HFM

Got lots done in the garage this week, but also came up with more ideas of things to do. I think I should just go ahead and accept that the garage will never actually be totally done, but at least it's fully usable & more or less tidy at this point. I just about finished using The Stuff I Saved on the other half of the wall in the DuserHaus: Here's the full wall: I also cut down some more of the wood left over from construction into quarter-inch-thick strips and added them to the outside of the DuserHaus, to mimic a Japanese shoji screen: The edges of the paper are still exposed along the vertical lines in the picture. I don't think I want to use more wood to finish them off like an actual shoji would have, because it seems like it's going to be too square-ish, so I'm trying out some narrow black paper strips: You can see in those pictures that there is one panel on the wall that is a map -- that allowed me to tie in to the maps inside the DuserHaus, while clean...

Got some neat stuff done in the garage this week, and I am happy to say that I'm almost finished in there. First, I got the rice paper hung on the outside of the DuserHaus wall: It's a little more opaque than I was hoping, but it still looks pretty good.  Next, I took some x-rays that were done of AJ and Pickles recently, and printed them on transparencies. Then, I put them up on one of the DuserHaus windows, which I had covered with some translucent moisture barrier material left over from laying the floor in AJ's office a couple years ago: The illumination is from the garage door windows across the room. After that, I spread out the rest of The Stuff I Saved. Recall that there was a bunch of stuff left in the "rooms" under the kitchen by the previous owner (who moved in in 1963 or so, and lived here until she passed away in 2011) and the owner previous to her. To refresh your memory, look here and here . Some of it was just trash, but some of it was kind of inte...

This weekend, I continued organizing the garage. I decided that it is more important to finish getting the garage in order while I'm still on summer break than to restart the mural -- I can just about get the garage set up & fully usable in the time I have left, plus, life goal: stop starting/restarting projects before I have finished the previous one(s). Now that we have our bikes finished, job number one this weekend was to find a place to park them. Ideally, I wanted a spot that is both convenient and isn't visible from the open garage door or any windows, so that people won't get any fancy ideas about breaking in to steal our bikes later if they happen to get a peek. I settled on this spot under the concrete front steps: It is a small area with a low ceiling and an awkwardly placed post supporting the steps and porch above, so I haven't been sure exactly what I wanted to do with it. Happily, it turned out that the bikes fit perfectly there, so all I had to do wa...

Got a big project checked off the list this week: sanding and sealing the decking outside the new room. I wasn't able to do it when the decking was new because the overnight temperatures were too low, so unfortunately, the wood got weathered while I waited for things to warm up. The decking is only about 16 feet by 4 feet, but it took me three hours to sand down past the weathered layer and expose clean(ish) redwood: Every muscle in both legs is sore today. But it's done and it came out pretty ok, for my first time: In other news, we don't have any chairs or stools that are the right height for the pool/game table I mentioned last week, so I am making some out of leftover lumber we still have lying around in the garage. Here is attempt number one: It's not as rickety as it looks (it's only about 2 feet high), and somehow I managed to get it all more or less square. Those metal pieces are aluminum ties that the foundation/excavator contractors left here last spring. ...

Back from vacation, & back to projects! In construction project news, we got a date for the next milestone in the paperwork odyssey (essentially a big meeting), & it's not for another six months. In light of that news, I have decided that this will be the last numbered week on the blog -- I want to get out of the "still in progress/how damn long will this drag out" mindset, and get on with life.  And life is good down in the basement/workshop/Duserhaus brewery! This week, we got this fine table for $125 in the classifieds: What's so special about this table? If you take off the top, this is inside: For the uninitiated, this is a bumper pool table. Similar to the regular game you see in bars, the goal is to shoot the balls into the pockets, but there are fourteen little round bumpers inconveniently placed in the middle of the table and on either side of the pockets to make it harder. It's super fun, and importantly for Mars, it takes up a ton less room than...