The walls are skim coated, and although they may not be perfect, I am getting sick of this stuff, so I'm throwing in the towel on trying to make the walls smooth and even. Screw it! I'm getting back to what I know best: covering up my mistakes in layers and layers of primer and paint.

But should I just paint this room white, as I am wont to do? Jeannie says I'm gonna scuff up the walls with the instruments, since space will be so tight. But I can't decide if it's even worth the thought involved to choose a non-white color. We do have some brown paint leftover from the 3rd floor project, but somehow a dark brown room in a cellar just sounds creepy.

Part of me doesn't even wanna bother painting, since by all accounts I will need to cover the walls with sound-absorbing materials. This is no longer about soundproofing, but sound "treatment," trying to sweeten up the sound inside the room so we don't blow our ears out when we practice. So I gotta get some rugs. You got any rugs?

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

It's looking a little less like a disaster and more and more like a sheetrocked box of doom! I'm starting to worry that there won't be enough air when the door is closed. Ugh, I guess we'll have to paint as well.

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

Oh no! Okay, I haven't been to the Brooklyn Inn in a long time, so maybe I'm somehow to blame for this, but I always liked that bar. Now comes word that the bar is to be repurposed into a bistro. What the fuck is a bistro, anyway? This sounds suspiciously like what happened to the Sweetwater Tavern in Williamsburg. It used to be a foul-smelling, graffitied-up liquor barn with a surly clientele, and then one day I walked by and it was a 'cute' little restaurant, with curtains and quaint lettering on the window. Eww.

The Brooklyn Inn wasn't all that special, but it had the sense to it that it had been exactly the same for decades. I don't even think it was all that cheap. But I used ot meet a friend of mine there after work, as it was equidistant from our respective homes. So now it's gonna be a frickin' bistro, I've moved to the other end of the boro, and my friend moved back to Cleveland. Is nothing sacred?

UPDATE: The bistro may not be true after all! What? Something on the Internet turns out to be false? What a world. Here's an Eater Update, sounds like it will remain a bar, albeit a lame one like Magician and Tile Bar. Whooppee.

Labels: Brooklyn, Friends, Gentrification

It's already too hard. Nevertheless, here are some good things that came to pass over the weekend:

• Finished putting the drywall up in the basement, reinforced and rehung door, sealed joints
  
• Fixed faulty light switch in basement (no more unscrewing the bulbs to turn them off)
• Took a nap (a feat in of itself) and Freddie the Stray Cat stayed on the bed with me the whole time (normally she heads for zee hills when i get within eyesight)
• Key Food Onion Rings: 2 for $4
• Kick-ass show (Behold ... the Arctopus, Dysrhythmia, Ancient Wound) at new venue (Don Pedro) which is right off the J train
• Partially watched bizarre documentary at the bar about Afrobeat innovator Fela Kuti; sadly, Netflix does not yet have it.
• And this morning I put on some 'summer weight' pants and found $43 in the pocket!

Labels: Bands, Bars, Bushwick, Food, Good Stuff, Soundproofing

Getting sick of photos of plywood (with or without caulk and expanding foam)? This is the last time you'll see it here! Exciting pictures of drywall next!

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

The last wall has been (more or less) erected. Tonight I will break out the expanding foam, and tomorrow ... drywall.

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

You know how sometimes when you drink you end up doing things you later regret? Well, this happened to me the other night. I awoke on Sunday with a pounding head and the sobering realization that at 3:30 the night before I was singing "Captain Jack" because Alex knew how to play it on the piano. Sure it could be construed as an amusing party-type moment, but the more I thought about it, the worse it seemed. Now I keep thinking, "What if the neighbors were trying to sleep? What if their bed is right on the other side of the piano-room wall? Oh god I was singing Billy Joel. I mean, please. Billy Joel."

Luckily, my body shut itself down soon after. My only solace is that I think the neighbors know I live in the lower part of the house, and will blame it on Buzz. They think he's trouble anyway.

Labels: Bushwick, Friends, Funny to Me, House, Neighbors

More boring plywood news: 3 of the walls have been covered in plywood, looks like we'll have just enough to finish the last wall. I would have done this last night but I ran out of screws. Actually, I have tons of screws left but they're all 'fine thread' screws. Somehow I never knew this before beginning this process, you got your fine thread screws to attach things to metal, and coarse thread when drilling into wood. I'm not really sure how much of a difference this makes, but fine thread screws are just plan harder to screw down than coarse threads. So it's off to Home Depot for me in a bit. I'll also get more expanding foam!

The last can of foam I bought turned out to be something of a dud. It didn't expand to the impressive degree of the previous can, so I'm a little bitter about the whole foam issue for now. I guess I still love it, but I'm feeling a little cynical about my future with expanding foam, even though it constantly assures me it is GREAT STUFF.

Buzz and I moved all the drywall to the cellar last night, what a relief it's finally down there! It wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be, but moving drywall down a narrow flight of stairs is not something anybody looks forward to. at least it stopped raining. I'd had this sheetrock in my hallway since the end of February. I wish I could say the hallway looks better without it, but actually it's pretty dingy. Well, when I get done with this project, I suppose I should my attention back to the above-ground portions of this house. This will be a difficult transition, since the work I've been doing for the past couple of months needs only to be aesthetically pleasing to me and Buzz. All the other work the house needs has to look good to Real People, and all I've learned so far is that Sherbet-Orange is not a good paint choice.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing, Weather

At long last, we have begun the walling-in of our band room. We started with the most complex part: the wall with the door in it. Not only did we have to figure out how to put the wall up around the door, but the wall featured several annoyingly-placed columns that are braced under the main support beam of the house. We ended up just paneling over the columns, effectively losing some 40 cubic feet of space between the columns. It sucks to lose the space, but I take some comfort in thinking that the extra air space inside will aid the soundproofing.

Part of this process involves sealing up any gaps, no matter how small, in the room. For the smaller gaps I'm using acoustic caulk, and for the larger gaps ... expanding foam! This stuff is so cool! I'm still getting the hang of spraying it, but when you do it right, this foam could basically filly up the grand canyon. Once it dries it turns into super-resilient styrofoam kind of substance. If I had it to do all over again, I'd just build the whole room out of expanding foam.

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

Look what you missed out on. Actually, I'm not sure who made more a spectacle of themselves: Johnny, whose job it is to be drunk and obnoxious onstage, or Mark (L), who managed a rare feat, getting cut off at an illegal bar in a semi-legal performance room. He was better-behaved the second night, though there was some hollering observed.

Labels: Bands, Friends, Funny to Me

This was quite a weekend, but before I get to any of that, I must mention the most bizarre moment of the past 48 hours. Saturday morning (er, afternoon), I was hanging out with the guys from the Makebelieves (they stayed at our house after their Glasslands show), and Al mentioned "What's with your neighbors and their big bird?" He directed me out to the back yard where, 2 yards over, there sat one ring-necked pheasant. Yeah, that's right. A pheasant. Whaa?

Sadly, my stupid camera's batteries were dead and we had no spares around the house (Incidentally, this makes me want to go on a long rant about how it's pissing me off that bodegas constantly sell mostly-dead batteries to me), but you must believe me that inside the chain-link fenced yard, strewn with garbage and renovation debris, a lovely example of this game bird strode about like he owned the joint. A stray cat was in the next yard, eying said bird with great attention. Reportedly, the cat had been in the yard but was actually chased away by the pheasant, which was somewhat larger than the cat.

According to my research though, this is not all that strange. Pheasants are all over the boro, and because nobody is really hunting them, they get along just fine. Still, there's something just plain odd about seeing such an animal in this environment.

Labels: Animals, Brooklyn, Bushwick, Neighbors

I'm finally healthy like a spring harbor seal and ready to rock out with my ladybits out. If you haven't been out to the Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg, you should check out the show tonight. This is the continuation of the old Glasshouse Gallery. It's a different building ('round the corner) and does NOT have a big fake tree in the middle of the room blocking yoru view of the band. My friend and former bandmate Al is tooling up here as we speak to perform there with his current band, The Makebelieves. Remind me, I gotta tell Al about the dream I had the other night we were hanging out and I mentioned his band, and he said, "I'm not in that band anymore. My new band is called STIR CRAZY." Was there ever a band with that name? Well, there should be.

UPDATE: Oh well, there's already a band with this name, but they seem to be only on the west coast. Yikes!

Labels: Bands

Somehow, despite my healthy lifestyle choices and PMA, my cold continues unabated. I thought recovery was imminent when my voice gave out on Sunday, but I'm still decidedly unwell two days later, albeit in new and disgusting ways. My only solace is that by not using my federally-mandated sick days, I may very well infect my entire office. Then I'll have some peace and quiet around this place!

Work on the basement has slowed due to my ineffectual white blood cells, but we are definitely primed for completion. We brought the plywood downstairs yesterday. You may remember this plywood as the old subfloor Buzz painfully removed from the 4th floor during that project. How's that for recycling? Or, more correctly, how's that for being a skinflint? I'm also using as much of the old paneling and furring strips I ripped out of the basement, both to cut down on costs and so I don't have as much crap to throw out later.

Speaking of which, as a new homeowner I am now acquainted with the joys of being fully responsible not only for my trash, but for any little piece of garbage that happens to drop on my property (or the sidewalk in front). I've already been fined for improperly secured refuse (apparently the Dept of Sanitation prefers their garbage gift-wrapped), so when it comes to the big stuff like scrap wood and metal, I get spooked. I don't even want to risk a fine for some law I didn't even know about. For instance, do you know when your 'bulk' trash day is?

Trick question! Officially, there is no single bulk trash day, every regular trash day allows for the inclusion of large items. That's the theory, but of course a lotta people think Friday is always bulk day. Still, I have seen little consistency not just in bulk pick-up, but even the regular trash. I think they only pick up trash when they 'feel' like it. When I put out nonstandard items in the trash, I cross my fingers in the hopes it will be picked up. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. I never know if it's because there secretly is a bulk day they're not telling people about, or if the DOS guys are just jerking me around.

Labels: Health, House, Renovation, Soundproofing, The City