Posts Tagged House

Some Big News…

May 1

Posted by matttalley in Brodie, Bucket-List, Family, Foodie, France, House, Travel, Work, road trip | No Comments

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…

Tags: Brodie, Cheese, Delusions of Adequacy, Expat, food, Foodie, France, French, House, J-O-B, Laurel, Move, movers, Moving to France, Nesting, Road Trip, Shop, Stamps-With-Foot, Tools, Toulouse, travel, Wine, Yard

Hanging out in our ‘hood this weekend

Apr 29

Posted by matttalley in Brodie, Carpentry, Coffee, Craftsmanship, Friday, Friends, House, Photography, Puppy | No Comments

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.

Tags: Brodie, Brunch, C&P, Cheese, Craft, DubSEA, Hangover, House, Lathe, Maple, My Day, nerdy, project, Purpleheart, Snuggling, Stamps-With-Foot, Trader Joe's, White Center, Wine, Wood

Weekend Update – Spring flowers, Lincoln Park, and thoughts of Arborcide

Apr 15

Posted by matttalley in Brodie, Garden, Photography, Running, Updates, Yard, neighbors | No Comments

Oh Seattle… Why can’t you be pretty and green and sort of warm all year? I keep telling myself that Summer and early fall here make the crappy six month of fallwinterspring all worth it, but that is a hard pill to swallow right now. This has been an especially dreary winter: rain, cooler than normal temps, very few sunny days (I remember 4…) and it didn’t really get cold enough to kill the mosquito eggs, so we are looking forward to a buggy spring. Oh Joy. On the bright side of things, the lawn and garden at La Masion du Talley are erupting with jonquils, tulips, cherry blossoms, the begonias and the dahlias are just coming up, there is green on the espalier apples, new raspberry canes are shooting up, my rose bushes in the back are leafing out, I saw a couple of honey bees out foraging, the grass is lush and green, and the first hints of the lavender up front are coming in. I spent the weekend splitting my time between the inside of the house and the yard. In the last two weeks I have been in Tokyo, Orange Co.., CA and Las Vegas, so my part of the household chores had gone unattended to. Here is how it all went down:

Slept late Saturday.
Breakfast and coffee while sitting next to Brodie.
Washed a load of whites and a load of colors.
Thought about going for a run.
Lost two hours of my life to Pinterest instead…
Put dishes away – some of them anyway.
Stamp-With-Foot took Brodie to new vet.
Got dressed and picked up living room and office.
Wife loves new vet. Brodie, not so much…
Finished a couple of small house projects.
Got ready to take Brodie for a walk in Lincoln Park
Started raining.
Started hailing…
Canceled trip to the park.
Brodie went back to sleep on the couch.
Went downstairs to work on my Workbench of Doom in the basement.
Heard water running outside… SHIT! Gutters overflowing! Downspout Plugged!! FVCK!!!
Ran outside, put ladder up DURING hail storm, dug pine needles and holly leaves out of gutters on both sides of house.
Water started moving down drainpipe.
While on top of wet, slick ladder – wished I possessed The Force – would kill neighbor’s trees and lift them out of the ground like X-wing fighter…
Said loud dirty words about gutters, pine needles and neighbor’s trees.
Squinted eyes, pursed mouth, and made mental note to buy copper nails, a large auger bit, some Drain-O, and a vile of the poison that coated the blade that Bilbo was stabbed with for that hateful tree.
Climbed down slick ladder with frozen hands prayed for a single bolt of well placed lightning.
Went inside, threw wet hat down and stomped downstairs to plan a crime.
Stamps-With-Foot made me coffee.
Felt better & cleaned the basement a little.
Wife took me out on Movie Date.
Had a nice time.
Came home and sat in the hot tub for a good long while – nice light rain fell.
Wife all for me taking a hit out on the tree.
Fell asleep looking at Pinterest again.

Up at the crack of dawn on Sunday: 9:00am
Coffee and breakfast.
Wrote some e-mails and sent a few pics to Instagram
Wife left for appointment and Brodie and I went to C&P Coffee.
Brodie tried to eat a black lab the looked funny at him while I was ordering coffee.
Being French, he has a Napoleon Complex – Really, really.
I grabbed him in mid air and other dog looked like he wanted to tinkle on the carpet: hid behind owner
Brodie looked hard at that dog whole time we were there.
Stopped by Home Depot on the way home and got moss killer for the roof and yard.
Noticed the moss while unstopping gutters.
Came home, cut the grass and spread some Weed&Feed that will lead to the eventual demise of all the dandelions, clover, and nettles that dare to take root in my yard.
Mwahahaha…
Felt happy.
Edged and mowed the front and back yards.
Found a couple of ferociousness dandelion patches.
How had I missed them?!
Got out the instant death weed killer and murdered me some dandelions.
Giggled like Buffalo Bill as he put the lotion in the basket.
Other neighbor walked by told me that I had a beautiful yard.
Beamed with pride and tried not to look like a weed serial killer or that I was hatching a plan to commit arborcide!
Wife came home and helped me spray the roof for moss.
Took off overalls and went with wife and Brodie to Lincoln Park – pretty end to the day!
Went to Trader Joe’s for the week’s worth of groceries.
Stamps-With-Foot made dinner while I worked on some handmade Christmas gifts (starting early)
Looked at Pinterest and Instagram again.
Stole wife’s phone because her pics of Lincoln Park were better than mine.
Heard noise outside.
THE WAS A FVCKING RACCOON ON MY ROOF!!
Thought about getting The Ruminator’s pellet rifle.
Decided I did not want to be on top of ladder and at eye level with mad ‘coon that had just been tagged with a pellet.
Turned the water hose on and ruined his night.
He jumped off roof and into the hated pine tree.
I thought about the pellet rifle again… decided to let the raccoon and tree just have each other.
Came in and wife was asleep and the dog was snoring like a 75 year old alcoholic with sleep apnea.
Wrote a couple blog posts.
Turned off lights, set alarm, and went to snuggle with wife.

Tags: Arborcide, Brodie, Chores, Coffee Makes it all Better, Dandelion Warfare, DubSeattle, Get the Hose, Gutters, Handmade Christmas Gifts, Haterade, House, Instagram, Laundry, Lawn Mowing, Leftist Lawn Militants, Lincoln Park, Lists, Moss, Movie Date, My Day, Overalls, Photography, Pine Tree Hate, Pinterest, Raccoon, Stamps-With-Foot, Up on the Roof, Weekend, Workbench, Workbench of Doom, Yard

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

Mar 4

Posted by matttalley in Craftsmanship, House, Projects at Home, Shoulder, Updates, projects | No Comments

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.

Tags: Base, Beech, Bench, Chisels, Clutter, Coffee, coffee and croissants, Craft, Furniture, Furniture Making, Garage, House, incompetent, Machine Shop, Maple, Movies, My Day, OCD, Oops!, Plans for World Domination, Plausible deniability, Power Tools, project, Rain!, Reloading, Router, Screwing Up, Shop, Shoulder, Stamps-With-Foot, Tools

The Never Ending Hutch

Feb 2

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Craftsmanship, Furnature, House, Man Stuff, Projects at Home, Shoulder, neighbors, projects | No Comments

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.

Tags: 120 Grit, 220 Grit, Basement, Book Case, Books, Bookshelves, Built-In, Craft, Craftsmanship, Craig's List, Delusions of Adequacy, Dirty Words, Finishing, Fir, Furniture, Gloves, Granite, Haggling, House, Labor From Home Depot, Lists, Negotiating in Chinese, neighbors, projects, Restoration Glass, Reuse, Shoulder, Stain, Stamps-With-Foot, Tools

Wooden Nightstand Build

Jan 8

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Furnature, Projects at Home, projects | No Comments

My sweet sweet wife has issues with the color green – most shades. While living in Hamburg, we had a tiny bedroom that Stamps-With-Foot wanted to paint “sage green.” She bought the paint at Max Barr (a Teutonic version of Home Depot) brought it home and painted a little swatch on the wall. It was kinda dark, so she painted the whole wall. Still kinda dark. She then painted the whole room. I came home and my bedroom was Olive Drab, Army Green… It took me two coats of primer and three coats of paint to banish the darkness.

Flash forward a few years to Seattle. We have replaced all of our MDF particle board IKEA crap furniture with real wood pieces with the exception of our night stands. I hate them. Hate. I traded my mother a couple bookshelves for a former dressing table/vanity that was deeply scratched in places and had a couple of drawers that wouldn’t budge. It was in two pieces already and I shortened the legs, stripped off some of the old finish and prepped them for paint. Stamps-With-Foot wanted the pieces to match our 1930′s bedroom set, which has a sage green accent color. The plan is to have the bodies painted green, use a soft sunflower yellow for the accent and to completely strip the top and drawer fronts and coat them with a polyurethane so that the natural color and grain would pop. I had primed them, sanded, primed again, and grabbed some color swathes for her to choose from. She chose a fine green and I had it custom mixed at my local Benjamin Moore store (friends don’t let friends buy paint at Home Depot). I had two smooth coats sprayed on before my sweet wife decided they were the wrong color green. I tried in vain to talk her out of making me swap the color. I tried really hard – I even mentioned the Hamburg incident. No dice, the color WOULD be changed.

I showed up at the paint store with a picture frame for them to color-match, ignored their snickers, bought all new paint, went home, sanded, and resprayed both pieces with two coats of the “new” green. I painted the accent color and rubbed the color into the cracks before washing it off the high spots. The tops were polyurathaned, drawers were fixed, dividers installed, fronts refinished, 100+ year old glass knobs bought/installed, and then I carried them up to our Master Suite and my sweet bride gushed over them. Her delight made my heart happy.

In my heart of hearts I know she is still second guessing the 2nd color choice, but I have sworn to myself that if she changes her mind again she will be banned from deciding house/furniture/accent colors for the term of one year and that I will turn the basement into a mountain chalet-themed man cave- which might happen anyway, I am just really looking for an excuse to belay my guilt.

Tags: Behr Paint Sucks, Color Matched, Home Depot, House, Master Bedroom, Night Stand, Paint, Poly, projects, Re-Finish, Sage Green, Stamps-With-Foot, Tools, Up-Cycled

Weekend Update – 1/7/13

Jan 7

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Craftsmanship, Family, Furnature, Holidays, House, Kinfolk, projects | No Comments

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.

Tags: Clint Eastwood, Craft, Craftsmanship, Delusions of Adequacy, Doner Dresser, drowning sorrows, Grumpy Face, Holidays, Honey & Jack, House, I Broke Some Shit, Jack Daniel's, Mexican Coke, My Igor, Old Western, Plausible deniability, project, Sparks, Table Saw, The Kids, The Kitchen, The Ruminator, Tools

Weekend Update

Dec 3

Posted by matttalley in Furnature, House, Puppy, Updates, neighbors, projects | No Comments

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.

Tags: Basement, Brodie, Cat, Cold and Rain, Creaky Old Ladder, Gutters, Hottub, House, iPad, Izzy, Kindle, Lists, mid-century modern, Movies, My Day, need more book shelves, neighbors, Oaths and Curses, Pine Tree Hate, project, Shinny Vampires, Stamps-With-Foot, The Devil On My Shoulder, Tools, Weekend, Wirty dords

Needing to Catch Up…

Nov 10

Posted by matttalley in Updates | No Comments

I have been out of pocket the last couple of months and just haven’t found the time to post anything. Home repairs/maintenance, a really long sleepless trip to China for my J-O-B, local elections, the presidential election, deadlines and long hours at work, laziness, etc… have claimed all my waking hours.

I am spending the weekend with my lovely wife getting the house and yard ready for winter, drinking coffee, unclogging drains, and wading into my long neglected to-read piles of books beside the bed and in my office. I will take a couple of hours and finish some long ago started posts, organize some pictures and work on drivenoutside a little. I have some AMAZING pictures from China, a hysterical Brodie-related story to share, a few shop projects complete, some nice shots of our fall garden harvest, a long overdue trip report from a summer trip with The Ruminator, 7-8 videos highlighting thing that are hand crafted and a couple that are just beyond words that I will post.

Tags: Books, House, J-O-B, Laziness, To-Read Pile, update, Weekend, Work Travel, Yard

Kitchen Cabinet Build and Remodel

Oct 7

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Craftsmanship, projects | No Comments

When looking at the house that we now live in the one room that had us on the fence was the kitchen. it had original cabinets, but it was dark, dated, there were no outlets, and one wall was just a hodge-podge of appliances. I have spent the better part of my very limited free time trying to fix those issues. I have added a dishwasher, a knife rack, lots of paint, cranberry glass handles/pulls, outlets, pullouts, switches, a microwave, under cabinet lighting, build drawer organizers and am in the process of finishing hand made, period and house perfect cabinets for what was the ugly wall. It has been a very long and laborious process. I would never be this detailed in a house I was building for someone else – I would lose money.

Below is a gallery of the progress up until this point:

Tags: Cabinet Making, cabinets, Craft, House, Kitchen, Kitchen remodel, Nesting, OCD, project, remodeling, The Kitchen, Tools

No cats in the house

Aug 19

Posted by matttalley in Family, House, Updates | No Comments

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.

Tags: Devil Cat, Earning your own keep, House, Izzy, Kitty Litter, neighbors, No Cats in the house!, self-preservation, Stamps-With-Foot, The Nana

Sawdust and paint fumes

Aug 9

Posted by matttalley in Art, Carpentry, Craftsmanship, Furnature, Garden, Green, House, Yard, projects | No Comments

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:

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

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

Small basement work bench (reloading and winter projects)
Rebuild bookcase in master bedroom
Murphy bed for my home office
Box ceiling for master bedroom
Home office bookshelves
Chicken coop
Ornamental planter box
Cookbook shelf in kitchen
Rebuild my standing desk
Basement stairs rebuild

Tags: Bookshelves, Craft, Daddy, Delusions of Adequacy, Furniture, Furniture Making, House, Leftist Lawn Militants, Paint Fumes, project, Red Legs, Stamps-With-Foot, Table, Tools, Yard

Ignoring the yard and building stuff

Apr 23

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Craftsmanship, House, Updates | No Comments

Horror of horrors, I did not touch my yard this weekend. My lush, Ireland-green grass (I am a wee bit narcissistic about my grass) was left to grow and stretch toward the sky in the weekend sunshine. I spent all available daylight hours outside and didn’t even attempt to take the mower out, turn the compost, or battle with my creeping nemesis - the dandelions. Stamps-With-Foot did a little weeding on Saturday, but the bulk of our weekend was committed to getting the kitchen cabinets done enough so that we could do a test fit and install.

Success! My wife was a priming and painting machine: taking care of the microwave cabinet, the lowers, and the drawers. The lower cabinets were positioned into place and their rock-maple tops fitted (waiting on the drawer fronts and pulls to be finished). I cut all the frames for the doors, assembled the fridge cabinet, installed it with my wife holding the thing up in the air (hehehe), tacked together the trash/recycling slider, and cut the shelves for the microwave cabinet. When completely done, our cabinet space will increase by more than a third, will include al the latest and coolest amenities (slides, organizers, spice racks, pullouts, etc…), and the new cabinets completely match the original 1928 built-ins, both in construction and style.

I need to finish the fridge top cabinet, install the drawers, add a corner cookbook shelf, tack up cove-crown around all, and one final coat of paint. SOMEDAY, this will all be finished and we will have the most awesomest kitchen a tiny, period appropriate, craftsman house can have!

I added a pic of Brodie lounging in the sunshine, just because.

Tags: Brodie, cabinets, Craft, House, Ireland Green Grass, Kitchen, Kitchen remodel, Mowing, Nesting, OCD, Period Appropriate, project, Stamps-With-Foot, Weeding, Weekend, Yard, Yard Narcism

What I Want Thursday – 3/15/12

Mar 15

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Craftsmanship, Cycling, Family, Furnature, Garden, Gear, Thursday, projects | 1 Comment

Time again to reflect on some crap that I have been obsessing over for the last couple of weeks:

1. To be in Hawaii on vacation with my wife and OUT of cell phone range

2. To organize and back up all my computer files and pictures from the mess of harddrives and CDs/DVDs

3. For my shop to be back up to 100% after the break in

4. A fantastic sport coat

5. For it to be sunny and 70 degrees outside my house

6. A Midi-Lathe to complete some house and garden turning projects

7. A sliding tool box for my truck

8. A set of 2010 leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica

9. To get a real, hand written, paper letter from my son and daughter

10. To never worry about the IRS or April 15th EVER again.

11. I want to ride my bike like I did when I was 12: aimlessly and all day!!

12. More time…

Tags: Books, Encylopedia Brit, Fashion, fountain pen love, Hawaii, House, IRS, nerdy, Nesting, The Kids, Theft, Thursdays, Tools, Truck, Warm Weather, Writing letters

An update on the removal of the giant outdoor cat litter box.

Aug 15

Posted by matttalley in Garden, House | 4 Comments

As mentioned before, the previous owners of our home filled what used to be a cascading koi pond with a couple of years worth of used cat litter. The removal of this “gift” was a project that I was NOT looking forward to, but it had to be done. While it was officially still winter, I started the spring prep in the yard/garden and the litter box was the first project on my list.

I dug the bed out and hauled the old liner and kitty-nuggets away. I had thought about turning the area into a raised root vegetable planter, but the thought of any leftover cat poo getting into my food gave me the shakes. Stamps-With-Foot has been eyeing my vegetable boxes with intent to “ maybe add some flowers” so I decided to give her some space to plant non-edible flora in the backyard, which by agreement is my gardening domain.

There was already a course of interlocking wall block down, so I rearranged the foot print and after a trip to Home Depot for material, I laid four more courses down to give her a two foot tall planter with about fourteen square feet of planting space. (As a note, I have mad masonry hammer skills.)

After finishing the walls and filling the new planter with topsoil and a fresh layer of compost, I soaked the blocks with water and added moss bits from the old wall/garage roof to the seams because my little wife really likes the mossy look of old walls. I blended some moss up with yogurt that next weekend and spread it on to assist the growth process. By next summer the planter will look like it has been there for twenty years and the odd floral planting will not “happen” to show up next to my veggies. The pics below show the original ivy-covered state and how it looked up until late summer.

Tags: Flower Box, House, Keeping Thw Wife Happy, Kitty Litter, Laurel, Mad Hammer Skillz, Yard

Sometimes I am too damn handy.

Jun 11

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Furnature, House | 1 Comment

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:

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…
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?”
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.
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.

Tags: Delusions of Adequacy, House, Laurel, Plausible deniability, project, Tools

The dishwasher that ate my March

May 2

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, House, projects | 1 Comment

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.

Tags: Delusions of Adequacy, House, Laurel, Nesting, project, Tools

Our Dirty Little Secret…

Feb 24

Posted by matttalley in Green, House, projects | 2 Comments

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.

Tags: Delusions of Adequacy, House, Plausible deniability, project, Tech, The Scarlet H

Spring projects start and an ultimatum of sorts.

Feb 15

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Garden, Green, House | 2 Comments

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…

Tags: Cabinet Making, Case Mod, Delusions of Adequacy, House, OCD, project, Repurposing, Yard

Death threats for a tree

Dec 6

Posted by matttalley in House, neighbors | 3 Comments

I am having a personal crisis of conscience: I love trees, I really do, but I want evil things to happen to one particular example of flora in the neighbor’s yard. Less than a year ago I spent an entire morning precariously balanced on a 1950’s vintage wooden step-ladder, pulling pine needles out of the gutters of our new home, saying dirty words the whole time. With that experience fresh in my mind, I had some limbs trimmed a few months later that were on my side of the fence and hanging over our roof so that I wouldn’t have to worry about the downspouts clogging. The best laid plans of mice and men… Just because I have a smidgen of OCD, I did my yearly gutter/shingle inspection and upon popping my head up above the edge of the roof, I almost had an aneurism! Every gutter on the south end on the house (under the neighbor’s tree) was filled to overflowing with fvcking pine needles. Son of a…. I spent four hours raking my yard/pulling debris from the gutters and plotting the murder of a pine tree. Driving my hate was the realization that I have spent a week of Sundays and $1000+ engaged in a losing battle with this conifer. Are there hit men for trees? Would they make its demise look like an accident? How would a tree “slip in the tub” or “leave the gas on?”

It is really not the tree’s fault. I am the interloper. I am the higher ape with a Machiavellian need for order in my yard. The tree is just being. I realize these things on a intellectual level, but all that flies out the window the second I see a heap brown needles in my soft, green perfect grass, I start day dreaming of copper nails and the sweet lullaby of chainsaws.

Tags: Gutters, Haterade, House, neighbors, OCD, Pine Tree Hate, Plausible deniability, Plotting, Yard

Unduly expensive and complicated raised garden boxes

Oct 7

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Foodie, Garden, Green, House | 2 Comments

I have spent something like 40 total hours of labor over the entire summer and spent ~$250 to build the most over complicated raised garden bed boxes within a four mile radius. I have obsessed over the design & materials, changed the layout and location no more than 4 times and used child labor (my 9-year old son) during construction. We now have Garden Boxes that can support the weight of our entire house and my wife mentioned that I might need an intervention.

It all started when we decided to grow some veggies and I didn’t want to use treated lumber from Home Depot. I considered landscape bricks, but the total project cost would be over $700 for three 8X3X2’ beds. I wanted to use 3-inch thick cypress beams, as that particular wood is rot proof for 50+ years, but that type of wood is outrageously expensive here in the Pacific Northwest ~$1000 for the needed lengths. I considered redwood, but it was also too pricy to be left out in the yard, half covered with dirt. The predicament was solved for me when I happened upon a bunch of 4”X10”X8’ fir beams that were end cuts from a beam roof construction project in the neighborhood. As they were “scrap” I picked them up for a song.

In addition to the boxes, there will be an espalier apple tree and two columnar apples on that side of the yard. I wanted the garden boxes to mesh with that plan and still be functional, pretty, and to fit in with the style of our house & yard. To help with that goal, I decided to lap joint the corners of the boxes and use hardwood dowels to both keep the joints together and as homage to the period craftsmanship of our home. I know I have OCD. Since I was already using dowels, I wanted to marry the planks together (see drawing) so that the whole structure would be stronger and resist and bowing in the middle as the dirt pressed on the sides of the beds. I felt it might also be nice to add replaceable cedar top rails to shed water and to take the brunt of any abuse. I may have over-thought the concept and might have been better off just using concrete cinder blocks…

The finished product with espalier apple trees cartooned in.

Here are the exact steps to take in building raised garden boxes just like ours:
Plan obsessively
Re-design twice
Buy lumber – get great deal
Bring home and cover with tarp
Let sit for a month
Measure and layout each joint with son’s help
Let son drop board on your shin
Try REALLY hard not to say curse words
By son ice cream.
Limp for a couple of days
Carefully cut all end notches with son
Tell him no when he wants to run the circle saw
Tel him no when he asks again every 10 minutes
Lit it all sit for 2 more weeks
Find really expensive combination square your son left in the grass
Smile because you love him anyway
Drill all dowel holes in the middle of the individual sections with spade bit
Let sit for a week in rain because you forgot to tarp it
Assembly all sections dry for 1st box
Realize that the pieces are now warped and twisted more than a bit
Say a LOT of curse words
Hand-fit each joint with a mallet and chisel
Cuss some more
Purchase ¾” X 2’ auger bit
Assemble 1st box with glue and dowels
Get HUGE splinter in palm
Say hurtful, mean things to the lumber & loudly question the legitimacy of its parentage
Cry a little while digging the jagged hunk of wood out with utility knife
Use Super Glue creatively as first aid supply
Spend a full hour getting 1st box square using one hand
Call it a night
Make sure the thing didn’t move while you were sleeping
Drill corners for dowels
Almost burn up drill
Look at sky and count to ten
Run out of waterproof wood glue
Say dirty words all the way to Home Depot
Buy bigger drill, glue, and more dowels
Apply glue and hammer in dowels with wooden mallet
Look over to see puppy chewing on your hat
Say the F-word
Retrieve soggy hat
Clamp box up with 8 huge pipe clamps
Let joints dry/sit for a week
Construct next two boxes with minimal dirty words
Let sit a further week
Ask 15 year old daughter if she wants to help
She will look at you like you are insane for the mere suggestion
Try not to break her phone when she returns to texting
Look up and count to twenty – repeat
Spread out boxes in yard and turn over
Apply two coats of white primer to bottoms of boxes
Get paint on favorite pair of shorts
Let wife help paint over primer with green outdoor paint
Look up and notice that wife has painted halfway down the box…
Take paint brush from wife
Say sweet things to her and laugh about the extra paint coverage
Let boxes sit for two days
Finish painting bottoms green (keep ground moisture out and blends with grass)
Let sit a week
Position in yard where they should finally go
Ask visiting friend for his opinion
Take his advice (as it is better than your plan) and reposition
Let wife see
Move 3 more times to make wife happy
Move back to position friend suggested
Let sit for a week
Get married to wife a second time and almost loose mind to stress
Have house full of guests for a week
Try not to kill Ross when he makes fun of your yard
Drink lots of beer
Buy gravel and hardware cloth for box foundation
Cut sod from under box locations and move to bare patch in front yard
Wife will work hard in front planting lavender and arranging sod
Lay hardware cloth and pour gravel footings
Spend Saturday with wife finally placing boxes
Drink beer and wine until you hurt the next day in celebration of your hard work
Let sit another week
Cut top rail on table saw
Decide to really complicate things by adding hardwood splines to top rail joint
Devise special spline jig for table saw
Cut last rail too short
DO NOT throw anything, close eyes and count to ten
Revert to cussing
Trip to Home Depot for extra cedar
Re-rip and re-miter last rail
Glue joints of rail and try not to glue rail to box
Wait 3 days and cut away spline waste
Find “cute” little ceramic tiles from the 1920’s that wife will love for boxes
Spend 2 nights in shop making custom cedar frames for the tiles
Add corner splines to match boxes just because
Measure twice to find box center
Attach tiles to front of the boxes with proper outdoor screws
Coat top rails with food-safe clear coat
Wait 2 days
Apply another coat and repeat
Show wife your handy-work and wait for her to swoon
Point out the joint details and all the thought that went into the build
Wait for batting of eyelashes and the swoon…
Mention the period tiles and their perfect symmetry
Keep waiting…
Waiting……………

A drawing of the project shoeing some of the detail

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 23

Tags: Delusions of Adequacy, food, House, Nesting, project, Yard, you kids get off my lawn

BOOK SALE P0RN

Sep 27

Posted by matttalley in Books, House, Review, Toys, nerdy | 3 Comments

Some people collect books out of compulsion: odds and ends, with no order to their accumulation. We have our issues, but to call it a compulsion is a stretch. Unlike many of our bibliophilic brethren, we can actually sell a book from time to time and are somewhat choosy where and on what we spend our money on. I think that our current library sits at about 1,200 volumes, equally split between history and fiction. With the purchase of our home and my subsequent attempt to return all the period architectural details and furnish the living room as the original owners might have done, I have started to gather a few editions that could have been found in our home that first Fall. I have 1928 editions of:

Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle,
Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf (German edition)
Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
Virginia Woolf – Orlando: A Biography
Margaret Mead – Coming of Age in Samoa
Agatha Christie – The Mystery of the Blue Train
The Common Book of Prayer
Felix Salten – Bambi: a Life in the Woods (Bambi. Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde)
Herbert Asbury – The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld
André Maurois – Disraeli
T. E. Lawrence – Revolt in the Desert

To add weight to the our pre-stock market crash collection, I been on the search for a complete set of 1909 Harvard Classics, the 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, and a set of the 1910 11th edition set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, as this is THE edition to have (for the Über-booky folk). All taken together, this will give our parlor a true sense of period nerdiness. None of the above volumes are particularly pricey ~ $6 each in decent condition and ALL of them are available for download since enough time has passed that the works are in the public domain. The wealth of information contained in them isn’t the sole point for wanting them; it is also their tangible quality – the faded bindings, the smell of their paper, the care taken with the block-printed illustrations… These are all books that have witnessed the same history as our little home and deserve a safe and revered place there.

This past weekend we attended the bi-annual Friends of the Seattle Public Sale, where we usually pick up some Travel Lit, a few mountain climbing related tomes and the odd cookbook. Well, on this trip I hit the motherload! I found 14 mountaineering books that are on my “List” and in the Sets and Rare Book Room I happened upon a complete set of 1910 of the EB. I may have swooned. I snapped up those bad-boys faster than a lawyer cashes a check. The set is of Ex-library stock and there is some serious shelf wear on a couple pieces, but nothing that would keep them from being used for another 80 years. For a grand total of $33, I walked out a very happy little hobbit. I will work on the rest of the list as further opportunity presents and as time and money are available.

A few notable biblio-quotes:

“Anyone who has got a book collection and a garden wants for nothing.” & “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den”
-Phillip Adams

“I cannot live without books.”
– Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to John Adams in 1815)

“With thought, patience, and discrimination, book passion becomes the signature of a person’s character. “
— Nicholas A. Basbanes

Tags: Books, House, Library, Nesting

Cleaning and organizing the shop

Aug 12

Posted by matttalley in Carpentry, Gear, Updates | 1 Comment

My garage is actually condemned and we knew it was a tear-down when we bought our house. Half of the bottom sills are rotten, there was no power, and it used to move a little when hit by a strong gust of wind. I have planned some projects in the house that require some saw and painting space, so we decided to leave the garage up until we completed the wanted updates to the house and then replace it with a somewhat larger, yet period-appropriate, garage/shop combo with a studio apartment above.

Right after we moved in, I scrubbed the place, applied some leverage to the walls to square them up as possible, reinforced the roof trusses, glued and screwed 3/8 plywood sheathing to two of the interior walls, installed florescent lighting, installed 9 bike hooks in the rafters, added garden tool holders and box storage shelves, built a narrow stout plywood work bench, and partially wired 5 outlets. I did most of it with lumber, wire, and lights that I already owned, so my total outlay was less than $200 and the structure is now solid as possible given the years of neglect and will usable for the next couple of years. I was going to do a little more – rebuild the barn doors and finish the wiring, but a surprise shoulder injury and subsequent surgery put that off indefinably. I now have more projects than time and can’t fit it all in.

The little bit of work making the garage usable has really been a blessing: In the six months that we have owned La Maison Du Talley, I have built our compost bins, the three huge garden boxes, two window flower boxes, a mason bee house, refinished a massive hutch, built a rolling utility cabinet, stripped and repainted furniture, built stuff for the kids, stored and serviced my fleet of bicycles, rewired a couple of lamps, etc… all without filling our house or basement with noise, sawdust, or fumes, which keeps The Mrs. happy!

For the last couple of months my kids have been here and cleanup and organization after this or that project was minimal. Crap started piling up. I got some new lumber and supplies dropped in my lap and they were just sort of tossed in. There were semi-emergency house and bike repairs that left tools splayed about, my larger table saw (every proper joiner/cabinet maker needs two…) is in pieces as I am rebuilding the fence and adding a router table to the side leaf. I had to crawl around and under bikes, push saw horses out of the way, step over a wheel barrow, and move the drill press to get a set of micro pliers to repair a necklace for my happy wife. It was starting to look like Godzilla ate a strip mall containing a furniture, garden and bike shop then pooped in my garage.

After dropping my daughter off at the Airport the past Sunday morning at 5:00am, I went home, snuggled with the wife and the puppy for a couple hours, spent the rest of the morning in my bathrobe reading part of a book, consuming a large amount of coffee, and had a leisurely lunch. I then spent the entire afternoon cleaning and reorganizing the garage so that it would again be usable and so I wouldn’t brain myself every time I opened the door. I was super-productive:

Completely cleared and cleaned my bench top
Hung all the bikes on their assigned hook
Worked on stripping “new” Schwinn frame
Unpacked two boxes of refinishing and painting supplies
Sweep up a summers worth of saw dust
Emptied trash and recycling bins
Got the Tug-a-bike trailer ready to sale on Craigslist
Completely reorganized my tool chest (All the bike tools now have their own drawer!)
Put some labels on the nail and screw bin
Organized bench tools
Worked on a secret project for Laurel
Hung up First Aid Kit
Reinforced a wooden table
Made up a complete took kit for the house (no more in and out for little repairs)
Moved drill press to better location
Worked on finishing table saw fence

In addition to my sometimes compulsive need for organization, there will be a number of Engineers and builders staying at or visiting my home in the next month and it would kill me if my work space looked like that when they showed up. When I shut off the lights at 10:00 PM, it was a whole new space and ready for inspection and for me to jump into a new project that I have planned for September.

a few pictures of the building and the organization spaces/racks from earlier this summer.

Tags: bike, House, The Kids, Tools, Yard

You wish you had my neighbors!

Jul 11

Posted by matttalley in House, Manners, neighbors | 1 Comment

Some mornings I get up and it feels like I live in the nicest mobile home in a south Alabama trailer park. It is the neighbors – both sides.

On the North side of Casa da Talley, resides a couple of 20-something constructions workers who also happen to be in a metal band. They are nice enough guys during the day and when sober, but add beer and darkness and the guitars are plugged in, the drum sticks uncased, and the amp volume is turned to 11. Sometimes the music is OK, but there practice space is 10 feet from our bedroom window and guitar licks at 2am when we have work the next day is super-uncool. Add to the music their general inability to take care of their yard, the heaps of trash in the front and back, the non-working trucks and motorcycles parked in the weeds and one has a recipe for hillbilly soup. On of the most enduring things they have done since we have been there was to carve their Halloween pumpkin with the words “Balls Deep” and put it out on their front porch. While I seriously doubt that they had even one trick-or-treater I am willing to be that their artistic flair led to a bunch of uneasy questions from the little ones on the street.

I need to point out that I live on a block of 500K+ homes. These guys live in one of the very few rentals on the whole street and have made life generally miserable for the entire neighborhood for the last 2.5 years. The owner of the property is a septuagenarian lawyer who could care less about the those of us who have to live near his tenets.

To the south I have on old chain-smoking semi-recluse whose yard, if left solely in his care, can have grass growing 3 feet high. There are vines growing into his roof and attic, the back yard is completely covered in weed-trees and there are heaps of trash in the back and alley. Though usually benign, he has recently moved a homeless couple into a tent/tarp in the backyard and says it is in exchange for them doing his yard work. Both of my new “neighbors” seem to have serious alcohol problems, but the woman also has a chemical dependency and possible severe mental health issues – her companion has apologized for her outbursts at least once. When a half naked homeless man apologizes for your behavior while he is smoking a hand-roll and taking swigs from an Olde English 800 tallboy, you might need to look into some in-patient care…

While having a BBQ with friends and family 2 weekends ago, there was cussing and screaming from the tent compound about how stupid her partner was and shortly there after screams of drunken ecstasy and and very vivid and specific directions as to what she wanted done as the couple engaged in freaky dirty hobo sex 2 feet from my fence. REALLY!? My buddy, David – The Sleepy Weasel, was there and we went over to ask the homeowner to make them stop. He seemed genuinely surprised that he his very own drunken, crazy, high, street people were doing the dirty. He apologized and marched into the back to turn the hose on them or something. The stopped and we spent the afternoon around the grill loudly discussing the ballistic wound capability of various pistol rounds and hand loads – David just got back from his third tour in Iraq and his wife grew up in her father’s sniper rifle producing machine shop: he is currently manufacturing optic mounts for the Navy Seals .50cal rifles. After she uttered the phrase “6 inch permanent wound cavity” there was a rustling under the tarp and all was quiet for the rest of the afternoon

In all fairness, part of the reason that we got such a smoking deal on our home was the neighbors and the condition that their houses were in. I spoke to a Realtor 3-4 months ago who had shown our house a few times while it was on the market and lamented that is not for trash and the truck parked in the yard next door (north house – truck was gone when we put our offer in) she could have sold the place in a month and got the full asking price.

Well, as of today (July 9, 2010) my hellbilly neighbors are quiet and respectful, and have cleaned up some. They had a huge party a couple of weeks ago and pissed off the wrong neighbor who called a couple of cops he knew. The cops told them to turn it down and they did – for exactly 15 minutes. the cops came back found the party in full gallop. They used some obscure statute about willfully disobeying the Seattle noise ordnance, and the police seized all the guitars in the house. They busted a few people for underage drinking and both of the guys living there got hauled off to jail for a day or so. I guess after 2.5 years one guy had taken all he could stand.

Concerning the new “tenants” to the south – well, that one is stickier: There is no law in Seattle that makes it illegal to live in a tent in someone else’s backyard. The fact that there were invited by the property owner also adds a wrinkle and there is very little that can be legally done about the situation. One of the guys across the ally came out the other morning and saw the dude peeing in the back with just a shirt on – no pants. That neighbor was enraged – he has a couple of kids. He called the cops, the health department, Planning and development, the sheriff, and the city attorney. I would really HATE to piss this guy off – he seems to be tenacious, bright, and angry. There is talk about him procuring bees. For my part, I have been cranking up the circle saw bright and early every morning and shooting the pellet gun with my son, talking loudly about marksmanship. As my boy has a competition air rifle that shoots a .177cal pellet out at 1200 feet per second, it is not a quiet activity. So far it has endeared me to the Machiavellian homeowner and made our new neighbors grumble a little bit.

I will give it a couple of weeks and watch from the bench to see how this all plays out. Hopefully, no new tents appear and the one there now gets packed up and moved.

Tags: House, neighbors, Yard

Coffee gets crap done!

Jun 6

Posted by matttalley in Garden, House, Updates, neighbors | No Comments

I was a whirlwind of activity on Saturday. I got tons of “to-dos” accomplished, TONS! Not sure what it was – the sun finally shining, nervous energy, the continuous day-long ingestion of coffee, or what but I wish I had that much fire every day. Here is how it went down:

Awakened at 5:30 – neighbor flipping out: cussing, smashing, yelling…
He found girlfriend cheating on him – no shots fired and she was long gone
Back to sleep until 9:00
Laurel ground some fresh roasted beans and made coffee
Took Brodie in the truck to run errands
Stopped for more breakfast (and more coffee) at C&P
Got haircut and surprise tea tree oil scalp massage
Went to estate sale
Found amazing joiner and radial arm saw for $50!!!!!
Already sold
Purchased a clamp and pruning shears
—- Estate sales make me a little sad – a reminder of my own mortality
Stopped at a garage sale on the way home
Got 4 cook books and a DVD (Leon the professional) for $2.50
Picked up puppy food
Came home and mowed old guy’s yard next door
My sweet wife made a yummy lunch
Rode the Penny-Farthing 4 miles – down on California Ave and back
Came home and did some truck maintenance – air in tires and oil change
Down to hardware and garden stores for a couple things
Picked up another top-hat blueberry and spearmint
Dug up 6 ferns in the back yard – only one lives there now
Planted white azalea – they remind me of Daddy
Cut some shrubs off front fence
Planted blueberry and mint
Had pizza with friends and family for dinner
Enjoyed a wheat beer
Went for a walk around pond with everyone
Picked some raspberries
Sowed grass seed in the backyard just before sunset
Watched The Long Way Down on DVD
Enjoyed a great glass of port with Laurel
Asleep by 11:30

I was a whirlwind of activity on Saturday. I got tons of “to-dos” accomplished, TONS!

Awaken at 5:30 – neighbor flipping out: cussing, smashing, yelling…

He found girlfriend cheating on him…

Back to sleep until 9:00

Laurel ground some fresh roasted beans and made coffee J

Took Brodie in the truck to run errands

Stopped for more breakfast (and more coffee) at C&P

Got haircut and surprise tea tree oil scalp massage

Went to estate sale

Found amazing joiner and radial arm saw for $50!!!!!

Already sold L

Purchased a clamp and pruning shears

—- Estate sales make me a little sad – reminder of my own mortality

Stopped at a garage sale on the way home

Got 4 books and a DVD (Leon the professional) for $2.50

Picked up puppy food

Came home and mowed old guy’s yard next door

My sweet wife made a yummy lunch

Rode the Penny-Farthing 4 miles – down on California Ave and back

Came home and did some truck maintenance – air in tires and oil change

Down to hardware and garden store for a couple things

Picked up another top-hat blueberry and spearmint

Dug up 6 ferns in the back yard – only one lives there now

Planted white azalea – they remind me of Daddy

Cut some shrubs off front fence

Planted blueberry and mint

Had pizza with friends and family for dinner

Enjoyed a wheat beer

Went for a walk around pond with everyone

Picked some raspberries

Sowed grass seed in the backyard just before sunset

Watched The Long Way Down on DVD

Enjoyed a glass of port with Laurel

Asleep by 11:30

Tags: Brodie, Garage Sale, House, Laurel, neighbors, project, Tools, Yard

Change of Address

Apr 22

Posted by matttalley in Garden, neighbors | No Comments

My neighbors on both sides seem to be farming dandelions. They have to be, as there is no other explanation of how every square inch of their yards are covered with the cancerous weed. Is there some sort of market for them that I am oblivious to? I don’t think it would be too neighborly of me to mow their yards or spray gallons of Round Up or burn their grass from sidewalk to steps so that they can start over… No, that might be seen as pushy/controlling/crazy and there might be some legal/state mental hospital sort of repercussions. I am going to have to just keep weeding and patrolling Casa d’ Talley and let the neighbors cultivate what they will – even if it does eventually drive me insane.

I hate Dandelions – HATE! Seeing one of the little bastards pop up in my yard is like finding a zit on prom night, a dent in a new car, or balls on your hot new girlfriend. I take it is as a personal affront when one of their little flowers spring open within the boundary of my fence. They don’t try to hide under the hedge or behind a rhododendron, oh no, the fvckers make sure to sprout right at the gate or next to the steps where they know it will affect me the most – sacrificing one of their brethren Taraxacum officinal in hope that I get so pissed that my blood pressure pops a vain and I keel over in the yard, my last sight being their spiky green leaves. I know in my heart of hearts that when I pass from this earth there is a good chance that my own personal Hell will have be carpeted with them and there will be a significant populations of soul eating pigeons as well.

I am going to formally change my address to “The house with the red door marooned in a continent of dandelions, Seattle, WA, 98XXX.” Fvcking weeds!

Tags: House, neighbors, Yard

Bringing light to the darkness

Feb 16

Posted by matttalley in Garden, Green, projects | No Comments

It has begun… We have started the transformation of our yard from mossy dark over-grown warren to bright open space. There was a 40’ cedar growing into the garage and casting its pall on ¾ of the back yard. We had a guy come in and take it down 16” at a time a couple of Saturdays ago. He brought in a wood chipper and I spent the day cutting eighteen 2” to 8” trees/bushes down and feeding them into the chipper. Laurel and I planted our strawberry pots, and ½ of our kitchen herbs. I am pulling some stumps this week/weekend, planting our new Espalier apple tree and laying out the three raised garden beds – the Territorial Seed Company catalog and I have become the most intimate of friends.

I finished building stack-able ceder compost bins on Saturday (Laurel liked VERY much!) and my next major build is the planters. The raised beds will be enclosed with wall block. It took some soul searching as I REALLY wanted to do them in carefully joined wood, but cypress lumber in the Pacific North West is crazy-expensive. Redwood is almost as good as resisting rot, but to get true clear pieces that are untreated I have to special order them and for three 3X7X1.5 planting beds I would have $750 in wood. The block will last a LONG time and is a quarter of the cost of building in wood. After removing an old pond filled with used cat litter (??), the addition of a hot tub, some stone, and small green house will make my own small urban farm/park/orchard/retreat just about PERFECT.

Click on small image for large one you can read.

The front yard is a project for later this fall – just before my last shoulder surgery. We want to extend the yard to the sidewalk. Right now there is 8’ between the fence and walk were the property slopes down and the space goes to waste. We will also remove the chain link and install an iron fence, cut down the over grown rhododendrons, add a Belgium Fence Espalier, plant a Lapin cheery tree, add Provence, Lady and Spanish lavender at the fence and add azaleas (my daddy’s favorite) under the front windows.

Spring and summer projects for inside the house are vast in their breadth: new built-ins for the living room, a fireplace surround, a new heating system, addition of period appropriate kitchen cabinets, built-ins in the basement, Man Cave construction, rework of basement stairs, a new bathroom vanity and WC cabinet, rewiring of attic, attic subfloor and stairs, etc… etc… As you may deduce, we will not be traveling to any exotic locals this year. Vacations will be spent with children at home and putting sweat equity into Case Da Talley.

Tags: House, Yard

Looking back on 2009

Dec 31

Posted by matttalley in Holidays, Review | No Comments

Moved from Germany back to US for job in Seattle
Drove cross-country in the middle of winter
Started new job
Lived in temporary basement apartment
Laurel took 1week trip with her mom
Survived lay-off at work
Laurel started new job
Started traveling for work
Laurel hated new job
Road trip to Portland
Laurel gets new job she likes
Stuff arrived from Germany – no damage
Found a house to live in
Started bike commuting to work after unpacking single-speed
Looked for a puppy to adopt
Found and adopted Brodie (½ Boston ½ French Bulldog)
Laurel laid off
Traveling for work again
Laurel found a new job as HR director
My daughter in Seattle for two weeks
Took time off
Did tourist stuff
Had FANTASTIC time with Madison
My daughter flew home, everyone sad
Started looking for a new house to buy
Work going great!
Found great house and put offer in, offer accepted
Went on most laid back climbing road trip ever
Had great time with friends
Laurel LOVES her job
Flew to rural Louisiana to help design helicopter system
Took weekend off while there and spent it with the kids
Reached 1,200 bike-commute miles
Brodie escapes twice and eats glasses
Brodie still a GREAT puppy
Bought small flat-bed truck for moving and yard work a new house
Halloween at work, took my Penny-Farthing and wore great mustache
Heat stopped working in Rental house, landlord waited 3+ weeks to have it fixed.
House closed 107 days after offer accepted – incompetent selling agent
Moved out of rental house and into our new (built in the 20’s) home in West Seattle
Fell down the basement stairs at 05:30 and tore up shoulder third morning in house
Got great painkillers from doctor
Saw 3 doctors in 5 visits. Had x-rays, ultrasound, and an MRI
Had shoulder surgery (4th on same shoulder)
Need to have another special surgery in 2010 to repair a tendon
First house guests come up for long weekend
Worked till Christmas
Grew beard
Brother&Mother-in-law come for Christmas
Heavily self-medicated due to acute mother-in-law induced stress.
Killed Zombies on Christmas Eve at the shooting range – new tradition started
Finished 23rd book this year
Gained 10 pounds since surgery
Father-in-law came in for New Years
Took 1st run after surgery – felt good, but not great.
Spent New Years Eve with Laurel, Donald, David, Lucy, Rosy, and Brodie.

Moved from Germany back to US for job in Seattle

Drove cross-country in the middle of winter

Started new job

Lived in temp basement apartment

Laurel took 1week trip with her mom

Survived lay-off at work

Laurel started new job

Started traveling for work

Laurel hated new job

Road trip to Portland

Laurel gets new job she likes

Stuff arrived from Germany – no damage J

Found a house to live in

Started bike commuting to work after unpacking single-speed

Looked for a puppy to adopt

Found and adopted Brodie (½ Boston ½ French Bulldog)

Laurel laid off

Traveling for work again

Laurel found a new job as HR director

My daughter in Seattle for two weeks

Took time off

Did tourist stuff

Had FANTASTIC time with Madison

My daughter flew home, everyone sad

Started looking for a new house to buy

Work going great!

Found great house and put offer in, offer accepted

Went on most laid back climbing road trip ever

Had great time with friends

Laurel LOVES her job

Flew to rural Louisiana to help design helicopter system

Took weekend and spent it with the kids

Reached 1,200 bike-commute miles

Brodie escapes twice and eats glasses

Brodie still a GREAT puppy

Bought small flat-bed truck for moving and yard work a new house

Halloween at work, took my Penny-Farthing and wore great mustache

Heat stopped working in Rental house, landlord waited 3+ weeks to have it fixed.

House closed 107 days after offer accepted – incompetent selling agent

Moved out of rental house and into our new (built in the 20’s) home in West Seattle

Fell down the basement stairs at 05:30 and tore up shoulder third morning in house

Got great painkillers from doctor

Saw 3 doctors in 5 visits. Had x-rays, ultrasound, and an MRI

Had shoulder surgery (4^th on same shoulder)

Need to have another special surgery in 2010 to repair a tendon

First houseguests come up for long weekend

Worked till Christmas

Brother&Mother-in-law come for Christmas

Heavily self-medicated due to acute mother-in-law induced stress.

Killed Zombies on Christmas Eve at the shooting range – new tradition started

Finished 24^th book this year

Gained 10 pounds since surgery

Father-in-law came in for New Years

Took 1^st run after surgery – felt good, but not great.

Spent New Years Eve with Laurel, Donald, David, Lucy, Rosy, and Brodie.

Tags: 2009, bike, Brodie, commute, Costumes, Cycling, House, My Day, Realestate Agent, Shoulder, single-speed, Surgery

SOLD!!

Nov 4

Posted by matttalley in House | No Comments

Ha!! Our home loan funded and was recorded today and we are now the proud owners of a GREAT Jewel-box house!! Our agent handed us the keys just after 6:00 and let us wander around our new place unmolested. I unloaded four boxes from the car, we let Brodie sniff all the corners, Laurel started a load of clothes, we ate our first meal in the dining nook, and explored every room of what we hope will be our home until we are both old and bent.

We are now officially Seattle residents, no longer denizens of the soul-sucking ‘burbs in Kent. Nope, we are living in a hip and trendy walking neighborhood with public transit, a fantastic public park, a NEW library branch, a local coffee shop house in a huge Craftsman bungalow, and a neighborhood pub where dogs are welcome and where the bartender knows what sort of glass to pour a German Weiss Bier into. I have a green yard that I can obcess over, Laurel has a vine-maple tree to sit under, we have a dedicated office, Brodie has cats to chase out of the yard, there are 6 coffee shops within ¼ mile, a grocery store almost next door, and we get views of the mountains, city lights, and the Puget Sound.

Tags: Coffee, House, Library, Pub

incompetent agent…

Oct 26

Posted by matttalley in House | No Comments

As of today, it has been 102 days since our offer on the house was accepted by the seller and we still do not have keys in hand or even a fvckin’ closing date scheduled!?! Pissed is only part of the paragraph that describes our state right now. It also includes: frustrated, mad, stressed, resentful, hopeful, happy, disappointed, thwarted, cheerfully optimistic, defeated, vengeful, sad, expectant, sanguine, angry, optimistic, confident and 50 other descriptive adjectives that still do not fully capture it all. It seems that the selling agent that we have to rely on has been in a stupidity-induced coma for the last three months and did not even know the name of the second Mortgage (the house is in short sale with two Mortgages lenders…) holding bank until I sent it to her last week. We would LOVE to walk away and tell her to shove her commission, but we like the house, love the neighborhood, see a 100K in free equity in the near future, and if we pull out now, the chance of finding and closing on a place before the end of the year has about the same odds as Newark, NJ becoming crime free.

We have actually looked at other places and none of them have the mix of package and potential that this one does. SHIT!!!

Tags: House, incompetent, Realestate Agent

Driven Outside

random outbursts from my inner three-year-old

Posts Tagged House

Some Big News…

Hanging out in our ‘hood this weekend

Weekend Update – Spring flowers, Lincoln Park, and thoughts of Arborcide

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

The Never Ending Hutch

Wooden Nightstand Build

Weekend Update – 1/7/13

Weekend Update

Needing to Catch Up…

Kitchen Cabinet Build and Remodel

No cats in the house

Sawdust and paint fumes

Ignoring the yard and building stuff

What I Want Thursday – 3/15/12

An update on the removal of the giant outdoor cat litter box.

Sometimes I am too damn handy.

The dishwasher that ate my March

Our Dirty Little Secret…

Spring projects start and an ultimatum of sorts.

Death threats for a tree

Unduly expensive and complicated raised garden boxes

A drawing of the project shoeing some of the detail

BOOK SALE P0RN

Cleaning and organizing the shop

You wish you had my neighbors!

Coffee gets crap done!

Change of Address

Bringing light to the darkness

Looking back on 2009

SOLD!!

incompetent agent…

He said what?!:

The reasons Mommy drinks:

Links:

Archives