Don't Look Up!

Listening to The Dogs "Rot And Roll" (Iowa), not to be confused with The Dogs (Detroit), The Dogs (Chicago) or Dogs (France).


The ceiling in our soon-to-be-finished office has been nagging me. This room has not been painted since we moved in and I noticed a few patches of ugly flaking paint here and there. I didn't worry about it too much thinking I would simply scrape the flakey paint off, spackle if needed, and paint as usual.





Those pesky mulitple layers of paint had finally been eradicated from the molding/doors/baseboards, and it was time to start painting. Of course, the ceiling of a room is the thing you paint first so it was time to prep and paint. A simple job. Loose paint should be totally removed before repainting. I climbed up the ladder with my trusty paint scraper and proceeded to remove all the flakey ceiling paint. I scraped and scraped and scraped some more and to my horror this flakiness stretched much farther across the ceiling than I had imagined. I ended up removing more than a couple of layers of ceiling, and about 1/4 of the entire ceiling span. My heart sunk as more and more of this crap scraped off and fell to floor. But the worst was discovering the drywall underneath was discolored and brown from water damage that happened who knows when. It looked like we were going to have to replace entire ceiling.



The drywall beneath had been damaged by water and painted over at some point before we bought the house. We have never had a water leak and the roof is only a couple of years old so obviously this damage happened awhile ago. The stained ugly drywall stared down at me. How depressing. But, hey, it seemed to be intact and strong. Then Dan and I went snooping around in the attic to see what was going on on the other side. Under the insulation we found water stained drywall, but it was bone dry, strong and intact. No mold, no dampness at all. And no evidence of recent leaks! This is good. We happily decided we wouldn't have to replace the drywall and we could salvage the office ceiling with a little patching and sanding.





I decided to patch the bald spots I had scraped into the ceiling with simple premixed spackle. Done, but not very fun while standing on a ladder, with your arms over your head and your head wrenched all the way back so you can see what your doing. Ouch, neck cramps. No wonder Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel while lying on his back on a scaffold.






After drying for 24 hours I tackled the sanding portion of this job. We have a hand held power sander, and with large grit sandpaper smoothing out the dry spackle wasn't too bad - with the exception of almost going into respiratory failure by breathing in all that dust. I should have worn a mask, but I am really lame sometime and I didn't. I also did not take pictures of myself covered in white powder.


Now with the new ceiling spackle all nice and smooth, I slapped on a couple of layers of Kilz primer.


And here is the ceiling after painting! Finally done! My ceiling is no Sistine Chapel, but it looks pretty great. Here, too, is a little sneak peek of the dark gray walls.

And here is a picture of my honey changing out the a/c outlets. He wasn't having too much fun but dang if he did get 'em all done!

Unhinged!

Anvil at Emo's next Monday! Heavy Metal heaven!

I am happy to announce more progress on our office overhaul. After Dan got 30 layers of paint off the doors, and after I got those same layers off the doorway moulding and baseboards it was time to think about re-hanging the doors. And what better to use than the original hinges? They are perfectly good, and original so already fit the existing screw holes and cuts. No need to patch or fill old holes!

However, and of course, there was a problem: just like the doors and moulding, the hinges were covered with 30 layers of paint. It had to come off. We could have bought new one's but we would rather reuse what we have, and at 10 bucks per new hinge why spend the money? Instead, we spent 8 bucks on a can of paint stripper, soaked the 4 hinges in the stuff, and scraped off all those old layers of paint.


Please note - a person should always wear rubber gloves when using paint stripper. If it can dissolve paint it can certainly dissolve skin, so be careful with this toxic chemical! I learned a little something about rubber gloves: when using paint stripper wear chemical resistant gloves! I am serious! The paint stripper totally ate holes in my regular rubber gloves which I painfully discovered when the gloves bubbled up and corroded in front of my eyes, while still on my hands, and I got that stinging, icy, burning sensation from the stripper. After removing the now useless gloves and washing my hands really well with soap and water I switched to chemical resistant gloves for the rest of the job. You do not want this crap on your skin.

The paint stripper worked really well to break down the paint. I scrubbed the hinges with a wire brush and hit them with a bit of steel wool leaving them clean and paint free. I did get new screws : 1 inch #10's, because even though I am pretty cheap thrifty and like to reuse stuff I was not about to strip the paint off all those old screws.


Now, this little project would never have had to happen if some previous occupant of our house had not painted over the hinges in the first place. Do yourself a favor: when painting a door don't paint the hinges! Take a couple of minutes and remove them first. Your welcome.

I like to paint doors while they're hanging because I can paint both sides at the same time. If you paint a door while it's laying on top of a table, for instance, you can only paint one side at a time, then you have to wait for it to dry, turn it over and paint the other side, and if you have to do 2 coats it takes even longer. When you paint a door while it's hanging you cut your paint time in half. But first, I always paint the door jam and the edge of the door where the hinges screw in so I can hang the door and not have to fool around with taping off the hinges and painting around them. See this picture, below, of the painted door edge before applying the hinges. Also notice how Dan got that door all the way down to bare wood (!!!) by stripping and sanding with a belt sander. The doors look great!




And here is a picture of the door jam hinge, all ready to go. Fits perfectly.


So, the doors are hung and ready to paint! Yippee!

Here are a few more pictures, below, of the paint stripper in action on the office windows. I removed as much paint with the heat gun as I could, but I didn't want to get too close to the glass with a 4 million degree heat gun blast (it would be just my luck that the windows would crack), so I used stripper on the sashes where the window glass sits.

Coming Up: The old leaky ceiling problem!

CAT-SICLES!

Hope the new year is treating everyone well so far. We are still working on the office re-vamp...I've mentioned before that Dan and I work reeeally slow, plus a few weird obstacles have arisen during the seemingly endless job to make it feel like we'll never get done....so, I haven't posted for 6 weeks, not that I've been sitting around doing nothing! We have been quite busy working on the office, and got through the holidays unscathed.

But anyway, today I want to address certain things we deal with as the lucky guardians to a few feral cats who live in our yard. It was freezing a few nights last week with really cold days in the 30's (weird for Texas), and now it's raining, so we have been more than slightly concerned about these homeless felines. These kitties are the less fortunate "outsiders", as we call them. They are all feral cats who came with the house when we bought it. Our neighborhood was jumping with feral cats so some of the neighbors and I systematically rounded them all up, got them spayed/neutered and in most cases adopted. Since these cats were already here when we moved in, and since this was their home before it was ours, here they stay, and here we are taking care of them to the extent that they let us.

We have been worried for awhile about how to keep them warm during the winter. We have tried baskets, boxes rigged with plastic and blankets, and tarps to keep wind off the porch (the porch seems to be a favorite hang out). Last year we discovered the Mylar pad. This thing radiates body heat so when a cat (or a cold human butt) sits on it it gets warm. It seems to work pretty well with a couple of blankets to make a little cat nest. There is usually some kitty sleeping here day and night when the weather gets cold. We also have a regular pet basket with a sheepskin pad in it, also usually occupied. But this year we decided to go higher tech and we found this amazing product:

This thing is called a Snuggle Safe. It kind of looks like a big hockey puck with some kind of goo inside it. Throw this baby in the microwave for 5 minutes, put it in the kitty nest, and you will have a warm and happy cat for up to 24 hours. Below, see it in it's flannel paw print cover with the kitty bed blankets that are on the porch love seat.

This certainly isn't as great as having a nice cozy indoor chair or bed to curl up on, but it seems to do the trick pretty well and I'm glad the cats are using it.

Now, without further ado, may I present the Outsiders:

This is Onions. His name used to be Balls, but after he was fixed he needed a name change. Dan named him Onions and the name just somehow stuck. Balls was a tough, beat-up street punk who is probably the sire of all the cats in Texas. Once mean, skinny, and miserable, he is doing much better by simply getting fixed and being fed regularly. He's probably about 10 years old but has had a pretty rough life leaving him blind in one eye and with bad teeth. We attempted to catch him and take him to the vet but that didn't get very far! He looks pretty happy on the Snuggle Safe in this picture:

This is Calpurnia. She is calico, hence the name, aren't we so clever. She is a small female, very sweet. She was probably someones pet at some point because she's pretty friendly, and is so cute I can't imagine someone not wanting her, let alone leaving her to fend for herself. She is probably around 8 years old. Someday we hope to lure her into the house and make an honest woman out of her.

Then there is this poor guy, the latest cat who appeared in the yard yowling like a siren, looking for food and a sponsor. We named him Carlo after the freeloading "artist" in the movie "Our Man Godfrey" (great movie..if you haven't seen it you should). He is some kind of weird Persian/Siamese mix, with crossed-eyes. I like Carlo but he doesn't trust people at all and keeps his distance at feeding time. His fur gets a little matted but there is no way in hell he'll let us near him, so sometimes he looks pretty ratty. Too bad, he could be quite handsome if he was cleaned up a little. You can see him hiding in the bushes if you look close.

So there you have them. Although these cats are not actual "pets" we do consider them to be part of the family. We are die hard cat lovers and really if we don't keep an eyeball on them I don't know who will, especially in our dog crazy neighborhood.

I love dogs, too, but I love cats more.

Like A Trip To This Islands: Tropical TV Lounge!

Listening to The Arteries....fantastic UK punk that will rock the hell out of you!

I have not posted for 2 weeks because I have been busy with our office re-vamp and have not finished it yet, of course. We tend to work reeaallly slow but I will post the office makeover when it is totally done and you will be absolutely amazed! Until then I thought I'd share our Tropical TV Lounge.

The hula dancers and guitar player, below, are cake decorations. You get your inspiration where you can!

I am not crazy about tv's in living rooms or bedrooms. I know many many people disagree with this but I find a tv in the living room to be a big ugly black hole that grips your brain and sucks you in, and it's always a design challenge. The best solution I have ever seen for a living room tv was placing the tv in a no-longer-used fireplace. This is smart because an unused fireplace is a big black hole in itself. This is a good solution. And if you have one of those videos or dvd's of a roaring fireplace fire to pop in so much the better....it's almost like having a working fireplace without all the mess! Additionally, a tv in the bedroom is forbidden in my book. I like our bedroom to be a quiet, calm and relaxing place for winding down and maybe reading before falling off to sleep. I cannot sleep with blue tv light and all that blaring noise.

But I do like tv, and Dan likes tv...I just don't want it in my face. We decided that one of the 3 bedrooms in our house could be turned into a tv room/guest room. We have some Hawaiiana collectable stuff that we wanted to get out of boxes and display, so voila, we created our TropicalTV Lounge!

The first thing to figure out was our color scheme and furniture. The typical Hawaii beachy colors that came to mind are greens and blues, but we thought that color pallette would be a little cold for a lounge-y vibe. So we looked to our collection of tiki mugs for color inspiration. They are mostly brown, yellow and tan. We thought of the colors of driftwood, sand, palm trees, flowers and natural fibers. Our color pallet choices became yellow, brown and green with pops of red and orange.

We chose a warm gold for the walls: Behr in Soft Gold. And we wallpapered one wall with a warm toned grassy wallpaper. Dan and I had never put up wallpaper before but it was really pretty easy with the two of us and with Dan's long wing span. We measured the height of the walls, and cut it 2 inches longer. The wallpaper was pre-pasted so all we had to do was dampen the back with water and a paint brush, position it on the wall, and smooth it down with a big sponge to get all the air pockets out. We trimmed the top and bottom edges with a razor blade. Very easy and we think it adds some nice grassy texture and interest to the wall.

We wanted some kind of tv stand that would also give us storage for our dvr, cable and dvd equipment. We wanted some glassed in shelving to display all out tiki mugs and collectables. We were not real keen on a big entertainment center thing because we find them too big, ugly and $$$. So,we turned as we often do to IKEA. We ended up getting 2 Billy bookcases with glass doors, a cabintet for the tv, and some of those floating shelves for various goodies to live on. The result gives us lots of storage with out the heavy weighed down look of a big old entertainment center.


Here, above, is our IKEA Billy and shelf combo. And here are some of our tiki mugs. And speaking of tiki, if you are ever in San Francisco and want to get a drink with an umbrella in it, climb Nob Hill and go to The Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel. It will be worth it and you will burn a few calories climbing the hills. The Tonga room is way rad, you will like it!

The daybed is also from IKEA and can accomodate a sleep over. The cover is made out of some of that stretchy fleece fabric I snagged at the fabic store. This stuff is great for furniture covers because it's really sturdy, is stretchable, soft, washable, cozy, and comes in a zillion colors and patterns.

I made the drapes. I ordered the fabric from www.hawaiifabricmart.com. They have literally thousands of colors and patterns and are very reasonably priced. If you ever want Hawaiian fabric this is the place to go! They also have a store in Honolulu that I was lucky enough to visit a few years ago (crazy, I bought FABRIC on my Hawaiian vacation!). Drapes are actually pretty easy to make. I measure the length I want, add 10 inches for casings and hems, and double the width I want. Do the simple math, and figure out how much fabric you need. This fabric was 36 inches wide and I ended up buying 11 yards. And I made 2 drapes since there are 2 windows. I lined the drapes with 100% cotton muslin. They turned out great and are washable. And, we got exactly what we wanted, "custom" if you will, for cheap. We added a couple of bamboo shades from Cost Plus to help with the tropical feel we were trying to achieve. The drapery rods were old ones from IKEA that I had laying around. I sponge painted them brown and added some rattan finial things at the ends.

We live in (usually) sweltering Texas and have ceiling fans in almost every room. I like ceiling fans but the existing one in the Lounge was a hideous combo of brass with white blades. UGLY! It was the perfect size and worked great so instead of scrapping it we overhauled it. Dan took it down and I sanded the daylights out of brass, coated it with a couple of layers of white spray paint, and there ya go! All the ugly brass is a memory, and cost us nothing except for a can of spray paint. The glass bulb covers where ghastly, too, but again I could not talk myself into tossing them and buying new ones (especially b/c the new ones I really wanted were $15 clams a pop). I thought about how to overhaul the ugly "tulip" style glass shades and came up with this: I went to a craft store and bought a few sheets of brown and yellow tissue paper and cut it into strips. I took some plain old Elmer's glue, watered it down and applied the tissue strips to the shades with a paintbrush. After it dried I hit it with a couple of layers of clear coat. Now observe the magnificent outcome: they look sort of tortoiseshell-y. Not too shabby for about a 50 cents worth of tissue paper!

These suitcases have been floating around between me and my sister for years. I actually bought the bigger one at the Ashby Flea Market in Berkeley a million years ago for like 5 bucks, when I was going to Vegas for the first time and needed a suitcase. My sister had it for a long time after that and stored all her tools in it. I re-inherited these things and love them so much I thought they would make a nice side table in the Lounge, and give a little bit of the travel vibe to the room. The basket on top houses the remote controls.




The other end table is a jute storage cube that holds extra blankets. I got the lamp at some discount store and thought it would work perfectly in the room because it looks like a big piece of bamboo. The shade is vintage, scored at one of the City Wide Garage Sales here in Austin a couple of years ago. We got a matching pair for $50. (the other is in the attic right now waiting for a lamp to call home).

The Hawaiian prints on the wall are from a couple of different calenders that I was saving, the frames from Joanne Fabrics for really cheap.


The pendant lamp was a birthday present from Dan. There used to be second hand store a few doors down from one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Picante, in Berkeley. I had my eye on this thing for a few months and suddenly it was gone. I was happy to find out it was gone because Dan went and got it for me..it is one of my favorite things.

The Barbie and Ken are ready to luau. I think every house should have a Barbie and Ken.

Dan and I went to Mazatlan about a year ago and found the wood swordfish and marlin at the mercado. We have always liked the fish-on-the-wall look but didn't want the real thing because 1) we do not like dead things on our walls and 2) real marlins and swordfish are endangered. So when we saw these we got them. We had to check them at the airport but they arrived safely.

And of course, record albums. We have a bunch of these and they look just right on the shelves above the tv. Yes, we do still play them. I got the ceramic mermaids from my grandmother who used to work as a painter at the famous Betty Lou Nichols Ceramics in La Habra, California. She told me that these 2 figures were from a line they made for a seafood restaurant in Los Angeles in the 1950's. The mermaids were used to dress up their seafood platters.

















So, there it is, our daily trip to warmer climes! We love our Lounge, especially on cold days like today. Cheers!

We are punk rock martha stewart

Love Gun

The wood trim in our house has about 10 layers if paint on it in every hue imaginable. This is not a happy fact. I can't understand why someone would add yet another layer of paint to woodwork and mouldings that are already so thick with glopped-on paint you can barely see the details of the wood itself. Some people even go so far as to paint over hinges and window locks - this is utter insanity and is the lazy man or woman's way of doing things. Of course, this too is one of the abuses our house was subjected to before we moved in and rescued it. But let's face it: there comes a time when decades of old paint has to be removed. So, any room makeover we tackle entails taking off all door and window hardware, stripping it and reusing it (they just don't make door hinges the way they used to so we try to salvage the originals, 10 layers of paint or not). If we wanted to take the easy way out and do a crap job the woodwork in our house could just be sanded before painting, but we decided that we wanted to get down to the bare wood and start fresh.

Thankfully I discovered an indispensable product that I can not live without. I call it my Love Gun. I kid, it's really called a heat gun. It has changed my life.




It kind of looks like a blow dryer but do not get this thing near your hair - or your skin or anything plastic. This thing gets fiery HOT! It will singe, burn or melt just about everything. So when I use my heat gun I also make sure this is nearby:



Better safe than sorry! And since I was working today with the Love Gun I thought it only appropriate to listen to this:


We are currently re-vamping our home office. The first thing I do when I take on a room is to strip all the baseboards, moulding, windows and doors of the offensive layers of paint. This is not an easy task since this room has 4 double-hung windows and 2 doors, and all that moulding, and all those baseboards. This is not the cheap ugly new crap that you find in newly built houses but rather is old and original to the house, so in keeping with our aesthetic, it must be kept. So, out came my toy, the heat gun.

Here is a shot showing how damn hot this thing gets, and how it bubbles up the many layers of old paint:


Here are a couple of shots of me scraping away the paint. It comes off pretty easily, but keep on the lookout for smoke and sparks! Seriously, I could start a fire if I don't keep my eyeballs peeled.





















This is actually a pretty labor intensive good upper body workout, but it is much easier than sanding! And you will get down to the lovely bare wood.

By the way, the song "Plaster Caster" is pretty hilarious. It's a fact that none of the guys in KISS ever got cast by the famous Plaster Caster herself, Cynthia. They wanted to but she said no dice. She apparently thought they were jerks...imagine that!

And here is an art shot of the door trim that I finished today. Looks nice. Bare wood!





When all the woodwork is stripped I will paint the walls (still planning on going with the goth dark gray Valspar color called "Sled"), and will then prime and paint the mouldings/windows/baseboards/etc with Valspar "Ultra White" high gloss. All the trim in the rooms we have already re-vamped are this color. We figured that since we have gone to all the trouble of removing the million layers of paint we do not want to repeat this exercise in hard labor! So, we will keep it all white, forever, and will only have to touch up the paint periodically. No more pesky layers!

"Plaster Caster (plaster caster)
Grab a hold of me faster (faster faster)
She calls me by the name of Master"....hilarious!



we are punk rock martha stewart

The Dreaded Screen Door Project

Listening to Pretty Maids.

Why are the simplest tasks so often the hardest to accomplish? Why can't a 20 minute project actually take 20 minutes? I ask myself this a lot.

We hired a well-recommended guy to put in a new door on our cottage apartment, and had him put in the screen door as well while he was at it. The old metal door was ugly and dented and had to go, but we were a little freaked out about putting in a new frame and door because 1) we didn't know how to do it and 2) if it isn't done just right it won't close and will come off the hinges. This is why we hired a guy to do it in the first place.

So, the door went in without too much trouble, but the way this guy installed the screen was ridiculous. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It was not flush, did not close well, and the latch didn't line up. It was verging on falling off when I realized that it had to be re-installed the right way. The new door and frame seem to be ok but so often if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself.

Here is a picture of the door before I re-installed the screen. I got a thing for aqua colored doors and black trim..

Putting in a screen door is pretty easy. We put them in on the front and back doors of the house with no problem, but this one was another story.
Normally a screen door fits into a door frame easily if you get the right size. This screen door was the right size but it didn't sit flush against the door jam. It stuck out about 1/2 inch and there was no way to put on the hinges. Check out this picture and you will see what I mean. Notice how the screen door sticks out? It should be flush.






I thought about this for a couple of days and here, right, is my solution:
I screwed a piece of wood 1/2 inch thick to the door jam resulting in a flush surface, and that means flush installation of the screen door!


















Here is the screen door with the hinges. The damn thing actually worked! And painted black it's hardly noticeable.










But let's not forget that I never get off easy with any project. I found that the screen door had a little sticking problem resulting in having to give it a swift kick to get it open. I thought about this for awhile and remembered that I am the owner of plane! So, down came the door again, out came the plane, and with a little elbow grease the sticking problem is but a memory.

A little sanding and a paint touch up and the door was ready to hang for real this time.

I then installed one of those door closer things: very easy per the instructions that come in the package. I did a little measuring, drilled a couple of holes in the door jam and a couple in the screen door and, voila, the door closes all by itself with out banging. It is pretty cool. Then I added a hook lock and a handle.


























And here it is, all done, finally. All in all, this re-install took about 5 hours....that's 4 hours and 40 minutes longer than I thought it would take. I kid, but seriously when the weather is as nice as it has been lately I happily turn off the AC and open up all the windows and doors and enjoy the fresh allergen air of Austin - with screens, of course, I am not crazy...this is Texas after all where we grow the biggest mosquitoes in the country. Aaah, fall elm!








We are punk rock martha stewart