Progress.

Saturday morning, we drove over a very foggy Bay Bridge to Easton to visit the Morrises and celebrate a first birthday. We all had an excellent time catching up and watching the kids play, and it was with sadness that we loaded up and headed home well beyond Finn’s naptime.

On Sunday, the house was filled with the sound of clomping boots as three talkative men began hanging drywall in the den. The majority of the ceiling is done, and they’re working their way around to the bathroom. I’m hoping that by the time I get home tonight everything will be hung and the first coat of tape and mud will be in place.

I did some sleuthing and found a tile manufacturer who makes hexagonal tile with no bullnose (the tile is completely flat, like it would have been 100 years ago). Their closest distributor is down in Federal Hill, so I’m going to see what 30 sq. feet of it would cost. Jen is seeing beadboard in that bathroom, which would go very well with old-style tile. The big question will be whether 1″ or 2″ tile is the right size and scale for the space.

No Soup Today.

Bright and early Saturday morning, I had 15 sheets of 1/2″ delivered by a nice guy with a forklift, and managed to hump all of them inside to the front porch before the snow really started falling. There was, however, no word from the drywall guy, who didn’t return a phone message on Saturday and never showed Sunday; such is the way of discount contractors. And thus, the drywall sits. The side room is ready for him whenever he wakes up, though—the insulation is cleaned up and debris cleared out, awaiting the clomp-clomp of drywall stilts. On Friday, Mr. Scout worked upstairs tacking in ceiling insulation to try and retain some of the heat, which seems to have made a difference throughout both floors. I’m going to tuck more in between the sash pockets and small cracks to see if that does anything else when I get a little time this week.

Back to Saturday. Mama is fighting a case of strep throat, so I wrangled Finn as much as I could over the weekend to let her rest up. Before lunch, Finn and I took a trip up to Lakeshore Learning, which is sort of a Target for teachers, to buy birthday presents for some friends. This was my first time there but she’s been before, and made an immediate beeline to the squishy erasers, amid an entire store full of sensory overload. After tearing her away and browsing the aisles a few times, we joined a group of kids doing crafts at a table up front and made a snow igloo (which, strangely, includes googly eyes, sparkly red stripes, and fuzzy pop-poms). Here is where I brag on my daughter, who walked up to the table and asked the woman in a confident sing-song voice if she could play too, then politely shared with the other children and said thank you when we were done. (She bent down, picked up a stray googly eye, and handed it to the boy next to her, with a cheerful “here you go, guys!”) Other parents sort of stared at us as we walked away, which made me wonder if they taught their kids manners too. From what I saw, not so much.

Sunday afternoon I chaperoned her to our neighbor’s second birthday party. She dove right in to the fray (about 15 kids of varying ages, from 1.5 to about 7) and did really well on her own with one early exception: Wading into the chaotic living room while I was caught in the middle of a conversation, she suddenly realized she didn’t know where her daddy was and had a slight freakout. I heard the timbre of her voice rising and zoomed in, scooped her up, and talked her down off the ledge. Once she understood I would stay in visual range, I set her down to explore on her own for the rest of the party, making sure she knew where I was. About two hours after cupcakes we finally hit sweaty meltdown, but a two-house walk home on my shoulders was gravy compared to Saturday’s car ride, when I pushed her right up against the edge of naptime and paid the price the whole car ride home.

There are days when I feel like I’m just making this up as I go along, but the days like Sunday, when I can walk into a party full of kids and candy and noise and people and still read her face from across the room and know when she needs a hug or a juice or when it’s time to bail—those are the days that I feel like I’m doing OK.

And there is no better sound in the world than the sound of her laughter.

Bottled.

Mr. Scout stopped by on Friday and, among other things, got the upstairs bathroom ready for lights, cooked us a delicious dinner of coq au vin, and helped me bottle the american amber that’s been bubbling in the basement. The gravity reading we took was a lot higher than we’d been expecting, so it may be that the beer got infected, which would suck.

Pressing on, we added sugar and bottled two full cases, figuring it will be extra-sweet when it’s ready.

Saturday, our electrician neighbor knocked at 9 and we got started working on the remainder of the electrical projects both upstairs and down. There’s a newer, larger subpanel on the first floor with correct breakers for the office, working cans in the ceiling, a heater mounted in the bathroom, outlets on the chimney wall, and 3-way wiring at each end of the room. I also added insulation in the wall gaps and down under the threshold of the outside door. Upstairs, we got the wiring run to the bathroom, cans in the ceiling, a run for the 3-way switches, holes cut for the sink outlets, and runs for the floor heater and bathroom fan. This evening he’s going to stop back out to fish a wire through the living room ceiling for a fan before we close everything off. Once I know that’s going in, I’m scheduling the drywall delivery and installation.

Update: All of September and October 2003 is entered into WordPress. Next up is August.

Emo Girl.

Good news! Our electrician will be at the house at 8:30 AM tomorrow morning to get things wrapped up. We’re shooting to get the downstairs wiring finished and the upstairs under way (enough to finally install insulation and keep the house warm).

And, we’re bottling tonight! Woo-hoo!

Resolution.

When I started this weblog in March of 2001, I did it for a couple of different reasons. The first was to keep some kind of record of what I was doing from day to day. The second was to learn more about HTML and coding. The third was to create something each day, whether it was a page design, a photograph, a drawing, or writing.

As I approach the ten-year mark, I’m looking back through the archives and realizing that updates have been spotty over the last year, due to work, life, sleep, and motivation. I’m not going to blame anyone but myself for a lack of focus. That having been said, I’ve been wrestling with finding new ways to post at least something each day this year and get back into the habit of writing, as well as reawakening a routine of finding at least one thing each day to photograph.

The other thing I’m going to work on, with the anniversary as a target date, is getting the rest of the static content from the old weblog into WordPress once and for all.

In the meantime, electrical work on the side porch is stalled while I wait for our neighbor to get back to me. I was going to schedule drywall delivery and installation for this coming weekend, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen right now.

Mr. Scout stopped over to look at the beer in the basement, and we took a gravity reading to see how things are progressing. While the numbers were close to the target, we figured it would be better to let it sit for another week and finish fermenting.

Box of Girl.

Finn has a friend over today while her mother (not Jen) is delivering a baby. As of 9:45 this morning, the living room is filled with ballerina outfits, cat ears, pop-poms, and toddler tunes.

Over the weekend, I was able to get some time in on the side porch, where I pulled the baffles down over the front porch and redid them to fit stringers reaching all the way up to the roofline. My neighbor the electrician stopped over for a few hours on Saturday to hang light cans, but we weren’t able to get much more than that done. We still need to hook it all up and replace the small panel with the larger one I bought a few weeks ago, which will carry more circuits upstairs to the bathroom. Up there, we need to level the ceiling joists so that the cans can go in and switches can be run. I had our drywall guy come out and give us a price for both floors, which came in somewhere around “how soon can you get out here”, so the electrical has bumped up in priority.

The Harbor Freight multitool came in so handy, I don’t know what I was doing without it. I trimmed a section of roofline in a back corner, put in two old-work boxes in the shared wall (through 3/4″ sheathing), cut notches in the stringers for cables to pass behind, and cut the first of many sections of flooring out to be replaced. It went through hard pine like butter and made what would have been a time-intensive, frustrating task into a minor two-minute nuisance.

Before packing up for the evening, I cleaned up the space and took a minute to imagine it with drywall. We’re getting close!

Now with Real Doorway.

That’s a real-sized door there! With sturdy locks and everything! And it opens and shuts like a normal door should!

Porch Update.

Here’s the result of yesterday’s work on the porch: Based on the available space, we decided to ditch the washer/dryer idea, spin the shower and expand its width, and move the double sink from beneath the two front windows to the shared wall with the bedroom so that we can add a medicine cabinet and mirror. The closet in the back half remains full-size, and there’s a normal-sized door splitting the two sections aligned with the chimney. Mr. Scout shimmed and leveled the floor to get it ready for the plumber, who (hopefully) can get started before the end of the week.

Progress.

The big news around the Lockardugan estate these days is a successful mortgage refinance, which (among other things) has consolidated several large bills into one smaller payment at a lower interest rate. We will be seeing additional benefits beyond a smaller monthly outlay, beginning with forward progress on the side porch and atrium.

To recap, the day before Finn was born, we installed a door between the living room and what used to be the exam room in preparation for renovations. Predictably, the 20 months since then have been filled with all-baby-all-the-time, so the exam room sat untouched while we gathered some shekels and got her moving under her own power. Our main stumbling block, even before she was born, was how to organize the space in the atrium above, due to the need for plumbing—the plan has always been to use that space for a master bathroom adjoining the front bedroom. The jigsaw puzzle goes together like this: In order to finish off the downstairs, we need to put piping in for the upstairs bathroom. In order to get piping upstairs, we need to have a plan for how the bathroom up there will be laid out. In order for piping to go in, we need a chunk of cash to pay the plumber.

So, we’ve got the cash. Now, for the plan. On paper it sounds simple, but we have been stumped as to how to fit a sink, toilet, and bathtub into a space surrounded by windows and flanked by a fixed attic staircase. Working with only one interior wall makes planning difficult, because a shower on an outside wall is always going to be chilly.

What we've got now.

We enlisted the professional aid of Mr. Scout to help visualize a solution to our problem above, and get the ball rolling on the space below. (The immediate goal is to have a working bathroom on the first floor in place by July 4 for parade-goers, and the long-term goal is to have a functional den completed by, oh, let’s say Thanksgiving.)

The upstairs room is, as mentioned before, completely surrounded by old, creaky windows. The basement steps drop down into the back third, right next to a doorway that was tacked on to the rear of the porch. The staircase is next to a surround which encloses the chimney.

Our checklist for the upstairs bathroom is:

• A shower
• A toilet
• Dual sinks
• A large, usable closet
• Sunshine
• An over/under washing machine/dryer (not necessary, but would be nice)

Option 1

Mr. Scout did some measuring and some thinking, and suggested a radical solution: Make the back bedroom the master. Flip the current “closet”, push it forward to meet the depth of the chimney, and make the back 1/3 of the space a dressing room. Chop the attic stairs and devise some kind of hinged stair solution that can be folded up and hidden. Delete entirely the doorway into the front bedroom. Delete all but a few of the windows on the side of the house and take back that wall space. Put a tub/shower against the back of the closet and some kind of vanity/built in cabinetry against the front wall with the sinks. And put the toilet along the outside wall so it’s not the first thing you see upon entry.

Option 2

I did another variation on this idea where the tub becomes a stand-up shower in order to fit the washer/dryer alongside; we’ll have to measure that exactly and see if it can go somewhere else instead. I’m not entirely sure I want to delete the doorway to the blue bedroom, but if there’s another way to arrange the room to make things work better, I’m on board.

Downstairs plan

Downstairs, we’re altering the original plan just a touch to make the new bathroom more usable. Mr. Scout suggested widening the room from 44″ to 50″, turning the toilet and widening the window above to center them visually, and then using a 24″ door against the office wall, opening inward, for entry. We’ll level the floor and tile it. The casement windows I was originally considering for the den will change to a trio of double-hung units like we’ve got throughout the house, and the back door will be enlarged from a miniscule 24″ to a standard 32″ 15-pane glass (although this one will be exterior-grade steel). I’m still on the fence about what to do with the window over the radiator on the back wall; it may come out and it may stay in.

We’re shooting to have a working toilet and possibly a sink in place, surrounded by some roughed-in drywall for our parade guests. After that hubbub dies down we can get to the serious business of new windows, siding, and what to do about the floor (the end cutting pliers and I have a date with the floor sometime very soon), as well as insulating the coal cellar below (more tigerfoam) and doing something with the rickety porch off the back.

Successes.

Saturday afternoon, while Finn was down for a nap, I decided to try something I’ve meant to do for months. After having left it alone in disgust since early January, I finally went back out and straightened up the side porch last weekend. All of the extra bales of pink fiberglas got stacked in one pile, the clouds of blown fiber were swept up, and I filled two contractor’s bags full of assorted garbage to be hauled away. This past Saturday afternoon, in one last-ditch effort, I went back out and screwed three sheets of plywood and a bit of drywall over the open area between the front porch roof and the side room, sealing off the area above the porch into a closed cavity. I also adjusted the relief valve on the radiator closest to the front door and made sure the shutoff valve was open (it wasn’t).

The difference in the new office has been dramatic and astounding. I left the french doors closed Saturday night, as we always do, and when I stepped out there Sunday morning the front porch was warmer than the living room. It stayed like that for the rest of the day. Sunday night it got down to about 30° outside, and as I sat in the office typing, my hands were warm—and I didn’t need to wear fleece. It was more comfortable out there than sitting in the dining room, as a matter of fact. Opening the door between the front office and side porch produces a noticeable outrush of air, which confirms my suspicion that the area above the porch was subject to constant airflow, negating any heat-retaining properties of the insulation above.

After some sweat, cursing, and great exertion, we have the new laser printer sitting between our desks in the office. It’s literally a tank—I’d say over 200 lbs., and not small enough to jockey around with only two people. We had some very appreciated help from Aunt C. and Dr. G., who were gracious and kind enough, after humping the new one inside, to help me get the old one out to the Jeep. I hooked everything up, fired off a few test prints, and got the seal of approval from Mama. It’s loud, there’s no powersave mode, and the fan stays on constantly, which means it’s really better suited in a side office or well-ventilated closet, but that’s an inconvenience I’m willing to put up with for the sheer utility and flexibility of this thing. We’ll just keep it turned off when we don’t need it. Meanwhile, I brought the Xerox in to work this morning, got it set up and tested in a mixed-OS environment, and everything seems to be working as advertised.

Finn used her potty for the fourth time this evening. Sitting in her highchair, watching us as we made dinner, and eating vegetables, she got the worried look on her face and made a preliminary grunt. Jen asked her if she needed to use the potty, and she replied simply, “Potty.” We all sat down and read a book together, and the distraction made for a satisfying and successful outcome. We harbor no illusion that she will be trained by age 2, but if she continues asking for it, we’re going to keep offering it.

All of this really couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I’ve been battling a debilitating feeling of ennui the last couple of weeks, in part because I don’t feel like I’ve made many advances lately. Work has been relatively constant, my family is healthy and happy, and we are blessed with a daughter who is whip-smart and surprising us with new discoveries every day, but for me personally, I’ve been in a bit of a rut with projects here at the house and at work. These small things have got me motivated to start pushing forward again, and that’s a feeling I like to have.

Step 1: Start carrying the camera everywhere again, and take pictures.