zabbo

Through the magic of iSight, Gawker (no, not that Gawker — confusing, yes.) , and YouTube I’m able to bring you a time-lapse video of my afternoon spent assembling one of our new dressers.

To be honest, the loftice has been done for quite a few weeks now. I fell asleep at the blog wheel.

The final polish was done just in time for Alice to start working from home and for me to get fed up with commuting to a lonely downtown office. We have a theory that our new pleasant home office is all that’s keeping us civil as we sit in the same room all day.

The final bits were ornamental. Alice, painting super star, took care of the bedroom door and the banister. Bringing a whole bunch of fabric into the room was the final touch . The windows are pretty straight forward but the closet and the drapes which close off the loftice deserve some attention.

We bought a system from Ikea (DEKA. No, of course you can’t order it online — Ikea is Swedish for “etailing luddite”) that lets one attach mounts and run taught wires to hang drapes from. The drapes hang from clips with rings that slip over the wire. In the closet the wire runs just behind a bit of trim that drops down from the front of the closet. It’s mostly out of sight. The wire for the curtains that separate the room follows the contour of the roof. When shut the curtains form a wall with a few inches separating it from the ceiling.

The result is visually simple and appealing and the drapes slide along the wire with surprising ease. It’s especially nice to not have to fight with the wooden folding doors that were originally installed in the closet. I was convinced that their track was primarily designed to induce uncontrollable fits of rage. That it could kind of guide the motion of the doors seemed to be an afterthought.

Anyway, all this means that our friends from far afield have to come visit. When’s the last time any of you got to slide your privacy drape closed after wishing your hosts good night?

As promised, we managed to get the bulk of the painting of the new office completed last night. Liz generously volunteered her time to the cause. It turned out that it took us about four hours to get it done.

We had previously painted the windows and ceiling. The drywallers had mudded over some parts of the ceiling which needed to be touched up, but otherwise all we did was put on two coats of color on the vertical walls. They’re tiny walls, too, so it went very smoothly.

I got the unenviable job of putting the light green on the wall that connects the first and second floor through the staircase. Alice and Liz had already claimed the grown-up rollers so I was stuck wielding a 4″ roller on the end of a 8′ extension. That kept us entertained for a solid half hour.

True to form, the very first thing that felt the cool touch of wet paint was my calf. Turned out the back of that tray liner was still wet!

The amazing drywall ninjas finally finished their work today. The loftice no longer has nasty wood paneling, nor gaping holes, but proper smooth walls.

They did a much better job than the previous knuckle-draggers who did the drywall in the rest of the house. Their seams aren’t all squiggly. They actually went to the trouble of using those strips of whatever on the corners so that it isn’t just compound standing up to dings. They drywalled the inside of the closet. Imagine.

Now Alice and I have to paint the walls before we jet off to Phoenix this weekend so that the work can remain on schedule. The drywall ninjas (I should have gotten their names, or something.) did prime on their way out so we just have to put on the coats of color. It’ll be a breeze.

Work began this week on our project to clean up the upstairs office. This will be our only major project for the season and we’re hoping to get it done in time to enjoy most of the summer. We don’t have the energy for a repeat performance of last summer with the painting and the bathrooms and the ugh.

The original idea for the office was simple. When we bought the house the office was finished not with something reasonable, like sheetrock, but with reversed cedar planks. The side of the planks that faced the room were rough and only sort of painted. If you brushed up against them they’d catch your clothes. Replacing that nonsense with a normal surface was the driver for the project. Along for the ride came sanding and finishing the floors, trimming out the room to match most of the house, insulating while we had the walls open, and of course painting. We love painting.

That was the original idea, anyway. The stairs that lead to the office came up through a small enclosed space that was sandwiched between the walls of either bedroom. Alice never liked that it felt so cramped and that the walls above the stairs themselves were pretty useless. She made the clever suggestion that we knock down the wall that seperated the stairwell from the office. This creates more of a loft office that the stairs come into and that our bedroom happens to hang off of.

So that’s what we went for. The wall was flimsy and not holding anything up so it was easy to tear out. Now when you come up the stairs you get a nice view into the office. Light actually flows into the stairwell via the office windows.

I’m still fascinated by getting to peer into the dirty guts of this old house. The highlight photo along side this post features the dirty old chimney in the center. It was painted white but gunk (roofing tar?) seems to have made inroads at some point in the past. It’s fun to see fir floor boards all over the place up there. The entire upper floor was built from them and the extra bits were used as scraps for framing the walls. The crawl spaces look like they haven’t been touched since the knee walls first hid them away from the main space.

Next week: electrician and sheet rock ninjas. Here’s to hoping.

We had a fun little micro earthquake just now. I’m always floored by how quickly the USGS is able to pick up these events on their radar. Ladies and gentleman, event uw01290200. Their page lists the location of the quake at 45.517°N, 122.667°W. Google maps lists our house as being at 45.522646°N, 122.652483°W. I wonder how close that is.

Alice brings up a good point. This house has been around for 100 years. We wonder how many earthquakes it’s seen.

I have to sing the praise of The Energy Trust of Oregon. If you don’t own a home in Oregon you’re probably not going to be overly excited by this. If you do, dig this.

A few days ago I was listening to some piece on OPB that was discussing rising energy prices and the result it will have on people heating their homes this season. The Energy Trust was mentioned because they perform free evaluations of a home’s ability to conserve heat. I gave them a call and scheduled a walk-through and the service guy came out this morning and took a look at the house. It was a blast.

He honestly seemed to enjoy the science of heat flowing through a house. It was fascinating stuff. I came away with a list of tasks ranging from five minute tweaks to ambitious insulation installation. Oh, and a handful of compact flourescent bulbs. That alone makes it worth the effort, I think. It was reassuring to hear that the nice man felt that, for a budding centenarian, our house is doing remarkably well.

All this for the low low price of.. well.. the percentage my utility bills that has funded the trust for as long as I’ve been paying for energy in Oregon. All the more reason to take advantage of their services!