By popular demand

Several regular readers have asked for (demanded) pictures of the house. Here are some, from various stages of progress:

This is the front room, early on, cluttered and full of stuff:



---
In the two bedrooms, previous bozos (owners) had put in asbestos popcorn-texture ceilings. We had them tested, and it was really a very small concentration of asbestos, and it was of a type considered the "better" of the two major types, crystotile, rather than amphibole, which is believed to stay in the lungs longer and therefore result in increased toxicity.

Nevertheless, we decided to drop false ceilings in both of the bedrooms, and seal it off. We went through all the analyses about sealing vs. remediation vs. removal, and decided for overall health concerns, both ours and any workers we'd have coming in to do actual removal, that sealing it off made the most sense.

To do it, we put up 2x4s across the ceiling, and then finished, primed 1/4" plywood:

---
Before dropping the ceilings, we decided to provide a warning for future owners who might be tempted to tear out the ceilings and popcorn:

---
Here is a big whole in the wall from crumbling plaster in the back bedroom that J re-plastered. The plaster-on-lath construction was in remarkably good shape in most of the rooms, but certain parts needed repair.

---
Here is J repairing small holes in the front bedroom:

---
Here is the rear bedroom after extensive painstaking scraping, multiple layers of wallpaper stripping, patching small holes and gouge marks, and cleaning the remaining crap off of the walls. Much of this work was done by A over a not-so-entertaining Thanksgiving visit.

---
Here I am painting yellow onto the walls in the front bedroom. I like to sit down. I tire easily.

---
Here are the rear bedroom walls after being primed with tinted primer (tinted a sort of bluish grey so that the main paint, called Dill Pickle, will go on easier. My conclusion after using four different kinds of primer in different areas is that all primer sucks. I mean, it helps the paint stick better, which is nice, but it sucks, and peels easily, and is generally just a pain in the ass to work with.

---
Here are the beginnings of the abovementioned Dill Pickle, in the rear bedroom:

---
The floors have endured about 93 years of abuse, and here is one example of what the looked like (this in the rear bedroom):

---
Here is me laying the foam underlayment for the laminate flooring, which provides both a moisture barrier, and some cushioning under the flooring (which makes it really pleasant to walk on.)

---
Here is the result of all the hard work of painting and laying underlayment:

---
And here is the front bedroom, with a stack of flooring acclimating to be laid in the front room (a big task, as the front room is 15'x26'.)

---
Here is a glass block wall that I built for the tub/shower. The bathroom is designed in a really peculiar way, with the sink next to the window (on the other side of the glass wall in this photo), then the tub/shower, then the toilet next to the door. It's kind of ridiculous to have it laid out like this, but moving all the plumbing would be a very expensive and in-depth operation which would require a plumber, so we're just making what we have look nicer.

---
And perhaps most importantly, here is the fuel for all this hard work (this is an actual photograph of our fridge at the house, without any special arrangements made.)

---

A story about December 19, 2004

I got a phone call a year ago today from my brother, S., which he has said since he doesn't remember. He called from my parents house and said "I've got some bad news." I had just talked to my mom that morning, about another brother being sick, so I thought I knew what it was. I said, "Yeah, I know, I talked to mom this morning." He replied, "Oh, no, some other bad news." I knew instantly what he was talking about.

My dad had been diagnosed with lung cancer eleven days prior. Bad cancer: staged at least at "IIIb", and according to the pulmonologist, very likely a stage "IV". Even now, talking about the details is difficult. Last night, I laid in bed with my wife until 1am, talking about him, looking up at the ceiling, crying, remembering. I chose to talk about the happy things, the funny memories. The details of the cancer and the death: some are still too raw.

I got to spend several weeks with him in the weeks just prior to his death: J and I went up for Thanksgiving, and it was clear that I should stick around. While numerous medical appointments stand out in my mind, the better memories are sitting in his office, talking, reminiscing, getting information, talking about what he wanted to happen when he died.

A bittersweet, but funny exclamation happened one day, in the midst of a conversation about distribution of ashes. I asked him if he wanted his ashes to be spread anywhere, and after something thinking and some discussion, we came up with two places he wanted: Monterey Bay, where he spent much of his adolescence, and Galway Bay, where he spent much of his imagination as an adult. In response to one or another of these questions about ashes, and who he wanted to be sure was invited to his wake, he exclaimed, "HEY! You're planning MY GODDAMN DEATH, aren't you!?!" We laughed, since, horrifically, that's exactly what we were doing.

Laughing was so important, so therapeutic, especially in those last weeks. We did a lot of it: sitting around in the family room in the house I grew up in along with my siblings, we'd start making a joke out of something or other relating to death, and dying. My dad loved, loved to laugh. My entire immediate family loves, loves to laugh. We still do it, about my dad, when the grief gets to be too much, or even when it doesn't. I was sitting around in that same room, playing poker with three of my brothers, a few months later. My father's ashes were sitting on the table we were using, and S., the same brother mentioned above, said, "Goddammit, c'mon, dad! Bet or call!"

I honestly don't know if all this laughter is to forestall the misery, the grief, of losing a father (a husband, a brother, a best friend) too early, too young. Or some other kind of coping mechanism. Or because he loved to laugh, and we all learned a lot of our laughing skills from him. I hope that a lot of it is the last.

Busy, busy

So, I just got some shit from a disgruntled regular reader, who shall remained unnamed, but who has previously been known in these pages as TGS. The really ironic thing about the aforementioned shit I was dished is that it pertained to my failing to regularly update this blog. This, from TGS, who has put her blog on hiatus! The hypocrite!

As I write this, I'm so damn tired I think I might fal asleep typing. Happily, leonard Cohen is crooning me awake. The snow is falling fairly heavily outside, really only the second real snow of the season.

We've been busting our little butts on the house, and it's starting to really come together. We have both bedrooms close to done: painted, laminate flooring laid, and ready to move stuff in to.

Now we only have a few things to do: the front room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the dishwasher installation, putting in a new toilet, fixing the leak from the current toilet that is old enough to have developed a stalactite in the basement, and on, and on. The joys of home ownership!

I'm just hoping that when I pull out the toilet that I don't find that the leak has damaged the subflooring. That would really, really suck.

The project I most look forward to, and which feels farthest away, is building a little wine cellar in the basement. I'm thinking I'll get to that in about 2026.

Here's a neat map from the BBC about the beautiful trend in South America towards leftist governments. There is hope!

Off to bed now, hoping that I don't fall asleep while brushing with the electric toothbrush.

p.s. Tomorrow will be one year since my father died, both too quickly, and too fast. It gets a bit easier as time passes, but not much.