Fishgirl Speaks

Post-Thanksgiving House Fun

When I moved into this house in 1998, there was a lot of work to do, including shoring up the living room floor which would travel an inch or two when bounced. Since it wasn't posing any immediate problems, it got put off.

Not long ago we noticed a crack in the living room wall (click any picture to enlarge):

Then this appeared in the office (in line with the living room wall):

Hm, guess we better think about fixing the floor.

The house is rather, um, homemade. The substructure is actual 2x4 redwood that is not necessarily well-assembled. Under the living room the 2x4s are just stabbed right into the dirt, and the dirt is quite soft. The living room is also the largest room in the house and eventually became known to our guests as a bit of a trampoline, having tamped down the 2x4s. We took an investigative crawl under the house to confirm what I already knew, and snapped a few pics:

Yes, that's at least an inch clearance between post and beam.

More not-touching supports.

At least this fine piece of support carpentry is still holding up the kitchen. Likely because it's actually standing on concrete:

On the plus side, several years ago I had the house bolted to the foundation (which it hadn't been for 90ish years). Here is one of the custom brackets installed:

This piece is about a foot wide.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we donned our dust masks and crawled under to work. Here's a workout for you: Travel 30 feet prone, using just your elbows and toes, pushing a 20 pound concrete block in front of you. Travel 30 feet back the same, minus the block. Repeat 10 times. 

For each block, we needed to create a level spot for it to sit. If the dirt wasn't super soft, it was hard and rock-like, requiring pick-and-smash action in close quarters.

About 28 hours worth of work later (split between the two of us) and we now have a firm, secure floor. Here is one row of new and improved supports:

And another row:

There were a few more pictures, but they didn't come out very well. The super fine dust, sketchy lighting, and awkward positioning make photography a challenge. But I did drag out a couple of pieces to shoot in the backyard. Witness the state of these "footings":

And for your amusement, some found objects For some reason, there were a lot of salad dressing jar lids.

Shasta soda, Durkee's Famous Dressing and Meat Sauce, and a prescription box for vaginal suppository. What's THAT doing under the house?

Our elbows were pretty much toast after all of that. At least it was a pretty cheap project. Yay!

Weirdness

The school is located in San Jose's Guadalupe Gardens, which are abundant with critters. We love them all. Something, however, started digging into the school. A corner of the changing area is quite close to the outdoors. When we arrived yesterday, there was about a cup and a half of dirt piled against the wall. There is no visible entry on the outside. That means it was coming up from way below. A little ground squirrel Halloween prank?

A few months ago we noticed a crack in the living room wall. It was mildly alarming, but investigating meant crawling under the house on dusty rocks. Not hands and knees crawling either, but elbows and dragging. Naturally, we postponed it.

Last night, Charles called me in to the office where he pointed out more cracks in the corner on what is essentially the same wall as the one in the living room. Guess we can't postpone that investigation anymore.

Also last night, we came home to find the utility sink faucet running. The cats have never done this before. Not in the five years that sink has been there. I can only hope it was only running for a brief time and not the entire day we were gone from 8am to 9pm. At least it was cold water.

All Creatures Mostly Small

I love critters of all sorts. Even though I'm essentially a city dweller, I get to see a fair assortment of life with anywhere from two to 100 legs.

The school is next to the Guadalupe Gardens, so when the weather turns warms, everybody comes out. Sometimes when I pull up, I'll just sit in the car and watch the ground squirrels hide in plain site, chatter to each other, and occasionally dart around. One time, a squirrel zipped across the street with its tail straight up. I thought to myself, "Hey, he's high-tailing it!"

Frequently, bugs seem to crawl in to die. I like to assume it's a comforting thing rather than an insult to the school. Last Thursday, I saw a small cockroach lying motionless on its back. When I blew on it to test its deadness, its antennae moved softly. Maybe it was freshly dead and not rigid yet, I thought. I grabbed a tissue and, in the final test, waved it over the roach. When I pulled it away, the roach was gone, or rather, had grabbed the Kleenex. So, not dead then! Well, it still had to go outside and I went to wave it off the tissue just outside the front door. It landed feet up and wriggling, tumbled down the ramp a little bit, and righted itself. It seemed to be stomping off in indignation when a bluebird flew down, cocked its head at me as if to say, "For me? Thanks!" and snapped it up in its beak. Sayonara, cockroach.

This past weekend I tore into the pile of crap at the side of the house. It's a great place for crap when you're in the backyard, but from the house, it's the first and last thing I see in a day, being just outside the bedroom. I had plenty of tiny company to amuse me during my labors. The ants and roly-poly bugs are pretty common and some spiders I see frequently, but I also saw a couple of new ones, shiny and chocolatey brown. I truly enjoyed the company of the Red Admiral butterfly, who stayed with me for most of the afternoon, pausing frequently on the upended, outgoing plastic doghouse. And I always like the surprise of pulling up a chunk of concrete to see two black, wet, salamander eyes staring up at me. All creatures, mostly small - I love them all. Thanks for making an ugly job cool, guys!

Photo snagged from here.

New Year's Clean

Me: I can't wait to clean my house.
J: You know, not too many people say that kind of thing.

For many years now, I've been hosting a big party the first Saturday of the year. Big party naturally means big cleaning, and a good incentive to take care of some house maintenance to boot. I've really come to enjoy this ritual, and sometimes I even claim to have adopted the Chinese New Year's tradition of cleaning the house from top to bottom, sweeping away the bad luck of the previous year and preparing the house for new, good luck. I don't really believe in good or bad luck so much, but you can feel the difference when your house is really clean, right? Another way to look at it is in terms of Feng Shui. Clean and tidy is just good practice when it comes to aligning your house chi, and boy, is there some stagnant chi in this house. A few accomplishments so far:

• I cleaned out the candle drawers in the dining room, dumped a bunch of old wax, and cleaned up some of the holders.
• I sewed up some easy and cheap chair slipcovers for our embarassing, cat-enhanced fabric chairs. The next chairs will be all wood, believe me.
• We Tasmanian-deviled the Room of Requirement so it now looks more like a library and less like a photo station/massage space/fabric store/display storage/crap factory.
• Finally finished reorganizing my CDs into DiscSox so they take up less room in the living room. Got rid of a few, too. Sure it's nice to have a big library, but how much dust can you listen to?
• After 10+ years in one configuration, we moved some of the bedroom furniture around. Much more open feeling now. Talk about dust bunnies. Watership Down anyone?
• Many bags of clothes are ready for Goodwill. Rugby shirts haven't been in style for a loooong time. I don't care if it came from Oxford.

Still to come, getting rid of more dust magnets including the old Dell computer that's been sitting under my desk unused for a few years now. Plus I still have a spare, giant desk sitting in the driveway from when I moved my studio two years ago. Free desk anyone? I guess that's more of a leaf magnet. Anyway, lots more cleaning and cleaning out to go...but it feels great. I would recommend this New Year's tradition to anyone!

Wisteria at Dusk

Everybody is enjoying the lovely spring weather, including all the flora, of course. I know I have been remiss in posting completed studio pics, but perhaps these two of the wisteria climbing towards the shop will suffice for a time. And no, I did not consciously choose that color paint with the wisteria in mind :-)

  

Name that Crime

The other night, Charles and I went looking for a fuse for the heater. The heater crapped out during this cold snap - brilliant! Our first stop was Orchard Supply Hardware. Their stock in fuses and breaker boxes were all in a locked case with a sign that said "All staff must walk breakers to register #1 for purchase." Or something to that effect. Across the aisle was another locked case with various electrical tools like wire strippers and pliers and the same sign. Mind you, none of these were terribly expensive items. When stores lock things up, it usually relates to theft or potential crimes. So the question is, what crimes are being perpetrated with breakers, fuses, and their related tools? Anyone?

Side note: Striking out at OSH, we went to Kragen in search of the elusive 3 amp ATO fuse and ended up buying a variety 40 pack as our only option. If anyone needs an ATO fuse, just holller!

They're Cute When They're Little

Since we installed the new lawn recently, we've had continual trouble with critters peeling back sod to root for grubs. I suspected raccoons, but now we know the truth:

Upon seeing Charles, he immediately played dead - plenty long enough for me to fetch the camera. Being a youngster, he hasn't quite mastered his skills, so his ears would get twitchy if the gloved hand moved in closer. We could see him breathing too. So cute.

Charles picked him up, and the sucker grabbed a fistful of grass to take with.

I suspect they've set up camp under my studio.
And now to search for some sort of natural repellent. We worked hard on that lawn, darnit.

Upholstery on the Cheap

One of the aforementioned projects was recovering the sofa. This sofa is about 15 years old...with cats, if you know what I mean. I put the ol' blinders on whenever anyone came over, and I'm pretty sure they did too. It's not easy to replace something of that magnitude, let alone blocking the underlying gravity well long enough to do so. If you haven't been on the sofa, come over and you'll feel what I'm talking about.

In any case, I couldn't very well wear blinders with my wedding attire, nor expect others to do the same at the house reception, so something needed to be done. For about $75 with shipping, I purchased 25 yards of unbleached, 100% cotton and proceeded to stitch it on to the sofa - a semi-permanent slipcover, if you will. Here are pics of the project, complete with supervisors. You'll note that they are in every single shot. That's about how the project went.

 Hey look, a human! Thanks, Cyd.

 Everyone's taking a break.

 

 Composite of the finished sofa.

 The end!

Now Where Were We?

A lot has happened in the last couple of months, to say the least. I'm a little (more like a lottle) brain dead this week, so before I track down various photos, I'll start with a recap. We did impressive amounts of work to prepare for the wedding reception at the house. I can hardly believe it myself, which is partially why I want to list everything just so I can look at it in awe. The best part? We get to keep the results.

The other best part? We even impressed my father. Dig it.

Some of this started before the annual January party, but it's all related, so here we go:

• Repaired hole in dining room floor (leftover from redo of heating system)
• Installed thresholds, including custom built from kitchen to mudroom
• Painted office, library, bedroom, mudroom, and Dutch doors
• Reorganized the mudroom
• Reorganized the library (aka Room of Requirement)
• Recovered the sofa
• Rehanged a bunch of art
• Built a studio (just in time to make a bunch of wedding related jewelry)
• Tore up the old lawn, leveled the ground, installed new irrigation and new lawn
• Installed path to studio (needs more work, but looks decent)
• Cleaned out base of redwoods (10 years detritus or more)
• Reorganized garden shed
• Built temporary deck
• Extended patio with more temporary deck
• Added mulch around redwoods/ferns
• Mulched around heavenly bamboo
• Installed temporary brick path along driveway
• Re-landscaped front yard (thanks Mom and Pop!)
• Upgraded/reconfigured all drip irrigation
• Cleaned out Mexican sage/dusty miller
• Planted vinca minor near studio
• Planted more alyssum along hot tub path
• Cleaned out side yard
• Installed rainbarrels at every downspout
• Installed new (for us) stained glass window in dormer window, restuccoed and painted surrounding house
• Built a new basement cover
• Installed the Doorknob of Completion (to bathroom)
• And of course, hours and hours of weeding

I also had a lot of fun diving into some creative, wedding-related projects after not having a studio for almost a year.

Phew! I'm sort of holding out for the pro shots, but we'll get some photos rolling pretty soon here. Stay tuned for Hakone Gardens, and Shepberg Yard...

Underfoot

Here are some pics of the new studio floor. It's a solid, carbonized, stranded, woven bamboo with beveled edges. That makes three styles of bamboo we have. Ask me about bamboo floor. Anytime. Really.

And here's a pic of Benny the Fang, outdoor helper extraordinaire, taking a break on the hot tub. This pic was on the camera between flooring shots, so I have to assume he was a big help to Charles.

And, most recently, here we have the plush, new lawn:

And of course, the helper, enjoying the fruits of Charles' labor.

Looks nice to me too, Benny. But we have to stay off of it for awhile so it can take root.

We also paved a path to studio, although it's not yet permanent, and planted some myrtle.

Weeding continues...

Next up: more green things and digging and paint and... and...