Prime Time

Catching up:

We work a lot. Just not on our house. Bren now does his deliveries and installations alone, and has a big Geek Squad Home Theater Unit truck parked outside the house. Luckily, it masks...said house.

The ballet season started in October with Le Corsaire, a pirate ballet, and then the perennial favorite, Dracula. I had the good fortune to go to an Arts Integration conference for Educators in Oakland, CA, and meet my cousin Scott in San Francisco. He is studying Chinese in Monterey. He is much smarter than me.

I also accepted the position of Director of Education and Outreach at CB. Hence, my project (walls, floors) has progressed little. I did, however, begin priming the fully resurfaced living room walls for paint last weekend.

There's not much to show for it, since it's really just taking the room from kinda white to really white, but my sidekick is pretty cute:




In a French independent film kind of way. Chevy's mom has been hanging around the house lately, to our dismay. Does he know it's her, and that she abandoned him? Do we suffice in her stead?

He must think we're OK, because he helps me with the laundry.



He makes sure I keep the black load black. "Blacker than the blackest black times infinity." If you get the reference, kudos.

I promise we're not going to post cat pictures every time we write from here on out. It's just that he's always...there. And the little extra money that comes in, that was originally intended for home improvement, has gone to the veterinarian's office adjacent PetSmart of late. It's amazing how many shots this guy has to endure!

Rub A Dub Dub...

Here's a quick update. Miles came over this weekend and we finally got the tub laid into the frame. We put down a thick layer of concrete as a footer to support and secure the tub from shifting. It probably still will shift a bit after a few fill-ups, but hopefully not too much. Pressing the tub down into the concrete was similar to closing the lid on a waffle iron.



I got the drain pipe in too. Joining CVP pipe is way easier than soldering copper pipe.

Post post

The toughest part about doing all of the remodeling ourselves, is not knowing the order of how things should be done. Trial and error, and problem solving have become my biggest hobbies (that and playing "bite-my-hands" with Chevy [see below for the lowdown on the cat from Anne]). The tub has been the main project for me the last few weeks, and I feel like it could have gone much faster, but most of the time I spent working around decisions and setbacks. I knew I had to build the frame for the tub. How much of a ledge should I put around the rim? How much wood do I need? more than I thought. It was nice that the instructions with the tub gave me the exact measurements for the frame. The tough part for me was how much longer I had to cut the wood to make the ledge. Oops, those eight pieces I just just cut are too short.
Here's me working:



Anyway, I got the frame built finally. At this point we realized that the tub is pretty darn heavy, and when a tub that size is full of water, it is going to be super heavy. Add myself into the mix and we're talking heavy-heavy. All that on the floor of a house that is already pretty old adds up to an achy house.

To ease our minds and to alleviate future worries, I put in a Lally Column to support the joists below the tub. This thing has 16,000 lbs of support.



After that all I had to do was nail in the frame, cut an outlet box, install the outlet for the tub power and cut the rough-in for the tub drain through two inches of real hardwood and sub floor. Can you see why this has taken me forever?

Well here's the progress as of tonight:



The rough-in.



At last, the next step is to drop the tub into the frame. Then there's only about twenty more things left to do before we can bathe!

I Shot A Weed in Denver Just to Watch it Die

Rewind to our laborious Labor Day weekend. We pretty much killed our lawn. Not only is it all weeds, it's all weeds that have had the run of the place for some time. The same pestilence reigns next door and across the street, as if the weeds existed before the street was paved. Witness exhibit A, a modest example of the offending breed:



The root is like a carrot! Anyway, we have the ugliest lawn on the block now, and that's an accomplishment. I hate it, but we really can't address the outside until we have a few more basic comforts in place. It's cooling off, and still no tub. Bren's working on it (more on that later), but it can't be done soon enough. Last night, I took a nice hot bath...I set the washing machine to the hot setting. Enough said.

The living room walls completely resurfaced, the ceiling has been giving me fits. The cove is finally sanded, after we attempted to devise all manner of curved sanding mechanisms, including attaching a halved length of sandpaper-covered 4" PVC pipe to the electric sander, to no avail. Finally, it ended up being good, old-fashioned elbow grease that did the trick. We are going to put moulding just below the curve, and around those cool ceiling tiles I mentioned before. We'll paint the area between the moulding white. And the tiles.



All this sanding creates a lot of dust. Just ask Chevy, who, as it turns out, is actually a boy.



He looks like a skunk. Chevy, by the way, is an estimated 9 weeks old now. He's gained a pound since we found him, which means he's a whopping...two pounds. An active fellow, he's inspired some unexpected construction around the house:



We took some rope we used to secure our belongings in the moving van and wrapped it around the banister in the bonus room, creating the ultimate scratching/climbing post. You can't really see him, but he's having a blast.

Am I one of those...



NOOOOOOOOOO!

Animal House

So. Only days after we had to relinquish Goatson to the animal shelter (a traumatic experience to say the least), I was getting ready for work on Saturday when Bren and I heard high-pitched mewing outside the door to the bonus room, which opens onto the driveway. Turns out this scared little girl was lodged in the undercarriage of my car:



She looks like a Laser Cat right here. I guess I need some photography pointers from Andrea or Renee. She looks a little less evil here, safe inside:



We're calling her Chevy. She fits into my cupped hands, so she can't be more than a few weeks old. She eats, but I'm having a hard time getting her to drink. Bren is allergic to cats, of course, so we aren't sure if we can keep her...but neither of us want to go anywhere near the shelter for a while. In the meantime, she's already figured out how to poop in her litter box, which is awesome. She is a scholar.

Since she is currently sitting on my shoulder, purring like a motorboat and licking my neck and ear, I'll let her impart some wisdom:

Sddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd gddddddd,tgedoo ````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Deep.

"They say it's raining in Chicago, but it's cold and clear in Denver."

Denver is awesome. To any of our friends who live in the "Denver metro" area, and not in Denver proper, you are missing out. Denver's city webpage (and their coinciding 3-1-1 info-line) is rife with helpful and interesting information. Garbage-pickup times, building permit info, pet shelter hours, museum events and art exhibits, and anything else you could think of pertaining to city life.

Almost exactly 24 hours ago I filled out a request to have a pot-hole at the end of our driveway filled in. I honestly didn't expect anything to happen. Then, out of the blue this morning, two swarthy and genial guys show up with a truck full of asphalt and "do work" on our driveway.

Thanks Denver!

We Put the Gag in Lolligag

Another lengthy absence. Sorry. We really have done things, I promise. The thing is, everything happens so slowly that progress is being made on a molecular level, but nothing is done. We have very little to show. The workweek is proving to be completely worthless as far as home improvement goes. We have, however, had time to visit with Tulsa friends Renee and Daniel, go to the dentist, and play poker, as evidenced below:



If you can't tell, Justin is losing. We've also been grilling out a lot:



The feast!

In other news, we finally bought our tub.



We were lucky enough to find one that was 6' long and 36" wide; large enough to accommodate one Bren. He was dismayed, however, upon picking it up, when he saw that the box advertises it as a two person tub. Doh!

Bren also scored a dryer, via the same employee auction system that afforded us our $40 washer, for a whopping $57. We offically have a set for under $100.



We haven't installed the dryer yet, mainly because the previous owner's vent...doesn't vent. It directs the fluff into the water heater closet, instead of out of the house. Thus, we have to punch a hole in the side of our house, which could be rather gratifying. Or disastrous -- we'll let you know.

Work on the walls continues. Special thanks to those of you who donated money and Home Depot gift cards in honor of my birthday, 26 long years ago! The money is going toward, in part, a thermoplastic version of a tin ceiling for the living room. We painstaking taped off the moulding lines in there, and have arrived at the right configuration to deal with the coved ceilings without making the room look smaller. It's going to be SO COOL! Soon, we will be ready to paint. Our choice, called "Scotch Lassie," matches well with our first art print purchase:



It's the second from the left. The print is an Utagawa Hiroshige, circa 1855, called "Navaro Rapids."

Speaking of my birthday -- we received another gift that morning, albeit bittersweet. This girl came running up our drive, practically dying of thirst:



Four days later, no response from our postings in the neighborhood or online. She is definitely a puppy -- so far she has eaten part of the coffee table, part of the trampoline, one bra, two toothbrushes, two rolls of paper towels, 6 rolls of toilet paper, one razor (God knows how she got that), and one light bulb (ditto). We are calling her Goatson because of said eating habits. Although we are falling in love with her, as she crawls in bed with us and licks us to death, unfortunately, she is obviously part Pit Bull. Pit Bulls are banned in Denver -- even mixed dogs who exhibit certain physical traits of the Pit Bull. To that end, we have to take her to the Denver Dumb Friends League in the morning, where I hope she will be carted to another part of the state, and adopted by a farmer or something.



We love you, crazy little Goatson. Be good. We know you'll grow up to be a loyal protector to whomever is lucky enough to find you next.

Sniff.