done in the about the same amount of time.

Paint Removed

We love the look of the house like this! Very homesteady. It would be great to leave it like this, protected with some kind of stain or oil. But we won’t be here forever, and the next buyer would probably find that a shade too eccentric.

More pics here.

Home Improvements – prep

Unsuspecting House

In preparation for our house’s 100th Birthday in 2010, we’re giving it a new porch, new paint, and other treats. The picture above, showing the completely unsuspecting house just a couple of days ago, doesn’t look so bad. A closer look, below, shows the paint is peeling badly. Plus, the porch is a little rotten. Time for it to go.

Peeling Paint

We had to

Defensive Gardening

We had to tie back and protect Anna’s abundant, amazing plants from the imminent horde of contractors. That included putting plywood down to prevent wanton root trompage.

More pics of the progress here.