As If the Guy Doesn't Have Enough to Worry About

This past August, we went down the cape camping.  It happened to be the same weekend as a big hurricane was passing offshore.  We managed to survive at the campsite without getting soaked or blown away and we decided the next day to go exploring at the beach and see what kind of damage had been done.

First we went to Coast Guard beach, but couldn't get close enough so we went to Nauset beach instead.  When we first got there they weren't letting anyone down on the beach, but eventually we were determined to be trustworthy enough to stay out of the water and we got an up close look at the waves.  There were some idiots trying to surf, but the undertow was so bad, they couldn't make it past the first 20 or 30 feet into the water.  I did get some good pics though.

On second look, I took pictures of these surfers on the NEXT day.  They're still pretty good considering the storm has passed by two days prior.  There were a LOT of surfers.  I had no idea there were so many in Massachusetts.  I never would have figured that we had prime surfing areas here. 

Back to my original story.  The day after the storm started out pretty gloomy, but by noon time the sun was out and it was hot.  We decided to go to the Wildlife Refuge at Monomoy and take a walk along the beach.  The weather was glorious and there were quite a few people out walking.  Now, if you have ever spent time at the beach down the cape, you know there is no escaping the greenheads.  They are flies that are all over the place and their main goal is to land on you and bite.  Hard.  There are boxes all over the place in saltmarshes that are designed to capture these little bastards, but alas on this day, we were being swarmed.  It makes an enjoyable walk almost unbearable.

On the beach I found this cool weather-beaten tree that kids had obviously decorated with ornaments.  It was kind of sweet.  (Click on the picture to see it bigger).

They were all hand-made and had cute sayings like "Summer 2009 with Grandma," or "Happy Birthday Daddy Nelson 2009."  There was no way to tell who made it.  I think it probably started out as one or two ornaments then people just started adding to it.  I spent some time looking at and reading a bunch of them.  Then I found one at the back that needed a closer inspection.

Oh, if only after dealing with bailouts, health care reform, Afghanistan, Iraq and all the other things the president has to worry about he could actually make the flies go away.

I Need to Get Out More

So, John found this link to a site where you can map all the states in the country you've visited.  He's only got about five more to go.  Sadly I've not been around as much.

http://bighugelabs.com/map.php

Pretty cool.  You can check it out here.

I Think I Need a Nap

I've been meaning to post this picture for a while. A few weeks ago, I stopped by the workshop to get my first look at the assembled bed. It was staggering to see it. I'm not sure I can describe what it was like to see the bed all together for the first time. I've seen the individual parts, run my hands countless times over the smooth surface, but nothing quite prepared me to see the whole thing.

John went to Wilmot's last week to see about matching the stain color to the other furniture in the bedroom. I've mentioned Wilmot's in Middleboro before, but they are so awesome they deserve another shout-out. They not only tried about eight different stain mixtures, they tried them all on conditioned wood vs. non-conditioned wood, shellac vs. no-shellac. They even called Zinsser about how to treat the shellac so that a spray on finish will stick to it. Seriously, if you need to buy paint, stain, wallpaper, or flooring and you live in southeastern Massachusetts, you will do well to rememer Wilmot's on Everett Street in Middleboro. They are awesome!

I'm extremely nervous about the finishing portion of this project because we basically only get one shot to get it right. I'm sure we'll be fine, and pretty soon I'll get to take that nap in my spankin' new, fabulous bed!

Good night everyone!

I'm Plastered

These photos are a week late. The plasterer was here over a week ago hanging blueboard and doing the skimcoat. These are some in-between photos (in between the hanging and the plastering). Paint is next. Good thing I've been on vacation.

The closet. Unbelievably, this closet is the same size as it was before the renovation. For some reason, this big space existed behind the teeny-tiny door that was here before. Now, it's going to get all tricked out with fancy hanging devices and big amoir-style doors.

The SMOOTH ceiling. I wish someone could explain to me why people choose those bumpy, impossible to paint ceilings that seem to be in all the new houses now. In my opinion, there is no substitute for a smooth-as-a-baby's-bum ceiling.

Slow and steady wins the race. I hope I finish by Thanksgiving, because I need my dining room back. I got quite a bit accomplished while I've been on vacation these last two weeks, but I'm back to work tomorrow, so I expect that the rate of my accomplishments will slow dramatically. I'll do what I can.

Ready for Plaster

And we have lift off. The new windows are in, the room has been insulated and we are anxiously awaiting the plasterer. By this time next week, hopefully the room will be painted and will start to feel like a regular room again. I went to Wilmott's yesterday and bought the paint (when did paint get so expensive, by the way) and the fabric for the valances has been ordered. Good thing I'm on vacation or this would never get done.

I Have a Lot of Plaster Dust in My Nose

I think I have officially gone off the deep end. The last time we did a "project" I silently vowed that it would be my last. All I wanted was to get some new living room furniture and to paint the living room a color that didn't look like last week's moldy supper that I forgot to throw away. Simple right? Not if you live in my house. John took this as an opportunity to remove the wall between the dining room and the living room because it wasn't done "right." Turns out he was correct, but it turned a relatively simple project into a not-so-simple one that took several weeks to finish.

But I digress. Anyone who knows me knows that my dining room has been reluctantly transformed into my "craft room." If it wasn't supposed to be a dining room, this would not be a problem. I am into paper-crafting and I have a lot of supplies. Turns out, the dining room is big enough to hold all my supplies and it is conveniently situated next to the kitchen which has a tv so that I can watch it while I Create, and has ample counter space to spread my supplies on.

However, as I mentioned, this is actually a dining room. It's not supposed to hold crafting supplies. It's supposed to be used for dining. I caught a break last year from temporarily cleaning it out for thanksgiving because my mother decided to host that instead of me, but this year I feared the worst. Where the heck was I going to put all that stuff so that people would have a place to eat on thanksgiving? The answer: the spare bedroom.

This is one view of the room before its amazing transformation into my new, cool stamping studio. Why is there a big whole in the plaster, you may be thinking? This particular bedroom has walls that are in very poor condition. (I found this out the last time I painted it. Yes, that was me that decided on the bizarre random stripe, and no, I don't know what I was thinking). So I decided that it was time to rip out those old, crappy plaster walls and re-do them with nice, new plaster walls. And while I was at it, I thought it would be nice to replace the old, crappy windows with new, fancy, energy efficient ones. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Construction, or should I say destruction, began this morning. It will not end soon. I live in an old house which means lots of lathes (as you can see in the pic) and lots of horse-hair plaster (hence the plaster dust in my nose). Unfortunately, we only have one level B suit and I didn't get to wear it. I mostly stayed out of here while the destruction was going on, but I did enter on occasion to bundle up and bring out all those lathes. What I was doing in the meantime was stripping the paint off of the trim: windows, doors, baseboards. Yahoo.

I know it will eventually be done, but man, I gotta tell you hauling all that ridiculously heavy plaster debris downstairs and out to the bagster is hard work. One thing that I realized is that I'm not "young" anymore and doing all this hard labor is way harder now than it was ten years ago. My back is killing me and I'm tired of trying to get all that plaster dust out of my nose.

By the way, several years ago we hired a local company to blow insulation into the outside walls because we knew there was nothing there and it would help somewhat with the obscenely high heating bills we were paying. Although I can honestly say we did see some benefit from it, as you can see from this picture, trying to blow insulation into an old house is a crap-shoot. This is blown fiberglass insulation, which is not supposed to settle as much as the blown newspaper type of insulation, but settle it has. Something to think about.

The Mysterious Rash

Let me first begin by saying that I am not a marketing expert in any sense of the word. I am, however, a consumer and like most consumers (and most people, really) I know what I like and what I don’t like. I was searching on eBay recently for anklets and happened on a listing where the thumbnail was intriguing enough that I clicked on it to get a better look.

I really wish I hadn’t. I think feet and ankles are not the most attractive feature on anyone, but this is just wrong. If I made jewelry for a living, I would pick someone with really nice ankles to model my creations. Not someone who is covered in bruises and who has recently gotten over a mysterious rash. I’m just saying.