So this actually took place some time ago – about 4 months ago, I believe. Nevertheless, I haven’t documented it yet, and I am rather please with the results. The idea for a sliding door came to me several years ago. The door into the bathroom took up a majority of the space when swinging inwards, and it always hit the toilet. Apparently, DC row homes originally had wall mounted toilet tanks, which have smaller footprint on the floor plan. Or so I was told. Dunno how much truth there is in it, but it sounds a plausible explanation.

Regardless, the door opening into the bathroom was clumsy at best, so I found a company that sells sliding door hardware [Johnson Hardware, out of Elkhart, IN]. Because I had already refinished the bathroom with wall tile, I didn’t want to get into the guts of the wall for a pocket door. So I purchased a lightweight wall mount sliding kit.

With a little drywall, the mount kit, and various tools to refinish the original trim, I was in business.

Post demo, pre refinishing

Now, there was a fair amount of damage to the original plaster, so I took that out some loney weekend in the distant past. I lived with the exposed wall for at least 8 months. Cool and edgy at first… then just an daily reminder of work unfinished.

But, on a not so lonely weekend in the not do distant past, we decided that tackling this wall and the door mount would be an a good weekend task.

Mounting the sliding door hardware

Nothing is as easy as it seems, and there was a bit of engineering involved in out-setting the hardware so that it would pass smoothly over the existing door molding. No prob. I happened to have three blocks of cherry wood left over from the shelving endeavor which where the perfect thickness, and much less obtrusive than a two x four.  A little bonus was that I was able to validate my purchase of a drill press, which was used to place the mounting holes in the hardware itself.  Mounting the rail on the wall wasn’t quite as easy, given the amount of pressure I needed to apply, the angle i was approaching from, and the absolute lack of leverage I had. I vaguely remember sweating my ass off during this endeavor.

The original door is mounte, and now sliding freely

The other thing I was looking for in the slide mount was to keep the original door, and as much of the old feel as possible.

Starting to paint the walls

Painting finsihed... debating cutting a box to cover the mount

Pardon the language. But my 7 grand worth of GE appliances is about to get a fourth repair in 4 years. Sure they’re nice and shiny… but I would trade that for reliability at this point. Each of the three appliances has broken at least once, and this is the second go-round for my dishwasher. Sigh. To be honest, I don’t know if any brand woulda been better – I paid a fair amount, but I clearly didn’t go top of the heap, nor did I go cheap and reliable.

But that doesn’t stop me from being pissed that sh*t keeps breaking. I’ve got more than enough on my plate without watching dished stack up, and pulling half cooled food out of my fridge.

And that’s my complaint of the day.

After a day in the sun playing soccer, Sunday was time to get down to business on the second bedroom. It’s been in the works for some time – the cork flooring in the dressing room has been laid, I re-plastered a section that was damaged years ago when I was demo-ing the adjacent bathroom, and two thirds of the walls have been painted. By Sunday, it was time to cut and place the trim for both sections of the bedroom.

The amount of polish well cut trim adds to a room is extremely gratifying. And, thankfully, not that difficult. It was, in fact, for more taxing to clean the room and clear out all of the tools. And equally gratifying.

The one draw back to the work as it nears what I anticipated to be “complete”, is that there’s always a few new tasks that just beg to be done. I notice the sloppiness of some trim work by previous owners – I notice chips in the paint left by removing the old fittings. The floor, which I had decided not to refinish until I sell the house at a much later date, now bothers the hell out of me.

For the time being, I’ll have to live with these concessions. There are now two other areas that are in much more dire need of attention. Seeing how good the refinished trim looks in the second bedroom, I realize that taking the same approach in the foyer and landing will dramatically improve the feel of the house.

As the upstairs comes to a close, I have a strong desire to purge most of the shit I’ve accumulated over the last couple years. Hopefully I’ll find time this week to at least gather up the shit I don’t need or want anymore.

Mia Jones and my old friend Scott Hollingsworth invited Lauren and I over for the World Cup final today. Apparently, it was Mia’s ambition to fatten us all up for the kill. Tons of food, all quite good, follwoed by Lauren’s homemade Peach Pie. The game went as expected – and if a bit anticlimatic, it was a good afternoon spent eating, drinking beer and flapping our lips.

None of this particularly helped finish off the second bedroom, which is nearing it’s final stages. After a post-beer coffee shop run, it became clear that it was far too early for bed, and far too late to start anything major. Which of course led to me starting something major – like laying the cork flooring in the second bedroom’s sunroom. We managed to get all of the more complex cuts out of the way tonight, so that tomorrow it’s a straight march back into the main section of the bedroom.

Lauren thankfully took “before” photos of the sunroom, so we’ll have something to show for our work, mid to late week…. I hope.

A side note: 12 miles this AM keeps me on track for marathon training schedule.

Many a month has passed, and I have loads of pictures and videos. The house is coming along… however, that will have to wait. For the meantime, I’ll just pass along a couple pics of the coffee table Lauren and I built a couple weekends ago. Short story is that we say a mid century table we liked that cost $375… a few moments inspection of the piece led us to believe we could build it a a day or two. Here you are:

The Sunroom, East wall

This weekend we transformed my house into an art gallery. All the furniture was removed from the living room, and all the crap laying around my first floor was relegated to the basement. It’s too late tonight to go into detail, but I’ll just say thank you to everyone who came over. It was fantastic. For my part, the paintings made my house look amazing – and gave me a glimpse of what it can become. Enough of the rhetoric – here a few pics of the house transformed. More to come.

East wall , looking forward, and Katie

East wall, looking North

The artists. Kelly Queener (left), Katie Claiborne (right)

Kelly had come up for a friend’s band, and we figured we might finish up the long standing shelving project. We were cranking through the shelf assembly process. We were quite enamoured with the makeshift clamps  engineered out of 2 x 4s, twine and discarded shims. We repaired a few slats of cherry, re-planing them successfully, and glued all the pieces into shelves. Sweet.

The time had come to check the joists in the ceiling above. I should point out that these are to be hanging shelves, conceived from an exhibit I saw at the Tate Modern in ’04. My life would have perhaps been much easier had I skipped that particular exhibit. But I didn’t, and these are to be hanging shelves. As such, I needed to match the support beams for each shelf with the joists.

Stud finder-check. Wax pencil-check. Straight edge – check. We go front to back and side to side (and no the Boyz-n-tha-hood reference isn’t lost on me). But the stud finder is losing it’s damn mind. Clicking and beeping and beeping and… that’s what is was doing, really. Truly. It looked like there was a joist or a cross beam in the ceiling running only about half way out, and then front to back in two different place, about to thirds the way out. We drill a few pilots to see if there’s any grip. Nada.

What the hell? The stud finder still insists that there’s something up above. Kelly sits and stares. She offers a few thoughts. I’m already deeply in thought, wondering what course of action to take. And then it dawns on me. I could sit here trying to be clever all day – Christ, all week, and not get a damn thing done. It’s kinda my forte. But I’ve been on a mission to change my ways.

Fuck it. I see the hammer to my left. Ten seconds later, plaster and bits of lathe are flying everywhere. twenty seconds later, my sisters is fleeing for safety and a mask.

Some joker had just laid scrap wood on the topside of the lathe. To the stud finder, it appeared solid. To the drill, not so much.

I quickly reverted to my overthinking ways, debating options for hanging the shelves given new situation.  No true joists, nor any true support from the adjacent door frame (there’s one hidden behind the dry wall). And the realization that the support that is present, is there for the turn in the staircase above. Now, I’m certain that doubled-up 2x4s toenailed in to the 2x6s we found in the ceiling could hold the shelves.

Post plaster removal

Even fully loaded. But what about that 300 lb man bounding up the stairs while the shleves are fully loaded? Not so sure. An most definitely sure that I don’t want to be sued by a fat house guest for falling through my stairs, through my kitchen cabinets, and landing in my basement with a can of black beans up his or her ass.

This meant that the shelves needed to be supported from the floor. Sigh. I had to order more cherry wood. Fortunately, I found Fingerlelumber, who were pretty fanastic. I had my cherry 2x6s on my doorstep 3 days later.

And that’s where we stand today. The weekend ran out, Kelly went home, and I had to return to writing proposals for work. But I’m pretty damn glad I didn’t :

1. Obsess about what to do without actually doing anything.
2. Try to hang the shelves without inspecting the insides of the ceiling.
3. Glue on the support beams before opening up the ceiling.
4. Freak the fuck out, becuase the kitchen shelves still aren’t done.

I can promise that two of the four list items will never occur. The other two, all bets are off.

But for the first time in quite a while, I have a clear idea of what needs to happen next, and exactly what the difficulties will be. I can probably even tackle ‘em this weekend. Maybe. The front and back yard both seem to call for my attention.

It’s very easy to forget that this massive project all about me is actually where I live. In the midst of all the construction, plastering, painting and programming, living comfortably can get pushed aside. Now, there are many reasons for this state of affairs – most of which are truly none of your business. I will divulge this much however – a never ending to-do list can serve as insulation from life. Or rather, an insulation from living.

I don’t know about you, but I’m quite fond of living. And I don’t just mean the drinking, smoking, sex and sniffing glue. No, no – that’s just dressing. I mean living – the ability feel the texture woven by the brilliance and folly of ourselves and those all around us. But what on Earth does this have to do with my house?

A home is like sleep. It’s something we all need, rarely think about until it’s under duress, and often take for granted. Home is where we weave the threads we carry throughout the day into the textile of self. Home is filled with our music. Our toys. Our books. It’s where we eat. It’s where we have sex. It’s where we can execute our minute degree of control on the world.

Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t really given much attention to the comfort of home. My books were still packed away. The only music I had came from a iPod plugged into hand-me-down computer speakers acquired from a Haitian in a DC alley. My guitars moved from room to room.

What struck me most is the music. When I moved away from home, the first thing I did at any new abode was set up my stereo. I haven’t owned a stereo in years.

Until two weeks ago.

I bought an old Marantz tuner, a turntable, and a set of open-box Klipsch speakers. I bought a handful of LPs. This acquisition was seeded by a simple idea: have something to look forward to when you get home. Having everything at your fingertips all the time devalues the experience of home. Taking my entire identity with me in a bag seemed to eat at the routine of coming home. I often walked in the front door and thought, “now what?”

Why is my camera so bad?

Now, the to-do list has been replaced by ritual. I take my bag off and place it on the bottom shelf of my bookcase dragged out of storage. I hang my coat on the rack that spent the last two years in a box. I go back to the bookcase and select an album, pull it out and place it on the turntable. “Start /stop” is pressed and I’m home.

So what am I doing at home at the moment? Listening to “This is Hardcore” which just arrived from Japan this afternoon. Writing. Enjoying the work I’ve put into the house so far. And, yeah, thinking about the work that’s still to come. But the “to do” list has taken a back seat to what “is”.