Reusing/remaking old tools

September 11, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I love me some old tools. I love looking at them, touching their surfaces, using them… Most of my hand planes, some of my chisels, and all of my molding planes are older them my grandfather. I will push people down in a junk/antique shoppe to get to a wooden plane or socket chisel peeping out from behind a Paint-By-Numbers masterpiece.

Occasionally, I find a beautiful tool that is beyond repair and cannot be brought back to life. I lament its loss. There have been a couple of pieces lately that I just couldn’t let go into the burn pile or let sit to languish as food for wood-worms. The molding plane pictured below was/is a 1860s-ish Gleave #8 round and was split and has warped at the split to the point that there was no bringing it back from the dead. So I cleaned it up, applied a little walnut oil, and added a VERY pitted iron to make a key holder for our living room. It subtly tells first-time visitors that a carpenter/Ébéniste lives here.

The 23″ walnut joiner plane, also below, was the property of a C. Wanger, and used just outside the village of Cornebarrieu, France. It bears the marks of his hand on the foreend and his thumb and index fingers have left deep indentions on the tote. It has been repaired a couple of times, the wedge has been cut off and worms got to it years ago. The poor thing is now held together with hope, spit, and a little epoxy. I loved the size and color, so I turned it into a desk organizer for my office.

Before you all start collecting scrap so you can roast me alive for desecrating beautiful tools, know that I rescued them from a fiery fate and have given these tools a useful and meaningful after-life.

Our new puppy is part cat…

September 10, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Truffle has some cat DNA in there somewhere:

1. If you want to sleep and she doesn’t want you to there is a slobber attack. Don’t try to hide your head under the pillow – it won’t help you.
2. She will chase the laser pointer up the concrete column in the living room and go back to look for it an hour later.
3. Why would she eat her food, sleep in her bed, play with her toys? Brodie’s are so much better.
4. Apparently, her assigned spot in the bed is between my wife and me at shoulder level.
5. Oh, you want to write an email or get some work done? Nope, not on her watch. She will sit in your lap, lick the keyboard and grunt until you pet her full-time.
6. Yoga Mat? Wrong. Puppy play space. Move over.
7. You want to watch “your show”? Not during designated playtime you don’t. When is designated play time? What time does your show start?
8. Why would my wife want to put make-up on by herself when Truffle can help?
9. A relaxing bath for the Mrs…. Sure if she doesn’t mind Truffle standing at the side of the tub whimpering or lying beside it passing gas.
10. “What do you mean there is a no dogs on the table rule?!” We have learned that chairs and benches have to be pushed in so that we do have to share our meals.
11. She CAN get in the bed by herself, but why would she do that? Standing beside the bed with her nose and front paws on the mattress and whining until the bald pink monkeys put her up there is a winning strategy, so why should she expand the energy?

Need a trash can lid? Make it on the Lathe

September 8, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We have a Art Deco flower pot in the guest bathroom that is used as a trash can. is about 9″ high and 8″ in diameter, so it doesn’t hold a lot. However, our new puppy is VERY interested in the contents of that vessel. To stem any possible and eventual messes, I took some pine scrap, chucked it up in the lathe and made a heavy wooden lid. I stained and finished to match the pot. Simple fast jobs like this make it so I can buy new tools without my sweet wife flipping out.

Making stuff with My Son

August 25, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

It is one of my duties in this life to make sure that my children can do for themselves. Having to call a plumber for a clogged drain or an electrician to replace a switch just is not the Talley way. We are fixers, tinkers, builders, and warranty voiders by practice and nature. I cannot have it on my conscience that such a path would end with me, so part of the summertime ritual is to fix and build stuff.

This year was no different. The Ruminator work on the lathe a bit, helped me build a kitchen island, and helped design and construct a hanging shelf system for my wife’s sewing room. We hung a storage rack in the garage, built a snowboard rack for his room, hung stuff up in the living room, applied a little spray paint and finish, learned about milk paint, refurbished a miter-box saw, cut up some andirons, went over tool identification, sunk a bunch of screws, put some all-thread to use, made sparks with the grinder, and that sort of thing.

Just little bits at a time… Next year we will do a little metal work and wood carving. The year after, we might build a deck and do a little welding. At some point he will learn to sew and mend a little – not to be a seamstress, but enough to make simple stuff and put a button back on a coat. If he wants to be a carpenter or a cobbler or a tailor or a machinist or a welder fine, then I am equipping him with early skills to build from. But if he wants to be an architect, teacher, engineer, lawyer, doctor, or whatever – I still want him to have the knowledge base of how things work, how they are put together, and how they should be fixed.

UPDATE: Shortly after my son left to go back home, I was cleaning up the GROP and I found this message below written in saw dust. It made me both humble and very proud.

Chopping Block Kitchen Island – IKEA Hack

July 10, 2014 / Matt Talley / 2 Comments

Stamps-With_Foot has wanted a chopping block island for years. Our kitchen in Seattle just didn’t have the room for one, but the kitchen in France was PLENTY big enough. I looked into taking some 5/4 maple and gluing it up for her, but without a table saw and a power planer it would have been REALLY difficult. We found a couple that were already built, but they were between 400 and 900 Euros. No.Thank.You. After some deliberation, I decided on an IKEA island – the Groland. Stop Laughing and put down the stones…

While my son (The Ruminator) was here in France on his summer vacation, we bought one in a box, strapped it to the top of the car, drug it home, and started putting it together. I couldn’t leave it stock though, that is just not how I operate 🙂 We added a few flourishes to make it “better.”

1. Turned the legs on the lathe to give it bun feet
2. Glued it all together and added some extra dowels for reinforcement
3. Removed the steel rods on the original and plugged the holes with Dowels
4. Painted the base with a Sea Green Milk Paint
5. Added an additional block section to the bottom of the top panel – to make it super-solid
6. Cut a 6″ hole in the top for sweeping scraps off the work surface
7. Put a large plastic bin – removable from both sides – under scrap hole
8. Bolted rolling pin to one side to towels and placed 2 brass hooks on the other side
9. Scrapped the wood lattice bottom panel and used 7/8″ tongue and groove clear pine decking boards instead.
10. Polyurethaned the top – 5 coats – and bottom shelf so they match and make the painted base “pop”
11. Took a hunk of cherry tree trunk and turned it down as a lid for the scrap hole.

My Son and I had it installed just in time for my chef Father-in-Law, The Chatty Buddha, to visit and whip up a few fine meals using it as a work platform

Our French Jardin

June 27, 2014 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

With my J-O-B and all that we have going on here in France (work, travel, guests, work, work…) there is NO WAY that I can have a proper garden. To scratch my farming itch, I have been medium obsessive over the grass (I have not found the desire to begin a campaign of slaughter for the dandelions as yet) and have made our outside living space as nice a possible. The prior occupants of our house planted rosemary, sage, lavender (we have 5 different bee types on it right now), a couple of fruit trees and some bulbs that we are nursing a little the the color and life help with my primal need to make stuff grow.

We eat outside in the evenings a couple nights a week and I bought a sweet masonry grill from an English couple that were moving to Spain. The thing weighed a ton, but it works and looks great. In addition to grilling on weekend afternoons, I REALLY like to have my coffee in the shade of the porch out back if my schedule allows and the hammock has an assign spot in the shade. We see our back yard here as more of an outdoor room and have furnished it with a teak table set and the Adirondack lawn furniture that I made for Stamps-With-Foot a couple of years ago – she insisted we bring it from Seattle 🙂

Guitar and Ukulele wall mounts

April 22, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

One of the last things to deal with at our place in France was all the stringed instruments propped in corners or laying precariously on top of furniture. I wanted them out in view so they would be played instead of put in a closet somewhere, forgotten about. We want a home that is filled with music and if there is a loaner guitar or uke (LOVE the ukulele – have two) about, someone is going to pick one of them up and strum a few cords. There is nothing like a cool evening, sitting outside after a BBQ with someone softly playing a tune or two. I looked at a couple of commercial wall mounts that were pricey and didn’t really go with our decor and decided to make my own. I am sure they would look great in a studio and there was one model that would have been killer in my 15-year-old self’s poster-filled bedroom, but nothing I looked at screamed “hand-crafted” or “classy.” I went through a couple of ideas in my head that wouldn’t have really worked out for various reasons before having a light bulb moment while on a work trip in China: scrap wood + my lathe + U-hooks and some silicone tape = sweet instrument hangers that both blend with our home AND that no one else has.

This past weekend (Easter holiday), I cut five octagon blocks out of some left-over 5 inch thick pine timber and rounded the first one on the lathe. It was meant to be a prototype so I free-handed the curves without really having a design in mind before I started. It looked so great after the stain and wax went on that I took it right in and mounted it to the wall. I turned the others all with different patterns and hung them in a living-room hallway that has an awkward corner. They look great there – if my opinion counts for anything. Now there is room for 2 ukuleles, an acoustic guitar, an electric cigar-box blues machine, and a resonator banjo.

I am working on a Uke hanger for my home office as well. I spend 10+ hours on my computer or on the phone and find that it helps if I can take a little break or strum while thinking about a technical problem that is pissing me off. I wouldn’t be able to do that in a cube.

Bench for the front entry – Project #4 in France

March 10, 2014 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

We are a “no shoes in the house” family. It is dry and dusty where we live in the summer and the trails near by that I run and that Stamps-With-Foot and Brodie walk on are shared with horses. We don’t want to track dirt and poo into the house. There is a great spot right by the front door to take your shoes off, but no place to sit down to do it. I decided a rustic little 5-board bench was in order. I spent five hours from the initial sketch design to putting on the final coat of polyurethane over a week’s time. No nails or screws were used, just through-mortises, wedges and dowels. We now have a small piece of furniture outside the front door that is functional and matches the house and the style of our other furniture – you never know it might someday find its way inside.

Hall Tree and Shoe Rack for My Bride

March 4, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Soon after we moved into La Maison du Talley in Seattle, my lovely bride decided that “we” needed a place to hang coats by the front door. I looked a little at coat racks and hall trees in the shops close to the house, but I just couldn’t stomach paying $250-300 for a semi-crappy coat rack that was the wrong color or wood for our house. I had one of those “light bulb” moments and decided to build one for us. Normally, I would have cut the raised panels (I tried to convince Stamps-With-Foot to let me do linen-fold panels) and added a little fancy trip work, but as I was recovering from shoulder surgery (#4), I decided to go with the re-use route. Second Use is a used hardware and reclaimed building material store in Seattle that I frequent and I cruised over for a used fir 6-panel door. Right away, I found the perfect one that set me back a whole $30. While pushing the cart loaded with the door to the front, I found a couple of cast off cabinet doors, a few odd sections of trim, and a bundle of old tongue & groove fir flooring. A plan formed in my little head…

I cut two feet from the top of the door, then flipped it over. I built a bench and shoe rack from the cabinet doors (raised panels turned in to match the adjacent hutch and the flat panel cabinets in the rest of the house) and attached it to what became the bottom of the door/hall tree. I ringed the top with a flooring plank, tongue down, and then applied some 100 year old left over fir crown molding on the top. The whole thing was sanded down and stained a deep red mahogany and finished off with 3 coats of exterior grade polyurethane.

For the hooks, I sourced a set of coat and helmet hooks from an old Seattle firehouse and small round dog leash hooks from Rejuvenation Hardware. When all was said and done, this was the very first project finished for our home in Seattle, I spent a total of $94, and I wrote a little love note to Stamps-With-Foot on the top of it. My little wife was giddy when I brought it into the house and she raved to friends for weeks about handy and awesome her husband was – made me puff out my chest like a Banty rooster.

If I did this again, the only thing I would change would be to make the shoe shelves movable as they are about 1/4″ too narrow for my running shoes, but perfect for her shoes, which I guess is the most important feature.

$Here is the face frame glued together and clamped. I have a tiny shop and used wax paper to cover the top, so I don\'t want to hear any sh!t about me abusing my table saw!$

Weekend

February 10, 2014 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We had a pretty good weekend:

The house is coming together and I got a couple of small projects done. I hung a hand-tool only built pull-up bar outside to facilitate working out at home. With help from Stamps-With-Foot, I hung what used to be an old rickety wooden ladder in the living room. I sanded, stained, and varnished it into what is now a sweet bookshelf. We also picked up a couple of chairs, a wooden chest, and a large stone BBQ grill from a couple that are moving from France to Spain soon. The grill is moulded concrete and stone, came in 6 pieces, and weights close to 350 pounds. It super sucked getting it moved into place!

Part of Saturday was spent trying to update and setup my new work computer. There was some sort of sync error and all my previous back-ups are gone from the work server so I am starting with nothing. It is somewhat depressing and a metric shit-ton of work! At one point I had to take a break and we took Brodie for a long, muddy walk on a nearby trail. He was all in until it started raining and sleeting sideways on our way backup the house. He WANTS to be a giant farm dog right up until the reality of it smacks him in the face. Then, he wants to go home and snuggle under a blanket…

Saturday night was spent out in Toulouse. We had a Vietnamese dinner with 10+ people from an English speaking group. It was really nice to get out of the house and not think about my computer woes.

We went for a drive in the country Sunday, stopped by a craft market so that Stamps-With-Foot could peruse fabric for quilt pieces. After the crafty thing, we ate very long lunch in a tiny village restaurant 40 minutes north of Toulouse. We were seated at a table with a very sweet French couple who were very happy to talk to us, let my sweet/adorable wife try her new French vocabulary, and the food was Excellent! Brodie went and was perfectly mannered – he sat under the table the whole time while his mommy slipped him slivers duck breast.

Sunday night was filled with more work on my computer and some dirty words and wishes of bodily injury for the person that jacked my other computer.

Leaving for France and our MONSTER To-Do list.

December 21, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Moving from one country to another, the actual process, is a huge pain in the ass. So much to do and so many details… The complexity of our move was increased because we will continue to own our place in Seattle and we had The Nana move into it. Separating the stuff that would go and stay, fixing small issues like that leaking faucet, winterizing the garden, trimming trees, installing railings and additional locks, and organizing yard and house maintenance contacts was enough to make my head explode.

There were 4 specific and different to-do lists that were drawn up in June and added to as time went on. I would like to tell you that it all got done, but the state of my backyard, the unsold table saws, the uninstalled basement railing and the incomplete bookshelf in our bedroom say different.

Things that were accomplished:

Trimmed our vine maple (see pictures below of Stamps-With-Foot with the chainsaw)
Winterized the pipes and garden
Installed the front stair railing
Installed a speak-easy in the front door, so Nana would not have to open the door to a stranger
Leaves were raked
The raspberry cage was retied
Junk was removed from the backyard
Bills were transferred
The heating-oil tank was filled
Rebuilt bathroom faucet and valve
Cancelled our car insurance
Trimmed the bushes
New tires were purchased for the car we left for Nana to use
Squeaky doors were oiled
Wired a motion detector light in the back yard
Installed an additional basement door lock and metal security screen
My shop was cleaned and organized
Had extra keys made
Upgrades made in the alarm system
We sold one truck and donated another
My father-in-law planted a fig tree and served as grunt labor during Thanksgiving
I drained and prepped the hot tub for 2 years of alone time
Basement became slightly more organized
I hauled two entire loads of brush and projects-that-will-never-be to the dump (and found a very nice Fender guitar and new oak office chair there, but that is a story/post for another day)
Household paint was retouched
Replaced burned out bulbs
Blackberries were trimmed
Removed rust and repainted the front door railings
Did some final cabinet work
Moved two houses worth of furniture and a storeroom into our basement, first floor and garage
Unpacked my mom
Had Cable TV and a home phone installed (we only used cell phones)
Repaired outside wall where cable installer poked extra holes
I busted some plaster in the living room that will wait until I get back in the summer
Hung the TV over the fireplace
etc…etc…etc…

The images below are proof of some of the work and evidence of what did not get done as well.

From Trash to Basement Built-in

December 19, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I was at one of the architectural salvage places in the SODO area of Seattle one fine summer day 3 years ago and as I was leaving with whatever small treasure I had found (picture Sméagol with his Precious…), I spied a bit of white cabinetry and what looked like a paneled cabinet door in their free/meant-for-the-dumpster pile so I went over and looked to see if I could salvage a bit of whatever it was. The hope was for a door that I could re-purpose or some cool hardware left intact, but I struck gold! Some idiot used a pry-bar and a Sawzall to rip a built-in painted hutch out of a house’s wall during a remodel. It was taken to the salvage shop without a back, one side missing, no top, zero trim left, and with rough recent tool/pry marks all over it. All the shelves were there and the door that I had seen was one of four heavily painted paneled oak doors. I saw some promise and had an exact spot for it, so I piled the wreckage in the back of my truck, roped it down, and sped away before someone could tell me no.

It languished in the basement for part of a year before I tightened the joints, squared it all up, made a back from pine bead-board, built a matching side panel, reinforced the structure and installed it on one of our basement den walls. What used to be the open counter-top space between the original built-in base and top, became storage for boots or snowboards or books (which is what is there now).

I wanted to include Stamp-With-Foot in the project, so I took her with me to pick out some trim. She found a section of fancy scalloped-cut chair rail/case molding that she REALLY liked and I went home and used it in a custom buildup: adding a section of ripped down base molding and a length of popular wood that I ran over with two different router bits to make the top trim.

After getting the piece installed, I realized that I would have a 5″ gap of dead space between the inside top of the cabinet and the finished top, so I rabbited in two shelf lips and built matching hatch covers to provide storage for long or seldom used items in the top of the cabinet. The hatches were finished with brass ring pulls from a local boat supply hardware shop. After some light sanding, Stamps-With-Foot and I put two coats of white cabinet paint on it and I had The Ruminator help me install antiques glass pulls and keyed latches while he was visiting for Christmas. The piece looks like it was built with the house, the top is already filled with mountaineering books, and is a fantastic addition to our basement and home.

Kitchen Cabinet Work Update

December 18, 2013 / Matt Talley

There was a flurry of activity to get our kitchen done before our move to France. I got it 99% of the way – with serious help from Mr. Flood and my sweet wife. It just needs a little paint on the overhead fridge pullouts, slight pull-out slide adjustment and the installation of the custom milled and matched cove molding. That will all keep until we get back to Seattle though. My mom will be able to cook in there just fine as-is.

I feel that the upper cookbook shelf ties the old and new sides together and adds that part of the overall kitchen that was missing. The shelf also seems to lighten up the space a little as well. The wine rack was put in specifically for my wife. It started as a discussion in the breakfast nook one mid-morning, transitioned to a napkin sketch, and four hours later, the carcass was built, bottom brackets cut, and block top was in the clamps with the glue drying. After the paint was on and top installed, my wife swooned. It made me smile from ear to ear!

The paper towel holder was a bit of a conundrum. With low upper cabinets, there was just no good spot either on the counter or under the cabinet. I toyed around with a couple of ideas before I decided to mount the paper towels on the old ironing board (now spice cabinet) lower door. I used some scrap popular and turned a section of oak down on the lathe for the rod. It is inserted all the way through the shelf and both wedged and glued in place. My grand kids will still be able to use that towel holder when they are my age. yes, I over built something again… On the brighter side, the paper town holder bracket, the small round shelf brackets, the cookbook shelf brackets, and the wine rack brackets all match, again marrying all the different kitchen elements together.

Almost as important to her as the wine rack was the trash and recycling can drawer. After it was in and painted I caught her pulling it open and closing it over and over with a giggly smile. The curves on the side match all the shelf brackets – I couldn’t help myself.

“New” Midcentury Modern bookcase in the bedroom – left undone

December 17, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We are a house of books. Every room of our home – including the kitchen and bathroom – has books living there; on the shelf, tucked into a nook, behind a cabinet door… It feels like there will be a raid from Ray Bradbury’s Firemen at any time. Years ago we shared a home where a huge pile sat at the end of the bed, there were mounds in the living room, and stacks on the kitchen table. It drove my wife insane. Taking a lesson from that, I have tried very hard in the ensuing years to not do that again by building of buying bookcases and shelves aplenty – happy wife, happy life.

To that end, we have a bookshelf that has now lived three distinct lives: it started its existence as a staircase bookcase in our first rental house in Washington State. It was the very first thing I built when we moved back to the US and my wife was amazed at my woodworking ability – she had never seen me really do anything beyond fix a chair or hang a picture. She was super impressed with the recessed dados and the router work. I removed it from our rental and cut it down in size when we bought our house in Seattle, putting it in my wife’s basement sewing room for pattern and costume book storage. I just couldn’t stand to see the work put into it go to waste. It now lives on our bedroom wall, after being cut down once again. It has been painted to match our bedroom furniture and I sheathed the outside in 3/4″ birch recycled from existing shelves with edge banding. Both will eventually be stained and finished to match our headboard – giving it a mid-century modern look. Reusing original pieces and re-purposing the parts of existing furniture makes my heart happy. It offers about 14 feet of shelf space and keeps Stamps-With-Foot’s Harry Potter and Twilight out of the living-room – sure make fun…. He who is without literary sin cast the first stone…

It was one of the MANY projects that I just did not get finished before our move to France. The bookshelf is completely usable and when Last I saw it, my mother had filled it with James A. Mitchener, Deddie McComber, and biographies galore. It will keep until we get back to Seattle in a few years.

Film Friday – Japanese farm house love story

October 18, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Minka from Birdling Films on Vimeo.

Birthday Weekend

October 2, 2013 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Took the day off from work – yay!!
4:17am: alarm goes off and my 40th birthday weekend begins.
I sing “Happy Birthday to Me!”
Sweet wife gives me a gift – mostly to shut me up
Breakfast out with wife and mother: yummy beignets, eggs, bacon, and sweet coffee
Mother has gift for me and hands it over right away
savage the gift wrapping like I am three years old
More Awesome presents from my wife
Facebook, phone and e-mail fill with birthday wishes
Take shower and get dressed in vest and tie
Off to Bellevue for a haircut and strait razor shave
Really enjoyed shave
Bought a bottle of lavender pre-shave oil
A new leather ISW holster somehow becomes mine – self-gifting is awesome
Stop for more coffee at C&P
Home to get ready for date with wife
Talked to some friends on the phone
Played in yard with puppy
Off to a dinner Theatre Circus show
Very Cool
Really happy
Home to snuggle
Asleep and dreaming by 12:30

Up early Saturday.
Chocolate croissants, eggs, and bacon for breakfast
Sweet wife sick
Fall arrived and the rain started
Ran some errands
Spent a little time in the shop working on some lathe projects
Napped a bit with wife and puppy
Went into basement to get a tool and water everywhere
Water heater blew its seam and was leaking
DAMMIT!!
Shut off water and cleared path from heater to basement drain
Assessed the damage and decided it had to be replaced
Went to Home Depot and dropped $400 on a new water heater
Grumble… Grumble… Grumble…
Went to sleep pissed off.
Slept late in the hope that the water-heater magically replaced itself
No luck
Put on work clothes and trudged downstairs into the depths of the basement to wage war
REALLY hate to plumb
Drained the rest of the tank, disconnected the plumbing and electrical
Said a number of curse words
Pulled old heater out, carried it up stairs to truck, and brought new one in
Tweaked back
Cleaned up mess on old tank platform and placed new one
Connected the pipes and filled the tank
FVCKING pipe above tank now leaking!!
I HATE TO PLUMB!!!!
Trip to hardware store
Installed new sections of pipe
Said prayer
turned on water and tank pressurized
No leaks
HALLELUJAH!
Wired new heater and set the duel thermostat
2 hours later, I took a very satisfying hot shower.
Wife swooned and told me how awesome I was.
Made the hassle and aggravation all worth while
Packed for 5 day trip to England
Went to sleep and snuggled wife and puppy

Up early and off to the airport.

The Ruminator’s Summer Visit – 2013

August 15, 2013 / Matt Talley / 2 Comments

My son will turn 13 this winter – I feel so old. He came out to Seattle this summer for a visit and I was able to take the whole time off from work due to our pending move and the prep involved. We had the best time together and I can only hope and pray that as he ascends/descends into adolescence that our summers and time together are at least half as good as this summer was.

He is at the age where he is starting to take direction well and can stay on-task for a bit, so I put his little butt to work. We had a mountain of stuff to get done before we leave for France and his extra set of hands was incredibly helpful. We shopped for steel fence and stair rail, installed a speak-easy in the front door, cut and primed two stair rails, I taught him how to used an HVLP spray-gun to paint furniture, we stained table legs, used the router, he learned the first steps in using a wood lathe (he helped make his own carving mallet and made his mother a honey dipper turned from European beech), and he helped me measure, mark and chisel hinge pockets in the kitchen cabinet doors. My toe-headed son helped dig the two 18″ holes for the front entry stair rail, dug a hole up front, outside the fence, and helped replant a root-bound rosemary there. Since he was in mole-mode, we went into the back yard and he helped dig the hole for a new receptacle and motion light power pole near the back fence. We then squared and leveled the pole, braced it, ran conduit for the wire, and mixed & poured concrete. It was a long day and he was a tired little puppy after the digging and concrete work. I guarantee that he slept like a rock that night – I did.

The Ruminator also learned about how to properly use hand planes this summer – he loved them. Left to his own devises, he would sit in the shop for hours banging away on scrap with the chisels and making piles and piles of long, curly, paper thin wood shavings. He was channeling Roy Underhill and I was so proud!

It wasn’t all work though – I am not a slave-driver. There were bike rides, visits to the park and the beach, movies at the theatre and on the iPad, Austin Powers and South-park voice impressions (much to Stamps-With-Foot’s dismay), ukulele playing around the fire pit, and he is probably the first kid in his hometown to have ever been indoor skydiving.

Knotted “survival bracelets” are popular right now and the one we tied up last year is now too small or was unraveled and used on some woodland adventure, I’m sure. We stopped at Home Depot on the way home from some outing and he picked out the paracord color and stainless steel shackle. We sat in the back yard with Stamps-With-Foot, chatting with a family friend while I tied a new bracelet. It fit perfectly and he beamed with gratitude. This was the summer that the Ruminator went to his very first Major League Baseball game – Mariners vs. The Red Socks – and had the whole hot dog/roasted peanut experience. We had great seats 23rows up on the first base line and the Mariners won. I was so happy to be there with him and it made my heart happy to see his face shine when a bat made contact and sent a ball into the outfield.

Probably the highlight of his trip though (for him) was when we went to the Washington Gathering of the Clans and he got a sword. A shiny steel Viking sword. Thinking back to when I was 12, I would have given up anatomy for a sword! I would have slaughtered vegetation, hacked fruit and veggies gruesomely, sheared branches, cut myself at least twice, tried to wear it to school, and gotten into some semi-serious trouble of some sort before my blade would have been taken away and put in that unknown place in my parent’s house from which there was no return – propped up next to my first pellet gun, beside that awesome surgical tubing slingshot, and near that box full of fire crackers. Anyways, I made him promise, not to do what I would have surely done – we will see how that works out. I bet he spent his first week back twirling the thing around like a mini blond Conan – to the annoyance of his mother.

He has been promised that if he does well in school and minds to a considerable degree, doesn’t act up in class, and helps around the house, he will get to fly to France for the summer next year. It is an amazing opportunity and I am looking very forward to showing my son France and Europe! Hiking, cycling, road trips, climbing, food, culture, language, all of it!

Kitchen Cabinet Doors

August 14, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I am super trying to finish up the kitchen cabinet doors and get them painted and hung. I was putting the last coat of paint on them this weekend and the cat decided to help… I said dirty words – loudly. The cat didn’t care and looked away like I was insane for questioning her right to sit in fresh white paint. Had to let the door dry and sand cat hair off and repaint. I said more dirty words. The cat didn’t care and laid on her side in the grass, I am sure thinking: ‘Ima gonna do it again, jus ’cause. Dirty pink bald monkey…’

Fvcking cat.

Getting ready for our move to France – first round

July 18, 2013 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

We/I have some serious work to do before we move to France for two years and we have a list of stuff that needs to happen. Here is the initial “to-do” post:

The Lawn:
The Nana is going to be moving into our house and will be puttering around the yard, planting flowers and the like, but there is no way that she will be pruning trees, cutting the lawn, weed eating, edging, or pulling pine needles out of the gutters. There is a little time, so we have contracted a crew to start taking are of the lawn now so that any kinks will be worked out.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the timing of this yard work transition was set into full motion only when my lawnmower blew up. Really, really – kaboom! As in there was a silver dollar-sized hole in the side of the piston housing and oil spewed everywhere. Right up until that moment the lawn caed transition was just a good idea. After it died, I threw it in the back of the truck, so it wouldn’t leak anymore oil on my grass and called the lawn service. There were a couple of things after their 1st visit, that I would like done differently, but on the whole, so far so good.

Projects:
The Kitchen HAS TO BE COMPLETED. I have stopped working on my Basement of Doom, the Campaign Camping Furniture, wood turning and a couple of refinish projects until the kitchen is complete. I will work down from there and not take on ANY new projects. I have two chests of drawers and a Duncan Phyfe Table that I want to complete and sell so that I am not storing them.

Shop:
I hate my table saw. I am going to out the beast on Craig’s List along with my contractor’s saw (Just collects spiders and sawdust), 12″ band-saw, small joiner, small drill press and the miter-box saw. None of them will work in France (50Hz vs. 60Hz power issues), so I can’t take’em with me. They are all old and have had a good life with me. It is time that I pass them on to new homes where they will see less use and live out their golden years making soapbox derby cars and bird feeders. I am planning to use any money made to invest in both some quality carving chisels and I will save part for the down payment on all new, cabinet shop-quality, power tools when we return to the US.

I can’t not build stuff, so I am taking the Anarchist’s Tool Chest route and am taking a rebuilt an old ammo/tool box (see evolution in pictures below) into a more useful tool travel case and will then show up in France with planes (22 of them), carving knives, mallets, hand saws, chisels, etc… The plan is to make smaller more detailed items, mostly by hand, while I am there (I will be sourcing a lathe and doing some bowl work though…).

New Bench Chisels

July 17, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

The bottom chisel (originally my grandfather’s) is the only one I have left from my shop getting burgled/cleaned out over a year ago. I have saved my pennies and dimes for a while and two days ago I bought a set of Stanley Sweet Hearts. I mortised the hinges into the kitchen cabinet doors I am building for my wife. Having quality tools makes me happy.

Building Custom Cabinet Doors

May 13, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

1. Buy dimensional 3/4″ poplar boards.
2. Plane to uniform thickness.
3. Rip 2″ and 3″ strips on the table saw.
4. Two dado cuts on table saw for 1/4″X 3/8″ panel groove.
5. Run each section on router because table saw is a POS and there is depth variation in all the grooves…
6. Threaten table saw with large iron maul – mean it.
7. Grumble a little.
8. Cut door stiles (sides) to length – Measure opening for stiles, subtract 4″ for stile width and add 3/4″ for double 3/8″ panel slot.
9. Write all measurements down on a non-descript sheet of paper.
10. Put measurements somewhere safe.
11. Take a 2 week to 4 month break because life gets busy.
12. Lose paper with measurements.
13. Tear house and shop apart looking.
14. Give up and re-measure.
15. Cut rails.
16. Lay all parts out and label, check sizing, trim two pieces, and pray a little.
17. Set up horizontal drill press to drill for dowel joints.
18. Screw up at least 4 initial holes.
19. Hit head in shop at least 3 times.
20. Build sweet dowel trimming jig for table saw – let head swell a little.
21. Cut 3/8″ off each dowel (8 per door).
22. Drill 16 holes per door.
23. Sand the cut-off end of dowel.
24. Dry fit first door.
25. Success!
26. Get out every bar clamp, hand clamp, and Quick-clamp that you own and set up clamping station.
27. Find original measurements for doors in the “safe place.”
28. Say dirty words very loudly. Repeat.
29. Add glue to dowels and joints and assemble door.
30. Apply judicious blows from wooden mallet to seat parts.
31. Get glue on hands and in hair.
32. Clamp up.
33. Wipe extra glue on door off with wet rag.
34. Repeat last 6 steps 8 more times.
35. Scrape clue, plane joints, and sand doors with 3 different paper grits.
36. Check and adjust door fit to openings and prime after more planning.
37. Re-prime and paint with two coats of white cabinet paint.
38. Mark, mortise, and install hinges on door.
39. Install red glass pulls.
40. Mark and mortise hinge/door onto cabinet.
41. Check fit and adjust 2 to 9 times.
42. Repeat steps 28 thru 41 eight more times
43. Drink three beers and swear to never build your own kitchen cabinets from scratch ever again!

Some Big News…

May 1, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

So… My J-O-B has made us an offer that is very hard to refuse: a two year stint in the south of France and they will fly us home 3 times a year. We get to keep our house and I get to come back to my job in Seattle when that period ends. THE SOUTH OF FRANCE!! Warm weather, amazing wine, spectacular cheese, lavender, honey, the French vacation plan. We would be living outside of Toulouse – the third largest city in France. It sits at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, is an hour from the coast, has one of the 10 best Saturday markets in Europe (so says the interwebs), and has more sunshine in 6 weeks of summer than Seattle has all year. We are so freaking doing this!

There is some red tape that we have to cut through, namely a work permit. Since around 27% of the French population under 30 is out of work, getting a permit right now, even in the aerospace field, is tres difficile. Fingers crossed. If this happens, then The Nana will move into La Maison du Talley, pay the utilities, and keep the zombie horde away. Visualize a sweet grandmother rocking away on the front porch with a shotgun across her lap. Add a Marlboro hanging from the corner of her mouth and you will have an accurate picture of The Nana.

I will miss my shop and my yard for those two years, but I will plug the hole in my heart with Cote du Rhone, Comte, a day trip or 6 to the Mediterranean coast, weekends in Paris/Rome, sunshine, and a yearly vacation to Morocco. I will be taking a chest of hand tools and am planning on making some small detailed pieces while there. I also plan on scouring the flea markets over that two year period for planes, chisels, and joinery tools.

Stamps-With-Foot is not concerned about logistics or housing or much of anything other than “How is Brodie going to handle that long flight?!” She feels that we will be taking Brodie back to ancestral homeland and has spent some amount of time talking to the dog about this possibility – trying to get him psyched about the proposition…

Hanging out in our ‘hood this weekend

April 29, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We had a quiet West Seattle weekend: Friends over on Friday and we all drank no small amount of great Italian wine and ate the last of our French Comte cheese. I worked around the house and in the shop (me and the lathe are friends) Saturday morning while Stamps-With-Foot nursed a touch of a hangover and snuggled with the Brodie – He didn’t complain. Sunday was lazy with Brunch at Meander’s in White Center (Go For the Chicken and Waffles!) and afternoon coffee at C&P. After coffee and reading, there was a trip to Trader Joe’s, home for left-overs, some quality hottub time, and then we finished the evening with glasses of port, sitting in front of a fire.

Roller Derby, St. Paddy, Dresser Building and an Anniversary Weekend

March 18, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

This weekend was busy with friends, a dinner out, St. Paddy’s Day activities, an outing to the Roller Derby (?!), and the 9th anniversary of the day that my sweet wife and I met was on Sunday. Even with all that, we still got bunches done around the house: Our under-bed dresser finished, bathroom table drawer installed (a little work on that left), wine crate storage boxes made, basement lighting installed, and the basement work bench is moving along.

The drawers for the under-bed dresser and the one for the bathroom all came from a wooden donor-dresser that my father-in-law drug home from a garage sale last summer. He paid $4 for it and it was in pretty bad shape, but it was solid wood and had potential. It was mistakenly left in the weather (plastic cover leaked) for a month before I salvaged the drawers, cut out off the top and used the sides for kitchen cabinet door panels. I re-squared the drawers, added dividers in the fall, and over the Christmas break sealed the insides (The Ruminator helped). After lots of filling and sanding and more sanding, I stained the fronts to match our bedroom furniture, then built ¾” plywood beams to hang the drawers from bed frame and used some scrap oak flooring as drawer guides/runners. The final product really looks good and is super functional. While some husbands bug their wives by filling the house with brought-home junk – I give my wife more and more and more storage and organization space.

On Sunday, I put the final coat of finish on the basement workbench top, let it dry, and then installed the three runs of aluminum t-track. Stamps-With-Foot bucked up and helped me wrestle its 200 pound beech and maple mass onto the steel base. I secured it with screws and covered the top with carpet squares while I finish the upper shelf/cabinet. I installed a outlet power strip under the main body of the topper and removed the old drawer dividers. I will soon add a plywood back with a mirror, a light under, a dedicated air supply line, install the desk drawers under the bench and mount 4 reclaimed letterpress drawers directly under the top as well. Happy with the progress so far.

A giant sealed dome over our place would solve most of this….

March 4, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

There are some days where I want to just drop everything I am holding, turn off the lights, lock the door, and go on an extended vacation involving a sugar-sand beach and copious amounts of fruit laden alcohol. This Saturday was one of those days.

I decided to work on the kitchen cabinet doors, cut some plywood sheets down, and tackle a bench top while the sun was shining. I opened the shop, brought out a plastic truck-bed toolbox to cut on (my 4 sawhorses are currently being used elsewhere), pulled 3 full-sized sheets of ¾” and ½” plywood out of the lumber rack and drug it all out into the backyard. After marking the first sheet, adjusting my saw blade depth, lining up my rip fence, and checking for clearance – I started my first cut and immediately ripped a 6” long kerf-cut into the top of the tool box that the sheet was sitting on. Dammit! I cut the rest of the plywood up without incident, but grumbled thinking about the mistake (I will fill and patch it with molten P-Tex plastic at some later point). After stacking all the assorted pieces of ply back into my cluttered shop, I man-handled the 170+ pound beech and maple in-work bench top from the basement and placed it on the now-damaged toolbox – trying very hard not to either herniate a disk in my bask or tear what is left of my shoulder.

My Shop/Garage is pilled deep and high with lumber, hardware, undone winter projects, wood shavings, tools, sawdust, flotsam & jetsam, etc…. I spent an hour trying to set up my router and in all the clutter and mess I couldn’t find a ¼” collet for one router and the other does not have an integrated fence, so using my big monkey brain, I improvised a fence. All I really wanted to do with the top was to route channels for t-track and thoroughly sand it down before taking the beast back into the bowels of the basement to apply stain and a tung oil finish. All was going as planned and my first cut was perfect. The second cut went just the same, but at the very end of the third cut my improvised fence failed and the router wobbled – gouging the top that I had spent a month building. Jesus H. Christ I was pissed! – Mostly at myself, but there was some vitriol left over for the machine in my hands. I said dirty, hateful, vile things while resetting the fence and making an adjusted cut. I moved on to make my last cut in the very front lip of the bench and while the fence held, I stood up mid-way through the pass and the router wobbled, making the bit chew into a section of wood where I did not want it to go. I gritted through the rest of the pass and finished the cut, but the second I was clear of the wood, I wanted to throw the still running router on the ground and beat the electric life out of it with the pruning shears that were leaning against the garage wall. I had to walk away, hand over my mouth, and just breathed deeply with my back to the offending router, my own incompetence, and the damage they had both wrought. My moment of reflection was short lived because just as I turned, I felt the first drop of rain fall from what was minutes ago a blue sky that had ominously darkened while I was focused on my router-rage (I swear it happened just like that – strait out of a hip urban dramedy…). SHIT!! I ran for something to cover the bench top. The only thing I could find was a pink tent fly and a sheet of cardboard. I covered everything and retreated into the shop, right eye twitching with disbelief/confusion/anger. I spent the next hour drinking coffee laced with sawdust and moving piles of crap around in my shop.

When my sweet wife got home she MAY have found me in the shop muttering to myself, pacing, covered in saw dust, contemplating the logistics of building a giant sealed dome over our entire lot. She talked me off the ledge, helped me put the top back into the basement, patted me a little, told me I was pretty and smart and a good boy, put me in some fresh, sawdust free clothes, and took me out to see a movie.

I got up the next morning and after a yummy breakfast of flaky croissants, bacon, eggs and two cups of coffee, I went downstairs and chiseled out the offending screw-ups, then cut and glued maple patches in. After calming down some and after a good night’s sleep, I felt better about the whole thing, but me and that router are still not on speaking terms.

I will end up muttering to myself.

February 10, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I have come to both love and accept my wife’s little quirks. I don’t understand them all and from time to time I have to just shake my head and mutter after finding something odd in the recycling or noticing that kitchen silverware was used to dig in the flower beds for example. I have also discovered that it is best to work within the confines of these quirks instead of confronting them/her with what most people would call reason. That confrontation would lead to a two hour discussion that would, in turn, lead nowhere. I would have to apologize for even bringing it up and then I would have to buy her something shiny for my transgression. In the end, I would be right back where I started – muttering to myself and slowly shaking my head with my lips pursed in an expression of both frustration and amazement.

Stamps-With-Foot is very visual and she has to SEE something for it to be real for her. Visualization of a concept like arranging pictures on the wall, where flowers COULD go in the yard, or where to move a chair in the living room is an exercise in frustration. This normally means that after a week+ of debating where a piece of furniture should go, I will move it 4-9 times before she decides that the original decision was the correct one. This comes up for me because we have been talking about to swapping offices at home. Her sewing/estrogen room will go upstairs to the sunny well-lit wood-floored bedroom at the front of our house and I will move my faux-Edwardian office/man-cave into the basement so that it will be co-located to my tiny hobby machine shop, work bench, and our den: A win/win for us both of us as long as I don’t have to move crap up and down and around for two days.

In the spirit of working with her previously addressed/documented traits, I formulated a plan to have it all work in my favor. I measured and drew a scale model of the room upstairs, showing locations of the doors, windows, and air vents. Then, I made scale cutouts of all the furniture that she could possibly have in the room. I left her with the drawing and cutout so that she could torment and second guess herself in peace while I went into the basement and worked on my new machine shop bench. 24 hours later and after looking at every possible combination at least 6 times, she had determined a location for each and every twig for her sewing nest and taped her choices for furniture location down on the drawing. I have elicited a promise that her decision is a final one and that if there is a change in any of the locations it will be made before the very first piece is picked up and humped upstairs.

Now all that is left for me to do is to bribe/con some friends and neighbors into helping move all the crap, putting it in its designated place and then to disappear in to my basement to plot my plan for world domination…. Mwahahahaha….

The Never Ending Hutch

February 2, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Right after we bought our place, I saw an add on Craig’s List for a huge hutch. It piqued my interest and I went by to take a look at it. A builder had pulled it out of a church school in Queen Anne, but it had been in the rectory library before that. It was in really bad shape: paint splattered here and there, broken and missing trim, missing glass, dents, dings, scratches, etc… Even with all that, I saw potential. After some surprise haggling, I loaded it on my truck and brought it home. This was right after I had shoulder surgery for the fourth time, so I would not be man-handling two 8 foot by 4 foot sections of furniture… I picked up some laborers in the Home Depot parking lot by the house and had them load it into my basement where it sat taking up space for three months before I felt strong enough to tackle the job. Below is the truncated build process in 67 easy steps:

Looked at hutch for too long and decided to get it done.
Started with bottom section – doors removed.
Stripped off all old paint and varnish from outside with “environmentally friendly” orange stripper.
Scraped and scraped stripper off.
Cussed “environmentally friendly.”
Put more stripper on.
Scrubbed off again.
Wife helped for 40 minutes, hated it and didn’t touch either section again.
Shoved a 1″ splinter under one of my fingernails.
Said the “F” word 5+ times, bled on base & floor and thought about cutting it all up for firewood.
Washed whole thing with paint thinner to stop the stripper residue from working any more.
Let dry and sanded whole case with 120 grit.
Sanded with 220 grit.
Sanded again with 220 grit.
Stained with a crazy pricey, but color-matched mahogany tinted oil-based stain.
Used wife’s special dish gloves.
The old, old fir had issue with the stain and was a little splotchy in some really key spots.
Was grumpy for two days.
Second coat of stain used to blend some areas.
Put on first coat of wipe-on poly acrylic semi-gloss finish.
Wife found stain covered dish gloves and I got in trouble.
Went to store and bought wife new gloves.
24 hours later, scuffed finish with white 3M pad and applied finish coat 7 more times.
Spent HOURS on the final coat.
Repeated all above steps with the four raised panel doors.
Installed 100+ year old glass pull-knobs on doors.
Whole process took two months.
Moved base into finished side of basement for use as a media cabinet and LCD TV base.
Went downtown to Chinese-owned granite shop on Seattle’s 1st Ave and haggled over granite for top.
I am a poor negotiator in Chinese.
Left and came back with Mandarin speaking co-worker.
Got GREAT deal on custom top. 1/12th of the price that I was quoted at Home Depot – really!
Built A-frame jig for back of truck to haul granite.
Picked up top and hauled home.
Bribed 4 neighbors to help move it into place.
Neighbors won’t answer my call anymore…
Four months from start to finish.
Two weeks later I started the top section.
Decided to make top section into a living room “built-in.”
Built, painted and installed new 8″ base for the top section in our living room to match existing trim.
Removed the doors, hardware, and hinges.
Repeated steps above with the exception of splinter under nail and use of wife’s gloves: I learned my lesson the first time.
Cut hole in back for outlet already on wall.
Had other, unsuspecting neighbors help me move the top section up.
New neighbors called me names after it was all done.
Hole for outlet 1″ off to the left.
Said hateful words.
Grumpy again.
Calmed down and used Dremel tool and coping saw to remove section from one side and glued it to other side.
Trimmed out outlet hole.
Stained and finished outlet trim.
Had wedding and took 30 day break in the rebuild/refinish process.
Started looking for matching trim and crown molding at reclaimed lumber yards.
No Luck.
Had crown custom milled at high cost by a shop in SODO that had 90 year old machines running on their floor (shop closed about a month after I was there last 🙁
Started the process of refinishing the doors.
Installed crown molding.
Shot nail through molding and into palm on final piece of crown.
Bled on top of hutch – no dirty words.
Installed refinished doors.
Built two interior shelves out of 80 year old fir floor boards. Stained and finished – look original!
Smacked the back of my head when installing shelves and almost knocked myself out.
Sourced and purchased piece of wavy restoration glass to match original broken pane.
Stained and finished the crown.
Put final coat of trim paint on the new base.
Installed the one missing glass pane.
5 months after base installed the top is done and looks like it has been in our place since 1928.

Never again.

$With so few outlets in the living room I couldn\'t bare to cap this on off and cover it. I measured 3 times to make 100% sure of the location - I was off exactly 1 inch and had to recut. Man, I said dirty words!$

$I used 3/4 birch plywood and edged it with 80 year old reclaimed fir flooring. I matched the color exactly and one can\'t tell from the outside that they are not original.$

Weekend Update – 1/7/13

January 7, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

My son was here for a week+ for the holidays and we did cool stuff as he is the Igor to my Dr. Frankinstein. He left on Friday morning and to keep myself occupied so I wouldn’t mope around all weekend thinking about how much I missed him, I busied myself with a few on-going projects:

Underbed dresser – 95% done
Letterpress drawers made into occasional tables – 50%
The never ending kitchen remodel – 85%
Sofa table rebuild – 20%
Bathroom drawer for wife – 50%
Candle box – 100%
Glass cabinet handle installation – 45%
Hall mirror – 22%
Helping a friend move – 50%
Etc…

While fitting the final pieces of the under bed dresser (built from an 1980s $4.00 garage sale upright five drawer) for our room and I transposed two numbers and cut something a touch too long. Grumble… Grumble… I went out to the shop, measured for screw clearance and put it on the table saw to rip down just a touch. I missed one screw, but my $56 carbide tipped cabinet blade didn’t. Sparks and bits of carbide flew. I said dirty words and came into the house to drown my sorrows in a Mexican coke, Jack with honey and an old Clint Eastwood western while propped up in bed with my grumpy face on.

Weekend Update

December 3, 2012 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We had an eventful, rain soaked weekend. Lots of stuff got done, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that great novelists write thought provoking prose about. Maybe a SNL skit though. Details below.

Friday:
Home from work and into jammies.
Sent some e-mail and web-surfed.
Yummy pizza for dinner.
Finished watching season 6 of Dexter – Debra KNOWS!!
Heard weird water noise outside of basement window…
SHIT!!! Gutters clogged!
Ran outside, pulled ladder out, said DIRTY WORDS.
Up on rickety old wooden extension ladder after midnight in a rainstorm…
Prayed for the death of my neighbor’s pine tree.
No, really. Prayed for the tree to die or for neighbor to sell me his house so I can have the pleasure of turning it into mulch.
Dried off and apologized to Stamps-With-Foot for snapping at her while 15′ in the air, digging out leaves from the clogged downspout.
Off to bed.
Passed out and dropped Kindle on the floor -still works.

Saturday:
Up at 10:00 – no time for coffee – grrrrrr…
Drove downtown with my mother to see a talk by Clay Jenkinson – a Jefferson and TR scholar – my two favorite presidents.
Coffee and half a cookie for brunch – health food…
Presentation was great – funny and enlightening.
Took Mother to grocery store then home.
Called The Ruminator and chatted about Christmas lists and school and stuff.
Cleaned living room floors and rug.
Cussed the neighbor’s tree again – pine needles everywhere.
HATE that tree.
Took sweet wife to see shiny vampire movie instead of new 007 – we suffer for those we love.
Snuck food and cookie into movie.
Came home and obsessively checked gutters for clogs and basement for water for the next 24 hours.
Cursed tree – shook fist at it like an old man.
Spent some time in the hot tub in the rain relaxing/fantasizing about a chainsaw, limbs on the ground, and wood chips everywhere while laughing maniacally.
Went to look at Pintrest “for a minute” before bed – closed iPad 4 hours later at 3:45am.

Sunday:
Slept late.
Breakfast.
Skype/FaceTime call with friends in Germany.
Miss them.
Worked on mid-century modern style bookshelf for bedroom.
Poked 20ish holes in wall looking for a studs. Stud-finder worthless on plaster walls.
Threw stud finder.
Hung shelf in a partial stage of completion. Will paint later.
Worked out Christmas budget with sweet wife.
Re-arranged living room to make room for Christmas tree.
Set iPad on top of built-in hutch to keep it out of the way and “safe.”
Watched helplessly as iPad slipped into crack and fell 5 feet and between hutch and wall.
Stared at wood, disbelieving.
Said foul, vile, hateful things.
Paused to collect myself.
Said foul, vile, hateful things again.
Contemplated getting the sledge hammer and splitting maul out.
Had to walk away before I broke stuff.
Went to Target: mood did not improve.
Shopped for Christmas tree in driving cold rain: mood still poor.
Found a nice, full 7′ tall Noble Fir.
Let tree air dry a bit and put it up in living room.
Worked on Christmas cards with sweet wife.
Wrote some funny stuff on cards to friends and family.
Went out to my little shop and cut two long 1/2″X5/8″ sticks of fir & popular.
Attached L-bracket to the ends.
Fished iPad out using the chopstick technique.
Wife so impressed, she bragged about my big ol’ brain on Facebook.
For just a second, I thought “When McGyver spends alone-time with a bottle of lotion, he is thinking of ME….”
Remembered that I was the dumb-ass that dropped it there in the first place and decided not to let me ego run rampant.
Mood improved.
More Christmas cards.
House smells like Christmas.
Hottubing.
Taught cat to hop onto edge of tub.
Fought internal demon to keep from teaching her to swim.
Also resisted the urge to splash.
Shower and shave – need new blades
Read kindle.
Dog snored like a 70 year old alcoholic man with sleep apnea.
Put him on wife’s side of the bed so they could snuggle.
Night-night time.

No cats in the house

August 19, 2012 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

We have a new resident living at La Maison du Talley: Izzy Osborne the cat. My mother recently moved from a house to a smaller apartment and her cat went nuts. Screaming, scratching, and peeing on everything and everyone. The Nana was beside herself with anger over the mess and with worry about what would happen to her kitty. This cat and I have history. For the last 7 years she has attacked me, drawn blood, hissed, growled, spit and slapped at me almost every time I got near her. There was an air of loathing in her yellow eyes every time she looked at me. Mean is an understatement! I have repeatedly teased The Nana about the cat being the Devil’s own and that her kitty brain was busy plotting evil, hate, and plague.

Stamps-With-Foot and I grudgingly agreed to bring her to our place to live in the back yard (I refuse to have a cat in the house – refuse) because I didn’t want my mother to get even more upset. Izzy wanted nothing to do with us for the first few days and even walked back to The Nana’s old house a couple of times. We went and got her – visualize armor made from a catcher’s mask and welding gloves – and once she figured out that we would feed her a couple times a day and not let Brodie use her for a chew toy, I guess she decided to stay.

She is a whole new cat… She purrs when I feed her, she will let me touch her, hasn’t attacked me even once, and her look of revulsion toward me is gone. While sitting in the yard on Sunday, she got into my lap and demanded some scratching – it was shocking. I was even able to pick her up yesterday without pulling back two bloody stumps from where my hands used to be. It is like she has experienced a complete reversal of personality. The thought has crossed my mind that she is just trying to lull me into a comfortable place, biding her time until she can corner me in the shop and eat me or catch me napping and come at me like the face-sucker from the Alien movies, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt for now, pet her when I feed her and pay her some attention when outside. You never know, she might earn her keep and find a mouse or two trying to invade the yard.

Driven Outside

Category: House