New Projects

Want to see the new things I'm doing?

Sorry for the long dry spell – I've been working on several new projects and it's difficult to make myself take the time to write when I want to be doing...

Projects:
A stone & glass mosaic which might end up in a show at the Gallery of Contemporary Mosaics in Chicago (at the Chicago Mosaic School)
A clean up of the back porch and yard (Wes and the bees were part of the backyard urban farming tour, so...)
New shelving in the pantry (ok, it's not really a pantry - it's just this weird cubbyhole at the top of the stairs going from the kitchen down to the basement)
A large planter for the front yard (concrete with glass & stone mosaic)
A public art commission

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First the small mosaic:

Working title: The Long Year.

Some of the materials for the mosaic.

It measures 18" x 11" and is made up of two partial pizzas of smalti, rocks I collected from the river, tumbled stones I purchased at various places, some landscaping stone I picked up (legitimately - from a local stone company) and some glass from Kokomo Opalescent Glass.

Inspiration - all the sorrow and joy life brings you and the strange way you can experience both at the same time.

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The back porch:

 

At our house the porches can get pretty messy... and they sometimes stay that way far longer than we like. Earlier this month Wes & I cleaned the back porch and the back yard. It's so much nicer to sit out there now.

Inspiration - the Backyard Urban Farming Tour - Wes & the bees were part of the tour...

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The rebuilt pantry:

This may not look like much - but if you'd seen the old shelves you would simply be amazed...

Inspiration - not being able to find anything and the ugly-gross old shelves...

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The Planter:
This has been dominating my front room for a month now...

Planter - 48" x 80" x 16"

I'm waiting for more fiberglass mesh - it's ordered and should be here sometime next week. I also need to find a place to get some concrete additive for accelerating the curing/adding strength.

The foam armature/base is made up of FoxBlocks reinforced with 1/2" rebar. The entire planter will be wrapped in the fiberglass mesh (most of it is right now) and nailed. Then it will have layers of concrete and mesh and concrete added until the concrete is around 1/2 - 3/4" thick. Once the concrete work is done I will mosaic it.

Inspiration - the prickly pear cactus that grows so well in Minnesota...

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And, finally the public art commission which merits a post of its own...

22 Below Zero

On this past Thursday it reached 22 below zero just before dawn. Our high that day was 4 below zero. While not quite a record, it was pretty damn cold. We spent the day doing two of Minnesota's favorite things - remarking on how cold it gets and congratulating ourselves on how well we do when it gets that cold.

Friday was when it all hit the fan, though...
Read more...

Friday evening after work Abelisto & I stopped by the shoe store where I purchased a pair of Timberline hiking boots since my Asolo boots don't fit since the foot surgery - well, it's not so much that they don't fit, but rather that the tongue of the boot presses right on the scar on the top of my foot, making it really uncomfortable to wear them. I am saving them to see if someday the scar will be less tender and I can wear them again. The Asolos are a really heavy pair of hiking boots and I would love to wear them again in the future. Anyway, after shoe shopping (always a taxing event since I have a hard time finding shoes that fit) we went out to dinner stopping on the way home at a new recycled clothing store here in Winona.

When we got home we discovered that the washer was not working. We have one of those computerized front loading LG washers that control water and wash time based on how much you put in the washer. It has a LED display that tells you what the problem is if there is something keeping the washer from working. The panel was flashing a code I had never seen before and instead of looking it up on the handy guide (which is conveniently magnetically attached to the side of the washer) I simply popped the door open. Out poured around 20 gallons of soapy water - right onto my new boots.

This was how I discovered that waterproof Timberlines are, in fact, waterproof.

I quickly shut the washer door, but actually at this point the water was below the door level and wasn't going to pour out any more. We found the shop vac and cleaned up the water mess and decided that since it had been warmer that day we would let it go until morning and see if it would thaw out. We also discovered that the waterline to the dishwasher was frozen too.

During the night Abelisto woke up smelling smoke. He got up and went over the house from top to bottom, and not finding any reason to be smelling smoke, tried to get some more sleep - but never managed to fully get back to sleep.

When we got up Saturday morning there was still some strange water issue in the kitchen and laundry room. Before I had much time to think about it the telephone in the front room rang. It was the land line phone - all our friends usually call us on our cell phones, so I figured that it was the usual telemarketer and didn't make a serious attempt to get to it before the voicemail answered it.

As I got to the phone I heard the head of the maintenance department at work leaving a message telling me that a waterline in my building had burst overnight and the office was affected. He also mentioned two other people whose areas are in the part of our offices that are across a rather wide hallway. I thought he probably was just calling everyone in the office, but that the damage was really in the offices across the hall. Besides that, I had water issues at home to deal with.

We went to Menards and picked up two ceramic space heaters. We put the insulation that one of the cats had torn down back up in the basement window, plugged the pipe heater back in (neither of us remembered unplugging it), and placed a space heater in the basement room with the pipes and in the laundry room.

All of a sudden we smelled smoke again. I was fairly certain it wasn't the space heaters, but we went on a search of the first floor of the house and the basement.

We found a gruesome sight. Sometime during the bitter cold of the week, a starling had come down in the chimney vent for the water heater. It must have been drawn to the warmth. It found itself in a bad situation, though, when the water heater turned on and hot gas fire exhaust came rushing up the chimney. The bird's struggles had lifted the chimney duct pipe off of the water heater - it almost escaped death, but not quite.

It actually was good that we found this - having the chimney vent almost knocked off could have given us carbon monoxide poisoning.

A bit later it seemed that the water lines were thawed. I had tried turning on the washer and it immediately started pouring water into the washing compartment. This washer has water saving controls and it never just pours water in. Even when I turned it off the water still came in. Abelisto and I pushed the washer sideways a bit so that we could reach the water valves and turned them off. By the time we got that done, water was pouring out onto the floor again so I got the shop vac and sucked it all up as well as sucking out as much of the water in the washer as I could.

At this point I figured that the washer's inlet valves had been frozen and were likely toasted. So I packed up all the wet soggy clothing and towels, and all the rest of the unwashed laundry and headed off to a Laundromat. Since I was out and about I drove by the university to check out the burst pipe scenario and discovered that my desk was part of the flooded area, but my coworkers were taking care of it, which was a good thing since it only took a few minutes of being in the room to trigger an asthma episode. The dissolving ceiling tile, or the debris or something was off-gassing some chemical that had my airways tight in no time. The water had splashed all over my laptop and new, 22" auxiliary monitor, but they both seemed to work alright.

I left my coworkers cleaning things up and went to do the laundry.

When I got home Abelisto mentioned that the furnace did not kick on during the entire time I was gone. We usually have our thermostat set around 60 degrees to save energy, but we had turned it all the way up earlier in hopes of helping to thaw out the frozen lines. At this point the temperature in the house was around 45 degrees so I went down and tested the fuses. None were blown so we called a service company.

Three and a half hours later we had heat. We also had $600.00 less in our checking account. It turned out it was mostly our own fault - if you don't change your furnace filters regularly it causes the blower motor to run harder which overheats the circuit board which will, in time, fry the furnace's computer.

While waiting for the service man to get the furnace fixed we decided to run the dishwasher and do some cleaning up. I was filling the sink and washing counter tops. Abelisto loaded and ran the dishwasher. I noticed that the sink drain bubbled up when the dishwasher kicked into rinse, but did not think much about it.

We stopped to make supper and I worked on the mosaic and finished cutting the tile order into sample-sized sheets of tile. Abelisto worked on his lecture for Monday and did some grading while I played with cutting glass tiles and building a jig for cutting better triangles from the 3/4 inch glass tiles.

At some point I went back in the kitchen and discovered that there was water pouring out of the washer AGAIN. Once more we got the shop vac and sucked it all up. I could not figure it out. We had turned off the water valves. I thought perhaps they weren't closing all the way, but that did not seem right since we didn't hear water coming in. I thought perhaps it was just trickling in.

I decided to open up the drain trap on the washer to completely drain any water that was in it. This, of course, made another mess which we sucked up again. This time, I was lazy and poured it down the sink instead of taking it outside and dumping it out.

I was sucking up the water on the kitchen floor (I did not do the best job lifting up the shop vac and some of the water missed the sink) when I realized that water was coming out of the washer drain trap again. Suddenly I knew what our problem was. Frozen drain.

I went downstairs to trace the drain pipe. I found a place where one of the cats (it was Finn) had pulled down the insulation from a window in the basement. This window was missing a pane and last summer when Finn decided he simply must be an outside cat we had half-heartedly covered it up with a board and leaned an old door over it to keep Finn from pulling down the board (the basement walls are old sandstone and mortar, no way to nail anything up to hold in the board). I had meant to fix it, really, but it slipped my mind. I don't go in the basement much - it makes me have to use my inhaler too much.

Anyway, the door leaning against this botched repair job was channeling frigid air right down the wall and onto the drain pipe. It took ten minutes to insulate the window, secure it with several layers of cardboard pressed into the window framing (another half-assed repair, I know, but I need some concrete anchors and a masonry bit to fix it right and I don't have any right now), and move the space heaters to where they would blow right on the pipe.

Three hours later the pipe thawed and the sink drained.

Repaired the Sag

Although I did not take a before photograph, I think anyone looking at our back porch project now that it is almost finished would agree that a few inches make quite a difference - especially in curb (or backyard) appeal.

On Saturday Abelisto, Nova, Mike & I replaced the old, rotted-at-the-bottom post holding up (or not holding up) the corner of the porch roof. It was quite a process and involved adding sound wood at the bottom of the old post (after we removed it) and using it as the fulcrum for raising the roof (with a pry-bar) the necessary 3 inches to get the new post up under the roof.

Nova is scraping the old paint today and we will possibly paint it all this weekend - if we don't decide to clean the basement instead. It's scary down there...

Catching Up With House Repairs - Porch Construction

Last weekend Nova, Michael, Eli, Abelisto & I began the back porch reconstruction. Nova had torn off all the decrepit screening and rotted wood.

We decided at the last moment to use tongue & groove 1 x 8" lumber for the sides of the porch - mainly because it is more forgiving to work with, and it was on sale at Menards...

We have a bit more to do and then we will haul off the junk and take some photos of the finished porch.

Me using new Sliding Compound Mitre Saw.
Since I was working in the sun so much that day I rigged up a scarf under my hat and wore long sleeves and long pants to protect myself from sun exposure. If you look closely you can see the sawdust flying.

Nova adding siding to the porch.
You can see some of the remedial woodworking that we had to do to correct some of the rotting and shoddy workmanship from the initial porch construction. We will likely end up
painting the entire porch and using indoor- outdoor carpeting on the porch decking.
You can see the corner of Beelandia in the background of this photograph.

Making Decisions

Today I am making decisions - all sorts of decisions.

1. Whether or not to move some websites to SiteGround so that I can use Drupal for CMS
   
   • Magnetic Aesthetic
   • Winona DFL
   • Sustain Winona
     
     
2. What changes need made to payroll items
   
   • deductions & exemptions
   • payroll automatic deposit: how much to which account
   • how long to keep kids on insurance
     
     
3. Priority of house repair tasks
   • ROOF - 1st week in August - $6,500.00 (hired Zane's Roofing)
     
   • Front porch - priority moved from after back porch to before, in order to get it done before roof in August - Some decking, posts, railings, roof joists and decking - $800.00 (us doing labor)
     
   • Back porch - remove screen, replace with lattice, level and paint decking - $125.00
     
   • Side porch - replace screens, add door(s), paint deck and posts & railings
     
   • Finish fence - 5 panels, 6 posts - $180.00
     
   • Landscaping (Mike & Nova for front yard, Mike, Nova, Abelisto & I for back)
   • Cracked plaster (6 spots on 1st floor, 3 on 2nd) - $125.00
     
   • Paint walls - $200.00
     
   • Stain woodwork - $100.00
     
   • Downstairs bathroom - yuk
   • Upstairs bathroom - more yuk
     
     
4. New car or no new car or new-used car - leaning towards putting off this decision until I hear back from EC
   
   
5. Tapestry, or Armor, or Quilt project next

I think that's all that I need to decide on today.

Turning our yard into Beelandia

Beelandia - with Top Bar Hive Metpropolis

Today we did some more fencing. With major help from #2 son, Abelisto & I all but finished the section of the yard we are planning to fully enclose for the bees. It is actually about a third of our yard in all. There is some yard in the front that is not fenced at all, and there will be about the same amount in the back as the fenced portion that will only have a dividing fence between our yard and the next house. We are waiting for people to remove a boat and RV and a dog kennel and a stack of firewood that has encroached into our property over the last couple years. The guy with the boat and RV did ask us, but the dog kennel guy did not and I have no idea whose firewood it is - it just appeared one day while we were at work...

We still have a bit more to do on this enclosure - one section in the front to put up (the post is set in concrete since it was next to the house - and it needs to set for a day or two before we hang a section of fence on it) and the rear gate (which would be immediately to my right as I took this photo). The section of the fence that will be the gate needs trimmed with the skilsaw in order to fit in the space allocated for the gate. We will do these two things one night this week.

Abelisto has already started the digging for the various plantings he has in mind. Once the fence is finished I want to remove the screening from the side porch and build steps from it down to the side walk. Then I want to get some nice chairs for the porch. Not a swing - those things give me motion sickness...

Next - the ROOF!!!

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On the Edge of Anger

Thought I would change the colors on the blog and see if it increased my motivation to blog. How strange it is to feel guilty over not blogging. Add one more thing to fret over. Messy house, bad eating habits, forgetting/avoiding exercise, browsing the net while at work (okay, this one is not a problem, I am supposed to look at websites now and then...), forgetting to check my bank balance before deciding to buy something, Now I can add not blogging to the list.

I am finding myself on the edge of anger more often nowadays. Mostly an unspecific anger which makes it hard to combat. I think it is a number of things:

the kids are being particularly aggravating these days;
the website redesign (at work) seems to be ending up as one giant hurry-up-and-wait project where things are becoming a jumbled mass of other people's agendas and not the team's;
and the fucking housing market fell apart just when we were reaching a point where we might sell this huge house.

I really do feel like it is nearly a sin (and I do not actually believe in sin, per se) to have 3 people living in a 3000 sq. ft. house. This house could house a community of 6 - 8 like-minded adults, or a family of 8, if there were families that big. I guess there are still families that size, but I do not know of any who would buy the house.

Having this much room has given me more studio room, and it is great for gatherings - last fall we had a party with 30 or so people attending and no one said it was too crowded.

Today Abelisto and I did our shopping on the bicycles (first time out on the bikes this spring - that's another thing, this winter seems to be hanging on tooth-and-nail up here in Minnesota, I am so sick of winter), and we saw a man working on the roof of a house near ours. I circled back around and asked him if he did roofs or if he was the homeowner. He said he did roofs on the side and we asked him to come look at ours. We told him about the bees, and the fact that we would only be doing sections of the roof, and he was fine with that. He said he would contact us in about a week to take a look at the roof and give us an estimate. I hope we can afford him, otherwise I will be doing the roof myself. I know I can do it, I just do not know if I want to tackle a job that big.

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