The Falk Death March

There was a time when I could hike 10 miles like it was a stroll to the corner market. Those days are long gone, so yesterday’s 12-mile hike was more like a death march for the last few miles. It’s not that I’m in bad shape, so much as I’m just out of practice.

Noah Falk founded the logging town of Falk in 1884. At that time is was more than an hours traveling distance from Eureka, so the town was self sufficient. Up until The Great Depression of the 1930s it was a successful lumber town with railroads, a large mill, post office, and housing for about 400 residents. By the 1940s is was a ghost town.






I’m sure it was in an effort to protect themselves from law suits, but some time in the 1970s the Pacific Lumber Company, who now owned the land decided to raze what was left of the town, so they bulldozed and burned everything. Time had reduced that 1884 hour long commute in to a 15 minute car ride from downtown Eureka. Apparently lots of people liked to go out there and explore the ghost town of Falk and some where getting hurt.

The BLM now manages the area and there is a nice, paved trail to the area where the town of Falk once was. Most of Falk is gone, but there are a few things still left, if you’re willing to go off the beaten trail. That’s is we did yesterday.

This was my first trip to Falk, but the friends I went with had been many times. We saw some old Model T Fords rusting in the trees. There was an old cabin that was falling apart. There was one odd little house that was no more than 8 feet wide and lined with benches on the walls. We suspected it was a feeding station for the loggers. They would haul up a chuck wagon to feed the men in the little cabin, rather than have them make there way back to town.

There was remnants of the railroad here an there with a few old trestles. The coolest thing was the old train barn. They could pull two locomotives in to it and there were pits in the ground where workers could service the engines from underneath. The barn is just buried in the trees now. Any remnants of tracks or roads from the town to the barn have long since been reclaimed by the forest. It was really very cool and well worth the pain and blisters.

I’m Going With Blue Ox Again

I still hadn’t heard anything about the millwork as of today, so I went down on my lunch break to either get some answers or get my samples back. I expected the worst and I was prepared for battle. I had it all worked out in my head what I was going to say. I was going to be a polite, yet very stern in my condemnation of their business practices. I was going to go on and on about how I know I’m a “little guy” but that doesn’t mean I should be ignored. I was going get my samples back, and as I stepped out the door I was going turn back and have one final and succinct comment that would express my dissatisfaction and drive home the point that I would never be doing business with them again.

Something along the lines of…


“I used to have respect for you, but from now on I’m taking my business else where.”

“I came here for the quality of the workmanship, but you don’t know how to run a business. From now I’m going to Mad River Millworks”

“I’ve enjoyed doing business with you in the past, but no more! I’m going to be taking my businesses to someone who appreciates it.”

Anyway, you get the idea. Anyone of those would have done.

The Blue Ox Mill is at the foot of X street, right on the water. This area of town is sort of an odd mix of light industry, some retail, and a smattering of residential properties. Those few residential properties that still exist are all from the turn of the century. There are some nice homes that over time have ended up in a poor location. When you get to the end of X street there are a few clumps of shrubs very close on either side of a one lane dirt road that continues after X street seems to have ended. This is the entrance to the mill. The shrubs are so close that both mirrors on my truck brush against them as I drive through. It sort of feels like you’re driving in to the Bat Cave or something.

After just a few yards of driving on the dirt road you pass over some railroad tracks and then you start to see some odd things. There is a very large, doll house sitting there along the road. There is an antique, rusted, steam powered logging saw. There is a really large, carved statue of Paul Bunion (Blue Ox Mill, get it? There is also a real live ox named Babe some place on the mill property). There is a 1870s, story and a half settlement era home that sort of looks like it just landed on the site after being dropped by a tornado. There is also a large wooden fishing boat. More like a small ship, really. All around are piles of lumber and logs, along with other odd little things that you only notice if you really look. It has that feeling that some antique thing was headed for the dump and it found its way to the mill instead. When it arrived, it was placed some place on the property out of convenience and that is where it has sat ever since.

After driving on the dirt road for maybe 20 yards or so you come up on the mill. The building was one of Eureka’s first power plants. There is a very good chance that Thomas Petch spent a lot of time in there. I’ve been told the building is from 1902, but I’m not really sure. It is huge and it looks like it is about to fall over. There are always more than a couple of dogs wandering around out front or sleeping on the front stairs. Once inside there are a few cats sleeping on the counter or curled up next to the fire place.

The office is small and crowded, but just beyond the back wall of the office is the actual mill. I’ve been back in there on a few occasions. It is filled with restored and unrestored antique milling and logging equipment. Once when I was there I saw a guy working on a massive antique lathe turning a 12 foot log in to a Victorian porch column. The place seems to be half museum and half working mill. The owners work a lot with troubled youth as well, and there is even a radio station run by the kids someplace on the property. There is also, supposedly, a reproduction of an old logging camp on the mill site, but I’ve never seen it.

Inside the mill there are all sorts of vintage, architectural elements from buildings that no longer exist leaning up against walls and piled in corners. There are stacks of lumber here and there. There are small little rooms and stalls filled with piles of who knows what. It has a that disheveled look you would imagine finding in a 100 year old warehouse that has been a working mill for decades, and who knows what before that. The old plank flooring is uneven in places. The lighting is not great. And everything is covered in saw dust.

Anyway, so I walk up the stairs ready to state my case and try and find out what the hell is going on. I had run in to Viviana – Eric and Viviana are the owners - at the market on Tuesday and asked here why I hadn’t heard from her. She said that Eric, her husband, and the mill operator, and been sick at home for the past 4 or 5 days. Honestly, I didn’t believe her. We only spoke briefly as we passed each other in the parking lot. I sighed and sort of rolled my eyes.

When I walked in Eric was in the office. He looked like hell. He saw me walk in and said hello from across the room. As he came to the counter he grabbed my samples and some paper work from the his desk. He was coughing the entire time. It turns out he really was sick. The quote was written up and ready to go. I’m not sure if he had done it that morning or if it had been sitting around and they just didn’t bother to call. I didn’t ask. In fact, I didn’t say much at all. Even though he had been sick, I was still kind if pissed. I was just in no mood to deal with excuses.

Eric and Viviana are really very nice people. They don’t have the best business savvy in the world and some like to criticize their work. Yes, they have screwed up some of my jobs, but they made them right, for the most part. They’ve screwed up two jobs for me in the past 5 years. One they made right at no cost to me, and the other I never asked them to fix, but they did offer. The corner blocks I had them reproduce were about a quarter inch too thick. I decided it is not really noticeable, so I didn’t bother to take them back. Better too thick, than too thin.

So Eric hands me the quote and it’s more than I thought it would be. Several hundred dollars more, in fact. I asked if this quote is for redwood and he said it was. I’ve always gotten redwood in the past, but I decided to go with poplar this time to save some money. It’s all going to be interior and painted anyway. I told him I wanted poplar and he calls the lumber yard right then and there to get a price. The polar is exactly half the cost of redwood. He refigures the quote and it looks much better.

As he’s adding numbers I start to get a feel for when I’m going to get this. As a last minute favor to some friends – actually, I offered – I’m going to be holding a party in 2 weeks at my house for a bunch of old house nuts like myself. I’m hoping to get the mudroom finished by then. I ask Eric how business is and he tells me he’s crazy busy. Not a good sign. He says he’s quoting jobs now that he won’t start until April of next year. Gulp!

I ask him when I can get my stuff and he says that little jobs like this he can do right away and I should have it in two weeks. I’m sort of talking to him and Shelia at the same time. Shelia is the book-keeper/scheduler. As I’m pleading my case with her, Eric picks up the phone again to call the lumberyard to order the wood.

Eventually it was decided that they can have it a week from this Monday. That is two days before the party. Shelia said to call on Friday, one week from today, because they may be able to get it to me sooner. I’m not sure what to think. I left there feeling glad that I didn’t let my temper destroy the relationship, but I’m still a little ambivalent about it. I feel kind of like the wife whose husband keeps cheating on her and she keeps taking him back.

Maybe they’ve changed this time. I want to believe it, but you just never know. Maybe one week from tonight I’ll have my millwork, or maybe I won’t.

Got Marble?

So, my plans to be done with the mudroom by Thanksgiving are slowly going asunder. There are two jobs I’m farming out and so far it looks like it is going to be a very bad crop. It seems every where I turn I'm met with nothing but excuses and blank stares.

First, there was the mill work I needed to get made. It consists of 6, fairly simple plinth blocks and 14, 6 foot pieces of casing. It is a half a days work for a decent mill with a capable and energetic staff. It was twelve days ago that I dropped off the sample at The Blue Ox Mill and to date I have not even received a bid on the job. After the first 6 phone calls I have given up. This place is notoriously bad at finishing – or even starting – work on time, but I went back to them because they have the knives already cut for the profile of casing I have.

The knives were cut specifically for me the last time I ordered casing from them. So to go to another mill at this point I would not only need to start the whole process over, but I would need to pay another fee ($75?) to get another set of knives cut. Extremely frustrating. I’m giving them until Friday and if they don’t produce something - ANYTHING - by then I will not only go and get my samples back, but I will begin “Operation Bad-Mouth” in which I slander their already bad reputation all over town. To be honest, most people will just roll their eyes and say something like, “While the hell did you go back to them. Every body knows how bad they are”. It’ll probably just make me look like an idiot to admit that I went back, so maybe I won’t even admit it. I’ll just quietly go some place else.

Then there is the marble I need cut for the two corner cabinets. This is probably no more that 5 sq ft of marble. I made two templates out of that 3/16th inch foam board you would mount photos and pictures on prior to framing. Last time I had marble cut it was 3 simple pieces I needed for the apron around the bathroom sink. This was 3 pieces of stone roughly 6X24 inches with no milling at all. Just straight cuts. It couldn’t get any simpler than that. I don’t remember how long it took, but it was something like 8 weeks and as many phone calls to get it done.

At the time, the place I went to was the only game in town. I might be able to make the 30 or 40 mile round trip to Fortuna, but I really can’t be sure if any other place has exactly what I want. Needless to say, I didn’t want to go back to the other guys. Since that time, a new place called “Got Marble?” has opened. They are located in a large, industrial warehouse about half way between Eureka and Arcata. I took a drive out there a few weeks back to see if they had the ¾ inch white marble I’m looking for.

The place is huge and they have dozens of varieties of stone in large slabs leaning against racks. The slabs are all the size of a sheet of plywood, roughly 4X8 feet, and maybe ¾ of an inch thick. There is a lot of freakin’ stone in one slab. Way more than I need. I walked down one row and quickly found what I was looking for. I went back to the office and there was a guy on the phone there. When he got off we started talking about the marble. I explained I only needed a few small pieces and I already had the templates cut.

He said, “Oh, well, we only sell slabs. We don’t do any cutting.”
Me, “Yean mean, I must buy the entire slab of marble.”
Him, “Yep”

I asked him who the heck buys whole slabs of stone and he said they get a lot of DIYers in there. This was a Saturday and I was the only person in sight. I asked him if he knew of any fabricators that could do what I want and he was stumped. I left, more than a little disappointed.

I looked in the phone book for monument makers (think tomb stones). There was only one so I called him on Monday. I told him what I needed and he said he could do it, no problem. I went in yesterday and took my templates, plus a small sample of the marble left over from another project. I didn’t want any mistakes on this. He looked it over and seemed like it wouldn’t be a problem at all. He then looks up and asks, “So when can you bring the marble in.” I was like, “Uh? What do you mean”. He was all like, “Oh, well, I don’t carry anything in this size. I thought you just wanted me to cut your marble”. He points to his stone selection and there isn’t a piece larger 12X24 inches.

SIGH!!!!!

So today with drooping shoulders and head I dragged myself back to the guys who screwed me over the last time. I raced down there on my lunch hour with my now well traveled templates in hand. I went in and the place seemed empty. I looked out in the shop and couldn’t find anyone. I called out a few times as I made my way down a hallway past one empty room after another. I finally found a young woman in an almost empty room staring out a window. I told her I wanted to get some marble cut in the shape of my templates. There was an awkward silence as she stared at the templates like they were some alien artifact that her mind couldn’t comprehend.

After a few seconds I repeated my request, only this time with more detail. “These are templates I’ve made for counters for corner cabinets. I want to get marble cut in the these shapes.” I gave each word more emphasis and annunciation as I pointed at the templates. She reached out for the templates and muttered, “Ummm, OK”. I cautiously handed her a piece of paper with some additional measurements, and with a clear voice, and in simple sentences I explained that it was for the backsplash pieces. She stared at my writing like it was written in some foreign language.

After more silence from her I asked if the guys were out on a job doing an installation. She said yes and I suggested I just write down my name and number on the piece of paper with the backsplash measurements. She smiled and nodded in agreement. I wrote down my name and number and left her standing there in the almost empty room. I got a little ways down the hallway and called back to her to tell her to not lose the templates because I would want them back if they can’t do the work. I didn’t get a response.

I’m having a bunch of old house fanatics over on the 14th of November. What do you think the odds are of me having either the millwork or the marble by then? I’m thinking the odds aren’t too good.

Stencil Madness

The second time I did the stencil on the frieze in the mudroom today it came out very nice. First time, not so good. I had read an excellent tutorial on stenciling over at The Old House Web. It went on and on about the layout…blah, blah, blah. I don’t have time for that sort of thing, I thought to myself. I’ve got stenciling to do.

Well, the spacing sucked, so I wiped off the first run and did it over. I had only one wall done, so it wasn’t the end of the world.

The Test Run


Round Two


You can see in the top picture that there is not enough room for another of the long designs. However, if I had started out on the left with a short design, as you can see in the do-over, I can start and stop with a short design, and the spacing is very nice. So, I wiped off the first test run and did it over.





The spacing on the short walls worked out just as well. Above are shots of two opposing corners. It is like the design was made just for this room. This was my second choice of a design. The first turned out to be too big. Someone had a clever idea of cutting it down, but it didn’t really work out. I think this design fits the space nicely.

I ordered the casing last week but I still haven’t heard from the mill as to when they can even start it. Very frustrating. I’m working with The Blue Ox Mill again, because they already cut the knives for my casing profile, but working with them can be trying at times. The owners, Eric and Vivianna, are very nice people and have a great operation going on, but sometimes it seems like they really don’t know how to run a business. Maybe I’ll bore you with the details tomorrow. Their place is really amazing. It is much more than just a mill.

I also made templates for the two marble counter tops for the corner cabinets. I’m dreading ordering it because the last time I ordered marble it was like pulling teeth to get these guys to make a few cuts. I’m going to contact a monument maker here it town and see if they’ll do it. I’m trying not to get my hopes up. Sometimes I just hate dealing with other people when I’m trying to keep a schedule. This is why I do so many things myself.

And The Winner Is….

Well, Anonymous and & Kathy won the “Let’s Guess The Mistake” contest, so they get to split the set of 6 Ginsu Steak Knives. Congratulations you two. The problems were the crooked window and the different widths of beadboard.

For some reason, in the butler’s pantry and going up the back stairs they used a narrower beadboard than in other rooms of the house. The boards are actually wider, but it is the kind of beadboard that has what appears to be 2 boards milled in to one wider board. The beads are closer together. I used this stuff to fill in above and below the window, and over the cabinet. It’s hardly noticeable, and I don’t think many will even catch it.

The window is another issue. I put that thing in nearly 3 years ago and I’ve walked by it hundreds of times and never noticed it was crooked. Now with the vertical beadboard running on either side of it, it is painfully obvious that it is crooked. This will only become more obvious once the casing is on. I must straighten it.

This is not one of these things where, “oh, it’ll only be noticeable to you”, or “It’s one of those charming nuances of an old home”. No, it’s crooked and it will stick out like a sore thumb with all of the straight, even vertical runs of beadboard going floor to ceiling. I’m going to need to remove the outside casing, so its kind of pain, but not really an all day job.

I got the room all painted and I really like the way it came out. This mud room is only 4X6 and sits in between the kitchen and bathroom. I used the 2 trim colors from each room for the paint colors in this room. In the bathroom the trim is Queen Anne’s Lace and in the kitchen the trim is Honied White. I think they go well together in here





I bought the stencil pictured above to go on the frieze but it turns out the pattern is about a half inch too high for the space. So I can’t use it, which is a bummer, because I really like the pattern. I first had the idea of fern leaves or something, but when I looked at patterns like that they all started to seem a little too Martha Stuartish too me. Everybody does know that she is the Devil incarnate, don’t they? Anyway, it’s back to the drawing board for the stencil. The paint needs to cure for a week anyway, so there is still time to change my mind a half dozen times.



I also cut the marble window stool for the stained-glass window. It didn’t come out as good as the others, but it should look nice once it is sanded down. I also went down to the mill and ordered the casing and plinth blocks I spoke about last week. The owners weren’t in, so I wasn’t able to get an ETA. I should find out Monday and I’m hoping it will be less than 2 weeks.

The last thing to do is to make templates for the marble pieces for the 2 built-in cabinets and then order that marble. I had hoped to do that this weekend, but it didn’t happen. Maybe tomorrow. I’m hoping I can get that ordered and received within 2 weeks as well. If all goes well, and it never does, I could have this room finished by Thanksgiving.

Guess The Problems

So, I finally got some paint on the beadboard in the little mudroom. I ran out though, and will need to buy more (Grrrr!). Anyway, as I was putting up the beadboard I noticed a kind of major flaw in the room that will need to be fixed. Then tonight, when I was painting I noticed another, minor flaw that can’t and won’t be fixed.





Both problems are visible in both shots, but the second shot is primarily there to show off the frieze. I really like the way it came out. I did it primarily so I could shorten the beadboard, because it was a little beat up at the ends. Plus, one wall already had the 1X10 board on it, so it was either remove one board or add 3 more. The plan is to do a stencil of some sort around the room.

Millwork

I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but it looks like I’ll be heading back to the mill. A year and a half ago I went to one of the local mills and had a bunch of custom casing milled to replace the stuff that was cut-down back in the 1920s. When they cut the place up in to apartments they took some of the more grand entry ways on the first floor and reduced them to small openings more appropriate to a small apartment.



I opened up the entryways back to their more grandiose size and needed the casing to match. So I took a small sample of the 1895 casing down to the mill and they cut a custom knife for a milling machine that can reproduce the profile exactly. The original 1895 casing that was cut down, while being too small for those openings, was perfect to use in other areas of the house. I had a whole stack of it up in the attic that I planned to use for the bathroom and kitchen.

Well, I used it in the bathroom and kitchen, but there is not enough left for the mudroom. There are 2 doors and a window, and I only have enough for one door and the window. So it’s back to the mill. I’m also going to have enough made so I can do the door to the laundry room. When I went to the mill a year and a half ago that door did not exist, so really I’m shorter than I thought (Short than I thought? Does that make sense?)

The stuff left in the attic is really bottom of the barrel stuff. While technically enough to do one whole door and the window, it’s really in bad shape. There is only one piece that is not cracked or missing notches here and there. I think I’ll just get enough made to finish up all of the doors and use that stuff for the window. If you count one door as having two sides, and each side needs two side casings and a header, I need 12 side casings and 6 headers. That comes to 88 feet of casing.

They cut the knife last time, so I won’t be paying for that again. Depending on how much I order, they may or may not charge me a set-up fee. If they do, that would be $75. I also need 6 plinth blocks, and those are $15 each if I get redwood. Poplar would be cheaper. If I need to pay the set-up fee, and they charge me $2 a foot for the lumber (A guess), that comes to $365.72 with tax. Ouch! This was not an expense I had anticipated for the mudroom.

Oh well, all in a days work.

Hot, Burning Passion

It’s been too many months since I’ve held you, my love. It’s been too long since I’ve felt your sensuous curves and your warm embrace. Oh how I’ve yearned for you. To feel your hot, burning passion once again is almost more than I can bare. Your firm body separated from me by nothing more than the thin leather of my glove causes my pulse to race, my face to redden, and beads of sweat to trickle down my forehead.

Oh, how I’ve missed you.


So, yea, I got the paint stripped off the few runs of beadboard that were put in above and below the window. Tomorrow I can start to trim out the room. There are 2 doors and a window, and then there is an 11-inch high wooden frieze up near the ceiling. There will be a piece of fluted 1X3 where the beadboard meets the frieze, and then a small 1X2 crown detail where the frieze meets the ceiling, and finally a bit of quarter round where the beadboard meets the tile.


1X3 Trim


The 1X3 piece is the same trim I used as a wainscot cap in the kitchen and the bathroom. It is hemlock and I buy it at a local lumberyard. The 1X2 crown is salvage that came out of the 1920s addition I took down. I’ve been waiting for a place to use it. This is such a small space (4X6), and utilitarian in nature, I think this is a perfect spot for it. The plan, eventually, is to do a stencil boarder on the wooden frieze. The quarter round I’ll make my self out of old redwood.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be alone with my heat gun. Come to me, my darling!

Switch On/Switch Off

I got the two switches mounted for the mudroom lights. One switch is for the new back porch light, and the other is for light for the room itself. For a few reasons, I ended up mounting them one-over-one instead of side by side.

First, it was a very tight space. Once the trim is on there would have only been about a half inch on either side of the switch plate. While that wouldn’t be the end of the world, it just seemed a little tight. Also, there are two studs in the wall that are close together right there. I would have needed to chisel out some wood in order to get a double gang box in there. Again, doable, but why go to the trouble. Finally, I would have had to cut one of the runs of beadboard in half. I was concerned the wall might become springy there.

It will look better with paint and switch plates



As a side note, I think I’m getting a little lazy. Four years ago I would have chiseled out the studs to make way for the double gang box. I would have accounted for that when I was putting in the beadboard and put in extra framing just incase I ended up cutting all the way through one of the boards. Secretly I ashamed of myself.

It’s funny how every time I work on electrical in this house I think it’s the last time. I went through the big whole-house rewire about 4 years ago and when I was done I thought I was done for ever. It took me more than 3 months to do the whole thing and I remember thinking at the time that it was all done and I would never again need to touch another wire in the house.

Oh, how wrong I was.

There was still a lot of wiring to do in the kitchen, and of course, the down stairs bathroom was only a gleam in my eye at that point. Oh sure, I put in circuits for those rooms and pulled wire to the general location 4 years ago, but that is the easy part. Cutting holes for boxes and wiring switches, lights, and sockets, that is the real grunt work of residential wiring.

Then today, as I was finishing up the switches in the mudroom, for one brief second I thought to myself, “Finally, I’m completely done with the wiring!”. Then I remembered the laundry room. Sure there’s a circuit for it, and the wire is pulled in to the room, but I still need to do the grunt work.

{Siiiigh!} Will it ever end?

Blog Wall

So, this is my new thing now. I wish I had thought of it earlier.

As I was about to put in the last few pieces of beadboard in the mudroom I figured I should cram something in the wall, you know, for posterities sake. Actually, my house is going to be an archivers dream during the next major renovation. I’m hoping this will be decades and decades away, but when it happens there will be a treasure drove of goodies to be had.

With every wall I’ve opened I’ve always left something inside. Sometimes it had context and sometimes it didn’t. The daily newspaper is always good, but it’s been suggested by some that modern newspaper won’t stand the test of time like old newspaper. It’s there either way. I’ve also written things in the walls. Because the walls are sheathed in that dove-tail grooved plaster board there is lots of room to write. A few times I’ve sanded down a board and then written a few paragraphs on the backside before I nail it up.

So today, as I was about to finish up with the beadboard in the mudroom I started to think about what to leave in the wall. I had today’s paper sitting there, so I figured that would be good enough. Then I thought about the blog. {Ding! Light goes off}. Of course, the blog is perfect. It doesn’t get any more contextual than that. So I printed up yesterday’s blog entry, and rolled it up with the newspaper. I then wrapped them both in a plastic bag and sealed them in the wall.



I hope it is a long, long, long time before the wall is opened up.

An Accomplishment

I actually got some work done this weekend, more than I thought, in fact. The main goal was to get the beadboard up in the little mudroom. While that didn’t happen in its entirety, I got a lot of sort of periphery things done that lead to the start of the beadboard installation.

At the last minute I decided I wanted an exterior light for the backdoor. This door didn’t exist a few years ago and I never put a light outside for it. It will give light for the porch, of course, but it will also add extra light for the tenants who park near this door. There is a motion detecting security light near this area, but it’s a little further away from the street than it should be.



I went down to Ace to buy the light and I found a boxed set of two exterior porch lights. The second one will go at the other back door. Right now that door has a motion detecting security light that has never worked right. I have screwed with that thing a dozen times over the past 2 years and no matter what I do it seems to stay on 24/7. It just a piece of crap.

While I was at Ace I found that they carry the retro looking cloth (Rayon) covered lamp cord. The ceiling fixture that is going in the mudroom is a small 1910ish fixture with an original Holophane shade. Because it has a few links of chain I wanted some nice cord. I looked on Vandykes.com and they wanted $1.99 a foot, plus shipping. At Ace it was .49 cents a foot. Much better. So I rewired the light and its ready to go.







In order to add the backdoor exterior light and I had to run some new wire, naturally, but I also ended up moving the location of the switch. The ceiling fixture that is in this mudroom was originally…well, not originally…..originally it was an interior light, then they moved some walls and it was an exterior light, then I put the wall back and it became an interior light again. At any rate, when I rewired the house 4 years ago I just rewired the switch where it was. Now, 4 years later, that is not the best spot, so I moved the switch so it is next to the new backdoor.

This required me to go under the house.

After I finished the bathroom plumbing I vowed i would not go under the house for 12 months. Well, I broke my vow. Today I was crawling in the dirt and cat poop and it seem like yesterday. It wasn’t the end of the world, really. This spot is very near an access hatch, so I only had to go maybe 10 feet under the house. In the end, the switch was moved and I now have an exterior light for the door. It was worth it.

While I was under there, I had nothing better to do, so I checked on the plumbing for the new bathroom. I never went under the house to inspect the new drains – and more importantly, the new bathtub floor drain – for leaks. I’m happy to report that everything was dry as a bone. I’m very relieved because if something had been leaking there was no way I was going to work on it until next year. As it is, I can shower, flush, and shave with confidence now.

Also….finally back to the beadboard….I prepped all of the beadboard for installation. These were 9.5 foot pieces of beadboard salvaged from the scullery. I remember when I removed it I measured carefully to see if it was enough to do the mudroom. At the time I said it was, but in reality it wasn’t even close. I mean, there was enough, in a very technical sense, but a lot of it was in such bad shape, in reality, it would never be enough.

I’ve worked with a lot of salvaged wood that was a little beat up, but to say this was “a little beat up” is like saying George W. Bush is “a little clueless”. This stuff was really, really beat up. The good boards were in good shape, but the bad stuff was beyond hope. The room it came from started out life as a scullery. Think mop buckets and piles of coal.

Then in about 1915 Mrs. Petch turned the home in to boarding house and the scullery was opened up in to the butler’s pantry and dining room to create her apartment. She may have been running a boarding house at this point, but she was hardly a savage. Beadboard in a living area just would not do. No, she covered the beadboard with wallpaper. This was the kind that was glued to cheesecloth and the tacked to the walls. Some pieces had many, many tacks still in the wood.

Then back in the 50s the real wood beadboard was covered with wood grained sheetrock. Those people were rocket scientists, weren’t they. So this meant more holes. Oh, the 50s. It was a terrible time for old houses. It worked out ok because all of the nails for both the wallpaper and for the sheetrock seemed to mostly end up on the same pieces. Add to that the fact that the back wall of the scullery was pushed out one foot. This meant that all of the beadboard on back wall and part of the two side walls had been removed and reattached.



Now fast forward 90 or so years and I pry if off again. Its amazing it wasn’t just a pile of splinters. Well, actually, in some respects, that’s what it was. I spent yesterday gleaning the good pieces out. I puttied all of the holes and sanded it down. The best part about was the lack of paint. Because it was papered over so many years ago it was spared the gallons and gallons of paint that was sloshed over so much of the wood work in this house.



Today I got two walls done. They were the most challenging walls, so I should finish up tomorrow or the next day. Some sections above and below the window are pieces of beadboard not from the scullery. This means they are soaked in layer after layer of paint that will need to come off. Its only a short run, so it should go quickly. After that I guess I can start to trim it out. More on that later.

Home, Is Where I Want To Be

I was down in the LA area this past week. It’s the first time I’ve been down there in about 15 years. I was at a conference for 3 days in Valencia, which is northern LA county. It was very odd. The whole place looked like it had sprung up in the last 6 months. The area surrounding the hotel was packed with shopping centers and malls. I visited one large mall and 6 or 7 large shopping centers within walking distance of the hotel.

Every evening I would go for long walks and in a mile in either direction all I saw were malls and shopping centers, with car dealerships at the periphery. There was really only one mall, in the traditional sense. It was two stories, and seemed to go on forever. It easily had 3 times the number of stores as our local Bayshore Mall (which is really on the shores of the bay). Then at all of the major intersections there were these large shopping centers that were like a mall turned inside out. Each one was anchored by an Olive Garden, TGI Friday’s, or maybe a Pier 1 Imports. They were the new kind of strip-mall where the strip had been convoluted a bit so the stores weren’t all in a straight line. These strip-malls all had names like “River Oaks” or “Maple Canyon” but there wasn’t a river, canyon, maple or oak to be seen.

They all had the exact same architecture too. And not just the shops, but the hotel, shops, malls, and business parks were all done in the same sort of California Mission style with a twist of Italian Renaissance. They all used the exact same stone veneer with stucco and touches of metal work. Next to or behind most of the shopping centers there would be an “Urban Living Center” that was done in the same style as everything else. These were massive condominium complexes with hundreds or maybe thousands of units.

There was one shopping center that did not have an Urban Living Center attached to it. It was anchored by a Myrvn’s at one end, and a Target at the other. It was not as stylish as the others and it was more like an older style strip-mall where the design was very linear. The architecture mostly looked the same as the others, though. Then I noticed that some parts looked different, but there was a transition point where it went for the original look to the new Mission/Renaissance look. It was actually in the middle of being transmogrified so it would like everything else. There was a point were a Subway Sandwich shop was in the middle of being born again in to its new Mission/Renaissance look.

The other thing I noticed was there was not one non-chain restaurant to be seen. I must have passed by literally hundreds and hundreds of store fronts, restaurants, and food courts. There was the occasional nail salon or dry-cleaner that was not a part of a larger chain, or at least the names weren’t recognizable to me as being a part of chain. As far as food went, though, it was all chain restaurants. And they had them all, including 3 Startbucks within 200 yards of the hotel, and Starbucks coffee in the hotel room.

The streets in this area were all 4 lanes in either direction, and as they approached the intersection the street would widen to 10 or 12 lanes in total to accommodate left and right hand turning lanes. The posted speed limit was 50 MPH, but most people were doing well over that. The sidewalks were wide and winding, but with the exception of the few Mexican immigrants walking to and from the bus stop, I was the only person on them. I’m not kidding at all. I never saw another person on these sidewalks and I walked for hours. To be honest, it’s not too surprising. With the 8 lanes of traffic whizzing by at 70 MPH it was a little like walking next to a freeway.

The streets were so wide at the intersection that it was usually a challenge to get across before the light turned. At the really large intersections, the Walk/Don’t Walk signs had big red timers that would count down from 30 seconds to let you know how much time you had left before the light turned. An older person, or someone not in good health would not make it in time.

All of the areas around the main mall had pedestrian bridges to cross the street. The bridges sometimes connected up with a complex of sidewalks that meandered behind the Urban Living Centers and Business Parks. They were really very nice. They were well landscaped and you were far enough away from the streets that the noise was not deafening. My walks were always in the evening after the conference. It would be about 6 or 7 in the evening and the weather was very nice, being in the high 70s. Still, not one person on any of the sidewalks – NOT ONE!

I’m not sure if this was downtown Valencia or not. Even though there were the business parks, there were no skyscrapers or large collection of businesses that would have defined a downtown as I know it. I don’t think I ever saw a building more than 4 stories tall. I assume there must be more to the city, although I didn’t explore it by car. I guess maybe this was just the shopping district, because really, that is all there was.

I may sound a bit like a country bumpkin describing his first trip to the big city. Really, I’ve lived in and visited many large metro areas before. I’ve just never seen one that was so dominated by shopping while at the same time being so devoid of pedestrians. It was very odd.

Anatomy of a Hoosier Bin

I call this thing a Hoosier Bin, but I don’t think that’s really very accurate. I’ve only really seen one real live Hoosier Cabinet in my life and it didn’t have a bin like this, that I recall. At any rate, I’ve gotten it in to my head that this was a popular style kitchen bin around the same time the Hoosier Cabinets were popular, so it became a Hoosier Bin in my mind.



I also think that even if there was a Hoosier Cabinet that had a bin like this, this bin is a little more rustic than what would have been on a real Hoosier Cabinet. It’s not that it isn’t constructed well, it’s just that the Hoosier Cabinet I saw had a refined, factory-made look to it, where as this bin has more of a home-made quality to it. It really looks like it was made with hand tools. It also came out of an 1880s house, and I think that may pre-date the Hoosier Cabinet.



Finally, it is made of thick, full-dimensional redwood, which would mean local construction, and as far as I know, there were no Hoosier Cabinet factories in town. This is all speculation, so who knows for sure. It’s sturdy. Its old. I like it. That what really counts.



There are no hinges for the bin. Instead it pivots on the bottom rail of the face frame. The base of the bin has a two piece, concave rail on it. The back of the bin is higher than the front and when you open it, the back hits the back side of the face frame and that its what keeps the bin from falling all the way out. It is not really attached to the cabinet in any way.



The opening of the face frame is actually smaller than the front and back of the bin. There are two notches cut in to the tops of the two sides of the bin. This makes it possible to get the bin in to the opening. You have to sort of put it half way in, then lift it so the top of the face frame slides down in to the notches. You then have clearance for the bottom part to fit in. The front part, with the concave bottom rail, the comes down to rest on the bottom rail of the face frame.

Once it is in place, because the front and backs of the bin are larger than the opening, it can’t fall in to or out of the cabinet. When I first put it together it worked well, but not great. It sort of popped in to place at the very end when I opened it and closed it. It was a bit clunky.





I then added a half round piece to the bottom rail of the face frame. This really solved the problem. Now, the concave bottom of the bin was riding on the convex half round of the bottom rail of the face frame. The operation is surprisingly smooth. I won’t paint the two opposing half round shapes, and maybe even wax them. It should really pivot well when it’s all finished. The bin itself is so heavy (maybe 30 pounds) and the tolerances of the face frame are so tight, there is really no place for the thing to go except back and forth. It’s pretty damn cool.

New Corner Cabinet

Last summer, or when ever it was, I found an old Hoosier style bin cabinet in a dumpster parked out in front of a small 1880s bungalow down the street from me. It was in kind of rough shape but still had some life in it so I snagged and it’s been sitting in my dining room ever since.



At first I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it but I quickly decided it would make a nice dirty clothes hamper for the downstairs bathroom. As it turned out, the bathroom was too small to incorporate the bin in the room, but I figured I could add the bin to a built-in cabinet just outside the bathroom door in the little mud room.

This solved two problems. First, I would have a place to drop dirty clothes after I came out of the bathroom. As I’ve learned over the last few months, this is a much needed item. I’m a very lazy person at heart, so making the 10 yard walk from the bathroom, through the kitchen, through the butler’s pantry, and in to the proposed laundry room would be too much for me. No, the clothes would, and in fact have, ended up sitting on the floor of the bathroom until I get sick of looking at them, or until guests are expected, which ever comes first.

The other problem solving nature of the bin has to do with the beadboard that will be covering the rest of the mud room. I have a bunch of 9.5 foot long pieces of beadboard that I want to use to cover the walls of the mudroom. It already has a beadboard ceiling and I thought it would be very cool to have a complete room of beadboard.

The beadboard was originally installed in the scullery, which is now the downstairs bathroom. If it was all in good shape it would be just barely enough to finish the mud room. The problem is, it is far from being all in good shape. The scullery had at least two different sinks installed, and what may have been a water heater. This lead to several holes of varying diameters being drilled in to the beadboard.

By installing a built-in corner cabinet to house the bin I no longer need as many 9.5 foot lengths of beadboard. There will be no beadboard behind then bin. I can now pick and chose from the best pieces to finish the rest of the room.

Kitchen on the left and bathroom on the right




As it turned out, the bin really didn’t fit in the mud room all that well either. Calling it a mud room is a bit of a stretch. The room is only 4X5.5 feet. Three walls have doors on them and the 4th has a window. After playing around with it, I decided a corner cabinet was the only way to go. So over the last few days I built the built-in and fixed up the bin. It works very well. Now I can start to put the rest of the beadboard in the room. After that’s all in I can make templates for the marble top of this built-in and the one in the bathroom. And with that, the bathroom will finally be done.

Look What I Found!

I was strolling down the street one day…

Ok, it was 2 days ago. I was walking back from the post office when I see an old grave marker in the bushes right by the sidewalk.



The marker is for Edith E. Walker, Born Jan. 20 1853, Died Nov. 20 1920. That would have put her at almost 68 years old. At first I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I was still 7 or 8 blocks from home and I couldn’t see carrying this thing the whole way. It is pretty heavy.

This section of sidewalk runs right along side an early 20th Century apartment building. It is owned by a notorious slumlord in town and the place is really nasty. The building is built very close to the property line, so there is maybe 2 feet of dirt in-between the sidewalk and the building. There are just a few poorly cared for bushes in the dirt area and the marker was clearly visible.

I walked home and looked in the phonebook for local cemeteries. There are 2 cemeteries in town but really only one is still in operation. The small one, which is owned by the city is only a few blocks from my house, but in the opposite direction of where I found the grave marker. I don’t think they bury people there any more. The other, larger cemetery is about 5 miles away at the edge of town.

I called the larger one and a young woman answered. When I told her what I found her reaction was one of shock, and without hesitation she said something like, “What?!? Well, bring it to us!”. I was encouraged because you never know when you’re going to get someone who doesn’t give a shit. Her reaction could have been something like, “Well, we’re not missing any, so good luck”.

I got in my car – that would be my new car – and drove back to get it. I fished it out of the bushes and drove it up to the cemetery. This is the first time I had been there. The place is called Ocean View Cemetery, and for good reason. It sits on a high bluff a few blocks from the bay and the view is spectacular. The weather was just as stunning that day. Blue skies, low 70s, and almost no wind.

The narrow road winds its way through the bucolic setting to the Sanctuary and main office. The building was the most uninspiring thing there. It is a long, squat, beige stucco building with a flat roof and no windows. It looked like something built in the 50s. I wasn’t sure where I was going and the first door I entered lead in to the sanctuary. Inside, it was very nice with lots of marble, flowers, and soft lighting.

Outside, in front of the sanctuary there were a half dozen private crypts. Each one was maybe 10X12 feet. They were very nice and very ornate. Lots of molded concrete and marble. They looked like they had been there forever. Then beyond that, the graveyard stretched out before me with the bay and the ocean off in the distance. It was very, very pleasant.

I eventually found the main office. There were two woman there and they just flew in to action as soon as I announced I was the one that called about the grave marker. I’m sure this was the most excitement they had seen in a while. One woman came out to my car to look at it…. Did I mention I was in my new car?….Anyway, the other woman started pulling out these old ledgers of death records to try and find out if Edith was one of theirs.

The ledgers are about 3 feet wide and a foot tall. Each one is broken up alphabetically and lists all of the deaths for a given decade. We looked in the 1920-29 ledger under the “W”s for an Edith Walker and she didn’t show. I took the opportunity to scan the “P”s for a Petch and found nothing there, as well. The penmanship was flawless and all written by the same hand. It was hard to believe it was done 90 years ago because it looked like a very nice calligraphy font printed by a high-end laser printer.

When I got back outside there was a guy from the maintenance department there. He had already pulled the marker out of my new car and it was sitting on the tailgate of his pickup. The 3 of us stood there and speculated as to how it could have ended up at the corner of H and 9th.

The older woman asked where I lived and I told her I owned the big green house at M & 9th. She paused for a second and then asked, “Isn’t there a Vance house right there.” I was impressed. The Vance’s were big wigs in the early history of Eureka. There are a few “Vance Houses” in town and a Vance Hotel (1880s). There was the Vance Mill, etc, etc. I told her the Vance House was at M & 10th and she said, “Oh yes, the Dutch Colonial.” Again, I was impressed. If she had asked if The Petch House was right there I would have been really, really impressed, but she didn’t.

As a side note: The Vance House at M & 10th is where the bottom half of The Frankenstein Hutch came out of. The Vance Hotel is where my 2 medicine cabinets came from.

The maintenance man speculated that the marker was probably the top of a small monument type grave stone because of the way the top was beveled. He pointed out to spot a few hundred yards away were there was a small grouping of monuments. They were all in the 4 to 6 foot tall range. Not really the typical grave stone, but more like small statues. It was hard to tell, but they looked similar to the small private crypts I had passed, so I think they were probably cast concrete with some marble plaques. I’m sure they were over 100 years old.

The maintenance guy went on to explain that this whole area between us and the monuments a few hundred yards away was once filled with these type of grave statuettes. He said it used to all look like The Ferndale Cemetery. It was now all manicured lawn and you could just make out indentations in the ground where grave markers were set a few inches below the level of the grass. All of the monuments, with the exception of the small grouping in the distance were gone.

The Ferndale Cemetery



I asked what happened and he and the woman explained that during the 1950s they ripped out all of the monuments and just set the name plates in the ground to mark the graves. All of the statues were hauled to the back of the cemetery and buried.

I stood there gape mouthed for a second and finally asked why the heck did they do that. There was a brief pause and finally the guy sheepishly said, “It was done for maintenance reasons”. They did it so they could mow the lawn easier. There was a longer pause. We were all thinking the same thing, but nobody said it: What a bunch of narrow minded, short sided, idiots. They ripped out a bunch 100+ year old Victorian grave stones so it would be easier to mow the stupid lawn. Unbelievable.

With that, I wished them luck in trying to find Edith and left.

The Card of Death

I heard once that the 13th card in the Taro deck is the Death Card. It supposedly signals transformation, passage, or change of some kind, rather than an actual death. I don’t really believe in any of that crap, but it’s a good metaphor, none the less. My life has been going through some pretty major changes recently. Mostly good.

This seems to happen to me ever 5 to 10 years, even going back to my childhood. I think that most change is for the good – not just for me, but for anybody - and these recent changes are, but it doesn’t always work out that way, and the process can be very stressful. It’s sort of like jumping over a ditch to escape a large dog. If you make it to the other side, you’re in the clear and it’s great. If not, you’re now laying at the bottom of the ditch and you’re easy pray for the dog.

A few months back, on a whim, I applied for a job I saw in the paper. It is completely out of my field when compared to my past work history. This new position is decidedly white collar, where all of my past jobs have been blue collar. Although some might be considered a light shade of blue, I am essentially a high school dropout who has managed to do ok. This new job was a part-time position that would be perfect for a college student who was going to school in this field. In fact, that’s how it was advertised. It wasn’t really an internship, but definitely an entry level position, and not fulltime.

The position was for a database programmer for a company that manages health plans for large companies. About 15 years ago I took up computer programming as a hobby. My brother and I are both self-taught and for a few years we kind of fed off each other in our passion for it. Some of that included database programming. It just something I’ve always liked and I tend to become consumed with it when I’m doing it. My native programming language is Visual Basic, although I do know others to a less extent. With VB, I would be considered a Guru in some circles.

I submitted a “resume” that had not one of my past jobs listed on it. None of my real jobs even came close to proving that I was capable of the work I was applying for. What I handed in was a listing of programs I had written, languages I knew, what I felt I was capable of, and what I had done for others. I also included a CD with a database program I had written for someone else. The interview went well and I followed it up with a few emails. Much to my surprise I got the job. Honestly, if this had a been a real, full-time position I probably wouldn’t have had a chance. The lack of a college degree and no work experience would have probably ruled me out of even getting an interview, let alone the job.

The database programming relies heavily on the VB language, but it is not exactly the same as what I’ve done in the past. I was very, very nervous. Before I was hired I had assured my new boss that I was more than capable of doing the work, and now I had to prove it. For anyone who is in-the-know, we maintain several SQL Servers where the databases are stored and then I link to the tables through MS Access. Within Access I design interfaces and do all of the data mining and report writing.

They had been without a programmer for a few weeks, or maybe months. My boss, who is extremely capable at the database side of it, was able to keep things moving along, but there was a lot of work backed up. For the first month or so I absolutely devoured projects. I was just in the zone. I quickly got a handle on programming in Access and just started flying through the backlog of projects. At the end of my 3rd week my boss calls me aside and tells me they want to bring me on fulltime. Yea!

My predecessor was often talked about in God-like terms for his ability to program. Even so, in a meeting during my second month my new boss suggested that I was even better than him. He was a college boy, and I’m not knocking that at all, but I think the term “boy” does apply here. Apparently he was fresh out of college when they hired him 4 or 5 years ago. That would mean that he would have been about 10 years old when I started programming. I guess there is something to be said for experience. I met him once, and he’s actually a nice guy, and very sharp. I have know doubt he will do well in his field.

I’ll never forget one day, it was like my 3rd day on the job, and I hear my boss behind me say to someone, “I want to introduce you to our new database programmer”. I looked around as if to try and see who this new programmer was. After a few seconds I realized she was talking about me. I was the new database programmer! It’s all very exciting. I mean, I’m basically now getting paid to do what was my hobby. This is one of the few times in my life I can say I love my job. I can say it with a straight face, and without my words dripping with sarcasm.

For the most part, I felt confident with the programming aspect. My real concern was working in the office atmosphere. This is something I’ve never done before. Fortunately, it is a very causal work place. There are maybe 30 people who work in the building and it is a largely a jeans and T-shirt crowd. Although some do dress nicer, I think that has more to do with their nature than the requirements of the job. I really don’t own many nice clothes so I was concerned I would need to go out and buy a new wardrobe. In my second week I was told we were getting an important visitor and that I should dress nice for the day. Not really knowing what to wear I went and rented a blue, crushed velvet tuxedo with a white ruffled shirt. Boy was my face red when I showed up to work wearing that.

Seriously though, I have been asked to dress nice on a few occasions because someone important is coming in. I’ve worn the same 10 year old pair of J. Crew chinos and blue buttoned down shirt 4 or 5 times over that past 3 months. This was also the same outfit I wore to the interview and to my first day on the job. Pretty soon I’m going to need to breakdown and at least buy a second shirt.

While all of this is going on, I’m still working my other job. I’ve been putting in 11 or 12 hour days for the last 3 months. For the first month I was on the job I spent several hours every night after work and on the weekends getting a better handle on the Access programming environment. The pace was getting difficult to maintain, and the more I worked at my new job, the less enthusiasm I had for my old job. That is to say that there was ever any real enthusiasm there in the first place. My old job was never anything more than a means to an end. The end being the work I do on The Petch House. The job was only about 25 hours a week but it had benefits. Namely, insurance benefits. I can’t be crawling around on a 32-foot ladder in a stiff wind without health insurance. I had to keep both jobs until I started full-time at the new job.

So when was that going to be? Well, I wasn’t really sure. The new company is growing and in the very brief conversation I had with my boss at the end of my 3rd week it was put to me as “Later this year”. I think it’s a budget issue or something. I knew they were serious because there seems to be enough work and they’ve already shelled-out to send to a conference in LA for a few days. They also gave me a new computer, laser printer, and they keep telling me to pick out a new chair from the catalog. It seems I have a new career, but when exactly this is going to become a real, fulltime job is a bit of a mystery. More stress.

Ok, so I’m thinking November at the latest. I can do November. The extra money from working two jobs will be good so I’ll just work my butt off for another 2 or 3 months. And the money is good. Even at only 20 hours a week my paychecks form the new job are the largest paychecks I’ve received since moving to Eureka 7 years ago. Which, to be honest, is no great feat. Eureka is not known for high paying jobs, and to be honest, I haven't worked a 40 hour week in 15 years.

Unfortunately there were a few complications. Earlier this year I had gotten a new boss at my old job. We got along well at first, but our relationship had been slowly deteriorating. The Monday prior to the Friday when I was offered the fulltime position at my new job, my new boss at my old job called me in to his office and raked me over the coals. As I said, our relationship had really deteriorated and I saw this coming, but still, it was the most humiliating thing I have ever been through. Some of it was deserved, but a lot of it was over the top. One of the things he brought in to question was the full benefits when I was only a part-time employee. We were in there for nearly 2 hours and I was absolutely seething through the whole thing. It took every ounce of strength to keep from walking out the door that very second. I didn’t need the money so much as the health insurance. I can’t be uninsured.

It felt like I was being held hostage by health insurance. When will the good ol’ US of A get its collative head out of its collective ass when it comes to health care in this country? Without health insurance I’m one burst appendix away from being bankrupt. I was now officially miserable in the old job and I loved the new job more than you can believe. Honestly, I feel guilty about my new job. I enjoy the work so much that it just feels odd. I’ve had a lot of miserable jobs in the past. It really didn’t feel right to try and pressure them in to bringing me on fulltime any sooner, so I had to wait it out.

To make matters even worse, through most of this I’m seeing a doctor over some minor medical problems that I won’t go in to. This is the real reason I don’t want to leave the old job just yet. I mean, a broken leg or a burst appendix is always hanging over my head like the Sword of Damoclse, but has anyone actually looked at the cost of a few x-rays these days!? It’s pretty unbelievable what some of these things cost.

As soon as my current medical drama is over with, or at least to a point where it is manageable, I called my insurance agent who wrote my homeowners policy and ask him about short term, catastrophic health insurance. I don’t need drug or doctors visits covered, because I don’t plan on that happening over the next few months. It’s a gamble, but it’s a good gamble. I’m normally very healthy. I just need to cover those unexpected, major problems that may crop up. He says he can write me a 3 month, catastrophic policy for $275. I say fine, let’s do it. As soon as the ink dries I will give notice at the old job and be done with it. The problem is, they won’t cover me because I’ve been to a doctor in the last 3 months. It doesn’t matter if I went in there just to get splinter removed or if I went in covered with boils. No one will write a short term policy for anyone who has been to a doctor for any reason in the last 90 days. Grrrrr! It’s all very frustrating.

So I stick it out at the old job for a few more weeks. I wear two hats at this job. One, I’m an employee and a subordinate of the new boss, whom I don’t get along with. Oh, I should say at this point that he is 10 years my junior and easily a foot shorter than me. In another facet, I am the IT Guy. In this aspect I am a contract employee through a small company I run. And I do mean “small” in the most literal sense of the word. I make as little as a few hundred dollars a month with this business. It did much better at one time, but then I bought this big Victorian home I call The Petch House and…..well, you know all about that. The whole software business sort of took a back seat and I don’t do a whole lot with it these days.

The IT gig with the company is very minor because this is a very minor company. The one real aspect of it is managing a set of hand held computers used by the sales force. There is a desktop application that ties the hand helds in to our accounting software and the whole thing is very buggy. We bought crappy software that came with zero documentation and I’m the only person west of the Mississippi that knows anything about it.

So the day after my managerial reaming by my diminutive new boss I inform him that I will no longer be able to manage the IT duties for the company. This is my shot across the bow to counteract his shot across the bow at me. I tell him he has 6 weeks to find a replacement. I inform him that I will be happy to train the new person on a schedule I decide. At the end of the 6 weeks I can be called upon for emergencies but the new rate will be triple that of the old rate.

This did not go over well. I should say that I have always gotten along well with the owner of the company (remember, he gives me full benefits for a part-time job) and this is the only reason they got 6 weeks to find a replacement. The owner is out of the country while a lot of this is going on. Just when I thought my relationship with my new boss couldn’t get any worse it took a nasty turn.

Since the owner was out of the country, either my new boss did not feel he had the authority or he didn’t feel capable to hire a replacement for me. As the clock ticked he saw that he was going to need to learn the system and he started to ask (Demand?) that I train him. I was suddenly very busy and scheduled training that was inconvenient for him. This did not go over well at all. Our relationship deteriorated to the level of 8 year old boys fighting over a toy. It came down to a childish battle of will where he was trying to impose an authority over me that he didn’t have. Remember, as the IT guy I’m not his employee.

I came in to the office one afternoon and he was sitting in front of the computer I normally use. He had the desktop software loaded. He had a notepad ready to take notes. He told me I needed to train him on one of the modules of the software. I told him I had a prior engagement and I would be available anytime between 6 and 7 am and I needed 24 hours notice. With that, I turned and walked out of the office. I could hear him grinding his teeth behind me.

The next morning we had a knock-down drag-out argument about the whole training thing. He went ballistic and so did I. Later that afternoon I wrote him a letter informing him that I would not be training him at all on any of the systems in the office. (In all of my written correspondence with him I am nothing but perfectly professional). I quoted several of his emails to me outlining why I would not be able to continue a working relationship with him, and I paraphrased some of his more insulting comments to me in our most recent argument.

The next day he catches me as I’m about to leave for a sales call. He drags me in to his office. He has his Bible with him. He accuses me of libel and demands that I give him a written retraction of my letter. While this is going on, the production manager and the head of the maintenance crew are also in the office. The production manager is the man that gave me the curly redwood fence posts over the summer. We’ve always gotten along very well. In fact, I’ve always gotten along very well with almost everyone I’ve worked with there.

I listened to my bosses diatribe for a less than a minute and then said, in response to his demand for a written retraction, “That won’t be happening”. I then turned to the production manager and told him it’s been a pleasure working with him. He wished me luck, and I walked off the property. I bought $300 a month insurance policy to hold me over until my 90 day, doctor-free period is over. In October I can get the $100 a month limited policy, and maybe by November I'll be fulltime at the new job.

The best part is, two weeks later the system at my old job starting having problems. They quickly hired a new guy and brought me back in to train him. Because the 6 weeks had elapsed my new fee was now being charged. The new guy is one of these hired gun tech people who is probably charging even more than my new fee. The whole thing was so stupid.

This was, without question, the most bizarre working experience I’ve ever had. To celebrate that the whole thing was finally over I went and bought a new car. Well, actually, it’s a 2003, but its new to me. I really tried to buy one that day that I walked off the job. I just really liked that juxtaposition of walking off a job I’ve held or 5 years and then buying a new car. Unfortunately it took another week to find that car I wanted.

I bought a VW GTI VR6. Picture a small, blue rocket ship with power-leather-heated everything. I’m keeping the Boss 1971 Ford F-100 Custom Camper Special for dump runs and what-not, but it’s no longer my daily-driver, and it’s about time. I bought the car, not only to celebrate the ending my last job, but also because of finishing the last major project on The Petch House. There is still a lot to do, but bathrooms, kitchens, plumbing, wiring, and other big expensive projects are out of the way. It feels good.

So, if all of that weren’t enough there was actually something else going on that I really don’t want to talk about on such a public forum as my blog. There is another reason why I haven’t been writing on the blog so much lately. Don’t let your imaginations run too wild, because its not like I was knocking over liquor stores and on the lamb for the last 3 months. Maybe someone will let me do a guest post on another blog and I can tell that story as well.

I’m not quite to a point where I can begin to do regular postings again, but I do want to start writing at least something. I really miss the blog. And I have been getting some stuff done on the house, despite my chaotic schedule and my psychotic boss. I do have blogging material, I just need to get some sort of rhythm back to my life.

Painting Outside

Well, the old bathroom is officially off the radar screen for now. I just need the marble for the corner cabinet, but that’s going to wait. I’m now moving back out side to finish up the house painting that I didn’t finish last year.

Last year I worked on painting the house for almost 7 months, with a few side jobs thrown in (Pimp My Fridge!). I scrapped everything to bare wood and then painted with 5 colors, doing one coat of primer and 2 top coats. I ran out of weather though, and never painted the skirting. So it’s past time to do that.

I’m not scraping to bare wood this time. It’s just the skirting. Today I spent about an hour scraping off loose spots and pulling old nails and hooks that were used for various cables and wire. When I bought the place, the outside was streaming with phone and cable TV wires. It was an absolute rats nest of wires encompassing the house.

I’ll work my way around the house scraping and pulling. Once that is done I’ll sand a section at a time. I think I’ll probably end up doing the skirting in 6 or 8 sections. I’ll sand and clean with 100 psi compressed air. Then prime and paint. I’m not a big fan of the power washer. Wood, water, and paint just don’t mix in my book. True, I could wait to let the wood dry out first, but what’s the point. Why use a power washer and then have to wait. The compressed air cleans the wood very nicely after sanding.

Anyway, sand, blow, primer, paint. There will be some puttying in there some place. I think I can get it done in 3 to 4 weeks, which means 6 to 8 in reality.

Raising The Bar

No, I haven’t died, and I have been getting some stuff done, just not that much. The bathroom is so close to being finished it’s not even funny. Well, I guess it is a little funny.



I got the door stripped, painted, and hung and it came out really nice. It looks really good, but it also opens and closes really well. The latter is not always a given when I hang a door. This one closes effortlessly. The catch works smoothly and the little deadbolt thingy works smoothly as well. Not too bad for a bunch of 100 year old stuff that was ready for the trash heap.







I had some left over parts for the bathroom and I was able to trade a beautiful matching set of period sink and tub faucets for the items seen above. There is a 1-inch diameter glass towel rod, a robe hook, and a tub mounted soap holder. It was a fair trade and gave me the last remaining little things I needed to make the bathroom more complete.

There are only 2 things left to do and the bathroom will be absolutely finished. I need to put the shelves in the medicine and the get the marble for the corner cabinet.

I stripped the paint off the shelves and sanded them down but now I can’t find them. Over the past few weeks I’ve searched a few times for them and I just can’t find them any where. I’m willing to bet they are in a pile of scrap lumber some place. I’m sure they will turn up in a year or two, but I can’t really wait that long. Tomorrow I’m going to get a few glass shelves made. I was going to make wood ones, but I think with the new glass towel bar, the glass shelves will look nice.



That just leaves the marble for the corner cabinet. I need two pieces, one for the bathroom cabinet and the other for the small cabinet that I still need to build for the little mud room just outside the bathroom. For some reason I’ve gotten it in my head that it’s best to get both pieces of marble cut at the same time. I still need to make the other cabinet though, so it could be a few weeks or months until I can stick a fork in the bathroom and call it done. It’s very close though - Tee-Hee.

There’s Only So Much…

There was an episode of the Simpsons where Homer complained that his brain could only hold so much. The conversation between him and Marge went something like this…

Home: It’s like my brain can only hold so much. Every time I learn something new I forget something old. Like that time I learned how to make wine in the bathtub and then I forget how to drive a car.

Marge: You forgot how to drive because you were always drunk on homemade wine!

No, I haven’t started making wine, and I haven’t forgotten how to drive either, but there does seem to be a limit of the number of creative things I can do at one time. There are a lot of things going on right now in my life and they require not only more of my time, but also more physical energy, and more of my creative energy as well.

There seems to be only so much I can do at one time and the blog is not one of those things. I could find the time to write a paragraph or two about what I’m doing around the house, but it would be little more than that. To be honest, what I’m doing right now is not very blog worthy.

I have another few months of this and then I will get back some of my life. Until then, posts are going to be few and far between. I did get a few very nice emails about Mort. I’m sorry I didn’t respond to them, but I do appreciate them.

Two Weekends, Two Doors

Doors really take a lot of time. Last weekend I put a new front door on one of the rental units. If you include the time it took to purchase the door and paint it, the whole thing took me 5 or 6 hours. Granted, I’m not the speediest worker in the world, but doors are a lot of work. You must mortise hinges and install locksets, and of course they never fit perfectly the first time. There is always some trimming or shimming that needs to be done. It didn’t help matters that the apartment was on the second floor.

This weekend I turned my door hanging attention back to the bathroom. I’ve been working on this door for a good 3 or 4 weeks now. The door was in reasonably good shape, given its age, but it still had some issues. The main issue was the paint. It had to all come off. There was a lot of it and it was chipping pretty bad. I’m really not in to the whole shabby chic thing.



The only other issue with it was one of the panels was cracked. It was right along the edge and it was a pretty clean break so I filled it with some poly urethane caulk. The wood on the panels gets very thin where it meets the rails and styles of the door. There really wasn’t much to glue. Plus, it would have been hard to get the glue in there and get it to stay while it set.

Once I got all of the pant off it came time to hang it. Naturally, the old hinge mortises on the door did not match up with the old hinge mortises on the door jamb I reused. Not that I expected them too, but one can hope. It’s probably just as well, because no doubt the screw holes would have been stripped.

And of course, things did not quite match up. This is a 100+ year old door being hung in an 80+ year old door jamb that was reused and installed by an armature carpenter. I really never expected the door to fit on the first try and it didn’t. It wasn’t too bad. A few minor trims later and the door was swinging effortlessly on its reproduction steeple tipped hinges.



I decided to get classy with the door knobs considering the bathroom came out so classy. I’m not sure where I got these. They probably came on one of the doors I bought some place. You can see the image of the old face plate. I’m not sure if that big oval style pre-dates my house or if it came later.



I also added a little deadbolt type lock. This was an Ebay purchase. Next will be to remove all of the hardware, take the door off the hinges, and paint it. I want to clean the door knobs and face plates as well. It probably won’t be until Wednesday or so when I get it back up, but this puts me one giant step closer to finishing the bathroom.

Not Long For This World

Ok, so the title is a bit dramatic, I'll admit, but Mortimer was diagnosed with Feline AIDS yesterday. The doctor says he could have several more good years ahead of him. Still, it's a bit sobering.

Mort has had this ongoing respiratory infection for the last 6 months or so. We've tried a few different antibiotics and the symptoms seem do go away for a little bit but they come back. He just can't shake it. This is what prompted the FAIDS test. He does not have leukemia, so that's good news.

He has a deep ear polyp and the doctor speculates that that could be the source of the infection. Then again, it may not be. There is a surgical procedure for removing the polyp, but no one around here does it. He is in no pain because of it, and we decided that given his age and condition it's not worth the trauma of putting him through a surgery that would require so much travel and time.

I often question putting cats through traumatic surgeries that require a lot of recovery. It's easy to anthropomorphize them and forget that they are not human. Even if they come out of it healthy there can be a psychological aspect that is hard to quantify.

I always think back to a cat we had when I was a kid. He was hit by a car and we opted for major surgery to save him. This required a long period of confinement for recuperation. The poor cat was just never the same after the whole ordeal. I was a kid at the time, and didn't think much about it then, but in retrospect, I don't think the heroic efforts were the right way to go with that cat.

I've already made the decision that I won't let Mort suffer and there will be no surgeries in his future. He has had a very long and difficult life, but the last 5 or 6 years have been very good for him. It doesn't seem right to put him through something that he may see as torture just so I can spend a few more months or years with him. When I feel the time has come, I'll put him to sleep.

When I first started the blog I wrote about how I met Mortimer. I wasn't really sure what to write about at the time, so Mort seemed like a good topic. I mentioned how he runs up to my truck every day when I get home from work. He still does it. Sometimes when I tell people this they say he only does it because he's hungry, but I know that's not it.

It doesn't matter how many times I pull up in a day, or how hungry or full he his, if he sees me pull up he runs out to the truck and greets me. It seemed like a good time to get this on video so I took my camera with me to work today. I wasn't worried that this might take several tries to get the shot. He does it every time rain or shine.