Tag: Painting

Things My Wife Has Said – Volume IV

/ Matt Talley / 4 Comments

My sweet, bubbly, kind, giving, gentle, well-adjusted, funny, smart, awesome wife has the best one-liners.  I have taken to writing them down and saving them like little jewels.   This is the fourth, though not the last, installment of Things My Wife Has Said:

  1. I was trying to be funny and I told my wife that I am sort of like an Uber driver: my beard gives rides for cash. She laughed so hard that wine came out of her nose. When recovered, she gave me $1 and said that she “expected change when her ride was done…”
  2. “Boys who buy their wives sewing machines get favors…”
  3. “Truffle (our female French Bulldog) is a Goddamn snuggle tyrant!”
  4. “Man buns are just comb-overs for hipsters.”
  5. I came home from work and went downstairs to check on how Stamps-With-Foot was doing on the bathroom paint progress. I found her naked, covered in purple paint, and listening to Tupac. When questioned about the state of things she said: “I didn’t want to get paint on my jammies, so I painted naked.”
  6. While out to dinner before seeing a a movie, my wife said: “You might be the Anti-Christ: Since I met you I eat pork, have condoned killing trees for a better view, and was singing along happily to Katy Perry this morning.”
  7. “There should be an escort service for puppies and baby piggies. You could snuggle and love them for an hour and the give them back.”
  8. “I don’t really like any Fructose Corn Syrup, but I really hate it when is high.”
  9. “What is wrong with you?! You bought $60 worth of Girl Scout Cookies into our house, left town, and I am on my period. What the fuck were you thinking?!?!
  10. While standing in the kitchen, very early and wearing a bathrobe: “A yawn is a silent scream for coffee.”
  11. “Budgeting is sexy.”
  12. “Do my boobs look too big in this shirt?” It was a trap.
  13. She went to the wax place on a Saturday and came in the house that afternoon with Vampirella arches above her eyes and asked: “What do you think of my eyebrows?” It was also a trap.
  14. I went snowboarding for the 1st time since hip reconstruction and I was forbidden by my wife to drop into the terrain park. When I got home I was questioned thoroughly. I was honest and said that there were no drops or rails or big air, but admitted taking small jump (more of a hop really) along one of the runs. I got “the look” and she made pre-tirade grumpy noises. I said quickly and defensively: “But I didn’t go into the terrain park!” My sugar sweet, tiny, gentle, accepting, loving, kind wife then said: “Huh?!, that is sort of like you saying ‘but I just got a blowjob from that hooker, I didn’t put it in her butt.'” Seriously, she said that. I was caught unaware, had no response, and couldn’t utter a sound in my defense, mostly due to the shock that those specific words had come out of her mouth at all and in that particular order….. She then hid one of my boarding boots for a couple of weeks.

Film Friday – Corner Cabinet Up-Cycle/Rebuild

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Way back in November of 2015, just after our return from living abroad for two years, I bought a set of hard used, little loved corner cabinets from a local salvage place. I have spent an hour and there installing, building trim, sanding, de-gunking, stripping old paint, priming, painting, and more painting. It has only taken 18 months, but they are now installed and look like they have been in our living room since the very first day.

Here is a slideshow/video tale of the steps taken in the project: What it was to what it became.

Working on my day off

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

The house remodel seems to never end…  I will be so glad to just be and live in our space at some point.  We are close, but there are still details left undone – enough that I am trying to concentrate on one room at a time.  My plan is to get each done in turn and then move on to the next.  I wasn’t as successful at that as I wanted to be this weekend as I bounced back and forth between the living room and our bedroom closet, but I did get a ton done.

I installed the upper shelves and corner shelf in the walk-in closet, laminating two layers of 3/4″ plywood for really strong support over a 54″ span and in the unsupported corner.  In addition to using copious amount of glue and screws, I attached the butted plywood edges together with wood biscuits – it is always a fine day when I get to crank up the biscuit joiner.

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Almost a year ago, I sourced some corner shelves at one of the local architectural salvage places for less than $200 – far cheaper than what it would have taken me to build them.  They came out of a 1930-40’s house and were painted Christmas colors, but I knew that they would be perfect for our living room, which was stripped of its built-ins at some point in the last 88 years.  They have sat in storage and until this past week when I pulled them out and got some material together to permanently mount them.  Stamps-With-Foot helped me set them in place after I built sturdy bases.  Each of them cover a wall plug, so I am in the process of re-routing the receptacle using armored cable.  I also have to build in an air-return duct under one and that has taken some serious brain power to get right.  I will add trim this week and my wife and Mother-in-law will paint them cabinet white this weekend.

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While I was at it, I punched out a rubber washer for a pot lid knob.  I made the knob a couple years ago out of some scrap cherry firewood after the original plastic one broke.  The original washer had corroded, so I made a new one and installed it.

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I also took a couple minutes to mount the red glass post topper on the back fence.  It was ordered (along with a spare) months ago and have meant to put it on every weekend since.  There is always an excuse for why I didn’t, so I marched right out first thing Saturday with a tube of clear silicone and finally just got it done.  It is the little victories that keep me going.

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F-Bomb Garage Build Update: Mid-September 2016

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Still no electricity… long sad story from the electrician: too much work, not enough people, confusion with the city, scheduling snafu… No show at all last week. I have watched an entire house, with a garage, be built and sold 3 streets away since my garage project started…

Fall is here and the rain is coming soon, so I spent an afternoon last week with the Airless Spray Rig and painted the garage doors, bollard post, and man-door Benjamin Moore Heritage red. The door & building trim will be bright white and will go on after work one day next week. Gutters go on after.

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Painting The F-Bomb Garage

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

The Garage build is coming along. Still waiting for Seattle City Light to connect the power from the transformer. 5 weeks now…Delay has been just a factor of this build. I would have more patience with City Light if one of their crews hadn’t been sitting at a bikini coffee stand for 30+ minutes on Monday while I was eating a late lunch across the street. I like boobs and bikinis and coffee even more than the average bear, but come on – don’t tell tell everybody how swamped your crews are if they have time to have a philosophical discussion with a nearly naked barista…

(For those of you not in the PacNW – bikini coffee here is a thing and some stands are really open to the definition of what a bikini is – an eye patch and pasties are the rule and some stands.)

I can’t continue with the interior wiring until that connection happens and the electrical inspection is OKed. No insulation or drywall/T1-11 until it get the “OK to Cover” from the electric inspector. I am not one to sit on my butt, so I wheeled out the airless spray rig for the first time in like forever and put two coats of quality Benjamin Moore paint on the outside of the garage – matches the house. I will paint the doors and trim this weekend.

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Roman Holiday – my birthday 2015

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

My wife and I have destination birthdays.  She likes castles and I have a historical/cultural bucket list of places.  In 2015 she went to Neuschwanstein for her Birthday and I chose Rome for my birthday trip this year.

We spent 3 night and 4 days exploring the city: Ancient, medieval, and modern. Did some light shopping, saw amazing art & sculpture, ate, drank perfect coffee after perfect coffee, and had delicious wine. Our apartment was just steps from Vatican City and we spent an entire day touring its Museums, Sistine chapel and St. Peters. To say it was packed is an understatement of high degree. There were people EVERYWHERE.

Other sites visited included: Basilica Santa Maria, Trevi Fountain (under remodel), The Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, Villa Borghese & the villa gardens, Colosseum, Forum, the Pantheon, and small streets and piazzas throughout the city. We strolled along the banks of the Tiber, kissed in the shadow of the San Angelo Fortress, listened to street musicians, and had much gelato!

The small shops in and around the Trastevere district and pocket restaurants were probably our favorite. Laurel even had a fine pair of bespoke and bejeweled leather Roman sandals made one evening after we happened upon a small cobbler shoppe.

Below are a few pictures from our trip.

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Museum of the History of Paris – a MUST see

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

The Musee Carnavalet (The History of Paris Museum) is a hidden gem! It is off the normal well-beaten tourist path and within walking distance from St. Eustace Church and the Picasso Museam. It is full of treasures including an entire Alfonse Mucha designed jewelry store – see pictures below. It made me feel all funny inside when my wife drug me there. She tried to get me to go with her this summer , but I wanted to do something else that now escaes me. I should have listened to her. There are 100+ rooms of paintings and sculpture, models, furniture, and good stuff to gawk at.

Set in a series of old Parisian town homes and Orangeries that are all put together with walkways and joined gardens. One of the cooler aspects is that you wander through re-creations of rooms from the French Revolution to the Paris Commune, and enter into the private spaces of famous Parisians like Marcel Proust’s bedroom with his brass bed and his little table covered in pens, ink, and notebooks. As I said, I was drug here the first time, but it is on my list to visit now even if I am in the city alone for a few hours. It was not too crowded at all and the gardens are a really nice place to sit in and catch up on your travel journal entries. Did I mention that the admission is free?!

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Chinese Lathe Build Update – Pimp My Lathe Edition

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

As mentioned in a previous post, I purchased a Chinese manufactured wood lathe shortly after moving to France. Putting it together and getting it running true was not a Herculean task, but it wasn’t a plug and play affair either. In addition to the initial setup, I have taken an hour here and there to make it bit more ridged and add some features that did not come stock, just to pimp it out a little:

  1. The base is now sheathed in 1/2″ plywood, glued to the wood supports and screwed into the sheet metal legs.  It makes the base a LOT stiffer and clean-up is much faster.
  2. After 4 months of weekly run-time, I have had to replace a couple of set screws and re-tighten the short bed extension outboard of the head-stock. The clamp bolt holding the head stock shattered and caused me some grief.  Chinese bolt quality sucks.
  3. The bottom of the base was finished with 2″ thick scraps and I added a couple hundred pounds of pavers, gravel, and crushed brick to add even more stability.  It is not enough when I try to turn a 15″ hunk of cherry outboard,  It still wobbles and jumps around a bit.  There is just no way to make the sheet metal frame more ridged.
  4. On the French cleats above the lathe, I added a tool holder and chuck/drive center/tail center tool mount for convenience.
  5. I hung a long compact florescent over the work area and on the side there is an IKEA floor lamp/spot light that I can move about.  Scored it used for $8.00!
  6. A tool grinder the I picked up for about $45 is mounted are the end of the lathe on a small table for easy mid-project tool sharpening.
  7. The capacity is only 12″ and that is not the magic number.  16″ – 18″ would be perfect for the bowls and bases and platters that I am doing here.  If I added 2″ iron risers to the head and tail stocks, then it would give me a 16″ turning capacity (swing).  I have thought long and hard about doing it, but haven’t yet as it might be a complication that is more headache than useful AND I don’t want to put anymore time or money into the thing.  I just want it to work.
  8. I designed a steel bed extension – modeled it in 3D and everything, but I am not going to have it made… I would be trying to turn an under powered Hyundai into a V8 4X4 Toyota Truck.
  9. For tuning large objects with the head swiveled, I designed a sweet swing arm tool post as well.  I modeled it up too, and decided not to have it built for the same reasons.  I will use the tool post arm that came with the lathe with a wood post under for support when I turn bigger stuff outboard.
  10. This Lathe will get me by for the next couple of years and I will go over it and repair/replace any worn parts before we leave France to ensure the next owner has relatively trouble free tool, but This is my last “cheap” lathe.  I am going to plop down some funds and get a Robust, Vicmarc, a huge Powermatic, Oneway, Oliver, or a Stubby – Something with power, mass, lots of heavy cast iron and reliable parts that I don’t have to screw with.

 

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Making stuff with My Son

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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Kitchen Cabinet Doors

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

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

Fvcking cat.

Rebuilding Daddy’s Bookcase

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

In 1969 or 1970, my father helped my grandfather build a rental house that my grandparents saw income from for the next 24 years. He came home at the end of the project with a truck bed full of spare/cut lumber and building supplies. Lumber was not wasted in our house. We didn’t go and buy a new 2X4 for a project… We rummaged through the cut-off bin or wood storage shelves for a piece that was the right size or that could be cut, planed, or trimmed to work – Wood was not wasted or thrown away in the Talley house! It is a lesson that I have taken to heart and most of the things I build for my own home are made, at least partially, out of used or recycled materials.

Anyway, Daddy took some of the lumber and built a set of bookshelves that in the next nine years held everything from encyclopedias to technical manuals. Four 12-inch shelves sat on a box base that my father stained and varnished with whatever color he had left over from the rental kitchen cabinet build. It sat in our living room and in the shop. In 1980 we moved back to Houston and somehow my aunt and uncle ended up with the shelves. They put them in their living room, knocked the bottom shelf back, drilled a hole for a cable and sat their 19″ TV on the base. It remained in their home until 2010, when my uncle passed away. My mother asked to have the shelf unit back and brought it to me when she moved to Seattle. It is the only object that I own that my father built with his own hands and I feel so very lucky and proud to have it.

I decided immediately give it an update to make it an everyday part of our home: add a little something here and there to update it and make it that much more useful. Plans are one thing and actually doing the work is quite another – it sat relegated in my overcrowded shop for almost a year before I finally got a chance to work on it. I put the knocked out shelf back, glued all the joints, added reinforcement and screws to hold it all together, and built a base with turned wooden bun feet for it to stand on. The original base box was 12″ X 30″ and I wanted to both maximize the space and add my own signature to the piece. I carefully cut an 8″ X 24″ opening in the front and added rails for a drawer. It was amazing working on the piece. I found my father’s 42 year old pencil marks, a divot from a hammer, saw marks, and I found part of a fingerprint from when it was stained – just on the inside of the bottom. Finding and touching these this tangible proof of my late father brought me more joy than I have words to describe.

I also added a face frame, edge trip, and crown mounding. The piece was sanded down with 120 grit, then all the holes and gaps were filled, sanded with 120 again and then with 220 grip. I then primed with two coats and finished it with 3 coats of white Benjamin Moore ultra-tough cabinet paint.

I think it turned out really nice and I think my dad would be really proud of the work that I did to it. I am taking the original brass corner trim and a piece of original shelving and turning it into a picture frame to hold my favorite picture of my father. I think that he would approve of that as well…


Left Out in the Rain

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Stamps-With-Foot and I worked furiously in the warm sunshine on Sunday in our yard and on the final bits of the kitchen cabinets that needed to be done. Our last tasks for the day were building cabinet drawers and priming the two base cabinets. I had my ubiquitous notebook out, to the side of where we were working, checking off tasks and referring to measurements & notes as we went. We cleaned up the tools and paint around 6:30, changed, had dinner at a local Thai place and ventured out to our new Trader Joe’s for a little grocery shopping.

I was getting ready this morning for a trip to Boeing and started looking for my notebook because I needed a phone number in it. It then hit me like a baseball bat… My notebook… got left outside… overnight!… in the Rain!! FVCK!!!! I popped out the back door like my butt was on fire, my bathrobe flapping and losing a flip-flop in the dash. Damn… It was sitting on the side of the wheel barrow and had swollen to an inch thick. I walked back to the house, with my head hung down and blotted off what water I could and checked the pages – a light of hope. I use a waterproof, indelible ink in my fountain pens, so there was only a little loss of information or smeared blotches (in spots where I used a cheap pen) where detailed notes and drawings used to be. I could have been SO MUCH worse.

While most folks would have to live with a swollen book, most folks don’t have an awesome steel and iron 1920’s book press sitting in their home office… I blotted the pages again as best I could, separated the wettest ones with wax paper sheets, and put it in the press with cardboard and a towel plotter to get out as much water as possible. I left it there for 8 hours or so and removed it before the pages started to stick together. I then carefully opened every page, sat it on its end with the covers far apart, pages fanned open, on the kitchen tile floor in front of the heater vent. Everything should be just fine… I say that with hope in my heart and my fingers crossed.

I will let it dry for a day or two and then press it again for another 24 hours or so. I might take the opportunity to press a design or my name into the cover – I update when it come out of the press.

UPDATE 4-22-12: Took the notebook out of the press and it is nice and flat. While waiting for it finish pressing I made an embossing stamp out of a scrap piece of popular. My carving chisels were taken in a recent theft, so I used a dremel tool with the diamond carver bit to scratch a simple test piece. It is a stylized version of the Arabic word IQRA. I have more or less adopted it as my own hallmark and use it to stamp my furniture, cabinets, it is on my stationary, and I have a smaller version that I use as a wax seal here and there. I decided it was fine time to mark my notebooks as well.

We got some serious shiznit done this weekend

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

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

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