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.

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.

For years I carried around a quote by Franz Kafka in my wallet. “In the struggle between you and the world, back the world”. It was given to me by my best professor in undergrad, Dr. Herbert Stern. Over the years it became to tattered and worn to carry. Apparently I’ve become optimistic in my thirties – or just a bit forgetful. Somehow, I forgot to transpose Kafka’s warning into a DIY context – into “In the struggle between Wyatt and the house, side with the house”. If I managed that transposition, I wouldn’t have been surprised when my new Rigid planer sniped the ends of the cherry wood destined to become my kitchen shelves.

Now, you might ask, “Why the hell didn’t you test it first?”

Well, I did. I cleaned up the test piece that Kelly and I used when trying to adjust my old planer. I cleaned up perfectly. What was once a ratty piece of 2×4 is now a perfectly square 1×4. No snipe.

The longer, wider cherry pieces were not so lucky. In fact, I would say that in one case, it was more of a gouge that snipe. And there ridges showing length wise when I put the wood in at a certain position. Pretty lame.

So I made some adjustments, and I retested. A bit better – but what I really found was that the Rigid planer worked pretty well when taking off close to it’s maximum depth, but was an absolute menace a shallower settings. I’m pretty much over having my fridge in the living room, so I kept at it. The result? I managed to get all of my wood planed and jointed, essentially ready for assembly. I’m so psyched.

It’s not perfect, but the under-shelf support beams boards should cover most of the problems. I’m just happy to have made some headway, and to have adapted to the problems at hand. So this week, I’m going to:

• Putty and stain the boards already on the wall.
• Cut the support beams to fit the finished planks
• Add two pieces of trim to the walls
• Assemble the shelves

Hopefully, this will allow me to hang the shelves next weekend. By then, I’ll have some pics of the progress, and maybe a short vid.

One final thought – my Grizzly planer may be ugly, but it worked really well. A very solid little box. There customer service is really fantastic, and I’ll be ordering a replacement pad this week. One of the two planers will end up as a gift for my kid sis.

I learned the word “damn” and it’s variants as a young boy working with my dad as he framed walls in our basement. “Another One Bites the Dust” was getting constant airplay – it was one of my favorites. I remember that song and “dammit!” being uttered by Dad as he hammered his thumb instead of the framing nails.

I have a whole new appreciation for “dammit” now. My planer – the cornerstone of my shelving project in my kitchen – has two deep ruts on the pad. The result: streaks on the underside of wood that is put through. Now, this doesn’t require the extra special upgrade “GOD dammit!’ because I caught it before I put through any of my nice cherry wood. But it’s quite a bummer. I’m on hold until I can find a local service shop – Grizzly doesn’t sell replacement pads to the average consumer.

My sister and I reset the blades and adjusted the wings to eliminate the end snipe that had plagued the planer since I replaced the blades a few weeks ago. On the plus side, the planer is no longer a “magic box” that spits out perfectly level wood. Both Kelly and I have a pretty clear idea of how the beast works. Unfortunately,with that understanding, we figured out that the ruts in the pad are clearly a show stopper.

Boo.

I’m fighting the urge to hit Home Depot for a new planer. Dammit