Puddle Jumping in DC

more changes, basement apartment for rent

Tom is moving.

He's been living here for almost exactly four years. He stuck with us through the basement renovation that upgraded him from a room upstairs to his own in-law suite/apartment. That involved a month or so living in what is now Maya's 6'x9' bedroom while we all lived on the second floor and shared one bathroom.

Finally, the man cut his own bathroom tiles as I installed them (don't remember what Mac was doing that weekend but I'm in charge of all renovation projects that involve goop anyway), helped lay his living room floor (more adventures in goop), and painted to move things along.

hanafuda cards

Renovation II: Moving Day (Jan 2006)

He is also responsible for a long running household Hanafuda addiction that was sadly put on hold until Maya can be trusted not to run away with (and eat) all the cards.

If you know anyone who needs an extremely metro accessible and quite affordable one bedroom apartment starting in April, let me know.

Catching Up

Mac and I are near then end of what has been a year and a half of one house project after another.  We're both pretty burnt out from working on the house but there always seems to be one more thing that really ought to be done . . . never the less, here are a couple of photos from the last two major projects we plan to undertake for a while.

Yellow

Back in November, I blogged about Mac repairing the ceiling of this room and installing a fan.  That was just marvelous.  However, once you put up new drywall on the ceiling, it needs painting.  Since you've got to joint compound the joints, sand and paint . . . wouldn't it just make sense to do the walls . . . and maybe spruce up those (really lousy) cabinets . . . I mean, the doors don't even work right . . .

That's how these things escalate.

It finally looks great. The cabinets are actually the same ones from when we moved in with new custom-made doors (Mac, again).

Green

This is the room we refer to as "the green room."  When we first moved here we painted it a mint-ier shade of green that I never like but Mac likes "having a green room" so, the green room it remains.

For years, this was an office.  When we started renovating the basement, it became Tom's bedroom for a couple of months (yep, a full size bed takes up the whole thing).  After that, it stored to-be-installed kitchen cabinets for several months and random stuff for several month after that. The plan has been to make it a guest room. 

Before we moved into this house, we had only 30 days to get the place livable (It was a rental unit for many decades and took a real beating.  I seriously envy the woodwork of some of our neighbors houses - the whole block started out identical in 1917.).  At the end, we ran out of time to do things like paint the woodwork.  The walls and ceiling in this room needed quite a bit of repair they never got that first time around. 

It's darn presentable now.

*The doll was my mom's as a kid. It's basically the size of a 6 month old child (of course, significantly lighter being hollow in parts and stuffed with cotton in the rest.) She's in need of a bit of doll doctoring from aging plastic limbs and a half-century old skull fracture.  We're not all that sentimental about this stuff so she could also use a new home if anyone can suggest one (perhaps with a doll-nurse hobbyist?).

Thought of the day

While the instinct to duck and avoid the falling paint blob does, indeed, prevent said blob from landing in your eye, it may also require a whopper of a shampoo job if the blob then hits you squarely in the back of the head.

My Applying Goop Soundtrack is a George Washington Biography

Back in our traditional roles on Sunday afternoon, Mac opperated the power saw and I smeared goop on the ceiling. 

We've discovered this is the best way. You see, I'm not crazy about the very loud power saw noise and can get impatient with carefully measuring and cutting.  Mac, on the other hand, has a just slap-it-on-up-there and sand it off later approach to spackle where I'm more in the camp of put-on-as-little-as-possible-and very-lightly-sand.  Of the two of us, I'm far more disturbed by messy spacke/grout/paint jobs.  Consequently, he's the carpenter and I'm in charge of all things goopy.

Sadly, we're still without a shower. Work has been busy and we haven't gotten much done on the bathroom during the week.  Hopefully, we can remedy the situation this weekend.

The title is true.  I'm on disk nine of "His Excellency", which I only seem to listen to when I tile floors or apply joint compound.

Thinking About Painting Things That Aren't Walls

  Una señora y un señor for a Día de los Muertos
  Day of the Dead Couple 
  Originally uploaded by Green Kitchen. Read her blog here.
 

The image to the right made me smile this morning.  Mac has just started crashing around upstairs, so I really ought to stop escapist blog reading and get a move on. 

It's been a ridiculously productive weekend -- although the vast majority of my product has been consumed: squash soup, "pumpkin" walnut cake, two loaves of spelt/oat/wheat bread, chili, cornbread . . .

I also built a platform for the new plastic storage shed in the backyard so it can sit next to the deck and the rain spout pipe from the roof can go underneath.  This was a minor triumph because it involved me cutting 4x4 posts with a circular saw all by myself.

Mac has been rewiring the bathroom all weekend - exhaust fan, light, and new socket near the sink all work! One piece of drywall has been hung on the ceiling (thanks to the help of four chili eaters last night) with just a bit more to go. 

Then we spackle and paint walls again. Oh, to paint things that aren't walls.

Sometimes Dirt Makes Me Happy

When it's outside . . .
When it's nice and dark and full of organic matter promising vegetables and flowers for future springs . . .

Image from Wikipedia.

Today, I moved dirt . . . and enjoyed it.

I had been planning to paint the so-called green room yet another shade of green.  However, Mac was on the ladder grumbling about the wiring and cutting a hole in the ceiling (read: installing bathroom fan and repairing ceiling).  There was nothing I could do to help him and he had the ladder which made it hard to spackle the ceiling in the green room.  So, I worked outside.  That was probably better all around.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

 
1. Haircuts
   
2. Luggage
3. Jobs
4. Blogs

In preparation for the weather in Beijing, Chengdu, and Xi'an, Mac got a haircut. 'Nuff said?

He doesn't look all that different, but the mop is smaller.

 

We're in full throws of packing/planning. Friday we did a mock travel day and carried all our gear around DC while we picked up our China Visa and ran errands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, we found ourselves in a tea shop playing cards.

Mac learned that his bags are uncomfortable and awkward. We all agreed to ditch the bags before the 3-day hike at Emei Shan and made list of things that we'd forgotten to pack, didn't leave room for, or should leave behind.

In other news,

I've accepted a new job.  I will be the media coordinator for Food & Water Watch when we return from China.

Finally, why blog?

Many blogs have a distinct voice, an obvious audience (often grandparents and far flung relatives), or a particular theme (small birds, green living, going on a trip). I'm not sure that the Bug Blog has really found its voice, especially since Bug's presence comes and goes. So, I will be experimenting with voice and theme for a while.

One common blogger device is the game of questionnaire tag. You've probably gotten one by email. Those do not bring focus to a blog unless the author is very creative and they do not appeal to me, personally.

However, some participatory blogger devices are more flexible and visual in nature - this is a visual medium, after all. I'm a particular fan of what used to be Self-portrait Tuesday, the Self-portrait Challenge. (June is Pop-Art so, watch for it.) Stephanie at little birds is prompting a Color Week. She does some nice color themed blog entries and I just might play along this time.

Ok, one last thing:

While there are a few more things to do in here, one of them is the breakfast dishes.

On Monday, We Graduated

So On Tuesday, We Did This:

Here's Mac checking out the furnace from above, through the new hole in the kitchen floor. Notice how the drain pipe to the sink is no longer there . . . It kind of fell off.

But, by Friday evening, we were seeing some progress:

Look, kitchen cabinets! You can't see it but we figured out how to hook up a new drain too.

Chaos

So all the various permits and public utility approvals came through and contractors riped a hole in the front of the house a couple weeks before Christmas.

I've sanded joint compound, leveled floors, ground down concrete, installed tile, painted walls, glued down floors and chased contractors doing the heavy work . . .

Here's Mac getting in on the grouting action:

Now, the basement looks like:

We still need to install the living room floor and finish it, paint the bedroom, get the plumber to finish the bathroom fixtures (shower is a helpful copper pipe sticking out of a lovely new tiling job), tile the kitchen counters, seal the bathroom and kitchen counter tile. In the mean time, all four of us are living on the second floor and sharing one bathroom and poor little Bug keeps getting exiled to the travel cage in the bedroom to protect her from dust and fumes. And, the living room looks like:
Those are kitchen cabinets for upstairs (You've seen pictures of the hideous plywood and rusting metal things with 50 coats of paint that we have in the kitchen now). We got a great deal on used cabinets but we probably won't get to install them until after graduation in May which is when we a planning a complete kitchen redo (The boxes of linoleum tile on top the cabinets are for the floor and the countertops will be made of a similar pattern as the bathroom tile above to use up leftovers. + We think the whole color scheme will go well with the purple paint that Paul picked out.)

And, school starts up again this week. Oh, and I got I job - only 20 hours a week, working for the Washington Regional Network for Livable Communities.

Blogger Down

I'm up and running again but have been negligent about updating the blog . . . . Why? I'm really tired and it's not really the running.

We'd been planning on renovating again. But, this time, we need the city's permission. Seems we don't own the front yard (Yes, this was disclosed when we bought the place) and need a public space permit to dig a hole, move the utility meter, and put a front door in on the basement level. We've been working on this since late January, found a contractor to do to the job, spoke with an electrician and the electric company, and had anticipated being mostly done by now . . . but, that was way too optimistic. This is District of Columbia bureaucracy we're talking about here.

First, Mac spends several days calling around to find out what we need. We needed plans drawn up by an architect. It seems that this is a piddling little job that most architects want nothing to do with. We finally find one who would assign the job to his assistant (?). So, nice guy comes out and measures and draws up plans and drops them off. Mac takes them to the city and discovers that the city wants some changes made to the plan, needs to be on mylar (?) and needs an official plot of the property from the city. Fine, we order the official plot, we call the architect back and he agrees to make changes. I week later, we call him to find out what happened to him and he brings over the plans. So now we have to find a place that makes mylars and get our plans copied. We get one mylar and four backup copies as requested and Mac heads back to the city planning office. But, the city still wants more changes, wants a document showing how much dirt we will dig up and where it will go and wants the plans stamped by an engineer licensed by DC. (At this point, Mac is stomping around and cursing). We call the architect to make more changes and he (bless him) agrees to call around and find an engineer to stamp the plans since, apparently, his firm has no engineer licensed by DC. A few days later, Mac heads out to the suburbs to meet with an engineer and get the plans stamped. Then, it's back to the planning office where, it turns out, four copies is not enough because four copies only covers the one department that needs the paperwork. Paperwork also has to be sent off to every utility company that services our property for approval and a variety of government departments. There is no copy place near the planning office so Mac treks off to make more copies. Returning, he discovers that he also needs more copies of some other document on 11x17 paper but no copier in the building can accommodate them so it's off to find a copy place again. Finally, all the paperwork is submitted and Mac is instructed to return Monday. Mac returns on Monday to discover that the city can't find the paperwork . . . . .

In the mean time, we've been working on the backyard, which you may remember from a previous entry.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's going to be lovely. The pile of dirt under the green tarp (left) and the plants in buckets (right) are destined for  raised beds surrounded by a little brick wall against the right and back fences. The table (currently upside down on the on the compost bin) and chairs go on the newly laid patio (center). The hammock goes under the tree in the corner (left).

Because, I work at my assistantship two and a half days a week, do an internship one day a week, take a class two nights a week, and our weekends are booked from now until Christmas, Fridays are the day we are supposed work on the yard. Two Fridays ago, we tore down the old fence (which may have been up by sheer willpower) and sunk new fence posts. Somehow the job took longer than we thought it would and after my 10 mile run on Saturday morning, I spent 10 hours putting up a fence in the back yard. Tuesday, when I was supposed to be studying, we hauled the old fence post and a bunch of trash from next door that had been collecting water to the dump (we'd spoken with the landlord about the trash but he doesn't care much about the place and we just wanted it gone). Friday, we poured the patio which means we first leveled the ground, then I hauled nearly 40 bags of concrete from the curb and smoothed the concrete that Mac was mixing and pouring. Saturday morning, I got up and ran 12 miles.

That's why I'm tired.

Why this particular Sunday?

So on Sunday, we invited guests over. Mac and I have a predicable housecleaning routine: He does the kitchen and bathrooms; I do the living room and dining room. It might sound unfair but it makes sense. Mac is very particular about where things go in the kitchen and how things get sanitized (he's the son of a micro-biologist). I'm particular about the clutter in the living room not just disappearing, and have patience enough to water the plants and dust the furniture.

Well, this particular Sunday, I went to an early yoga class. Upon returning, I began picking up the clutter in the living room and then, at about 11:30 am, went looking for the broom and mop. Mac had them in the basement and he wasn't done with them, he said. So, I went back upstairs and found more clutter to eradicate (it never ends, but you know that too). Twenty or thirty minutes later, I go back downstairs. This is what I found:

Notice how the shower walls are all missing from the bathroom and are stacked up in the hall way while Mac is working on the drywall behind the seal that has been leaking (and we've been periodically re-sealing) for months. Note too, that the guests are scheduled to arrive in two hours.

I told him "I'm going to take the broom now. I think I'll probably be done with it before you are actually ready for it."