The House Story

<><><>This saga was originally written as semi-regular email updates to several of my friends.  I've added a few lines, corrected some spelling mistakes, and laughed at my misconceptions.  It's mostly as it was, though.<><><>

Ever since I realized that what I called "rent" was really "the landlord’s mortgage payment" I wanted to buy a house. I started looking at the new models, and quickly realized that even if I was willing to sign away every penny I made for the rest of my life I couldn’t afford anything brand new. (And beside, they were all a) boring, b) beige, and c) cramped.)   I decided to start looking at older homes. What I really wanted was a ‘Big Old Victorian’ but those are few and far between in southern California, and most of them have been restored to death and cost more than brand new homes.

I think I dragged Louise through every ramshackle, run-down pile of lumber in Orange County.  I'd be strolling down a hallway, dodging water heaters in hallways and sinks set into closets with visions of red velvet wallpaper and walnut wainscot filling my fevered brain, with Weez shrieking about wiring, plumbing, heating, and roof integrity behind me.  I think the next-to-the-last straw for her was the place in Anaheim that had squares from linoleum sample books nailed over holes in the floor. 

I bewailed this sad state of affairs to Brian Bist, a friend from work.  He told me that I really needed to check out Santa Ana;  lots of vintage houses, good people, exciting neighborhoods.   So there I was, driving up and down the streets, looking at "For Sale" signs. I saw one outside a California Spanish bungalow, which looked like a two bedroom with a nice yard and a tree. Since I’d steeled myself for not getting a BOV, I hopped out of the car to get one of the sales brochures attached to the sign. Turns out the house was being sold by the City of Santa Ana, as a redevelopment project. The minimum offer on the bungalow was 183K, which was really more than I wanted to spend (especially on something I wasn’t in love with). However, on the back of the sheet were the addresses, brief descriptions, and minimum offers on other houses owned by the RC. One of them was "1106 North Spurgeon, 5 bedrooms, two baths, minimum offer 70K." Well, being the cynical, jaded person that I am, I convinced myself that this house would be a rundown hovel the size of a rabbit warren with an outhouse and a subdivided crawlspace.

Oy, was I wrong. Even though all the books tell you not to fall in love with a house you're looking at, I was smitten. It was a two story Colonial Revival, built in 1903, constructed mostly with redwood – a wood distinctly unappetizing to termites. The house has ten foot ceilings, and hardwood floors, which are in beautiful condition. (The hideous industrial carpet seems to have protected them.) In the front of the house, the entry hall is the result of the enclosure of the porch sometime in the misty past. It’s a twenty by twenty space, and the first thing you see from the front door is the big, beautiful staircase sweeping up to the second floor. The wood –clear Douglas fir—is as rich as it was when new, and when the banister is again draped with garlands at Christmas it’ll be a beautiful sight. I could picture black and white tile in the entry area, and a circular entry table with a big, overachieving floral arrangement just sitting there, taking up floor space.

The front parlour has a big bay window, and pocket doors -the kind that slid into the wall- that connect with the back parlor. Sometime in the past the front parlor was divided into two bedrooms and a bathroom. Those walls are going to be ripped out first thing, and I’m hoping that the floor wasn’t too badly damaged when they were put up. The place where the pocket doors are supposed to be is empty now, but the cast iron rail from which they hung is still there, and with a lot of hours with a carving knife and a chisel, they can be replaced.

In the middle of the first floor are the dining room and the library. I’m thinking about a deep, glorious red for the dining room, with velvet curtains, just dripping fringe and tassels. There’s a chimney in the west wall, and I hope that I can put a gas fireplace in… just think of dinners in the winter time with the fire crackling! The dining room windows open onto the side yard, and I’m planning a fountain there, so in the summer time we can open the windows and dine to the sound of the water plashing outside. The library is pretty bare right now; there’s a brick wall, about eight feet high, and a small hearth where a Franklin stove stood. I want to take the brick outside (and turn it into the garden walk) and build bookshelves, with a fireplace in the middle of the wall.

The kitchen still has the original cabinetry, including the "cold cupboard," the cabinet with vents into the basement and the attic, that on hot days would draw the cool air up from under the house and through the food that was stored there. There’s a built-in Hoosier cabinet, with the potato and onion bins on the bottom, and a built-in china cabinet, (which is missing all its drawers). The guy who’s remodeling the kitchen says he can replicate the decoration pattern on the one surviving cupboard door (which happens to match the pattern on the front door!) on all the new ones. Next to the kitchen is the utility room, which has the back stairs, a WC, and space for a washer and dryer, and will be the "messy projects" room for the foreseeable future. There’s a shower stall and a cheapo sink in there, too, but that’ll be going away. Eventually I want to put in a clawfoot bathtub and a nice pedestal lavatory, but that’ll be several years from now.

Upstairs there’s a big landing, a long hallway (19 feet-- which’ll be lined with bookshelves), four bedrooms (just think… I can have a guest room!), and an enclosed sun room that’s going to be the sewing space. I’m building a new bathroom upstairs, which will be part of the master suite.. a whirlpool tub, shower, lavatory, and WC in Twenties arte moderne style in black and white (with lots of flamingo accents).

Although I’ll have to replace both the electrical and the plumbing systems, the house is still the bargain of a lifetime.

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The Story of the Purchase: There was a lot more interest in the house than the City had expected. After all the offers were in, the staff decided that they had to have some way to evaluate them. They created a grid where the amounts offered, the rehab plans, the financing, the occupancy plan and the time frame were weighted, and came up with a recommendation. The recommendation was that the Redevelopment Commission accept the offer from a chap who bid 10K less than I did, and was not going to owner occupy, but had 100K in the bank was a general contractor, and was going to have the restoration complete in six weeks.

The other guy sent his general contractor (who lives in one of his apartment complexes) to speak for him. (I guess he was just to busy or too important to bother attending in person.) One of the Commissioners said, "If he can have it done in six weeks, he's a god." No one on the Commission believed he could get the permits in six weeks, let alone have the work done. The Commission decided to accept the highest offer from an owner-occupier... which just happened to be moi. So I am happy to tell you that the Redevelopment Commission of Santa Ana recommended that my offer to purchase the Claycomb House be accepted. Now their recommendation goes to the City Council, which will (hopefully) address the matter on December 1. <Sigh> Keep your fingers crossed for me!

On December 1, the Council met and considered my offer. Two of the Councilors didn’t like the marketing plan, didn’t like the commission, didn’t like the buyer evaluation process, and didn’t like my offer. Since the other five members had no problem with the sale, (but were willing to let the FFC spend two weeks looking into the matter) the decision was delayed for two weeks.

On December 15, the Santa Ana City Council was pleased (at long last) to accept my offer. (The vote was five to two, quelle surprise.) Escrow was opened the next day (for 45 days), and the appraisals and title search were ordered. Now I’m waiting for them to be done so the mortgage can be funded, and I can get into Contractor Hell. I’ll keep you informed as soon as that starts—you can expect a "Before" party sometime around the end of February!

We finally got the draft of the Development Contract from the City around the end of February. Oy. This thing is fifty-nine pages long, and the lists of the required renovations still have to be added. After the contract is approved, we can open escrow—they hadn’t opened it before as they said they were going to – and transfer title.

The DC lays out, in excruciating detail, all the things I'm agreeing to do to the house (rewire, replumb, remodel, repaint, re-garage, re-et-cetera) and all the hideous things they can do to me if I don't do all those things on time and to their satisfaction. They also wanted me to agree that I wouldn't sell the house within five years of completion of the project (they don't want me selling out to some developer) , and that I wouldn't sell it for more than the 'fair market value (whatever that is), and that I wouldn't try to sell to anyone who makes more than 125% of the median income for the neighborhood, and that I wouldn't discriminate against any prospective buyer on the grounds of race, creed, gender, belief, or hair color. (As if.) After several weeks of back and forth on the contract, we've finally reached agreement, and I'm ready to sign.

Cassaundra (who is representing me in the legal negotiations, and who used to supervise hotel acquisitions and divestitures for Marriott) said that it was the most restrictive document she’d ever seen in ten years.

The other outstanding issue is the fact that the City doesn't have clear title to the entire plot the house is built on. Apparently at some time in the past, the previous owner conveyed a small plot to a utility company. Then the City bought the house. Then the conveyance expired. (So title returned to the previous owner, even though it was never re-conveyed.) Then the previous owner expired. Since the title had never been re-conveyed, it didn't go through probate. So now the City has found the heirs of the previous owner, and for a little bribe --ooops, I mean "consideration"-- they've agreed to quit-claim the title back to the City, so they can convey clear title to the entire lot to me. Geez.

My current understanding is that all the title mess will be cleared up this month, and that the City will be ready to open escrow no later than the 31st of May. (Of course, I have to have the house re-appraised for the loan, because all the comps are outdated, and then I have to re-apply for the loan, since the rate-lock on the mortgage has lapsed, since this is taking so long..) Keep your fingers crossed, because after escrow closes, Contractor Hell opens!

Signing The Contract (House Update 1)

Louise and I signed the Development Agreement on Friday, June 5. I dropped it off at City Hall on Monday, and on Tuesday morning I got a call from the Housing Office telling me that I’d forgotten to initial one of the pages. I trotted back down there at lunchtime, scrawled my initials on the paper (all four copies of it) and headed back to work. There was a message on my voice mail Wednesday morning when I got into the office telling me "Ooops, Louise needed to initial the pages, too, and would I come back and get the contracts to take to her?" Louise decided that she’d just go in on Friday morning before work and initial the contract. Friday mid-morning I got a call from Louise telling me that I needed to go back to City Hall to sign the Grant Deed, too. Sheesh. (If everything goes well, we should be able to close escrow by the 25th of June, if not before.)

The good news was that after I signed the Grant Deed, they gave me the keys to the house, so I could start piling up the trash inside in preparation for the Neighborhood Clean-up Day, when there’d be a great big 40 foot dumpster in our front yard. (We’d cleverly volunteered to host one of the dumpsters, thus ensuring our easy access.)

Saturday morning, Louise and I headed for Home Despot, for what will be the first of many trips. We got a wheeled trash can, a Big Box o’ Trash Bags, a ladder (almost a hundred dollars…ouch!) a box of screwdriver bits for the cordless drill Louise got me for Christmas, and a big container of Goop, the waterless hand cleaner. We got to the house, and started work.

Did you know that commodes are held to the floor by only two bolts? Did you know that shower pans aren’t attached to the floor at all? That old PVC pipe will shatter if you hit it just right? That old, rusted screws will shatter if you try to remove them with a cordless drill? That ten year old rat shit has (happily!) no odor? It was a very productive day: I completely demolished one bathroom. I took the shower stall and curtain frame -a really ugly assembly of plumbing pipes and wall brackets- out of the utility room. Louise cleaned the Augean Kitchen, and sorted through the huge pile of wood that the Historic French Park Association had saved for us.

We gave the attic a through investigation, and although we found no forgotten Hepplewhite furniture, no boxes of left-over Victorian clothes or forgotten bags of gold pieces, we did discover gold of another sort: space! If we run a staircase up there, the attic is big enough to provide almost 400 square feet of floor --with 6 feet or more of headroom-- that can be used as a sewing room, with enough storage even for our huge cloth collection!

After the day’s major projects were done, we worked a bit on the doorway between the dining room and the library. At some point in the distant past, the height of the doorway had been reduced, and doorposts and window frames had been built into the previously open area. I was hoping we’d find old pocked doors inside the walls; Louise was convinced that there wasn’t enough linear space in the walls to hold doors of the requisite width; that there had simply been an open archway between the two rooms . After we’d pulled enough of the added framing away to see the original facing, it was obvious that my hopes for pocket doors were in vain.

I still didn’t believe that the arch had always been open—it conflicted with my understanding of the way Victorians had used space. There would have been some way (pocket or panel doors, or curtains) to close off the passage. We stood there glaring at the offending doorway, and then the afternoon sun, coming from the kitchen, illuminated the answer. In the varnish on the doorway were two circular imprints where a rod had previously suspended drapes between the two rooms. Louise looked at the evidence for a few moments, and said "I think I have something in the wood pile that size…" She returned with a carved dowel rod that fitted perfectly in the space between the door jambs!

We finally tore ourselves away from the decorating possibilities, and went home to get ready for the potluck dinner hosted by the Santa Ana Historical Society. Next Weekend: schlepping the old stove, refrigerator, freezer, washer, sinks, toilets, shower stalls and miscellaneous debris out to the dumpster, and starting on the kitchen counter demolition. Whee!

House Update 2

I get off on Fridays at noon, and -since Louise was home with a sick car- we decided to trot over to the house and get a head start on the weekend's work. After an exciting detour through the Home Depot Excess Cash Remover ("excess cash" being the sum of everything in the checking account plus 10%) we arrived clean and eager to work.

The first thing on the agenda was the smell we had noticed last weekend. The basement turned out to be the source of the stench: someone had thrown the carcass of a cat down there --it was still partly in the trash bag. As the only possessor of a "Y" chromosome, I was elected to deal with it. "Disgusting" only begins to describe it: it was stuck to the floor. It was falling apart. It was inhabited. Decomposing flesh produces gas under pressure. Ugh.

Once the basement-warming present was dealt with, we started on the four layers of flooring in the kitchen. We soon discovered that the long-handled tile remover was not going to work... the mass was too thick and too sticky. I was reduced to wriggling a chisel underneath the layer, levering it up enough to grip the edge, and then tearing away as much as would come loose. It progressed much faster than one would think. While I was messing with the linoleum in the kitchen, Louise went after the asphalt tiles in the utility room. Those, happily, were thin and brittle enough to be broken loose with the tile scraper, which soon proved to be worth it's weight in silver, at least. She was somewhat handicapped by having to work around the old washing machine, the old coffin freezer, and the pile of bathroom debris from last weekend's festivities.

When I was ready to take a break from the linoleum wars, I went to the utility room to start work on the back door. I'd called the City on Monday to be sure they had time to get me the key for the deadbolt, and called back on Thursday to be leave a second message. Needless to say, the deadbolt was still firmly in place, and there was no sign of a key. Cell phones are wonderful things: a few minutes of whining at the nice lady who answered the phone, and a locksmith was on the way to deal with the deadbolt. He had it off the door and a new key cut in less than an hour, and I am happy to recommend Patrick of Civic Center Lock and Key to anyone who needs a competent, cheerful locksmith.

With the back door open, we could carry the bags of tile, flooring, and assorted garbage down the back steps, where we quickly made the acquaintance of the mulberry bushes (now trees) that loomed over the porch. The trees were quickly introduced to the hacksaw, and an open pathway appeared to the back gate. One of the neighbors, Debbie McEwen, came over to review our progress, and we spent a very satisfactory hour trying to figure out what the original appearance of the kitchen walls had been. Under the chair rail, there was a faint grid, like the joints in a brick wall. Debbie found a spot behind the Hoosier cabinet, behind a drawer, where we could see the original, unpainted plaster of the walls could be seen, and there was the grid again... it had been scored into the still-damp plaster as a decorative treatment. We found evidence of the treatment behind the kitchen counter, too, but that's jumping ahead of the story.

Debbie also noticed some of the paint pulling away from the dining room wall. A few minutes picking produced a 1x2inch spot that exposed the wallpaper beneath-- and the pattern was still visible! We spent about an hour carefully flaking the paint and foundation paper away from the wallpaper, and revealed a large part of the original wallpaper. It had an elephant-ear leaf pattern in greyish-pink, blue, and cream; not very attractive, but interesting none-the-less.

I walked Debbie home, and she showed me a rectangular pedestal sink that had been salvaged from a house in the neighborhood, and told me I could have it if there was a place to put it. I think it'll work beautifully in the main bath upstairs.

Saturday was our Neighborhood Cleanup Day. We'd been warned that the dumpsters fill up early, so we were at the house by 7:15am to start schlepping the trash out to the dumpster (which, as you learned in last week's installment, we had volunteered to host in front of the house). In addition to the tiles, linoleum and assorted debris, there was a coffin freezer, refrigerator, stove, washing machine, commode, sinks, shower stalls, shower pans, the mulberry branches, and many little black remembrances left by the rats and mice before their departure. The dolly we'd rented from Blower's Rentals was worth every penny (and then some!) of the $8. The dumpster really did fill up quickly: by 9am or thereabouts, I had Louise standing in the thing to save space for the refrigerator. The residents of Mercy House, a rehabilitation facility a couple of blocks away, had volunteered to watch the dumpsters to be sure that no toxic materials (paint, batteries, old gasoline) were put in them. One of the gentlemen who was stationed at our dumpster took one look at the house, grabbed a rake, and started cleaning the front yard. In short order, he'd helped carry out old lumber from the entry way, branches from the back yard, and --proving his worth to be above that of rubies-- cleaned forty years of trash out of the basement! I gave him $30 bucks before they left, and counted myself the more fortunate of us two. He left his name and phone number with us, and said --about twenty times- that he'd really like to come help again.

After the major debris were wheeled out, my friend Eric from Riverside showed up, to give me my first lesson in demolition. We identified the kitchen counter as our victim, and with a ten-pound sledge hammer, several pry bars, and dust masks we made short work of it. Modern construction of tiled counters requires some greenboard (water-resistant wallboard), thin-set mortar for the tiles, and grout. This counter was made from pine planks, and two inches of cement with chicken wire embedded below the tile. Not that it made any difference to the sledgehammer. We were able to save the two cabinet doors that were original to the kitchen (distinguished by the unique router patterns) and the enameled cast-iron sink, which will save me $300 or so when it comes to putting in the new kitchen. (The doors were taken home to be the paint removal project during the week.)

We broke for a picnic lunch in the park with a couple of neighbors, Catherine Cate (whose husband Steve is President of the French Park Historical Association) and Marc LaFont, one of the guiding lights of Wilshire Square, the neighborhood just south of French Park. Topics of conversation ranged from the perfidy of the Planning Department in wanting to charge me $2000 for permission to build the garage they're requiring me to build, to how nice the park was in the afternoon breeze. After lunch, Catherine retrieved an old chandelier (salvaged from the Hotel Corday) that we can use in the entry hall. I love my neighbors.

Sunday saw us back at the house for a consultation with Art Dennis (Thurston de Barri, Baron of Drieburgen) who's a general contractor and woodworker. We talked about the minutiae of wall removal, and stair installation (we want to turn the unfinished attic into a 400 square foot sewing room). Risé Cartabiano (Alatiel de Beaumont) came down to look at potential locations for the mural she's going to paint (I'm voting for Pre-Raphaelites in the stairwell). And on Monday evening, we spent a pleasant hour or so in the (now catless) basement measuring the support piers that hold up the first floor.

All in all, a very pleasant exercise. Anyone wanna help take walls down next weekend?

House Update 3

I'm afraid this one isn't going to be very witty or very long... even the most scintillating prose can't make "I scraped paint out of beadboard with an Exacto knife for two days and it's still not finished" too interesting.

I’ve gotten the first promise of something new for the house: Nancy Berman (Duchesse Natalya de Foix) is going to embroider a piece to hang on the wall in the parlor. Louise will be designing it, and it will include the legend Sic situ laentantur Lares ("the household gods are happy here"). The quote comes from The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton -the novelist- and Ogden Codman, published in 1879.

Tuesday (6/23)

I just spent a very pleasant evening on the patio here at the old place, playing with incredibly powerful paint remover. I took fifty years of paint off a kitchen cabinet door. There was the cream colored layer, the dark green one, the cream with speckles, then a white layer, and at the bottom the original varnish. In places, the paint had become putty, filling holes in the wood. (It could have been used as glue: it was thick enough to hold the hinges on by itself!) When the label says "Caustic... wear gloves." it isn't kidding. The effect of the stuff on my hands wasn't all that bad -- it was the places on my forearms that little specks of the stuff splashed... it felt like I was getting burned with the ends of red-hot wires! I now have neoprene gloves that reach my elbows, goggles, the whole collection of HazMat stuff...)

Thursday

Louise has managed to convince me that the obnoxious, obstreperous, obstinate, offensive Building and Planning Departments have not singled me out for special harassment... they behave this way with everybody. (I've said more than once in this project, and will doubtless say so again, that if the employees of the City of Santa Ana were dependent on customer satisfaction for their livelihood, things would be very different.) We've decided to comply with their design requirements and put the garage in the back (southwest) corner of the property, with a driveway that runs the width of the lot. This will give us several benefits: a) there'll be a 16x50 swathe of contiguous back yard, b) we can build firewalls -much cheaper- on two sides of the garage without adversely affecting its appearance, c) there won't be a three month delay while we go through the variance process, and d) we'll save the $1700 variance fee. We'll still be hit for a building permit fee, a site review fee, an environmental fee, and a development processing fee, though. Sheesh.

Friday

I finally got the last of the nasty tiles out of the WC in the Utility Room. After that was finished, I started work on the window in the WC. Originally, the WC was outside of the house, on the back porch. At some time in the past, the porch was enclosed, but the window that had opened from the WC onto the porch was left intact...so now there's a window looking into the utility room. Eventually, there'll be a bathroom next to the WC: with a sink under that window, and a clawfooted bathtub. I'm going to replace the glass with a mirror, so there'll be a reflective surface above the sink. But before that can happen, I need to get the window working again. With my Guide to Renovating Old Houses clutched firmly in one hand I started cutting away the paint that had glued the window shut. I had no idea that double sash , counter-weighted windows were so complicated. I finally managed to break the sashes (the frame that actually holds the glass) free from the paint, and to remove the lower sash. Not only had it been painted shut, the goobers who last worked on it covered the sash ropes with paint, too... so the boards that cover the cast-iron counterweights will have to be removed, the ropes replaced, and the entire frame reassembled.

Saturday and Sunday

Louise finished getting the linoleum off the kitchen floor--a tedious process that involved a chisel, hammer, and an Exacto knife to cut away the parts under the moldings. She found some antique bay leaves underneath the Hoosier cabinet... so I guess that means we aren't the first Laurels to live there. (For our non-SCA friends, Louise and I are both members of the Order of the Laurel, the Society's national arts award .) I got started removing the paint from the built-in china cabinet. Even though it was a tedious, smelly, slow, tedious, messy process (did I mention the tedium?) the gradual appearance of the wood beneath made it all worthwhile. Buried for close to a century, the clear Douglas fir is fine-grained, beautifully planed, and smooth as silk. Most of the front of the cabinet is now clean, and the side is clean down to about three feet above the floor (the cabinet is almost seven feet high). I'll be going back at least one evening this week to scrape some more paint, breathe some more fumes, and splatter more caustic chemicals. I can't wait..

Wednesday night of last week, we met with the Historic French Park Association and a planner from the City to review our garage plans. Everything went well—the Association like the garage’s appearance, the planner was satisfied with it’s location on the lot—until she happened to mention that the Public Works Department would be asking us to ‘dedicate’ (which is code for "give away") a triangle ten feet long and wide in the front yard next to the alley, so that the sight-lines of cars exiting the alley wouldn’t be impeded. This was –as usual—the first time we’d heard of this request. I sputtered and looked astonished, and the planner allowed that Public Works might be satisfied if instead of dedicating the triangle (which would be fifty square feet out of the already postage-stamp sized lawn) we just concreted over it. Debbie McEwen (who I’m getting to like more and more) looked at her and asked "Are you on drugs?" Louise will be going down to the City next week for a conversation about this, and hopefully we’ll be able to resolve it in some fashion that doesn’t involve concrete or land give-aways.

It also turns out that I have to have a demolition permit to take the walls out of my parlor. My theory was that since the previous owners didn’t get a permit to put them in, I wouldn’t need one to take them out. Hah. Not only do I have to have a permit, I have to pay a fee (based on what the demolition would cost if I paid someone else to do it). (Maybe I should ask a friendly general contractor to quote me an absurdly low price, and use that as the basis for figuring my fee…)

Jon Matson and Cara McLeod joined me on Friday for a pleasant day of "light" remodeling chores. Since I can’t start ripping walls out, I decided to start removing the old "wall treatments" in the upstairs bathroom. "Wall treatments" in this context means "all of the wall except the studs and a few bits of plaster or wallboard sticking to them." The tiles, the grout, the mortar, the ugly fifties fixtures… all gone. Jon and I spent our time tile-banging, removing the ceramic tile from around the tub (anybody know if there’s a market for cast iron, enameled, built-in tubs, circa 1950?). We salvaged as much of the tile as possible, --it’s kind of a mottled aqua-green color, with the trim tiles in a dark hunter green. If they don’t have any salvage value, they can be used to line the basin of the fountain in the side yard. Jon pulled the tin (!) tile off the walls… yes, it really is metal, in the same aqua-green as the tub surround. I had no idea that there had ever been metal tiles, but there they were. While he was doing that, I started scraping the floor; there were three layers of covering there: self-stick linoleum tiles in an ugly gold and brown pattern, and black asphalt tiles below them, and what looked like green sheet linoleum on the bottom. The last layer was so old that it was mounted on burlap. Jon –alert man that he is—noticed that in a couple of places you could see daylight through the walls, so that’ll have to be dealt with too. The plan is to have a claw-footed tub in the bathroom, and put bead-board wainscoting around the walls. The sink Debbie McEwen gave me will go in there too, and the medicine cabinet and linen press will be stripped and refinished.

Cara, bless her heart, spent the entire day scraping paint off the bead board in the kitchen. As the paint comes off, we can see that the wood is in amazingly good condition—it’ll be absolutely radiant once it’s stained and sealed again.

On Saturday—the Glorious Fourth— Jeff Bissiri, the architect who designed the garage came by to check out the house and the site. We discussed several alternatives for the garage construction (since we’re now putting the garage in the far, southwest corner of the lot, on the property lines, we have to use firewalls on at least two of the sides). Louise scraped some more paint in the kitchen, and I scraped some more linoleum in the front bathroom. Sunday saw me helping Cassaundra and Phillipe move to their new house (they made their offer, were accepted, opened escrow, closed escrow, and moved in less than a month. I hate them.) (But the house is really great.)

Louise has informed me that we now have a demolition permit, so everyone who’s been champing at the bit to knock walls down, this is your chance! Mark your calendars for the first weekend in and let me know if you’re interested. I’ll provide pizza, soft drinks, and beer… you can bring gloves, sledgehammers, and safety goggles. We’ll probably start around 10am or so.

Two blondes were working on a house. The first, who was nailing down siding, would reach into his nail pouch, pull out a nail and either toss it over his shoulder or nail it in. The other blonde, figuring this was worth looking into, asked "Why are you throwing those nails away?" The first explained, "If I pull a nail out of my pouch and it's pointed TOWARD me I throw it away 'cause it's defective. If it's pointed toward the HOUSE, then I nail it in!" The second blonde, infuriated, yelled "You MORON!!! The nails pointed toward you aren't defective! They're for the OTHER side of the house!!" (and thank you, Rhiannon, for that lovely story.)

Not too much to report this week; On Saturday, I went to Peter and Sandy’s (Cassaundra and Phillipe, for the Society members) to "help" with their garage sale ("help" in this context means "conversational entertainment while stripping a cabinet door"). Louise stayed home to make 27 Mexican Waitress blouses, with colors not found in nature. On Sunday, we both went to the Orange County Fair with Chuck and Peggy (Charles and Brianna) to admire the Carnival of Products, the food booths, the rides, the art show entries and the dance shows. Quite the most fascinating part of the day was our visit to the Alaskan Pig Races. This little known but beguiling sport features an irritating announcer reciting a canned, pun-ful, annoying spiel while the porcine participants whirl around a circular track. Peggy, as an aficionado of this uncelebrated pursuit, revealed that the enticement to finish the course --instead of pausing for a refreshing nap-- was the bowl of Pig Chow at the end of the track.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot: we were burglarized last week. We stopped at the house to pick up my hat before hitting the Fair, and were showing Peggy around the place. I loosened the boards on the kitchen window to let some light into the room, and noticed a set of initials carved into the china cabinet. I had my mouth two-thirds open to ask Louise why she was carving initials into the wood when I realized that a) Louise wouldn’t do that, and b) someone had been in my house! We soon realized that both the Mikita cordless drill (my Christmas present from Louise) and the reciprocating saw (never even been used!!) were missing. We called the police, an investigator came out, expressed amazement at the size and age of the house, admired the beautiful staircase, glanced at the initials, commented that boy, we sure had a lot of work to do, and left. Hmph. So much for my tax dollars at work. And actually, it really wasn't that much anguish. The value of the tools, new, was less than five hundred dollars. I understand and sympathize with being hungry, and stealing for food money. I understand (but don't forgive) stealing for drug money. What pisses me off beyond belief is carving the initials into my china cabinet! Just like a dog marking territory. (And you know that they weren't stolen by some impoverished carpenter desperate to feed his starving family, but by some dumb punk with a drug habit who'll trade them for $10 worth of his poison of choice.)

But, on the other hand, it could have been much worse... he could have broken all the windows out. He could have kicked in the walls (the ones that aren't plaster, that is. He could have lit a match on the way out (of the all-wood house)... all in all, I think I got off pretty lightly.

My projects for this week are identifying a security company, and wiring the window latches and door knobs to a car battery.

House Update 6

Only one item of note to report this week (I was frantically getting ready to teach at Costume College, and didn’t get to the house at all. Next week, however, will be different: the first Tear Down the Walls Party will be August 1 & 2. If you’re interested in coming to help demolish the walls in the front parlor, either or both days, let me know… I can certainly use the help—and those of you who’ve already committed to coming, thank you!!!)

On Wednesday last, I got a call from my mortgage broker:

MB (in tones of darkest gloom): I’ve got some bad news… your mortgage has been suspended.

Prospective Homeowner (panicked): What does that mean?!

MB: It means that we’re not going to process your loan application until we get some information.

PB (still pretty paranoid): What do you need to know?

MB: We need your FHA Consultant to explain some of these line items on the Approved Repairs list.

PB: Have you contacted the consultant?

MB: Yeah, I just talked to him, and he says he can have the information ready for me today or tomorrow.

PB (now really irritated at having been given a heart seizure for no good reason): So you don’t need any more information from me personally?

MB (completely clueless): No, I just wanted to bring you up to date.

PB (after hanging up phone, and banging head on desk): AAAAIIIIIGH!

My, what a lot of things you learn when you start banging on walls!

Friday afternoon I got over to the house about 2pm, in time for delivery of the porta-potty (acquired because Louise was tired of walking down to the Burger King, and for the hordes of friends who would show up on Saturday and Sunday). I had a nice chat with the delivery man, who used to work for the private investigator who lived in the house in the late ‘80s. Small world.

Since I had the afternoon free, I decided to get an early start on tearing down the walls. I carefully lined up the sledge hammer with the edge of the doorway, thought vigorously about Councilman Moreno, and let fly. Dust everywhere. Much noise. Flying debris. I thought about Councilman Espinoza, and smacked the wall again. Much the same response. After about three hours of cathartic violence, the first two wall segments were outside in the front yard, I was covered in white goo. (Did you know that plaster dust mixed with sweat makes an invigorating body scrub?)

Saturday morning, I was up with the birds to meet the delivery man, who was coming at 7am (ack) to drop off the dumpster. Louise showed up around 8:30, and we fell to. Weezie quickly decided that she really wasn’t cut out for swinging the sledge hammer, but that pulling down drywall was the perfect task. Between the two of us the dumpster was full by about 10:30. The trash company was able to fit in another delivery by 11am, so we continued tossing long beams, abundantly studded with really sharp nails, out the window. By 3pm the rabbit warren that had long blighted the front parlor was gone. The whole house seemed to heave a sigh of relief, and the wonderful proportions of the room were visible again for the first time in sixty years.

Some 38 feet of ten-foot-high walls had been tossed into the dumpster of history, and were gone forever. Well, most of them were… the long beams wouldn’t fit inside the second dumpster, and neither of us were up to cutting them into shorter pieces. Because of the nails sticking out everywhere, they were too much of a hazard to leave outside in the front yard. Louise managed to convince me that my analysis ("The only way anyone could get hurt by these nails is by trespassing on my front lawn, even if it doesn’t have any grass yet, and anyone who’s trespassing deserves exactly what they get, and I don’t care if they die of tetanus!") was slightly flawed. We ended up schlepping them back into the house, and leaning them up against the entry way walls.

The next morning, we headed upstairs for the next part of the job: the walls that were partitioning the sun porch on the back of the house. A few minutes work with the pry bar revealed that these walls were much more solidly constructed than the ones in the front parlor; the studs were 4x4s, and were set about a foot apart. Inch-thick pine planks had been nailed to them, on both sides, and then beaver-board (the precursor to particle-board) and dowels had been nailed to that. Tim Cardy showed up right after that cheery little discovery, and his energy proved to be a real inspiration: an hour later most of the wall was down, and Louise and Tim were merrily pulling beaver-board away from the original siding, and discussing where the bearing walls were. Lucinda (Luisich) appeared, pry-bar and sledgehammer clutched firmly in hand, and dove right into the destructive frenzy.

After the beaver-board had been pulled down (and a break for discussion of interior decorating options taken) we started on the ceiling. Big mistake; we should have left well enough alone. It turns out that the reason that the walls were so over-built was that the builders had plenty of energy left after putting up the roof with a tack hammer and glue. Instead of anchoring the new rafters to the original walls, they had just nailed them to the fascia boards of the eaves, and enclosed the whole mess. Although a collapse of the roof is not imminent –after all, it’s been just fine for over forty years—we still need to get it looked at. I wonder how much that will cost. Ack. Ciarlasse and Riordan appeared, both looking far fresher than they should have after two flat tires and a missed funeral. They got the tour, and then helped us sit on the front steps for awhile catching up on life. About 5pm, we decided that two dumpsters-full was enough trash for the weekend, and headed home.

On Thursday afternoon, Louise and I met with our General Contractor, Mark Sauer, and reviewed the plans. Everything looks ok (except that I still have to choose the tub for the master bathroom), and he’s ready to start as soon as we close. Mark devised a clever solution to the roof problem that will not only strengthen the support structure, it will leave the original dragon-mouth corbels visible from inside the house. (Which is pretty cool.) The mortgage is creeping slowly toward completion, too (although the appraiser seems to have left for Tahiti, and –of course—they need some information that only he has). At any rate, we hope to close next week. Keep your fingers crossed!

The neighborhood association is involved with the rehabilitation of the c. 1930 duplexes across the alley from me. Mind you, that involvement consists mostly of screaming "You can’t do that!" at the contractor, and screaming "Why did you let him get away with that?!" at the Redevelopment Commission. Needless to say, our lungs get quite a workout. We had a chance to do something constructive last weekend, though—it was time to repaint the window frames. Mike The Contractor was all for ripping out the double sash wood windows and slapping in some cheap aluminum and rubber contraption. By dint of promising to strip the paint off the frames, we extracted a promise simply to paint the frames and leave them alone. As the closest neighbor, I was put in charge of making sure there was power for the heat guns. I strolled over there on Friday afternoon to talk to Mike The Contractor. After I explained what I wanted (at least four electrical outlets with the power on) he gave me a look that would have been appropriate if I’d grown a third foot on my head. "I just don’t get why you’re doing this!" said MTC, "these aren’t your buildings." I started warbling about how important it is that we conserve the historical fabric of the buildings, and quickly realized –from the glazed eyes and drool accumulated on the chin—that I’d lost my audience. I cut my losses, made sure the power was on to the outlets, and beat an ignominious retreat.

After it cooled off a bit that evening, Debbie McEwan brought over her collection of heat guns and extension cords. (She’s had extensive experience in removing paint, having stripped her entire house –which is bigger than mine—over the course of three months and many, many day laborers.) We went over to the duplexes, and I quickly learned that heat guns are called that for a reason… they get really hot. And metal transfers heat very efficiently. This means that pry bars are not good tools for heat-striping paint. When we got tired of playing with the old paint, Debbie and I sat down on the front steps to discuss our progress on the house. We were discussing the perfidy of whoever sprayed stucco on the house when suddenly a geyser erupted from behind her, reaching heights above fourteen feet! After a frantic search for the main water shut-off valve, we discovered that the Water Department had kindly replaced the meter and turned the water back on. Of course, they didn’t do the investigation necessary to learn that the pipes had been cut out a decade ago. It had taken the time from when the water was turned back on –and we still don’t know exactly when that was— to Friday evening for the water to force its way through the crushed and clogged service line to the place where the inlet pipe was cut. In retrospect, it was a good thing that we were sitting there—if the fountain had gone off thirty minutes later it would have run all night!

Saturday found us at the house, bright and early, pulling down walls in the sun room. Tim came back—must be a glutton for punishment. Even with the windows open for the first time in close to ten years, it was still incredibly stuffy. Still, it was kind of fun chucking planks out the windows into the general vicinity of the dumpster below. One of the neighbors loaned us his circular saw, and Tim and I made saw horses to cut wood on. Even with the planks laid neatly into the dumpster, with no wasted space, it was full before noon.

I never realized that "sweat pouring off" was anything more than a figure of speech. That particular shortcoming of my education has now been corrected. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard for so long in so uncomfortable an environment… even pushing cars in the mud and the rain last February wasn’t so strenuous. (Of course, I didn’t have the Cold From Hell then, either, so that should probably be considered a mitigating circumstance.)

On Sunday, we were back at the house (reasonably) early , throwing more wood out the windows, and wishing that we could afford a bigger dumpster. Louise went over to the duplexes to scrap paint of windows Luiseach arrived, with her husband Liam in tow, as did Ragnar and Anastasiia. It was (again) almost unbearably hot, but I was quickly put in my place by these visitors from Flat Hell (as the inhabitants fondly call the eastern reaches of Riverside), where it was 120º. Since I had lost all interest in moving wood from one part of the yard to another, we went inside to inspect the Ugly Brick Wall in the back parlor. It had been installed as the hearth and firewall for a Franklin Stove, and had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I’d had some fantasies of salvaging the brick to use in the sidewalks outside, but my preliminary whacks with a hammer and cold chisel hadn’t even chipped the mortar. Liam took one look at the Ugly Brick Wall in the back parlor, sniggered, and said "Gimme that sledge over there." With him and Ragnar whaling away, it was gone in less than an hour. Mind you, that was with me and Louise and Luiesich and Anastasiia all schlepping brick bits out to the back yard, but even so... I’d been figuring on at least an entire weekend. The real reason for Ragnar and Anastasiia being there was to go up to the Garment District for a cloth-buying frenzy, so when the rest of our entourage arrived (Flora, Munz, and Kathleen) we headed off north.

Mid-week update: My mortgage broker informs me that, having located the errant appraiser –who hadn’t gone to Tahiti after all- we are getting close to funding the loan. I’ve stopped expecting it to be "next week" since that’s been their mantra for the last six months, but I am becoming optimistic that we’ll be able to close before the end of August. I hasten to state that my Realtor, Michelle Basset (of Basset and Associates) has been utterly invaluable in this entire process, and that all the (infuriating, innumerable,) delays are certainly not her fault.

Weekend Expectations: We’ll be pulling down the remainder of the beaver-board, plaster-board, planks, and ceiling in the sun room this weekend, and anyone who wants to come play is more than welcome. You’ll need leather gloves, at a minimum, grubby clothes, and a high heat tolerance… although it is supposed to be getting cooler. Hooray!

-Governor William Bradford,

Plimouth Plantation, c 1750

First, my thanks to all of you who have written or called to check on the status of our little summer project. I have to apologize for not issuing an Update for such a long time…life has been very interesting lately. (I must have been cursed by a person of oriental extraction at some time in the past.)

The excitement began on Friday afternoon, four weeks ago. I was up in the future master bath, knee deep in 90 year old siding (which is being salvaged for use repairing damage outside). The cell phone rang; it was My Faithful Realtor, Michelle, who had just gotten a call from the head of the City Redevelopment Department. She (the Head) had been driving around, noticed the dumpster, the porta-potty, the piles of brick, lumber, wallboard, the sawhorses, and trashbags. She’d made a remarkable leap of logic, and concluded that work was being done on the house.

The Head wanted to know why Michelle’s client (me) was doing work in the house, when escrow hadn’t yet closed. Michelle said "Didn’t you give him the keys so he could start work?" The Head said "Well, yes, but we didn’t intend for him to start demolishing things!" Michelle said "Well, why don’t you call him? You’ve got his cell phone number." So my phone rang, and we went through the same conversation. (I forgot to point out that at least three City staffers, --not to mention the Planning Department—knew that we were demolishing stuff; we have a demolition permit, for cryin’ out loud!) The upshot of the conversation was that I was to return the keys, and ‘cease all entry’ until I had title. Sheesh. Louise and I have decided, though, that since the succeeding weekends were the hottest in Orange County’s history, that we didn’t mind too much being kept from working.

Week before last, we *almost* signed the loan documents. Weezie and I went down to First American Title in Santa Ana at 2pm on Thursday. We were met with a three inch thick stack of papers. This is my first mortgage; I’m still astonished at the amount of paperwork required to generate a home loan. I was doing my responsible consumer-goober thing, reading every word, and asking questions about everything I didn’t understand. (Which was every other paragraph. I’ve got a BA in medieval history, a strong minor in English, and a real love of obscure, archaic words, and I was having real trouble understanding exactly what the writer was trying to convey.)

The first problem was that the Truth In Lending document showed the interest rate as 8.5 percent per annum. I knew that my load was fixed at 8 percent, but though that perhaps this was the first years rate, increased to include the closing costs, but I called my mortgage broker, Chuck, to confirm that. "Chuck, I just wanted to confirm that the rate shown on the Truth In Lending document is increased to show the closing costs as a percentage."

"Well, uh, why do you want to know that?"

"Because if it doesn’t, this document is wrong… it doesn’t match what you told me the rate would be."

"Well, what does the disclosure show?"

"8.5 percent."

"That’s what I told you. 8.5 percent."

"No, you didn’t. You told me 8 percent"

"No, I didn’t. I told you 8.5 percent!"

"No, you did not!"

"Yes, I did!"

"No, you didn’t!"

This went on for some time. I finally told him that it really didn’t matter, because I was going to be refinancing right away, and that I knew that I could either bend over and take it or walk away from the deal, and that I wasn’t going to walk away from it so I’d better go get a barrel, and that I knew he did this for a living, and that he’d been doing it for a long time, and that hundreds of loans went across his desk every month, but that there was only one loan in my life and that I knew damn good and well he’d told me 8 percent. "Click." So I went back to signing documents. Louise shot me a glance from under her eyelashes and asked "He didn’t admit he’d made a mistake, did he?"

Now from the very beginning, the two things that have made this deal possible were the facts that the money I was borrowing in the mortgage would fund two accounts: one to pay for the repairs to the house, and building the new garage, and the other to make the first six payments on the mortgage, so I wouldn’t be paying both rent and mortgage during the time we’re remodeling the house.

I’d already found the "Rehab Holdback" account described, and recognized the amount that was being put in it as the (projected) cost of the work on the house. Then I came across a paragraph giving permission for the "Lender to withdraw funds from the Mortgage Payment Reserve Account, if one has been established." I guessed that this was the account that was going to pay the mortgage for me, and I knew that "Mortgage Payment Reserve Account" was a phrase I hadn’t seen before, so I asked the escrow officer if one had been established. She said "Hmmmm, don’t think so." I called the Lender to ask where the Payment Reserve account was created, and they told me they hadn’t established one. With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I asked why they hadn’t. "Because we weren’t instructed to," was the response.

"Chuck?"

"Yes, Paul, what now?"

"The Lender tells me that they weren’t instructed to set up a Mortgage Payment Reserve Account."

Little voice on the other end of the phone: "Oh."

"I guess this means that I need to stop signing papers, doesn’t it?"

"Yes."

Next week: a new musical, "Old Home Homo" featuring the smash hit "Oh, The Consultant And The Contractor Can Be Friends!"

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, on a panel above a

fireplace in Samuel Clemens’ home, circa 1874.

I am going to skip the now-traditional recounting of my recent adventures (those who really want to read them may let me know) and restrict myself to saying that, after spending fourteen months and five days in the process of acquisition, escrow closed last week, and I am looking forward to welcoming each of you to my home sometime early next January.

I have to confess that I’m a little surprised –and tremendously gratified—at how many people have said that they really wanted to read the missing update. Golly! <blink, blink> You like them.. <sniff> … you really, really like them!

So, where were we? Oh, yes, the arguments between the Contractor (who’s doing all the work, and making a pretty good living doing it) and the Consultant (who makes a living not by doing work, but rather by criticizing how others do it and how much they charge). The current dispute was "How much should this garage cost to build?" There was a tremendous amount of posturing and chest-beating and dark mutterings, but they (finally) agreed on the numbers, and everyone signed off on the specification of repairs. Four weeks ago, I said "…the lender is drawing loan docs today or tomorrow. I may be able to sign this week, and --maybe-- have a funded loan by this weekend! (But don't hold your breath...)" It turned out that my pessimism was well-founded: I almost closed Friday 10/9, but we discovered that the insurance quote had only been good for sixty days, and Friday was the sixty-third. And no, they couldn't extend the quote, it had to be re-written. (Same house, same price, same value, same premium, different date. Ack. Pfui. Rat-bastards.)

So, anyway, the application was re-written, the escrow company sent the premium, the lender funded, the title was recorded, and I did a little happy dance in the front yard. I thought briefly about clutching a handful of earth in my fist, shaking it at the sky, and swearing "As God is my witness, I’ll never be homeless again!" but I decided that it would be pointlessly melodramatic and probably too much temptation for Fate to resist.

While all the legal maneuvering was going on, I was keeping busy: I worked on two architectural salvage projects: one of them was the Seimsen House, which is a funny little building (c. 1939) with three commercial spaces on the first floor, and a Spanish Revival residence -complete with courtyard, entry way, and so on-- built on the roof. The City was willing to give the house to anyone who'd move it to a new location, but nobody took them up on it. A shame-- it was a cute place. The doors, interior trim and mouldings were all made of gumwood, which is a beautiful, close grained honey-colored wood which is simply not available today. The bathroom was decorated with a variety of Thirties tile, with lots of inlay work. The City told the Historical Preservation Society that we could save as much of the detailing as we could get off in two days, and we accomplished quite a lot: we saved all the doors, door surrounds, mouldings, front door and sidelights. Nathan Reed single-handedly pulled all the tile off the roof (because I refused to go up there... if I'm more than thirty feet off the ground I want an airplane around me). He made a valiant effort to get the bathroom tile, but it --like the windows-- was set in concrete, and impossible to remove without a jackhammer. I managed to get one of the arched sashes out of the wall, but it took almost three hours. We decided that removing the windows was simply more effort than it was worth--the wood was deteriorated and termite-eaten, and the glass wasn't especially nice, either.

I also joined Debbie McEwan --one of my new partners in crime-- to do a little more salvage on a house about to be demolished for a street widening project. We met the manager of the demolition company at the house, and he confessed that he'd forgotten the key to the padlock on the front door. He was perfectly willing for us to pull the boards off the side of the house, and break windows to let us in, but we kinda wanted to save the window glass. We stood there staring at the door for a few minutes, and then Debbie pushed the door with her finger, and we watched it swing open. Sigh. So much for physical security at the site.

The house was completely boarded up, and pretty dark... Debbie was holding a mirror to bounce the light from the open doorway onto the area I was working on. Suddenly the light went away. I looked up to give her grief about not paying attention (I mean, how hard is holding a mirror?) and realized that the shadow falling across the doorway was that of a policeman, hand on gun, and a most unamused expression on his face. Even after we established our bona fides, our identities, and our good nature, he wasn't smilin' much.

He finally went away –probably to hunt down an errant doughnut—and we went back to work. We got a nice little cabinet with glass front doors, four sets of mortise locks, a bunch of cupboard latches, and several windows worth of antique glass. (Not a lot of intrinsic value, but the cost of those things, new, or from a vintage hardware company, is unbelievable. The plain door lock assemblies can run above a hundred dollars... and that's not with the spiffy crystal knobs!)

Next week: My first vandalism, fun with utility companies, and lunch with the Mayor.

House Update 11

Work is so interesting....I could watch it for hours!

-CiarLasse

Well, Halloween was a smashing success. My household and the MacDomnhuills got together and haunted the house. (And mind you, we still have no electricity in the place!) Out front, we had some serious crowd control—and a good thing, too! At times there were upwards of a hundred kids and parents milling about, and the police stopped at least three times. The centerpiece of the front yard was the car crushing Luaran (Tom) up against the pine tree—he spent several hours flopping about and moaning. On door duty were Bonnie (Chretien) wearing a black dress and cloak, and Peter (Phillipe), who was got up as some kind of medieval biker/basher… he was wearing his leg armor, a black leather jacket, a chainmail coif, black sunglasses, and carrying a big club with spikes in it. Needless to say, crowd control was not a problem.

The entry hall was Dr Frankenstein’s Laboratory. The good doctor (Charles) welcomed the visitors (ten to fifteen at a time) into the room, where his Monster (me) and the Monster’s Bride (Peggy) were stretched out on slabs. After a couple of jolts, the Monster jolted to life and took the Nice People on a tour. There were a couple of Evil Elves on the front landing—Ciaran and Chretien had been given a couple of Santa’s Workshop Elves by her mother. Ciaran took one look at them and announced "Those things are not coming in my house, and save them for Halloween!" After he and Bart got through with them, they looked like Chuckie’s uncles, with little trickles of blood coming down their chins, and positively depraved looks in their eyes. Their little hands, which had formerly clasped hammers and cymbals, now held carving knives, rats, and entrails. Matt was sprawled at the foot of the stairs, with his "Kill Mother" tattoo prominently displayed.

The front parlor had been converted into a medieval torture chamber… Bob (Ciaran) had about thirty feet of Dungeon Wall flats left over from a murder mystery party, and they draped up against the walls very nicely. Jay and Stewart (Marseille) spent the evening lashed to a rack and stocks, respectively, being beaten and shrieking. The torturers were Debbie (Rhiannon) and Little Bri, both wearing long black dresses and wielding some serious whips. The whips and manacles were supplied by Ciaran, who made me promise not to ask questions. (Sigh.) Up against the wall were two suits of armor, the pig-faced bascinet and globos breastplate occupied by Gavin, and the antique chainmail suit by John. Gavin’s face was entirely hidden by his helm, and John had painted his face a solid black, so when he closed his eyes it looked like the coif and suit were empty, just floating in air. Most impressive.

Moving past the armor, we entered the Vampyres’ Lair. Richard and Nancy were tied to the floor, as snacks for later. Conal was on a table, with Kathy as a ghoul, noshing on his leg. (For those of you who don’t know Conal, he was injured in a mortar accident in the military, and has a *big* chunk out of his right calf. We painted it with fresh blood, and had Kathy with her mouth right down by it. Her face could be seen *through* Conal’s leg, and that went a long way toward convincing the neighborhood tough kids that what they were seeing was real. Valerie (Ceinwen) was occupying a nice coffin, and would come out and snatch a child (a shill) out of each tour group. Cara had an enormous stake protruding from her heart, and spent the evening up against the back wall, moaning "Go back, go back!" at the crowds.

The dining room was converted into the Nursery from Hell. Cassaundra was lying in a claw-footed bathtub, well-streaked with blood, moaning "My baby! What have you done with my baby?!" while Louise cackled insanely over her, and Bart played with the assorted, bloody baby parts in the sink. The tour was topped off when a chainsaw roared to life in the kitchen, a victim –we rotated several through the role—fell through the door, staggering into the room, clutching their bloody throat. Then Ciaran appeared in the doorway, wearing a Leatherface mask, and swinging the (bladeless) saw about. Inevitably, the crowd shrieked and all fifteen of them tried to make it though the door simultaneously. Some of them didn’t even stop for candy on the way out! We may have to tone it down a little for the younger kids—I heard that several were seen on the sidewalk, sobbing hysterically. Next year we’re thinking "Victorian Medicine" as the theme… dentistry, surgery, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Ripper… that kind of thing.

(One of the neighbors, after going through the house and seeing the 25-plus vampires, ghouls, victims and villains, asked me "Who are all these people?" Without even thinking I responded, "Oh, they’re just my household." A stunned look appeared on her face. "All these people are going to live with you?!?" )

In other news, the planner from SoCalEdison showed up, and we played an amusing round of "Twenty-three reasons you can’t have power next week." My contractor still has not gotten his concrete removal guy into the back yard, and I took down the old wooden fence.

House Update 12: Lots Of Progress At Last!

I know it’s been months since my last Update… I can only plead that there’s been way too much going on to spend much time at the computer. We’ve had some major progress (and a couple of major frustrations), but since our progress right now has all the speed of an onrushing glacier, I’ll take a few minutes, and let you know what’s happened.

Temporary power was turned on in November, and we can now stay at the house after dark. Wooo-hooo! Of course, I still can’t get a drink of water or wash my face, so it’ll be awhile longer before I can spend the night. (Assuming that I don’t perch on the rooftop with a shotgun… I’m getting really tired of finding Colt 45 bottles in my back yard on Sunday mornings.) I made Louise come outside to look at the "brewer’s nest" I discovered in the side yard… twelve empty beer bottles, and two cardboard bottle holders. I don’t mind having parties at my house, but I wish they’d invite me!

Louise has been locked in combat with the City Planning Department—they won’t let me have eaves on the back of the garage (too close to the property line, they say) and they want a Circuit Schedule –usually required only for commercial buildings—before they’ll issue an electrical permit. They were finally convinced that they really didn’t need that much information, and we got our permit. The electrician finished running the power, cable, and phone lines through the house, and passed his rough inspection. I’m not very impressed with the care he took with the job--there are huge holes in every wall in the house now (some of them ten-plus feet wide). When Louise called him on it, he told us that the contractor would be happy to patch them. (As if I’d let that man do any more work on this job!)

The new water heater has been installed, the new furnace is in (and it’s a design that’ll let me add air conditioning in the future without any changes). We’ve passed the rough electrical inspection (and you would not believe the holes in the walls!) and the rough plumbing inspection (ditto disbelief). We got in trouble for building new front steps without a permit. We got in trouble for reinforcing the roof without a permit. We got in trouble for building new interior walls without a permit. (I thought we had that one. Really, Inspector.) We’re going to build a front picket fence without a permit, too, but that’ll be later.

The garage foundations have been poured. Construction of the west and south walls was a little complicated. They’re three inches from the property line, so they have to be one hour fire walls. (That means they have to resist open flame for one hour: there’s a layer of stucco, then wire mesh over tar paper and inch thick dry wall.) There are brick walls on the other side of both walls, too, so my walls had to be finished laying on the ground, and then raised up into place. The contractor had to bring in a skip loader to get them off the ground. (And you would not believe the whining that went on!) The other two walls have been framed, and the roof joists should be here next week.

Cameron is coming up from San Diego to help me install the tile for the bathrooms. We’re putting a 4" white tile in the master bath, with 1" black tiles at the intersections. Louise is still undecided about the tile for the main bath, but she’s going to have to decide soon. The chap who’s repairing the drywall and plaster should be starting this Friday. He’s doing the bathrooms first, and then the kitchen… once those are done, the plumber can come and set the fixtures. The drywaller will do the bedrooms next, then the public rooms on the first floor. As soon as he’s done, the electrician can set the light fixtures, and the switches and plugs. Then the floor refinishers get the house for a week, and then (hopefully) we’ll be ready to move in.

Expect a housewarming party in mid to late May…

Giles

And I’ll try to be better about the Updates. J

Update 4/19

Don’t ever go shopping for tiles with a friend.

Especially your best friend.

Reeeeeally especially if you both have strong feelings about what Victorian Sanitary bathrooms should look like.

Our saga begins two weeks ago, when Paul said to Louise, "Richard is coming up from San Diego on the 14^th to show me how to lay tile. We need to have the tile for the water closet and the main bathroom by the weekend of the 10^th." "No problem," said Louise, "there are a bunch of tile stores up where I work—I can get the tile at lunchtime." On Monday, Louise picked out the tile she wanted, and wrote a check to the guy at the tile store. He didn’t have the tile there, but the store in Pasadena did, and Louise could run over there and pick it up. Wednesday after work, Louise drove over to Pasadena.

Louise: "I’m here to pick up my tile order."

Tile Guy #2: "What order?"

Louise: "This order, verified by this receipt."

TG#2: "I never got that order. And even if I had gotten it, I couldn’t have the tile here until next week." Louise called Tile Guy #1, at the store in Upland, who said "Golly, I sold some of that tile last week and there wasn’t any problem and I didn’t even think to check to be sure we had any before we deposited your check and what do you want to do now?" Louise said that she wanted her tile and she wanted it right now because her tile layer (that would be Richard) was coming up from San Diego tomorrow and he had to have the tile.

TG#1: "Well, just have him wait a week."

Louise: "He’s was working for nothing. It has to be this weekend."

TG#1: "Wow, how did you work that?"

Louise: "I used to date him, about fifteen years ago."

TG#1: "Wow, you must have been good."

At this point Louise –exhibiting extraordinary self-control… I would have slapped his face, and then the store with a lawsuit—walked out. So we went shopping for tiles on Saturday morning. Louise lingered over the marble/granite/carved limestone/imitation fresco tiles, while I slavered over reproduction Mintons and stark white bas-reliefs. I should have realized that there was going to be a problem when we hadn’t agreed on anything in the first five stores. After the first fifteen, there was definitely some tension in the air. After the twentieth store, Richard started playing relationship counselor. (Those of you who know Richard as Cameron of Caladoon will find this especially amusing.) Finally, when there were only two tile stores left to visit, we went into the clearance room at Bedrosian’s Tile & Marble. We found some stunningly beautiful flow blue tiles, with a piped slip pattern filled in white glaze. The price was stunning, too; thirty-one cents apiece. (They were on clearance, marked down from $9 apiece, according to the lady at the counter.) So we grabbed them, snagged some pure, glossy white tiles at Home Despot, and laid them in a blue and white diagonal checkerboard. We now have a floor that looks like a Miessen plate.

In other news, we passed the insulation inspection, got a structural engineer to sign off on the roof reinforcement, replaced two support columns in the basement, laid gold and green Arts & Crafts tile in the water closet, bought the black and white octagonal tiles for the master bath floor, and started the drywall repair. The second floor walls and ceiling are all repaired, and this morning (as of 6:30am) the kitchen is 80% done.

Next on the agenda is laying the tile in the master bath, painting the kitchen floor, installing the new cupboards, ordering the (Italian soapstone) kitchen counter, and installing the plumbing and lighting fixtures. After that, the floors get refinished, and we can move in. Think we can do it all in three weeks?

For those of you who are planning ahead, you can expect a housewarming party around the end of May, and one heck of a New Year’s Eve party on Friday, December 31, 1999.

Update 4/26/1999

I’ve got to tell you that laying grout is not nearly as easy as Cameron makes it look.

I started mixing grout at 10am on Sunday. I covered about two square feet of tile, and stopped to wipe off the excess. Of course, the mix was still wet, and I wiped most of the grout completely out of the floor. So I left it to sit a little while longer, and covered more of the tile. When the grout was dry enough to (mostly) stay where it was supposed to be, I wiped up the excess, and discovered that it was next to impossible to actually get the tiles clean; they just got a little less dirty. The next batch was mixed a little dryer—at least that’s the way I thought it was being mixed. It was actually mixed way too dry, and I practically had to pound the grout into the tiles with a hammer. The third batch was just right… but by that time my back was seriously sore, my wrists were even sorer (from being on my hands and knees for so long) and we’d discovered two tiles that were loose in the mortar. Sigh. Be nice to your tile guy… it’s harder than it appears.

While we were driving around last weekend, Cameron—with the experience of years of antiquing—spotted a house being demolished. We pulled over, and saw several doors piled up against a wall… they had glass doorknobs and mortise locks, and for those of you who don’t frequent antique shoppes, that’s between $70 and $100 bucks of hardware. Each. We tried to convince the chap who was working on the house to sell us the doors, but my Spanish and his English really weren’t good enough to negotiate a transaction of that magnitude. (That, and I think he was afraid his boss would be mad if he didn’t get a piece of the action.) I told one of my friends at work about the missed opportunity, and he (Brian Bist) said, "Oh, I know that house, and I know the guy who owns the property, too… here’s his phone number." I rang him right away, and asked if he’d be willing to sell me the doors. He said no, I could just have them. Wooo-hooo! Much rejoicing. Happy dance around the office. We made an appointment for 10AM on Saturday, and I borrowed Donna Espinoza’s Big Truck (diesel, quad cab, dual rear tires, incredibly butch) to schlep the doors in. I showed up a little early, and ate my breakfast perched in the cab. 10AM, no guy. 10:15AM, no guy. 10:30AM, still no guy. I called guy’s office—no answer. At 10:45, I hopped the fence, hoisted the doors over the wall, hopped back over, and loaded them into the truck. Mission accomplished.

I spent an interesting couple of hours removing the knobs and locks from the doors, and cleaning them (we won’t discuss what I found living inside them). The mechanisms are really fascinating, and I only broke one spring. When Donna and Patrice came to pick up the Truck, I cornered them and explained the intricacies of Victorian Mortise Locks at them until their eyes glazed over.

In other news, all the drywall is up—I’ve got a ceiling in the dining room, and walls in the master bath! (And if anyone knows a contractor who can build a shower for me, I’d be grateful for the referral…) The contractor is a whiz at skim-coating the drywall so it looks like plaster, and he’s going to be done this Friday. He’d better be done this Friday. If he’s not, he’s working Saturday and Sunday. He left a note for me last week asking for a $1500 draw against the final payment. Even though we hadn’t discussed this in advance, I wasn’t really adverse to giving it to him, so I called to make arrangements to get him the check. His phone had been disconnected. I guess he really needed that money! I paged him, and when he called me back, I asked –pen poised over the checkbook- "You are going to be able to meet the 4/30 completion date we discussed, right?" He said yes and I wrote the check and I’m gonna hold him to it.

The first couple of coats of paint are on the kitchen floor now. After the cupboards are installed, we’ll put the final coats down, and then paint a Victorian boarder in the center of the floor. The floor refinisher is starting next Monday …which means that all the carpet has to be out of the house by Sunday. If you’d like to join me and Louise for the Great Carpet Tear Out, Tack Strip Removal and Staple Pull Up, we’ll be starting about 9AM on Saturday 5/1. RSVP so I’ll know how much pizza to order.

Update 5/4

I hope that everyone who’s reading this had a more successful week than I did. The disappointments started with the drywaller, who had assured me that the bedrooms would be ready to paint on Thursday. Cameron came up from San Diego Thursday morning to mask and prep the rooms for painting, and guess what—they weren’t ready. The explanation was that the weather had been damper than expected, and the plaster hadn’t dried as quickly as it should have. But they’d work on it Thursday and Friday, and it would be ready Saturday morning. Since Cameron had to attend a practice in Riverside on Saturday morning, we decided to spend Saturday prepping, and Cameron would come back early Sunday morning to paint.

Louise and I, and Jeff Dickman (one of the neighbors) spent Saturday roughing up the old paint on the casements and jambs (those would be the window and door surrounds). That afternoon, Stuart Brennerman (my third roommate), Jim Heirs and I started pulling the carpet out of the first floor rooms. Ick. Major ick. I don’t even want to think about what was in those carpets. Stuart started removing tack strips (the tack-covered wood that holds carpet in place). For those of you who’ve never done it, it involves crawling with a prybar and hammer and basically annoying the wood to pieces. Not any fun at all.

The one good thing about the carpet is that it protected most of the wood flooring from damage. Unfortunately, the bathroom that had been installed in the front parlor had done major damage to the floor—big holes for the drain pipes, and dry rot caused by leaking water over most of the front part of the room. It looked like parts of the dining room had been used as a latrine. After Stuart left, Jim and I finished hauling out the carpet, and most of the debris (old stoves, old bathtubs, new kitchen cabinets) that had filled the lower part of the house. It’s becoming possible to get a sense of the way the rooms are going to feel… the walls are repaired, and with the windows open you can see the broad sweep of the spaces from one part of the house to another. Lots and lots of room; I can just see them filled with people laughing and talking and dancing.

On the way out of the house that evening, I realized that I’d left my pouch sitting on the bar in the entry way; Jim asked if I wanted to go back for it, and I flippantly said "No, it’s black; even if someone breaks in they won’t see it."

Early Sunday morning Louise and I got over to the house to do the last little bits of prep before Cameron started painting. When we pulled up, I noticed that the front door was ajar. Thinking "Damn! I knew I shouldn’t have left my pouch!" I shot up the stairs, reached my hand into the darkness, and grabbed… the pouch! Whew! Much relief. We’d had someone –probably kids—in the house before, and although a couple of the walls had been tagged, we hadn’t had any trouble with theft since the burglary when we started working on the house last year.

My relief turned to dark despair when I realized that not only were the chandeliers and ceiling fans missing, Cameron’s airless paint sprayer had disappeared, too. We called the police and the insurance company, and Louise took Cameron out to buy a new sprayer. Sears didn’t have the right model, and the three Home Bases they went to didn’t either. They finally found it at Home Depot, but by then it was noon and Cameron had to head back to San Diego for his mother’s birthday party.

After Cameron left, Louise and I crawled around removing the rest of the tack strips, and the staples that had held the carpet pad in place. Barry Jensen, another neighbor, came over to help, and suggested a staple-removing gadget he’d used on his house. After a protracted search through a number of hardware stores, I found them, and got back to the house just in time to meet Barry, who’d found his old one. If the process weren’t so damn uncomfortable, it’d be relaxing: find the staple, wiggle the remover under it, lever it up, find the next staple, wiggle the remover, lever it up, find, wriggle, lever, find wiggle lever…. It’s kinda like a mantra. We finished the upstairs about 9pm, and headed for Taft Street for a few hours sleep before work on Monday morning. Not the best weekend I’ve ever had.

On Monday, I met the floor refinisher who was going to repair, sand, stain, and seal the floors. After walking the house, he said that while the second floor was in pretty good shape, the dining room had urine stains –which he flatly refused to sand—and the rest of the first floor wasn’t worth the trouble of sanding; I should either replace the entire floor or carpet it until I could.

That just wasn’t acceptable. Debbie McEwen –another neighbor, and my new partner in the Midnight Architectural Salvage Company—hooked me up with a chap named Gary, who came over Monday at lunch. He checked out the house, looked at the repairs that would have to be made, and called me back with a quote. Oy. But he could start the next day, and he could get it done quickly, so off we go. (And it’s only double what the first guy was going to charge me.)

It’s darkest before the dawn. And we’re moving on the 22^nd and 23^rd.

Update 5/11/1999

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks. After we pulled up the disgusting carpet, we confirmed our theory that the first story rooms had the same floor as those in other houses in the neighborhood: an oaken perimeter, surrounding a central field of Douglas fir. The dining room fir was so badly stained, Gary the floor refinisher said that it’d be better to salvage the wood that wasn’t ruined, trash the rest, and lay new wood in the center of the floor. We could put down oak for $1400, or plywood for $400. Guess which one I chose. I really hate it –and the plywood looks really dorky in the middle of that beautiful oak—but I can replace it in the future, when money is a little less tight. (And beside, there’s going to be a great big rug in the middle of the floor, so no one’ll see it anyway.)

Gary had a crew of six guys working on Tuesday morning (5/4), and by Wednesday afternoon the downstairs floor was repaired. They started sanding Thursday, and by Friday the first coat of stain was on the wood. While that was going on downstairs, Louise and I were masking the woodwork upstairs. We really did believe that we would be ready to paint when Richard showed up on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the general contractor’s crew was in the backyard, building the forms for the new driveway. The concrete was poured Friday afternoon, and by dusk I had a concrete floor in the garage, a driveway through the back yard, and a whole new reason to be paranoid: what if someone walked on the new ‘crete? What if they wrote obscenities all over that smooth surface? What if…. Louise smacked me and we went off to dinner.

The next morning, Richard took one look at the masking, laughed hysterically, and told us that we were nowhere near being ready. We spent another four hours putting more paper up, tapeing plastic dropcloths to the floor, and snarling at each other—crawling about on already sore knees does nothing for the politeness quotient. After everything was masked, Richard fired up the new sprayer. He was wearing white dungarees, a white t-shirt, a white head sock (like a ski mask), and a respirator. Louise took one look and told him he looked like a sperm. You may recall from my last Update that Richard’s paint sprayer had been stolen, along with the ceiling fans and chandeliers. Courtesy of Farmer’s Insurance, he now has a new one, which is much more powerful than the one that got ripped off. The entire upstairs, except the sewing room and the master bath/closet, was painted in less than two hours. What a great machine. The air was filled with microscopic globules of Glidden Antique White, most of which migrated into Richard’s eyes, and my hair—I think I’ll make a most distinguished Olde Fart.

We spent the hours that we’d saved by using the Uber-Sprayer in cleaning the durn thing. Richard had wrapped it in tin foil, to keep the paint particles off, but the inside works had to be washed by running gallons and gallons of water through, and the fifty foot hose had to be scrubbed by Guess Who. Utterly exhausted, we went back to Taft Street to collapse.

Sunday morning Richard was lying on the couch, moaning… he had an ear ache, a sore throat, and bloodshot eyes. We left him on his bed of pain with several glasses of water, some Vitamin C, and my cell phone number. We got to the house about 8:30, and started pulling down the masking paper. The difference is nothing short of astonishing; the walls positively gleam, and the rooms all seem somehow bigger. I can’t wait to see how the first floor will look. Richard showed up about 10:30, and allowed as how he was too sick to be allowed to attend his mother’s lunch party, so he might as well get the tile up in the main bath. I wanted to put up a solid white tile wainscot, with a band of the blue tiles at the top. After a great deal of discussion, we decided to put up a solid white tile wainscot, with a band of the blue tiles at the top. (Some weeks ago, someone was listening to Louise and me debate some design feature. They made the comment that we apparently arrived at most of our decisions in a very round-about way. I responded that our usual problem-resolution method was for Louise to make a decision, and then I decided if I agreed with her or not.)

Anyway, Richard installed the tiles, and they look great; we’ll grout them (hopefully) this coming Saturday after we paint downstairs.

I went over to the house at lunchtime today, and the staircase and second floor have been sanded, and are looking great. Tonight we start masking. Only two weeks left---and I only have to buy a range, a dishwasher, four ceiling fans, a kitchen counter, find a contractor to put in the master shower, paint the garage, paint the downstairs, get the electrical fixtures, plugs, and switches installed, ditto the plumbing fixtures, and pack up the house. I wonder if they still sell those NoDoz pills I liked so much in college….

Update 6/1/1999

So much has happened since mid-May! Richard got the tiles in the main bathroom grouted, and they look incredible. Charles and Peggy Phillips came over on Saturday, and spent most of the day helping: Peggy proved her claim to the title "Clean Lady" and Charles helped me put the beadboard in the main bathroom and the downstairs WC. ("Helped me" is code for "designed the installation, made all the decisions, set up the table saw, made the cuts –including whittleing the boards to fit around the crown mouldings—chose the paneling glue, put it up, and hammered it home." My contribution to that part of the project was pretty much limited to running to Home Base for more paneling glue (I recommend "Liquid Nails") and holding things when Charles said "hold this."

The house used to have gas heaters in the main bath, the two front bedrooms, the front parlor, and the utility room. I cut the pipes to those locations using a SawzAll, and Gavin came over to cap them off. When the technician from the Gas Company came to turn the gas on, there were NO LEAKS!! Much rejoicing, happy dance, visions of hot bath water.

Stuart and Peter helped me move the plumbing fixtures over from the Cate’s garage, where they’ve been stored… Peter rode in the tub in the back of the truck when we moved it over, shirtless, waving merrily at the populace. (And yes, I have a picture) The fixtures have been installed in the main bathroom, and they are simply stunning… there’s a clawfoot tub, with an incredibly kewl flared faucet, and knobs with enamel inserts labled HOT and COLD, and a lever that flips between bath and shower, and a telephone handset sprayer, and a sunflower shower head with an enamel ring, and a ring hanging from the ceiling for the shower curtain. The tub isn’t quite long enough for me to float in, but I can sit in it very comfortably. The tub is in front of the window, so one can soak and read with the light coming from behind—quite luxurious. The beadboard that Charles put in has been stained and sealed, and the rich red tones of the oak against the blue and white tile looks perfect.

While all this was going on, Sandy packed up the library at the Taft Street house (where we were for the last five years). May 22 and 23 were selected as the moving weekend, and Valerie convinced me that I absolutely, positively, had to have a big moving truck. She convinced me of that on Friday morning, the 21st of May. I started calling truck rental places immediately, and got a lot of hysterical laughter when I told them I wanted the truck the next day. I finally located a company that’d rent one, and so I shot over to give them my plastic—didn’t even ask how much it was. (And that tells you how desperate I was becoming; I’m a dreadful cheapskate, and almost never buy anything without comparison-shopping, and bargaining, and asking for a discount.) Saturday morning dawned overcast but dry, and Stuart and I went down to pick up the truck. I haven’t driven a standard transmission in years, and now I had a 25 foot long panel truck. Eeeek. I managed to get it to Garden Grove without stalling, and we were ready to start.

Louise had the kitchen packed, and some of the sewing room. Stuart and I had already moved my bed and dresser, and his stuff which had been stored on the patio. At 9am, the horde arrived, and the move was on. The panel truck was filled twice, and most of the pickups and vans made two trips… but we were done by 2pm! Catherine Cate set up a catering station in the garage, with pastry and coffee and juice in the morning, and a five foot long sub and soft drinks and beer in the afternoon. I’d hoped to be able to use the garage as a staging area for the move, but the rolling door wasn’t on yet (it is now). I’m so very fortunate in my friends and household; there is absolutely no way the move could have been made that quickly without them.

Since then, we’ve gotten most of the kitchen put away, the first coat of paint on the cabinets, the refrigerator (Amana, freezer on the bottom, thank you very much, mother!) and the oven delivered (the dishwasher is coming on Wednesday). The electrician has all of the interior fixtures up –and the dining room chandelier looks wonderful. Next on the agenda: final electrical inspection, phone hook-up, and finishing the master bath. The housewarming party may be Saturday, June 19^th—look for invitations soon!

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All that happened in '98 and '99.  Since we moved in (May of '99), we've painted the exterior of the house, laid a herringbone brick sidewalk and patio (using bricks salvaged from another old house in French Park), and done some serious landscaping. On the inside, we've wallpapered the front parlor (using the William Morris pattern Strawberry Thief), and we're working on finding paper for the dining room and back parlour.  The guest room is done (well, all but the curtains).  Joe and Paul have chosen Wedgewood blues with white trim for the master bedroom scheme.

In the hope of sparing my friends some of the confusion I’ve suffered, I offer these beginning entries in the Homeowner’s Glossary, and solicit contributions:

Repipe: Giles’ definition: replace the pipes. General Contractor’s definition: replace the incoming water pipes. Plumber’s definition: replace the pipes I feel like replacing in the morning before I leave for three weeks in Hawaii.

Tomorrow: Giles’ definition: the day immediately following today. . General Contractor’s definition: the next business day (Subsidiary definition of ‘business day’: the next day I feel like working") Trades’ definition: Sorry, gone to Hawaii, no response possible at this time.

Minimal Damage: Giles’ definition: General Contractor’s definition: Trades’ definition: