Sunday, March 29, 2009

I'm baaa-aack

So, I've basically been napping for a month, and the mostly completed dog-cart sprang into being suddenly after a major headache, like Athena.

Not.

I swear remodeling looks soooo easy on the DIY shows. When we bought our house 8 years ago shortly before our wedding I 'guesstimated' a five year renovation plan. Despite being a lifelong conservative there must be some Bolshevik in me as I haven't come close to meeting any five year plan yet. Sigh.

The house had a very large 2.5 car garage. When we moved in I started out putting the McKennawerks in the garage, since it had nice 10' ceilings; but Gen, bless her, kept bugging me to move to the much larger basement area, even though it has a lower ceiling, insisting I would need the room. She was right, of course, as she almost always is. Having the extra floor space was needed. According to McKenna's Shop Law: the workshop always expands to fill the available space. This inevitably left a 25'x 26' garage to do something with.

A few years on we found a beautiful leaded glass front door with side lights and a palladian window at lowe's for $500, one tenth it's list price. It had been returned twice for being too large. When we spotted it on yet another Lowe's run Gen innocently said, "I wonder how much they want for that?" I logically responded, "Waaaay more than we can afford, that thing's at least 3 grand, new." Despite my impeccable logic Gen went off to ask the manager how much. His response was, "If you promise not to bring it, back how does $500 sound?" Score!

Of course, even with 10' ceilings it was too tall, so emergency crash remodel project # 473 rip out 16' steel garage door, frame new opening, and reframe rafters to install a cathedral ceiling to clear the 11.5' palladian window. The decision was made to go with a "morrocan" decorating theme, and in fits and starts we've added storage, a raised section of floor enclosed for a laundry room and half bath, installed a wood burning stove, new wiring, new high "E" windows, ad exhausteum.

But now we've finally gotten close enough to finishing that Gen has declared that she wants one room totally, completely, absolutely, done -- or I walk the plank.

Anyway, to save life and limb I've been putting a lot of time into finishing the "Peacock Room," named for the subject of a huge beautiful stained glass window I brought back from Tijuana. In the course of the last month, between trying to get the dog-cart ready for Kingdom A&S I've been plumbing, wiring, installing track lighting, painting, taping sheetrock, and getting ready to venetian plaster the ceiling preparatory to tiling the floor (the tile has been 'aging' gracefully in storage since about a month after we bought the house--it was on sale at another Lowe's closing sale for about 10 cents/sq.ft.).

On the dog-cart project, much was done, but until about the last 9 days much of it was "more of the same." The second side pole was cut, shaped, steamed, and fortunately didn't split, the wheel hubs dressed, and parts cut for later assembly. Then once laundry room mostly done, and with deadlines fast approaching I declared that since the washer and dryer were once again working I was off to the McKennawerks--hold my calls.

After a marathon of flying sawdust I had only the paperwork left to do, and at the last minute the #&^$ing computer swallowed my file folder of documentation without a burp. S*%#!

Despite having to hand write something totally inadequate on the drive up, and printing out a copy of the blog to this point, I managed a second, so it's on to Kingdom A&S in May, even though the pent went down the toilet.

Now that I can finally breathe again, it's time to transfer all the pics from the camera to the computer, and catch this thing back up. This would be a lot easier if I could touch-type...

Rather than one reaaallly long post that will take me a week to write, tomorrow I'm going to start posting a buncha small, probably disjointed, entries.

See ya,

McK

1 comment:

  1. ahem. Gen (that would be me) went in and started taping the drywall so Gen (me again) could paint the walls. All the rest was simply McKenna's way of generating "excitement" at the last minute because my husband, who I dearly love, is insane.

    I've promised Halla to not let him do this again.

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