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...

Odds and ends this week. Cleaning the garage and mouseproofing. Nothing riveting, so here are some odds & ends photos: Our neighbor up the hill is selling their house & moving to the South Pacific to retire. I found this tiny bus lapel pin in a box of stuff they put out on the sidewalk for people to take: I keep forgetting to mention that one of the cabinet doors in the Duserhaus is a corkboard covered with a map of the city. I thought the bus would make a nice addition to the map: Another detail I keep forgetting to mention is how I used a bunch of small end cuts as part of my scheme to level out the counter top. It worked well enough, and it looks interesting: I also used some wine and champagne corks to fill knots in the wood (as anyone who has heard my story about fixing the trunk of a rental car with a champagne cork knows, I keep a bunch around for just such an occasion): Also, AJ found this interesting shelf and drawer unit on the sidewalk. It should clean up pretty nice...

Cabinets: done! On Saturday, I leveled out the countertop, using a block plane: There are other types of planes that are better suited for this kind of task, but I'm trying to limit the amount of equipment I'm buying -- this is considered somewhat all purpose, and it was able to get the job done. Certainly, the army of hamsters that AJ has always wanted will be happy with the volume of shavings it produced: After that, I plugged gaps and filled holes, and then sanded the whole thing down. On Sunday, I sealed it with polyurethane, added magnet closures to the cabinet doors, and then moved all the brewing equipment and beer bottles in: Done! Next up: More cleaning and rearranging of things in the garage to tidy up the space and make it more usable. Also, waterproofing and mouseproofing in the front left corner of the garage,