Tag: Delusions of Adequacy

The Never Ending Hutch

/ 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:
  1. Looked at hutch for too long and decided to get it done.
  2. Started with bottom section – doors removed.
  3. Stripped off all old paint and varnish from outside with “environmentally friendly” orange stripper.
  4. Scraped and scraped stripper off.
  5. Cussed “environmentally friendly.”
  6. Put more stripper on.
  7. Scrubbed off again.
  8. Wife helped for 40 minutes, hated it and didn’t touch either section again.
  9. Shoved a 1″ splinter under one of my fingernails.
  10. Said the “F” word 5+ times, bled on base & floor and thought about cutting it all up for firewood.
  11. Washed whole thing with paint thinner to stop the stripper residue from working any more.
  12. Let dry and sanded whole case with 120 grit.
  13. Sanded with 220 grit.
  14. Sanded again with 220 grit.
  15. Stained with a crazy pricey, but color-matched mahogany tinted oil-based stain.
  16. Used wife’s special dish gloves.
  17. The old, old fir had issue with the stain and was a little splotchy in some really key spots.
  18. Was grumpy for two days.
  19. Second coat of stain used to blend some areas.
  20. Put on first coat of wipe-on poly acrylic semi-gloss finish.
  21. Wife found stain covered dish gloves and I got in trouble.
  22. Went to store and bought wife new gloves.
  23. 24 hours later, scuffed finish with white 3M pad and applied finish coat 7 more times.
  24. Spent HOURS on the final coat.
  25. Repeated all above steps with the four raised panel doors.
  26. Installed 100+ year old glass pull-knobs on doors.
  27. Whole process took two months.
  28. Moved base into finished side of basement for use as a media cabinet and LCD TV base.
  29. Went downtown to Chinese-owned granite shop on Seattle’s 1st Ave and haggled over granite for top.
  30. I am a poor negotiator in Chinese.
  31. Left and came back with Mandarin speaking co-worker.
  32. Got GREAT deal on custom top.  1/12th of the price that I was quoted at Home Depot – really!
  33. Built A-frame jig for back of truck to haul granite.
  34. Picked up top and hauled home.
  35. Bribed 4 neighbors to help move it into place.
  36. Neighbors won’t answer my call anymore…
  37. Four months from start to finish.
  38. Two weeks later I started the top section.
  39. Decided to make top section into a living room “built-in.”
  40. Built, painted and installed new 8″ base for the top section in our living room to match existing trim.
  41. Removed the doors, hardware, and hinges.
  42. Repeated steps above with the exception of splinter under nail and use of wife’s gloves: I learned my lesson the first time.
  43. Cut hole in back for outlet already on wall.
  44. Had other, unsuspecting neighbors help me move the top section up.
  45. New neighbors called me names after it was all done.
  46. Hole for outlet 1″ off to the left.
  47. Said hateful words.
  48. Grumpy again.
  49. Calmed down and used Dremel tool and coping saw to remove section from one side and glued it to other side.
  50. Trimmed out outlet hole.
  51. Stained and finished outlet trim.
  52. Had wedding and took 30 day break in the rebuild/refinish process.
  53. Started looking for matching trim and crown molding at reclaimed lumber yards.
  54. No Luck.
  55. 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 🙁
  56. Started the process of refinishing the doors.
  57. Installed crown molding.
  58. Shot nail through molding and into palm on final piece of crown.
  59. Bled on top of hutch – no dirty words.
  60. Installed refinished doors.
  61. Built two interior shelves out of 80 year old fir floor boards.  Stained and finished – look original!
  62. Smacked the back of my head when installing shelves and almost knocked myself out.
  63. Sourced and purchased piece of wavy restoration glass to match original broken pane.
  64. Stained and finished the crown.
  65. Put final coat of trim paint on the new base.
  66. Installed the one missing glass pane.
  67. 5 months after base installed the top is done and looks like it has been in our place since 1928.
Never again.

Weekend Update – 1/7/13

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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.

Our Summer Garden

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It has been a sweet summer in our small garden.  Stamps-With-Foot has really stepped up and has been planting, weeding, watering, picking fruit, staking dahlias and has even once turned the compost and added chicken manure.  I have been both shocked and impressed.  She even talked me into having some corn planted in the raised boxes this year.  She bought the starts, planted them, made sure they were well hydrated and is now about to harvest 15+ ears of yellow sweet corn.  Her squash has been prolific and we will have more soybeans this fall than we will know what to do with.  Happily surprised at my bride’s greening thumb…

So far this season, we have harvested 25 heads of garlic, 10 sweet yellow onions, 30+ yellow and green squash, a few Roma tomatoes (still very early in the season), 4+pints of raspberries (late summer crop just starting), 3 pints of wonderfully sweet blackberries, figs, apricots, 1 apple (more to come), a gallon+ of cherries, spinach, 5 beets, more Swiss and rainbow chard than I care to remember, 2 pints of small strawberries, a pint-ish of blueberries, and we have supplied three households with rosemary, sage, pineapple sage, thyme, basil, Thai basil, Moroccan mint, and spearmint.  We have been trading produce with some other members of our family for eggs and with two sets of neighbors for veggies and flowers.  Stamps-With-Foot mentioned the other day that she felt like Marie Antoinette with her little Austrian Hobby farm in the shadow of Versailles.

The amazing amount of flowers (except for the lavender and roses) have all been cared for by my sweet wife and a neighbor from across the street.  Both front and back yards have been perfumed since early spring.

Lawn Furniture done!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

As I mentioned in a previous post, there had been parts for Adirondack lawn chairs all over the house and shop for 9+ months waiting on me to gather the will to glue them up and drive some weatherproof screws home.  The Ruminator and I put together when he was here this summer – he supervised while waxing poetic about dressing up like a viking – and I spent a combined 12 hours priming and painting them candy apple red.

Since I don’t want to repaint them every spring I used an oil-based exterior paint.   Holy crap, it was hard to find!   It seems that everyone has switched to latex based paint for homeowner use (ease of use, easy cleanup, better for the environment, etc…) and I had to resort to having gloss deck and concrete paint custom mixed.  It went on like glass though and should be impervious to our rainy long winter weather for three or four years.  My sweet wife super loves them and could barely wait until they were dry before giving them a proper, reading a book in the sun, test.

Below is a gallery of the whole build process:

Sawdust and paint fumes

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It has been roughly eight months since my shop was robbed.  It is just now that I have found the will and desire to start building furniture again.  I have let projects and repairs pile up and let my garage shop digress into a sawdust filled junk-room.  There have been parts for Adirondack lawn chairs in my basement and shop since December.  I finally got around to gluing them up and screwing the pieces together when my son was here this summer.   That little project led me to start cleaning the shop and find all the stuff that has been waiting on me.  I dabbled with a couple of boxes, then started making pieces and organizing tools and supplies to tackle the larger stuff.  Below is a list of current projects that are in work:

  1. Painting the Adirondack chairs
  2. Re-build of my father’s 1971 bookshelves
  3. Kitchen cabinet doors
  4. Misc. Lathe tasks
  5. Kitchen cabinet pullouts
  6. Camp Kitchen box build and paint
  7. Campaign furniture for luxury car camping
  8. Hall mirror
  9. Copy of a 12th Century Abby oak door
  10. Fireplace surround and mantle
  11. New Kitchen cabinet pulls and knobs
  12. Garden tool shed
  13. Christmas gifts
  14. Garden table

The above are started and in-work.  I have plans to also build the below items soon:

  1. Small basement work bench (reloading and winter projects)
  2. Rebuild bookcase in master bedroom
  3. Murphy bed for my home office
  4. Box ceiling for master bedroom
  5. Home office bookshelves
  6. Chicken coop
  7. Ornamental planter box
  8. Cookbook shelf in kitchen
  9. Rebuild my standing desk
  10. Basement stairs rebuild

What I Want Thursday – 8/2/2012

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Below are the things that I find are present for me today:

1. More time with my children.

2. I want to stick to my new diet and workout schedule and not fall off the wagon and back into the cookie/café Mocha/lethargic/big-belly abyss.

3. For my wife to finish some long ago promised sewing tasks for me.

4. More book shelf space at home. We read more and more on our kindles and have sold many, if not most, of the paperbacks that have filled our lives for years and we are still completely out of space for our books. There are stacks on the floor in both of our home offices, to-read piles on each night-stand, fiction and history filing the living room book case, literature lined up on the basement hutch, cookbooks on the bottom shelf of the china hutch, and single volumes littered across the normally unoccupied spaces of our small home. We more shelves, not less books!

5. A finished kitchen

6. Painted lawn furniture

7. Filson Medium Travel bag. My son and I went to the Filson factory store and I fell into love/lust over this piece of luggage. I know that sounds weird, but I fly a LOT – I am a Platinum SkyTeam frequent flier member and a Gold OneWorld member. Quality, attractive, roomy, useful luggage is a necessity.

8. A cigarbox electric Ukulele for playing blues with a slide.

9. A proper car camping/glamping kitchen set up.

10. A few books: Passions:The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson; The Lodge Cast Iron Cookbook; Paris Between the Wars 1919-1939: Art, Life & Culture; Ernest Hemmingway bio and a two books of his letters (1&2), etc…

11. A Truck bed full of wooden wine/port crates/boxes for a couple of open projects at home.

12. To give Heifer International a menagerie of animals. That is my charity goal for the year. I want to save, gather, raise, find as much cash as possible to give to Heifer International by the end of 2012 for the purchase of bees, goats, cows, water buffalo, chickens, trees, training and hope. It will provide animals and knowledge that will change lives for the good. I will add a link or a tab on my front page to a fund status page/counter and update it as the gift grows.

Our yard is in bloom – Spring 2012

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Magical Spring has finally come to Le Maison du Talley. Our rhododendrons are back and in full pooping bloom after they were hacked back last year. The tulips, daffodils, and poppies have all decided to bloom at the same time. The Spanash, English and Provence lavender has taken root and flourished along the front fence. After a two year struggle with blossom-rot, the two cherries up front are full of flowers and green cherries. We have Mandarin orange blossoms, apple blossoms, apricots, figs, raspberry buds, a fence line of blooming roses, and 3 Meyer’s lemons on the dwarf tree in our backyard mini-orchard.

Stamps-with-Foot and I planted garlic and onions in the fall that are close to being pulled and we spent an afternoon planting tomatoes, squash, corn, and zucchini in two of our raised beds. After in initial problem with early blight last year, our two full beds of tomatoes went NUTS! and we had more that we could use or give away. We were more selective this year and planted just a couple varieties and only 7 plants. I hot-housed a bed of spinach, Swiss Chard, and beats all winter that is now in full production mode.

I plan to be home more this summer and really spend some time tending and harvesting, although one wouldn’t know it from all the traveling so far. I can’t wait until mid-August when I can sit in my cotton hammock, gently swinging over my Ireland-green grass, drinking a Dunkel Weissbeir, snuggling my wife, and patting our puppy while gazing out onto our yard and garden.

What I want Thursday – 4/12/12

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A list of stuff and things that I want currently – not that I necessarily need, but that i wuold like to have or see done/happen:

1. More time to read, write, build, snuggle, climb, bike, run, laugh…
2. A twin Murphy-bed in my office disguised as a mid-century modern wardrobe so that we have more guest space.
3. For my year-long kitchen project to be finished
4. To remember the password for my old laptop so I can have access to 10+ years of pictures…
5. My very own spending money that I can do with what I wish without submitting to a vote/need analysis
6. To have my FVCKIN’ tools back that some asshat stole…
7. A few new t-shirts for summer and a flat belly to reside under them.
8. For my Mother and Sister to find the perfect place in life
9. For all the dandelions in my yard to cease to exist
10. I would very much like for the really sad, really pregnant girl I say in Seattle yesterday to find someone/something/someplace that makes her warm, happy, and safe.

Spring Cleaning and Garden Prep -2012

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The sun is out and it looks like spring has finally come to Seattle. I had a full weekend off and was in the country for a change, so it was time to get busy waking the garden and yard up, prepping for planting, take care of some spring cleaning and enjoy a sunny warm day outside. Below is how this past Sunday went for me:

Up and out of the shower by 10:00am
Wife made yummy breakfast with Trader Joe’s Croissants
Coffee made me human
Put on my overalls
Removed extension cords that powered Christmas lights
Started taking down Christmas lights – 2.5 months late
Realized when on top of ladder that I needed long reach tool I made last year
Spent 30 minutes searching…
Remembered that I turned old tool into something else
Muttered dirty words
Spent 10 minutes making new long reach Christmas light removal tool
While on top of ladder, cleaned gutters – 5th time in 12 months…. Stupid Pine tree…
Turned compost
Cleaned and swept shop a little
Took apart one of our winter hot houses.
Planted forgotten bag of tulip/Camila bulbs found in hot house
Shook head and hoped that they will come up
Mulched roses
Feed roses some of the pink Miracle Grow good stuff
Treated roses for Black Spot as preventative measure
Killed some evil dandelions
Laughed manically while committing the deed
Reconnected the garden irrigation system
Wife brought me coffee and a kiss
Mulched the apple and cherry trees
Ran out of mulch
Started to Home Depot and somehow drove past and all the way to Second Use
Found $220+ of oak flooring for $25
Bought oak flooring…
Picked up more mulch at Home Depot and replacement drill for one that was stolen
Unloaded truck
Wife didn’t raise eyebrow at truck full of wood
Got away with unplanned purchase this time…
Trimmed dead shoots from lavender
Mulched around all the lavender
Sweet wife made me lunch
Moved new cabinet from shop into basement
Started to move charcoal grill
Found football sized mass of blue and black mold inside grill
How in the hell does that happen??!?!?!
Gagged more than a little
Muttered more dirty words
Cleaned out mold, scrubbed every surface with bleach solution and wire brush
There were some additional words spoken that start with F
Made HUGE hot fire with oak shop scrap to kill EVERYTHING in grill
Grill now ready for spring
Laid out spot on outside garage wall for new garden tool shed.
Cut stakes for raspberries
Dark outside so went into basement
Sanded kitchen cabinet shelves that are under construction
Put a coat of primer on them
Installed in some drawer slides in what will be new 15″ cabinets beside the stove
Fv#%ing drill battery ran out of juice
My lovely bride made a yummy dinner
Can’t find new charger for new drill
Wrapped last of wife’s birthday gifts
Put finishing coat of clear-coat on Persian table base that I have been redoing
Somehow got finish in my mouth
Spat and tried repeatedly to scrap the turpentine taste off my tongue
Failed
Gave up
Went to bed
Opened book
Not a single word read before I passed completely out.

Hot tub installation and emergency preparedness

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I bought my sweet wife a hot tub for our wedding anniversary. We had been looking for a while for just the right used tub, but most that were out there on Craigslist and the Inter-Webs were utter crap or cost almost as much as a new one. We found a machinist who wanted to sell his immaculately maintained soaker so he could put in a lux outdoor kitchen. It is an older tub, but he had all the maintenance records on it, the interior looked brand new, it worked great, and we paid about what it would have taken for him to have it hauled to the dump. I hired three giant Pacific islanders to deliver it – money well spent – then dug the trench for the electric and ran the wiring almost right away. I then made five trips to Home Depot and bought 2,450 pounds of gravel and sand to make a base – my back ached for a week from carring and packing it all into a solid foundation.  The the hot-tub movers were absent on installation day, so I used my big monkey-brain and with the help of my nephew, I moved the tub into place with rollers, planks, a lever, and wedges.   It is within 1/2 inch of where I planned it on paper and is almost dead level – 1/8″ up on the west side.

Due to my homeowner’s insurance restrictions, I was not allowed to wire into my main panel – it voids my fire coverage (yours probably says the same thing…), so I hired three successive electricians to tie it all in (one showed up high, the second was a complete no show, the third finally doing the needed work). While the third and final electrician was there and since I was paying for his time, I had him install a generator transfer switch, an exterior generator plug and a grounded exterior outlet.   I reasoned that when the power goes out, I can crank the generator and we will still have the fridge, lights, TV/DVD, and heat as long as we have gas.

Stamps-With-Foot LOVES the tub. Given to her own devices, she will sit in it all day like a Japanese snow monkey. It was great when the snow storm hit us this year in January.   We sat in the tub with snow piled all around, reflecting the city lights off its white surface.   I will build a deck over our existing concrete pad, from the house to the tub this spring, which will make her doubly happy.

November 2013 Update:

The tub ran like the German rail system for over 2.75 years. The water was always perfect, the heater and pump worked just like they were supposed to. I had a plastic fitting crack while switching filters that cost me $250 to have replaced, but that was it for maintenance. We ran the tub year around, turning the heat off in the summer for a nice cool soak on hot nights/afternoons. In the preparation for the move to France, I winterized it by shocking the water with chemical treatment, then I drained it completely. I vacuumed out all the lines as best I could – any water left should grow mold due to the shock treatment. I built a 2X4 platform and put the cover on it so that any accumulated snow or rain wouldn’t cause a cave in, before shrink-wrapping and tarping the whole thing to keep out any and all errant moisture. The cover has had it, and we will get a new one when we return to Seattle in a couple of years. My hope is that the tub springs back to working order and we have more trouble-free years together.

A fruitful season

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I am sitting in our breakfast nook, drinking coffee and getting mentally prepped for my J-O-B. As I sip my needed and delicious cup o’ joe, I can see the winter sunrise reflecting off the tips of the frost covered grass in the front yard. It has me ruminating on the intensity, goals, minor failures, and harvest from this years garden and yard work.

I spent our very cold spring getting our raised boxes ready for a bumper crop: perfect soil mix, irrigation lines, compost, etc… The tomatoes were planted a little early and they got an early blight that stunted them for a time, but they came back in force and we had more tomatoes than we new what to do with this year. I didn’t get the onions in the ground soon enough or plant garlic at all, so e ultimately gathered 2 medium white onions and I left the rest of the shoots in the ground this fall, planted winter garlic and covered them with straw so the we will have a summer crop next year.

We feel our biggest success was with our greens. Planted spinach, butter lettuce, and chard that fed us all summer. There was an unfortunate incident with the broccoli (bugs, microwave, crunchy dinner…), but on the whole our bed of greens was were most of the bang for our buck came from.

Fall hurt a little. I was away a good bit traveling for work and the garden was neglected. My very first apple was stolen by a squirrel, the slugs went NUTS on the last of the tomato crop. Fvcking slugs… There will be a battle next year and I am planning on a plan of full slug eradication. There was some definite success though: we gathered almost 2 gallons of raspberries, made mint mojitos and mint juleps from the 6 types of mint I have growing in containers. There were probably 3 bushels of tomatoes that came out of one 3×7 raised bed – really. We had our first lemon, first fig, cherries, huckleberries, strawberries (also hurt by the squirrels though), a full cup of blue berries, beets, greens, and lot of knowledge gained through screwing up.

Thoughts for this winter and next year:

Death to all slugs!!
Need more bees early in the season for fruit trees – hang some mason bees in a warm area.
Grow starts in basement and do not plant too early.
Mulch raspberries and roses.
Cut all blackberries out.
Need more drip irrigation hose.
Raise kitchen herb planters up another foot off the ground.
Raise strawberry pots up as well.
Prune tomato flowers so that crop is smaller and fruit larger.
Use apple bags to keep apple pests at bay.
Spray fruit trees early!
Spray roses with anti-rust/fungal early and monthly.
Spend more time in garden.

We got some serious shiznit done this weekend

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As per usual, our weekend was jammed with crap to get done before the dreaded Monday morning came calling. Here is how it went:

Up at 7:30
Coffee makes me into a human being. Able to now form whole sentences without grunting
Remove panels from back fence for new hot tub delivery
Smash thumb, say F-word. Say again louder just because
Clear temp spot on patio for said hot tub.
Spend 10 minutes day dreaming about hot tub magic on a cold winter evening – snow falling into the hot water…
Three J-O-B related calls wake me from my hazy never, never land
Get bact to work making room for te most expensive lawn accessory I have ever owned
Put hot house tent on second planter box
I WILL HAVE LOTS OF RED TOMATOES THIS YEAR, DAMNIT!!
Say hateful words about last years green tomatoes
Paint primer on cabinet base
Get primer in beard
Don’t realize about errant primer
Take dog with me to C&P Coffee Shop
Get some weird looks
Wonder if I have a boogie…
Meet wife at home
Wife cleans primer off face
Wrap living room in plastic and cover floor – looks like a scene from Dexter
Wife paints around trim
Work on J-O-B stuff from home
Three huge Somoans deliver hot tub
Do not argue about price
More coffee with nephew at C&P
Pizza and game night at sister’s place
Mom talks smack about she “never” cheats at games
Lighting REALLY wanted to strike….
Dominate in board game after dinner!!
Take that, Mom!!!
Consume port
Sleep
Up at 8:oo – wife brought home Starbucks
Super love wife
Researched crazy Seattle building codes for hot tubs and decks
Talked to a couple of friends in Germany using Skype – we miss Germany
Made a plan for deck that will keep me from getting a fine – maybe
Work on kitchen cabinet base in shop
Clean shop a little
Daydream about the day when I have a work space larger than a prison cell
Fondle jointer plane and wood mallet
Move desk for mother
Help tape trim in living room and paint ceiling and help paint walls
Mention that wall color looks like mac&cheese
Receive sustained dirty look from wife
Do not comment about color further
More paint in beard
Notice this time
More working for THE MAN at home
Wife goes to club meeting
Fix drawers on wife’s dresser solely for the brownie points
Lock self out of house
Look at sky and shake head slowly…
Mark pad site for hot tub with paint and mark wiring trench path
Spray paint toe of left shoe
Say the F-word at least twice
Go to sisters house and bum dinner
Sister is a great cook, single, very pretty – just saying in case you know a gent 45 – 55 with taste and a real job… Has to be single and not a dick. Must love really obese dachshunds.
Wife home
Play the whole locked my self and the dog out of the house thing off like I meant to do it
She doesn’t buy it
More painting
Not a word said about Kraft wall color – not even a smirk. Want to sleep inside tonight
Shower
Send a flurry of work emails
Curse my work email server to a firery prolonged end
Retype all the email and send again.
Off to bed to snuggle with wife.

Glamping

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

On a recent weekend, Stamps-With-foot and I met some friends at a campsite on the slopes of Mt. Rainer, situated next to a clear, cool, rushing river.  It was a welcome vacation from my iPhone, computer, the J-O-B, projects at home and was an adventure is truly luxurious camping: glamping.   We had soft warm double beds, million dollar views, canvas recliners, teak side tables, flowers in vases, steak for dinner, champagne both nights, a hardwood fueled fire, fresh pastries, good wine, table cloths, linen napkins, and a curtained canopied dining room. There were even antique Japanese pearls presented and worn (thanks for upping the b-day present giving bar Dave… you dick).  The only thing that separated it from a Victorian safari was the absence of white jacketed & gloved natives and the whole killing of endangered species thing.

All we brought to this gathering was a family sized tent, an air mattress, a set of cast iron Dutch ovens & griddle, some yummy food, good booze, and very sharp kitchen knives.  Our Portland friends added all the rest of the good stuff.  My normal camping experience often requires a nasty 10+ mile uphill hike (both ways), carrying all my junk (with most of the wife’s as well) & 25+ pounds of climbing gear.  Evenings and EARLY mornings are often spent hovering over a tiny stove to warm up some dehydrated crap-surprise, sleeping in a tiny tent, on a thin short blow-up pad, pumping my own water, and waking up to instant coffee. It might be age talking, but I think that I might prefer the linen napkin approach.   I am now plotting my own glamping plush set up.  Next time we all go camping together, it is going to look like a Moroccan Pasha has come over for a weekend – walled tents, plush pillows, curtains, chests, and feasting…

I feel the need to mention that the next time I see Dave I am going to hit him square in the taint for upping the ante with the amazing pearls…  Stamps-With-Foot is now expecting antique Japanese pearls, wrestled from the jaws of a giant clam by a tiny woman diver who held her breath for like 15 minutes and fought, almost to the death, for the prize… Yep, SMACK!! right in the baby-maker for this one David.   I hope your wife treated you well for the thought and originality of your beautiful gift, as you will soon look back on those halcyon nights of pleasure with non-functioning fondness.

Card Catalog, you complete me

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Are you old enough to remember standing in front of a wooden box in your school/neighborhood library, flipping through yellowed note cards, looking for the tittle/author of just the right book?  As I sat in Mrs. Peterson’s 3rd grade classroom, learning the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System, I would have never imagined that I would one day look back on it all with smiling nostalgia.  Going to the library and thumbing through the old oak card catalog drawers – pulled out and sitting on a table – and finding titles like The Roghfort Gang, My Side of the Mountain, How to Eat Fried Worms – happy memories.

The days to the DDS and the card catalog are almost completely gone. Almost all libraries – large, small, rural, urban – have digitized their catalogs/holdings and have sold off or just thrown out their cabinets (insert look of horror).  I had looked for my own case for the last 3-4 years before finding one at a decent price that fit in our home.  A fine old card catalog should be de rigueur for a bookworm’s home office/living room.  When I found that perfect one early this year, I may have caressed and spoke to it in soft loving tones for the first few days.  I moved it right into my office, re-arranged the drawers, and mounted my book press on the top.  Something was still missing though.  I realized that I needed labels installed in the brass pull/placard to complete the piece. I set up a template in Visio and set the lettering to an interesting script-like font that I found at dafont.  Then I had a little fun with naming the drawers from A to Z.

Thursday has come again

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What I want Thursday – August 11th, 2011:

  1. To get more sleep.  I find myself not going to bed before 1:00 most nights/mornings and I am up at 7ish.  It makes me grumpy.
  2. To find the drive and initiative to work out.  My cookie-handles have now connected with my pot belly and I am not amused, but I haven’t exactly done a great deal to address the situation.
  3. For my kids to have a great, productive, and interesting school year in 2011/2012. 
  4. I want my sister and Mother’s furniture to arrive from Texas so they can start feeling settled in Seattle.
  5. It would be great if my J-O-B cubical would stay spotless.  The 5S monster has come.
  6. I wish I could drink my coffee without sugar.  It would really help me shed the Santa-fat.
  7. Were in the HELL is my iPhone charging cord?!?!?!?!

Sometimes I am too damn handy.

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I have, for years, prided myself on my ability to make or fix just about anything found in our home or yard. Instead of having to hire a repairman or contractor, I have just done it all myself. That sounds smug, but I don’t mean for it to be – bear with me and you’ll see where this is going…

In the years since I met my wife, I have made: squirrel feeders, two loft beds, cutting tables (sewing), bird houses, 5 cutting boards, bookshelves, 2 hutches, kitchen cabinets, a hall tree, reupholstered chairs, refinished countless pieces of furniture, designed/built drawer organizers, patched walls, made a bat house (?!), hung drywall, sewn dresses, painted countless rooms (one with 5 coats of paint…), unclogged toilets & sinks, said some dirty words, welded a bumper, made a working boomerang for my son, etched glass, rescued old furniture from the burn pile, repaired a ukulele & 2 guitars, built window box planters, installed crown molding and fancy trim, bound books, constructed pellet gun targets, fixed printers/plotters, organized crap, made many of my own hand tools, hung doors, planted a garden, cleaned gutters, reseeded lawns, planted a mini-orchard, baked bread, made 2 yards Ireland-green, hung light fixtures, split firewood, soldered pipes, installed irrigation systems, pulled dents from two fenders, cut down trees, built 2 decks, sharpened countless kitchen knives, BBQed like a spatula wielding God, crafted raised garden boxes, installed 4 wireless home networks, baked turkeys, epoxied stuff back together, framed pictures, made pies, rewired lights & switches, changed automotive oil, installed shocks, brewed beer, hung about a 1000 pictures, replaced an intake manifold gasket, rewired the TV and remote, built-up 8 bikes, re-glazed windows, built PCs, replaced/rekeyed locks, and have been the entire family’s Computer Help Desk – on call 24hrs a day...

While this has saved me a few bucks here and there, it has had a couple of unwanted effects as well. 1: While I CAN fix this stuff, I don’t have the time to work, write, see the kids, snuggle my wife, and walk the dog and still take care of all the crap on my list of stuff to fix or build. 2: My wife knows I can do it all and so she is forever finding new tasks for me AND she breaks shit constantly. Now, the first thing is just one of those parts of married life that one has to just accept. It is like the 9th unwritten wedding vow: Do you, __________, promise to trap mice, carry grocery bags, repair the little things on the coming honey-do list, and put the toilet seat down, so long as you both shall live?

The second issue is more an unconscious development than a malicious attack on our household goods. Some examples:

  1. A cutting board gets left in a sink of water overnight and warps/splits. “It’s OK, you can fix it right?” She says when I find it in the morning and make the grumpy face…
  2. Kid who worked at the grocery store puts HUGE dent in car door with a train of shopping carts. No report is made. “Can you smooth that out?”
  3. First day in our home in Seattle… Me: Don’t use your hair dryer upstairs, the old wiring can’t handle it. Her: OK. After two tripped breakers when she plugged it in anyway the next morning, I found myself at the bottom of the stairs, crumpled in a ball, with a dislocated shoulder after I fell down said stairs trying to turn the breaker back on.
  4. Me: “Where is my bike lock cable?” Her: “Oh, that… I used it the other day and it fell off my bike somewhere and I didn’t notice.”

It is my fault, I have trained her to be this way – it is a learned behavior. If we had to pay cold hard cash for all the little/huge messes/dents/dings/cracks that seem to follow Stamps-With-Foot she would be more careful. I love my wife. She is amazing in so many ways – in most ways, but I swear the very next thing time I have to fix around the house (caused by her own personal tornado), my lovely/girly/sweet wife is going to get covered in sawdust, mud, paint, goo, putty, primer, glue, stain, and gunk – just because.

What I Want Thursday

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

This is blatant plagiarism. I slipped into the Wikipedia hole for like three hours this weekend and came out on a girl’s blog that was really sad: hurt, suicide, illness… but I did find a bright spot, one might argue the only one: She had a number of “What I want Thursday” posts. They were funny and sweet and made me think a couple of times – so I am stealing the idea. Is it plagiarism if I admit the theft? Probally.

So, to follow is my inaugural go:

  1. Better Penmanship – My handwritting is terrible , like a seventy-five year old doctor with the shakes writing a prescription terrible.
  2. A fine prosperous garden – As much for my ego as for our table and pocket book
  3. Custom letter-press stationary – Everyone should have their own!
  4. A clean, tidy and simple home – La Maison du Talley is currently flooded with the clutter of half done projects, piles in the basemet destined for Goodwill, and like 20 banana boxes of crap we are storing for other people.
  5. To finally finish the book I am writing about living in Hamburg
  6. A clean shop – Projects, sawdust, bike parts, and garden tools strewn about in a rushed haphazard manner.
  7. For my neighbor’s pine tree to die – I have cleaned my gutters three times in 2011 and they are full AGAIN. I have serious hate for that tree.
  8. Peace in the Middle East – I am throwing that on in because I, like the rest of humanity, really DO want it and because I am feeling like the rest of the list is all about me and flirts with self-absorbed douchebaggery.

Spring in Belfast, Northern Ireland

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One of the reasons my J-O-B pays me the medium bucks is because I will travel anywhere in the world with little to zero notice.  I again proved that last week when, with two hours notice, I hopped on a plane from Seattle to Northern Ireland two days before the Memorial Day weekend.  Stamps-With-Foot was none too happy.  I bought her shiny objects while there to quell the violence in her heart.  Man, she really likes shinny stuff because I haven’t heard one more cross word from her about my trip and I am starting to wonder if she relishes when I travel so that she can display annoyance and mock anger to receive sparkly bobbles and guilt-heavy jewelry.

Some rough initial, unedited opinions of Belfast:

  1. Strong northern winds blowing when I arrived brought in the smell of cattle and pastures – the sweet decay of manure and decomposing grass.
  2. Road right-of-way here is on the left side of the road.  This makes me a hazard to curbs, rental cars and living beings.  I also noticed after repeatedly walking against the flow of foot traffic on the street that people here walk on the left of sidewalk and escalators are left-flow as well.  It’s the little things one notices.
  3. There exists a weird pocket version of adolescence rebellion Northern Ireland: lily-white 12-18 year old boys who are overly groomed, cell phone to ear with hip-hop blaring, trying to look tough – Impossible when one is wearing his collar popped and has his feet shod in white leather slip-ons.
  4. I went on a hop-on hop-off city tour that included drives down the Falls Road and Shankill Road areas of town were 40’ high barriers, blast walls, bullet scarred bricks, and where victims’ and martyrs’ murals take up the entire sides of buildings and.  There is not an inch of street in those neighborhoods that doesn’t hold some palpable sad memory for some.  It was spooky and sad and made me say a prayer of thanks for my lower-middle class childhood.  Growing up in Belfast during The Troubles, in a constant state of fear and vengeance would have probably led me to a very angry and short life.
  5. This land is a sea of red hair. Most of it real, some from a bottle, one 20-something lass walked into view with natural ginger roots and pink/red tips. An Asian teen and a black girl with red dos also strolled by my people-watching perch – Were they red-headed just to blend…?
  6. I happened to stop in at a mass at St. Mary’s (walked out of Kelly’s Bar and there was a church, what do you do?) and police had to be called because of drunk/high/ crazy lady (maybe she was all three) interrupted mass and tried to take over the microphone at the pulpit.  – High drama.
  7. Traveling without my wife is lonely and sucky.  The sharing of things and people seen, food eaten, and the smell of the flower and grocery markets is a thing not to be trivialized.
  8. Every third word I here is “fock” or “focking.”  Spoken with gusto by men, women, teens and kids (one lad with spiky hair, maybe ten, at an international food market said today: “Ah fock this ma, I wanta go home”). It seems that the Northern Irish have such a great affinity for this word and use it as much as possible in an apparent attempt to claim it as their own.
  9. I went to Madden’s Bar to drink a pint and listen to the advertised Irish trad music. Walked in for the last 30 minutes of the Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Manchester United. As I sat down, Barcelona scored (final was 3-1 Barcelona) and the crowd cheered.  Apparently, I was in a Nationalist/Republican Pub…  I kept my United love to my focking self and drank my focking Guinness as focking quietly as focking possible. Music was great though.
  10. For some reason biking in Belfast is not wide spread. It can’t be due to a northern Irish aversion to 2 wheels:  I arrived on a Thursday afternoon and the roadways between villages were packed with road bikers all kitted up in multi-colored spandex.  Really, hundreds of them, but in the city it seems like almost no one rides.  I went out walking on a mostly sunny afternoon in the central part of downtown and saw maybe 15 people riding all day.  There was only one fixed speed wonder and only 1 guy on a trials bike (Danny MacAskill fan I would bet) out hopping on to park benches, walls, and planters.  It is not the weather – London and Hamburg are full of bikes. The Belfast streets are broad and flat.  It must be something left over from The Troubles, I don’t know and didn’t get a chance to ask.
  11. As discovered when Stamps-With-Foot and I were in Dublin – Guinness is better in Ireland!

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Bike to work month… big belly… left in the dust by old guy…

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May is bike to work month and I need to ride. As I have neglected my many two wheeled lovelies this spring in my quest to become hugely fat, I decided it was time that I get back in the saddle, shed some pounds, and get into fighting shape. My first outing was somewhat painful and more than a little ego smashing. I drove into work the first sunny morning of the month and cut out 20 minutes early to take advantage of the not-rainy weather. This winter and spring have been cold, wet, crappy, and gray and I am so white that my skin is almost translucent.

I rode my CycloX bike at what I believed was a nice little let’s-get-reacquainted clip. The sun was warm, the sky blue, little wind, I was soaking up vitamin D, and WHOOSH! – an ass on a blue bike darted past me without a word and cleared my bars by a couple inches. Son of a… Poor form, poor form… Times past, I would have chased him down, stuck on his wheel and punished him with a nasty big-ring pace till he fell off, ashamed of his transgression and performance.  However, my cookie handles precluded me for doling out lessons in cycling etiquette right then. Let’s just say that I got passed a bunch.  Once, that lovely afternoon, by a 70+ year old man on a ’80s steel frame, who said “Look out, son!” as he rolled by on my left.  Really, he said that.

I would like to tell you that I got stronger as the month wore on, but traveling for work, a painful case of costochondritis, and my own laziness conspired against me.  I rode home three more times in May, averaging once a week and did ZERO weekend rides.  I am more than a little ashamed to own as many bikes as I do and not treat them with the respect they deserve.  June and July are going to be different.  I am going to commute an average of twice a week (when I am home instead of in Belfast – long story) and I am going to do one weekend ride a week.  In fact, next weekend I am going to take my lovely bride on a tandam bike ride/pincnic on either the Burke/Gillman or the Cedar River trail

On a brighter note, ridership at my work has increased 33% from last May to this: we have 3 people out of 700 that now ride to work occasionally instead of just two…

My kitchen knife-rack is cooler than yours!

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We were given some really nice kitchen knives for our wedding – REALLY NICE.  I take pride in the fact that we never have dull kitchen cutlery and when my chef father-in-law comes for visits, he always remarks on the usability of our chef’s and prep knives.  Those were just Target specials that were leftovers and cast-offs from my parents and friends.  I was fine with them banging around in drawers and odd knife blocks.  Well, the new Globals, were above a shabby knife drawer and required a case that befitted there quality and beauty.

As part of the kitchen remodel, I am adding little touches that make cooking in our kitchen as easy and pleasurable as possible.  I decided to add a custom wall-mounted knife holder that would both protect the generous gift and make them immediately ready to use. 

Knives need a good hard wood to protect them (hardwood retain less mosture) and the harder the wood, the longer it will last through the years of little nicks and jabs as knives are withdrawn and put away.  I had some reclaimed maple flooring sections that came out of a local school gym that were just the right width and were bone-dry.  I went out to the table saw and cut 10 kerfs from ½” to 2 ½”.  I then glued and clamped two pieces together and let them sit for a day.  After the glue was fully cured, I cut off the original flooring grooves, drilled mounting holes, sanded it with 220 grit, and mounted it in the kitchen.  Dowels were installed over the screws in the mounting holes to make the installation seamless.  I taped off the wall and the contact strip where the knives would enter/exit and painted the rack and painted the rest a gloss white to match the eventual color of the cabinets.  One added benefit is that our Globals show very nicely in their new rack!  I am working on replacing the 9” crap chef’s knife with a Global sashimi blade and a 9″ bread knife.  Both the whe wife and father-in-law approve.

The dishwasher that ate my March

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Stamps-With-Foot hates doing the dishes.  She has about as much appreciation for dirty plates as the Dali Llama does for Chairman Mao…  Since moving into our 1928 wonder, we (mostly she) has been hand washing the pots, pans, silverware and plates and letting them dry on our limited counter-top space.  When discussing kitchen options a dishwasher was her number one priority.  There was some huffing and foot tapping…   I did as commanded and cut out a cabinet beside the sink (GOD! It hurt to alter the original cabinetry!), planned for plumbing and wiring, worked out the floor build up, cut access holes, made trim pieces, marked off measurements, etc…

For insurance reasons, I brought in an electrician to run the new power line back to the panel and while he was there, I had him install three outlets above the counter (there were none), move the stove power line and add a receptacle for our future over the stove microwave.  That sounds fairly simple, but there was some drywall to remove, some 420 time, weird access issues, and a stove cord he drilled through…  It took him two visits over a three week period to complete the needed work.  The plumber (I don’t plumb, I suck at it and old galvanized pipes scare me!) was easier to get a hold of, a nice guy, knew his stuff, and completed his part – two valves and line installation – in just a single morning.  I do recommend the later type of contractor instead of the former!

So, after maybe 6 hours of my labor and $1200 (washer price + craftsmen), my wife now has a dishwasher and lots of outlets to plug crap into.  Now, I can get on with the rest of the kitchen remodel – 9 feet of new cabinet build and installation.  I won’t need any additional professional assistance, so hopefully the rest goes smoothly and quickly.

The First Ride of Spring – Rekindling My Bike Romance

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Let’s say that I have been neglecting my bikes this year.  If my road bike were a truly a woman, she would have already maxed all the credit cards and run away with that suave, skinny, tanned bike mechanic that so lovingly tuned her last summer.  With the return of Daylight Savings time, it is time to rekindle the romance with my many two-wheeled mistresses.

My oldest friend, Herbert, was in Seattle celebrating the rain/spring break/grey skies for a week and we decided to go for a long bike ride while he was visiting.   We cruised down to the ferry dock near Lincoln Park and took a couple bikes over to Vashion Island for a circumnavigation tour of that dot of terra firma.  I rode my commuter bike and Herbert rode my 1979 disco-orange Volkscycle.  The night before we installed some retro fenders on the orange beauty (Arron’s Bike is the SHIT! – incredible customer service!), thinking we might get wet, but karma intervened and we had blue skies and warm sunshine for the whole trip.

After climbing a nasty hill leading from the ferry dock, we rode south along the less populated western side.  Vashion is dotted with small farms, quite roads, tall trees, and beach front cabins.  The abject poverty of some of the homes we passed was quite sad:  3000+ sq. soot cabin with 3-4 acres of green pasture behind, a dock extending out into the Sound with a handsome 30+ foot sail bot moored there, panted barn, new tractor, happy cows…  so sad…  😉

We stopped for lunch and beer at the Quartermaster Inn – yummy red pepper soup – and made it to Vashion Island Coffee Roasters just before they closed.  Coffee…  I bought a bag of my favorite Ecuadorian roast, and enjoyed a fine cup of joe, sitting on the bench outside watching the world go by.   Getting back on the bikes was difficult…  after a wet winter of cheating on my two wheel mistress with beer and snacks, my insensitivity to her was repaid by the butt-numbing pain inflected by my bike seat.  Holy crap!  Herbert was in worse shape as the plastic 1970’s plush saddle h was astride turned into a crotch mounted torture devise after 25 miles or so.

All together, we rode 46 miles, drank some good beer, ate yummy food, ingested way too much coffee, laughed about stupid things done as children, lovingly remembered friends that have passed, and made some memories.

Post Script:

We had planned to paddle a kayak over to Blake island the next day, but our butts decided that wasn’t going to happen.  Instead, we hobbled around for a couple of days like two old guys in search of a hemorrhoid pillow…

Running in the dark with The Chatty Buddha

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My Father-in-law was visiting us for a week and in an attempt to support my Santa-to-svelte transformation, he took up the reins to roll me out of bed before work to run with him.  He picked the most amazing time to morph into a Drill Instructor:  DST-Spring Forward, rain, wind, cold temps…  Who wouldn’t want to leave their soft bed and warm wife to slip on still-wet shoes  to go run in the dark and shiver as the rain gods pee on them??  Ooh, sign me up!

We ran at Lincoln Park, along the beach, up the hill, and through the trees the first morning for a 3.5 mile jog.  That initial run was bearable, but the next Monday morning was a whole other monkey!  It was dark, I was tired, a touch hung over, there was pouring rain, the mercury sat at 43 degrees, and no coffee had yet found me.  Stamps-With-Foot’s father, who we shall forever more refer to as The Chatty Buddha, had been up for an hour, done some yoga, had coffee, and was full of wit and observations.  Without coffee, I am more of a grumpy Neanderthal than 21st century Renaissance man.   It was hard not to send The Chatty Buddha to his celestial reward as we drove over to the park and as we began our run, a quip from him just after my first stride made me fantasize – in Technicolor – about pushing him down a long steep, wet, secluded forest stairway…  The sudden stop of rain, cessation of the biting wind, the sound of the trail crunching beneath us, and the sight/smell of the tide coming in – lapping the driftwood logs – made me completely forget about my in-law-patricidal thoughts.  We ran 4 miles and that sunrise beach run was the absolute highlight of my day.    Well, that and the resolutely frugal Chatty Buddha bought me a soul-satisfying triple Grande 1 pump Starbucks mocha as we headed home.  I am really glad he got me out into cold.

Second site is up and running

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Oh, if I had a hammer…  As mentioned,  in my heart of hearts I am just a joiner, a cabinet maker, and a carpenter.  To work a hunk of dull wood from rough plank into a beautiful and useful object, used for generations, is so fulfilling to me.  I sleep very peacefully after a day spent in the shop.  Since I am a 21st century ape, my building interests have bloomed to include metal work, gears, bicycles, motors, hydraulics, computers, cars, motorcycles, machining, etc…  While my specific skill set in most deeply rooted in wood, I can and do appreciate the accoutrements of the other trades.   I have been cyber-hording pictures of planes, saws, machines, shops, tools, bike frames, blueprints, and images of amazing works of craft and skill for YEARS and finally decided to do something with them.

I have built another site (in all my unlimited free time…) that is geared toward shining a spotlight on useful, finely executed, beautiful handmade and simple machine-built objects: Little bits of our world that become more appreciated, admired, and useful with age.

The site is Beasauge.net – a definition of the work in included there.  I would have liked to have Beausage.com, but some dill hole is cybersquatting on the url and wants $$$ to give it up.

Our Dirty Little Secret…

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The wife and I strive to have as little impact as possible on the world around us.  My green lawn is chemical free, our firewood is shop-scrap and blown-down timber, our garden is organic, we conserve water and electricity, I compost our kitchen and yard waste, we are looking at honey and egg production this year, we recycle or reuse over 92% of our waste (real number – I calculated it out over a three month period by volume), I build furniture and cabinets from recycled and thrown away wood, and we either carpool or I ride to work most days.

However, we have a dirty little secret that needles at my green-bent little soul at least a couple of times a day – the massive 1942 oil-fired heater in our basement.  We burn diesel to warm our home.  Worse, we burn it in an antiquated heater that our service person said was “…about 30% efficient…”   I feel like I and wearing a scarlet H (hypocrite) on my chest.  We HAVE to do something about it!

I had considered switching to biodiesel, but so much oil is used in the production of bio-crops (tractor feul and fertilizer) that there is actually more oil used to produce most available biodiesel than regular fuel.  I do not have the time, room, and am not zoned properly to produce my own biodiesel from used fryer oil.  We have instead decided to replace our war and famine-fueled antique oil guzzler with a modern heat pump.  I wanted a closed-loop geothermal system and we have the ground space for it, but the $25K price tag put it out of reach.  We have instead opted for an above ground model that will have an electric booster for when the outside ambient temperature falls below 30 degrees Fahrenheit.  It will increase our winter electric bill some, which now sits at ~$40 a month, but it will give us air-conditioning for the one week a year that we need it and the projected price increase (~$20 a month) will be offset by the $2K+ savings on oil every winter.  The system has a 20 year warrantee and will pay for its self in fuel savings in three years J  I wanted it installed last fall, but it looks like it will go in this summer.

Additionally, I am installing a fireplace insert upstairs and am building an electric “fireplace” for the basement family room to help out when the temperature drops.  We have only lost power once in the year and a half that we have been in our home, but just in case I am having an auxiliary generator adaptor wired to our main panel during the kitchen remodel so that our heat pump, fridge, freezer, stove, water heater and a few lights will be available if a storm or wind knocks our power out.

Spring projects start and an ultimatum of sorts.

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It seems that La Maison du Talley is in constant project mode.  There are two furniture refinishing projects happening in the unfinished side of our basement, there is an inch of sawdust on my shop floor, the front and back yards are still in various stages of completion, and my project idea/sketch book is quickly filling with new stuff.

I have finished a good number of things on my plate and have vowed to finish everything currently under construction or re-construction before beginning anything new.  I decided that as winter closes and spring dawns to take advantage of the better weather and rising temperatures (better for painting and finishing) and get some stuff knocked off.  In that vein, I had a very productive weekend:

I built and installed an irrigation system for the backyard made with ¾ PVC.  There are drip hose attachment points, ball valves, and splitters for ancillary hose attachments.  I built it so that I can later install a timer for watering the fruit trees and veggies when we are out of town and a coupler to flush the pipes with compressed air before the first freeze every year.  The total cost was less than a $100, I spent maybe 8 hours of labor from concept design to finish, and the shear convenience of it will pay off in spades in the years to come.

Last spring I acquired the top half of a built-in dish cabinet/hutch that had been ripped/sawed out of a 1920’s house.  It was missing one side, had no back, covered a thick coat of unknown layers of paint, and scrapes and gouges all over it.  I looked past its current state and saw some potential for some period appropriate and beautiful basement storage, so I picked it up for a steal and brought it home.  It languished there in the basement, covered with plastic and accumulating junk on top through my shoulder recovery, the excitement of the summer, and during our fall of rest and relaxation.

I got serious about it a couple of weeks ago and after, squaring the cabinet with joined pipe clamps, I installed a beadboard back – real beadboard and not the plywood facsimile.  I had Stamp-With-Foot help glue and drive a few nails so she would get an appreciation of the scope of the rebuild.  I also took her with me to the millwork store and she picked out some decorative edge molding that I incorporated into a built up crown detail.  I really appreciated her input as it made the project seem more like ours than just mine.  After re-gluing and adding screws to all the joints, I installed a new side piece and 3” structural beams for mounting it to the wall – it will be holding a good bit of weight and I wanted the load evenly distributed on the whole piece.

My little wife helped me man-handle it into place and attach it to the walls.  I spent an evening last week gluing up a custom top with clear grained popular and pine – it will have additional recessed storage in the top.   While milling the edges on the top edge, I realized that I had used my father’s tools to do almost the entire job.  I made me both smile and a little sad.  My father helped give me the skill to build cabinets and furniture; he taught me that doing something right and making it beautiful were one and the same.  I am using his tools because they became mine when he passed away and it made me wish that he were still here to see my adult ability to build and create, to help teach my son (his namesake) the same lessons I learned, and to just sit quietly and listen to him talk about his day and experience his warm smile.

I spent Saturday night and Sunday evening installing the new top and bits of trim.  I built all the pieces perfectly square and there was a hiccup during installation as the walls of our 1928 house and the actual dimensions of our “new” 1920 cabinet are anything but…  I called the wife down, she gave me her opinion (better than my own in this case) and I spent some quality time with a razor-sharp draw knife, a svelte jack plane, and creatively used a couple of long shims to make it all both work and look good.  All the trim is now installed and the whole thing turned out really nice. We will do a little more scraping before priming the bare wood and paint it all with a gloss white trim paint.  I will ost about it again when the finished cabinet is ready for unveiling.

Note: Stamps-With –Foot has now informed me that this is the last project that I will do in the house until I install a dishwasher and build the additional cabinets in the kitchen.  I will NOT complete the 1942 Philco Radio refinish, nope to reseeding the grass, the nook table remake will wait, no new fruit tree planting, the crown and headboard in our bedroom has been pushed and gym entertainment/storage cabinet is nixed until the Kitchen is done…

My OCD results for 2010

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2010 wasn’t a bad year according to the crazy/obsessive spreadsheet that I use to track my daily life –  It could be worse, some people spoke Meth to pass the time, I have spreadsheets.  While super-nerdy, I have never shopped my derriere on the street corner for a new template or some cool calc function…

Anyway, I wasted sometime in 2010 cyber hoarding and we got sucked into a number of DVD series that hypnotized us in front of the idiot box.  But, on the whole though I feel better about 2010 than I did about 2009, since I spent more than a quarter of the year rehabilitating my again repaired shoulder – the 4th time is the charm!.

Successes were:  I snuggled with my cute little wife, drank great beer, had a second wedding, read a bunch of really good books, ran a good bit, cycled some (not as much as I wanted/needed to because I was lazy!), My shoulder is now stronger than before the latest accident, traveled a little (work and pleasure), got to do some serious work around and to our home.  Here is how the numbers for the year shook out:

2010 2009
 2008
Running
 218 Miles 127.8 Miles 139.5 Miles
Cycling
 710 Miles 1271.3 Miles 945.5 Miles
Days Hiked
 3 Days 7 Days 10 Days
Books Read
 31 Books 23 Books 41 Books
Days Off
 33.5 Days 32.5 Days 98 Days
Gym
 45 Times 4 Times 33 Times
Miles Traveled
 34021.30 Miles 26,533 Miles 61,341.3 Miles
Camping
 0 Nights 3 Nights 8 Nights
Overtime Worked
 310.87 Hours 204.4 Hours 0 Hours

2011 looks like it will be a good year as well.  I have some building and woodworking projects that I am really looking forward to (skin on frame Kayak, kitchen cabinets, detailed carvings…), my shoulder feels great, Snowboarding is on the schedule, I have a short list of peaks to climb, we are finally getting the basement exercise room squared away, so I will be able to train while watching DVDs (I got a SWEET Classic Warner Bros. Cartoon set for Christmas), There are a couple of cyclo-cross and road racing events planned, I have committed to finishing the first complete draft of my own book, I have a fantastic summer with the kids planned, a climbing trip with The Big-Belly Orthopedic Redneck Climbers Assn MAY be in the works for August, I will get to see the family more, and I will get to read some books that have long waited for my attention (Life in a Medieval Village, Theodore Rex, Just My Type, America’s Best Travel Writing – 2008,…) and some great new releases (Keith Richard’s Life, Carriger’s Heartless, Bryson’s At Home, The Second Book of General Ignorance, etc…).  We also plan to spend the year simplifying our life and the amount of crap we have, paying down some debt, planting a HUGE garden, and generally living a lighter existence.  🙂

2010 2009
 2008
Running
 218 Miles 127.8 Miles 139.5 Miles
Cycling
 710 Miles 1271.3 Miles 945.5 Miles
Days Hiked
 3 Days 7 Days 10 Days
Books Read
 31 Books 23 Books 41 Books
Days Off
 33.5 Days 32.5 Days 98 Days
Gym
 45 Times 4 Times 33 Times
Miles Traveled
 34021.30 Miles 26,533 Miles 61,341.3 Miles
Camping
 0 Nights 3 Nights 8 Nights
Overtime Worked
 310.87 Hours 204.4 Hours 0 Hours

Halloween – Past and Present

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

There are certain advantages to being married to a costume designer whose resume includes stage, TV, and film production…  It takes the Halloween costume planning and execution to a whole different level.  There are no half-ass Wal-Mart last-minute plastic ensembles allowed in the Talley house.  Oh no!  Outfits are tailored, accessories are found after hours of internet trolling, wigs are clipped and styled, and the fat suits are tubby perfection!  Stamps-With-Foot took a small little ember of Halloween love in me and made it into a choreographed 3-alarm house fire.  Below are some pictures of our costumes past and present.

Matt and Laurel’s AWESOME Holiday Newsletter 2010

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

We sent this note out with our Christmas cards this year:

Hello Friends and Family!!

It has been quite a year for us and as neither of us have the necessary literary skill or dextérité to write a full clear, concise, and truthful tale, we have decided to send out the truncated version in list form.  Those of you who received a very thorough list earlier this year detailing Matt’s adventures with building some garden boxes may recognize this style.

Happenings for 2010…

  • Matt has shoulder surgery and spends New Years Day hopped up on pain medication
  • Donald and Matt find venue for Matt & Laurel’s 2nd wedding
  • Large cedar tree is removed and we complete a back yard makeover
  • Matt catches world record Great White shark using a cane pole and stink bait
  • Fly to San Francisco for Emmy and Nick’s gorgeous January wedding
  • Brodie dominates a 100 lb. bulldog in playground skirmish.  DOMINATES
  • Our own wedding planning stress begins…
  • Try to adopt 2nd puppy – ends badly when she and Brodie do not become friends
  • Laurel and Matt plant their first garden together
  • Laurel becomes a salaried employee
  • Matt travels to Tobi and Brian’s wedding in Orange County, California – Laurel had to work (joys of becoming salaried employee…)
  • Laurel makes cousin Rosie Brezynski a dress for her 8th grade graduation dance
  • Unfortunately miss Matt and Lola’s wedding in Sedona, AZ on a lovely Monday
  • Drive to California for Grover and Stacy’s beautiful Mt. Shasta June wedding
  • Carlton comes to Seattle for his first visit
  • David and Maria show up for our 1st summer BBQ
  • Matt, Carlton, Donald Burton and David Brezynski cycle from Vancouver, BC back to Seattle
  • Carlton rides 154 miles in three days at nine-years old, even peddling backward up a few hills…
  • Matt real tired
  • Spend fourth of July on a houseboat at Bainbridge island, watching fireworks from the deck
  • Madison comes to Seattle for the second time – spends two weeks text messaging and facebooking
  • More wedding planning – original budget shot
  • Wedding stress almost makes Matt cry
  • Sarah and Laurel remake Laurel’s fairy princess wedding dress
  • Matt and Laurel miss Henrik and Britta’s wedding in Hamburg three weeks before our own, but get to be the first stop on their three week honeymoon in the US
  • Brodie sires 19 litters of puppies – he feels being “fixed” is just a state of mind
  • Matt’s mother Nelda flies to the West Coast for the first time
  • 93.743% of the people we love in this world fly in for our wedding
  • Matt loses shooting bet with Ross – the SHAME!!
  • Matt and Laurel have 2nd wedding – Laurel looks stunning in her dress and makes Matt cry
  • Nelda, Henrik, Britta, Herbert, Mark, Matthew, and Lola all share our one bathroom for the days leading up to and after the wedding
  • Brodie is the most photographed wedding participant
  • Matt Builds most over-complicated garden boxes in Seattle
  • Laurel gets promotion at work and Matt becomes a stay at home video game tester
  • Laurel helps costumer friend Sarah with a production of Alice in Wonderland: A Rock Musical
  • Try to adopt another puppy (same one as before) – Still hates Brodie and incredibly gassy
  • Travel to Eugene, OR for Thanksgiving weekend
  • Matt completes his circumnavigation of the earth on his 1895 Penny Farthing
  • Matt takes 10 months to complete a hutch refinish project in the living room
  • Matt goes to Paris and Hamburg in December for work – Laurel tries to stowaway in his luggage
  • Christmas Eve 2nd Annual Zombie Shooting Fest planned.
  • Christmas at home with Laurel’s mom Beckie
  • Laurel and Matt plan to climb Olympus Mons to greet the New Year for its caldera rim.

We look forward to another year of working on our home, welcoming guests from near and far, having the kids out to visit, puppy snuggling, garden planting and other adventures not yet known.  We love you very much and are blessed to have you as part of our lives.  All our love, Matt and Laurel

…A number of people didn’t get the jokes above and seemingly didn’t notice how the word “truthful” was in bold/italics in the header of the letter.  My mom told everyone about our New Years mountaineering trip and my fishing skills.  A friend asked if we were keeping any of Brodie’s puppies.  I had cousins who voiced their concern about fireworks so near a volcano…  A distant (and very old) relative of my wife’s actually asked if we were polygamists due to the second wedding…   He really and truly asked it in writing, in the Christmas card he sent us in reply!  Man, I can’t wait till I am old so I can have no filter and get away with it!!

I have a warped sense of humor and anything in the above list written in italics should be seen as a humorous untruth. For the record: we are not polygamists, we will not be traveling to Mars for New Years to visit Olympus Mons, Brodie fathered no puppies after the snip-snip, I do not test video games as a profession, the furtherest I have ever ridden the Penny Farthing is 15 miles, and the world record Great White was caught by Alfredo Cutajar off the coast of Malta on April 16, 1987. 🙂


What I have to put up with every night…

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

The following pictures are how every night of my life now goes.  Cute sleepy wife goes to bed and puppy follows her.  I follow mere seconds to an hour later and this is what I find:

Stamps-With-Foot sound asleep, Dog (Brodie) on my side and in my spot.  Wife snuggling dog.  I walk in and without fail this is the reaction I get:

Wife: ZZZZzzzzzzzz….ZZZZZzzzzz

Brodie: “What?! You got a problem monkey? I was here first, this is my spot!    Don’t even think about disturbing me, I’m comfy and set for the evening.  You should have got here first…”

I ignore him, walk around the bed to hop in and turn off the lamp and I am greeted with this face:

Brodie: “If you touch me I am going to EAT YOUR FACE OFF – I swear by all that is Holy (salmon kibble, the stuffed monkey, & chasing kitties) that I will FVCK YOU UP if you…  Hey!…  NO… Stop…  Damn it!!…  Fine, I will sleep on the other side of her, but tomorrow night I am going to attack balls if you try this sh!t again…”

With that pronouncement he then makes a couple of turns, flops down with a huff, snorts a couple of times, may pass some gas just because and then begins to snore like a fat old guy with sleep apnea and a deviated septum.  Modern love with a dose of belligerent puppy.