I can't believe how hard a time we're having in finding a home for Spike, the white Angora cat we took in a little while ago. We keep getting weirdos who string us along for weeks and then disappear right at the moment they're supposed to come meet him in person. I keep thinking it's one person who keeps using different email addresses, but unless they're spoofing IP addresses all over the city, it's separate individuals. Super lame. I think people think they will respond to an adoption ad and then, minutes later, go to an undisclosed location to pick up their briefcase full of kitty. Come on, people, we've got to at least attempt to establish some background before handing out cats. Oh well, try, try again.

I wouldn't mind so much but you see, we're all full up with cats. I know I've said it before but summer hasn't even begun and we've got cats everywhere. Two of the back yard cats who were presumed to be feral have turned out to be more tame and friendly than the indoors cats! So we gotta find them homes as well.

And then there's Haley, a young cat we trapped a little while ago. We'd never seen her before the night she turned up in the trap. She also turned out to be very friendly, but was skin and bones and sporting a hugely infected abscess which manifested itself as a big hole on her shoulder. She recovered from her injuries at Empty Cages Collective, and once she was well enough, we brought her back home to finish her convalescence. She still needs to be vaccinated and spayed so she's kept separate from the other cats. It looks like we'll have to wait until the end of the month to get her spayed; we could get fixed sooner but it would require getting her ear tipped. And I don't wanna do that anymore if at all possible, not for tame, adoptable cats.

Meanwhile I have been having a helluva time getting this guy to come out and give me an estimate on replacing our back door, but he finally made it over yesterday (2 hours late). We're also probably putting a fence in, and THAT guy has been giving me the runaround for weeks. This is not even mentioning the first fence guy who came over, duly measured the yard and discussed options, only to never ever call me back with an estimate. What's up with that?

In an effort to bridge all my problems, I am in the process of teaching the cats to build a fence and replace a door. Results have been mixed so far, they have a lot of energy but I'm having trouble finding tools small enough for them to hold.

I'll be back when I have something interesting to report!

Labels: Adoption, Cat Fixin', Cats, Empty Cages Collective, House, The Yard

I think I need to hire somebody else to clean out my basement. Not because I mind the work, that's no big deal. But I get caught up in looking at all the junk and coming up with reasons NOT to throw it away. Piles of garbage, boxes full of bric-a-brac, I know we need the space and the stuff therein is worthless (as evidenced by the fact that it hasn't moved since we got here). What could I possibly have in all these boxes that I would want to keep? I should throw it all out!

But then, I start looking at the stuff ... and the brain starts coming up with reasons I need to keep it. A blister pack of small wheels, oh yeah, I need that. I'll put them on the coffee table to make it easier to sweep under it. A door chain lock, I better keep that in case those fake ConEd people start coming around. The 'smokeless' ashtray, it's such a good idea, even though you basically have to strap the thing to your chin for it to do any good. The toggle-nut bolts, the extra-small screws, the picture hanging kit ... I never use them but I have to have them at all times! The half-empty tubes of caulk or pails of grout, who knows when I may need them? Can you imagine how pissed I'll be next time I'm caulking and I run out and all I need is just a little bit more ...

I know the logic is flawed in there somewhere, but I can't find the fissure when I'm down in the cellar up to my knees in detritus. So I think I need to hire somebody who will just go down and be able to say, "Okay, this stuff is necessary, tools, sandpaper, tire pump. But this collection of broken picture frames you 'plan' to repair, toss it." It sounds so simple but I don't know if I can be trusted to sort it out on my own. Realistically, the Sorter would have to remove the offending items as well, I'm sure I would second guess when his back was turned and pocket some empty Lysol cans and pipe joint compound. I need I need!

Labels: House

The last two weeks were supposed to be a vacation but at some point we decided we would be doing some of our long-ignored home improvement projects. Originally we intended to replace the kitchen and hallway floors with new hardwood flooring. But in making the preparations for this, we realized that underneath the plywood floor (which we had painted 2 years before) there existed a totally viable hardwood floor! Once we determined this floor was in good enough shape to use, we abandoned the new-floor idea and set up to refinish.

To get there, however, we first had to knock a bunch of plaster off the fireplace and remove the brick hearth form the front. Once we did this, we realized he had to remove the walls on either side of the fireplace since it stopped a few inches before the brick started. Meanwhile, the hallway needed to have its ugly tile removed.

The hallway isn't much space but all of it was covered in linoleum tile. Jeannie took most of it off without much trouble before realizing there was ANOTHER layer of tile below it. This layer had been applied with so much adhesive it was literally pouring off the edges of the tile; the paste never really dried and was reminiscent of a quarter inch of the gunk they put on flypaper. Jeannie's sister came over to help and spent basically 24 hours chipping away at it. After much effort and injury on the part of the Purvis sisters, the tile was finally banished. The plywood lifted up relatively easily, leaving us with the pine subfloor (which was actually in pretty good condition). If that second layer of tile hadn't been there, we could have had the project wrapped up with a few days to relax afterwards. Instead we spent Friday to Sunday in refinishing hell. Friday we sanded, Saturday we stained, then Sunday we put 4 coats of polyurethane down. I guess it's good we did it so rapidly, if only because the cats were getting antsy being locked up in the bedroom for three days.

There's still a lot of work to do, but at least the floors are done. Of course, most people will tell you to do the floors last, since crap will invariably fall on it during other projects. But considering how much time the floor took, we didn't have much choice, we'll just have to be thorough with the dropcloths and whatever other prophylactic devices we must employ to protect our nice new floors!

Other upcoming projects include: painting the walls revealed around the fireplace, fixing the brickwork I broke on the fireplace, painting the kitchen walls because they're nasty, placing/replacing quarter-round molding and doorway thresholds to cover up shoddy edge work on the floor, and (finally!) painting the banister because there's too much damn paint on it and it's too banged-up to bother getting it professionally done so we're just painting it dark brown and hoping in dim light it might look like finished wood. Fun Times Accomplished!

Labels: House, Renovation, Vacation

So much stuff is going on, and all I want to do i lie around on the couch. No such luck, however, as the Holidays are upon us.

I gotta remember to take a picture of our Xmas lights, it's so lame. Rite Aid has a sale on lights so I bought a couple strings and put them around the perimeter of the windows on the ground floor. They're white lights too so they don't even look all that festive; it looks like a dressing room mirror. Oh well, I'm a Jew, your traditions are 'strange' and 'frightening' to me.

Great upheaval includes the departure of our tenants. Yep, they moved up to Greenpoint yesterday, piano and all! Incredibly, we were able to sleep through most of the actual move, except when one of the movers loudly bet another that he'd pay him a hundred bucks to ride Buzz's bike down the stairs. Without going into it too much, they decided to move due to some safety issues, for which I totally don't fault them. We knew going into it that Bushwick is not exactly the safest place on earth, and I always felt a little bad that we sort of dragged them here in the first place. Still, they got a darned cheap rent for a duplex apartment! But money isn't everything and now they're in a neighborhood that's not only one of the safest in town, but is full of those amenities that everybody normally aspires to: grocery stores, restaurants, book/record stores, and an Irish pub right across the street. Damn, I could use one of those!

That's what sucks about home ownership; we're stuck here. Eventually this might turn into an advantage, say, if the neighborhood gets all fancy around us and we make a killing in real estate. Of course, the way things are going, this doesn't look too likely in the foreseeable future (for instance, all eyes were on the local corner property that was about to open, as a litmus test of the area; it opened as a wig store.) But I still like the house and, barring any personal violence I might endure, I'm okay with the neighborhood. But what are we gonna do with this house?

For the time being we are going to see if we can afford the whole joint without rental income. This comes mostly because the house, as it is set up, is unworkable for a rental to any but those we can wholeheartedly trust (and of course, my motto is: Trust No One). It's a legal 2-family, but there's no actual division between the units. To divide the house properly would take quite an undertaking at this point, and honestly wasn't something I was planning to do for a while. But if push comes to shove we'll have to jumpstart the renovations. Assuming we win the lottery, no problem!

Having the house to ourselves at this point has another big advantage: we have people coming for Christmas. Jeannie's mom and nephew are coming up for the Holidays, so they will be camping out on separate floors, on their respective futons (futons currently make up 50% of our furniture now, classy!) We certainly won't feel crowded. Now the problem is, what do we do with a 13 year old kid?

The nephew looks like he's in his 20's, he's 6 feet tall and otherwise precocious, so he's pretty flexible. But the law is not. So we can't just blithely take him to shows and bars as we would do with, say, Jeannie's mom. We're trying to figure out what a kid from St. Thomas would want to do in the city, but we're coming up short. Worse still, Todd P, purveyor of all ages shows, just announced he's cutting back on his bookings, meaning shows we could get a kid into will be in short supply. Argh.

I dunno, if I was a kid raised in the Caribbean, NYC in the winter sounds like Siberia. Hell, now that I've visited the Caribbean, NYC feels like a gulag to me too. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but I just don't wanna have to leave the house. Aside from the requisite tours, museums, restaurants, what do kids do here? Should we give him some spray paint or what?

Labels: Holidays, House, Real Estate, Relatives, Renovation, Renting, The City, Vacation, Weather

Wow, one year ago today we loaded up the truck and moved to Bushwick. A whole friggin year. This is one of those moments that simultaneously feel like "Whoa, I can't believe a year slipped by!" and "Jesus Christ, it feels like a century has passed." But life rolls relatively on, and I guess we're generally doing all right, no major horror stories (yet), just a lot of cats. A whole lot of cats.

Labels: House

As promised, less kittens and more big fat white cats in the back yard! We hit up Home Depot yesterday for the first of what will probably be several trips there to populate the yard with plants. they had a surprisingly good selection, both for the garden and the window boxes I bought months ago but have yet to fill and mount. And yes, the window boxes are the lame plastic kind, but that's all they had at the XXtra discount store. In fact, HD was running low on decent planters too, I saw only one window box worth anything, and it was too small. To remedy this, we tried to get plants that would spill over the edge of the box to minimize our gauchity.

For the boxes we got annuals (including some 'double impatiens' which I just think are swell), but everything for the yard is perennial, so that we may enjoy the greenery for years to come. Or until we win the lottery. We're sort of reaching at straws, picking out stuff we like with little plan as to where stuff will get planted. But I guess it can go anywhere for now, it's not like we're gonna run out of room with the few plants we have so far.

At some point I'll have to remove most of the mint plants that sprouted up everywhere. I hate to tear up a perfectly serviceable plant that is doing a helluva job covering the side of the yard, but then, it's not like it won't just come right back.

I still want to get some big planters and plant some tall skinny trees so that I may move them around the patio at will, but HD had only superlame planters left. What's up with the state of outdoor furnishings? It's like people want their yards to look like the Enchanted Fairy Forest of Faux-Bronze Pots with Little Fleur-de-Lis all over the place. To the customers' credit, it seemed all the plainly designed planters and whatnot had all been sold, leaving the fugly stuff behind. But somebody must be buying this crap. I'll take my plastic boxes over the ostentatious stuff any day!

I've got the rest of the week off! If only I could enjoy it, but the specter of the workload when I return will ruin my ability to savor my freedom. Unless, perhaps, I get really drunk.

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Flowers, House, Plants, The Yard

Here's something to waste some time during your workday: Google Maps has added a 'Street View' feature that allows you to see a 360-degree panorama of your location. Granted, they haven't mapped out the most important areas of the city yet (namely, in front of my house), but I'm sure they're working on it. Oddly, they have actually mapped all of Bushwick Ave, which comes within a block of my house. This is odd because I would have thought they would have mapped out Broadway first, which runs parallel to Bushwick Ave. Then again, in my few driving experiences here, I noted with disdain how screwed up Broadway is. For such a seemingly vital thoroughfare, it's pothole-ridden and stoplight-laden. Anyhow, the photo above is a bodega I often frequent at the end of my block. My house is actually the other way down the street, but that view is particularly boring-looking under the eye of this map service. When they get down every street, though, you'll really have something. This should have some interesting ramifications. Now people can virtually walk down Atlantic Ave in Brownsville and East New York with impunity.

Meanwhile, it was a lovely weekend all around. One semi-disappointment was that the tree service guys never came back for all the remaining detritus. They had told me to keep a good portion of their fee as a deposit, which would be collected when they showed up to take all the vines and leafy parts. The logic involved was that this material needed to dry out to be easily handled (all the wood goes to a chipper and gets turned into mulch). Saturday came and went without a word, even after I tried to contact them. The forecast for Sunday was rain, so I got antsy, thinking if the whole reason they left this stuff was because it needed to dry out, getting rained on wasn't gonna help. So i got out the contractor bags and went to town on it. It wasn't actually that difficult, and soon I had almost all of it bagged. Now I just have to dole it out to the trash, and I've just saved a tidy sum on my tree/ladder issue. Still, it's not exactly good business practice to leave your customers hanging, especially since this guy was trying to sell me on many of his fence and deck-building expertise.

[via Curbed.com]

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, House, Maps, Renovation, The Yard, Weather

I was feeling gross yesterday but I was planning on going to work anyway until Jeannie talked me out of it. As lazy as I can be, I still have trouble making that decision to call in sick, mostly because I'm still not used to the notion of having sick days (of which I actually have a lot left to use).

Anyway, this worked out well since yesterday was The Day They Came to Remove the Tree. There was an old tree that had been devoured by termites and had fallen in the back yard, probably several years before we came to own the place. This would be a very easy thing for anybody with a chain saw to remove. However, there was a catch: a 40-foot clothesline tower.

For those of you who don't know, or who haven't been over to Abby's backyard, in the olden days, people dried their laundry on clotheslines. To facilitate this for upper-floor tenants, a ladder-like device was erected at the far end of the yard with pulleys attached for each floor. I'm not sure how people originally attached the lines (I guess some poor kid had to shimmy up the ladder with a rope in his teeth) and voila, you had a place to hang out your wet socks.

Since the advent of the commercial and/or residential laundry facilities, clothesline tower fell into disuse. Ours in particular suffered from obsolescence, the previous owners let it rust so bad its base supports rusted through. So at some point somebody moved it to the side, threading it through the phone lines and letting the top rest again the branches of the tree in the adjacent yard.

So not only was there a tree to remove, but it was partially leaning on this giant, rusty, steel tower thing which was precariously balanced between a couple of thin branches and the phone lines for half the neighborhood (all the more reason to go to cellular phones). I had no idea who to call to take care of this, but when the tree guy came over he said, "Eh, we do this all the time." It took them about 2 hours to do the bulk of the work.

The tree was gone before I even noticed. They also pruned back several other trees that were threatening other cables, as well as a bunch of vines. Work was momentarily stopped when they asked me to look up pictures of poison ivy and oak to make sure the vines weren't poisonous. I inwardly chuckled, I mean really, poison ivy here? Please. So I printed out some pictures of it to compare and they continued clearing it away.

The clothesline tower also came down without much trouble, they just slid it out from between the cables (I think they did break a couple of small branched in the tree). once they had it down they cut it into a couple of pieces and threw it on the truck, like it was nothing. It was especially helpful that our home abuts a church yard, so they were able to back their truck right up to the back fence of our yard.

They took most of the big stuff, leaving the green wood to dry out for a couple of days. They come back tomorrow to take the rest of it, plus all the leftover wood from my studio project. I'm trying to pick out some of the 2x4s or whatever I might want to keep. But it's a joy to ditch most of that stuff, as it has been taking up so much space in the cellar.

Before the tree guys showed up, I let the cats run around the yard. Despite the fact that there is no fence between our yard and the neighbors, there are tall fences around the perimeter of the two, so I haven't worried much about the cats escaping. Well, at some point I realized that Freddy was nowhere to be found. Indeed, long after the tree people had decamped, I peered over a fence and spied her sitting under an old Schwinn in the church's yard. I plied her with cat food to no avail. I feared she would return to her stray-cat, bird-killin' ways.

It was at this time I realized there in fact was a thatch of poison ivy growing out of the corner fence. Jesus Christ! I don't know how to get rid of it, should I just spray it with weed killer? I kind of want to get rid of it before the guys come back for the rest of the debris, cuz they said they don't wanna get near it, lest treeman Tony ruin his momentous birthday plans for the weekend.

At about 9:15, Freddy strolled back inside. She's still not any nicer to us, but she knows where she lives at least. Here's an album documenting some of the day's activities.

Addendum: Here's a pretty cool page about an archaeological dig in a Brooklyn back yard that has pretty much the only reference I could find about clothesline towers (their was half the size of ours and apparently not sitting between phone cables).

Labels: House, Neighbors, Pets, Renovation, The Yard

One of the more consistent requests I get through this site is information about the fence post spikes I used to erect a fence in my back yard. Well, it was the back yard at the last place I lived, in Clinton Hill. People write me every so often to ask where I procured the metal base posts to secure the wood posts that support the fence itself. Despite the momentousness of the project, I totally can't remember where I got them. I bought them online from a hardware store from the west coast, I think (I wanna say Washington). They were literally the only place I could find them online so I went ahead and got them. But that company seems to no longer have an online presence, if they have a presence at all anymore. So I always feel bad when I have to respond that I have no further info about it when people email.

But that has all changed, for the time being anyhow. A web researcher emailed me, not to ask where to get the spikes, but rather what my long-term opinion is of them. You see, this guy has located them, both online and at his local hardware store, and just wanted to know if they were worth it. He sent me the link, so I can now proudly post it here for anybody wanting to put up their own fence but not wanting to futz with pouring concrete. Near as I can figure these fence post spikes work pretty well. i don't know that I would trust them if you constantly have people scaling your walls, but to hold up your usual cedar plank fence it seems to work fine. Now all I have to do is put a link to this post on the original fence post post.

You may have noticed, since I moved to blogger for this blog, there is a serious disparity between old and new blog. The Archives page is hopelessly out of date (for recent archives, only the link on the right side of the home page will get you anywhere), and of course, the comments on the old posts still don't work. I just never have time to fix that stuff, and since it's been like this for many months now and the earth seems to continue to spin, I'm in no rush to fix it. I've got curtains to hang!

Labels: House, Renovation, The Yard

I'm tired of posting pictures of that damn band room. Anyway, it's nearly done. We still need rugs or something to dampen the sound in the room, but after that it's party time, more or less.

So here's a photo of the neighbors' houses. If you crop out the dirt-floor 'parking lot' on the right, and the enormous consturction site on the left, this little part of the block looks pretty nice. I mean, when people aren't shooting each other, kids aren't fighting, or the ice cream truck isn't parked right in front of the house playing "Turkey in the Straw" for a half hour at a time. What's the rate of psychosis in ice cream truck drivers?

Labels: Bushwick, House, Neighbors

We've feared gas bills more than any other utility when we moved into this place, nigh onto six months ago. Gas usage seems to vary wildly in this town, with some reporting bimonthly gas bills in the neighborhood of $5000 or more. Never having paid for our own gas before (aside from nominal cooking gas fees), it seemed like a real crap shoot.

We're all pretty frugal in our household, we kept the thermostat at reasonable levels, didn't linger in the shower, kept laundry to a minimum. This seemed to pay off, as our bills have been modest in comparison to the horror stories we had heard. Then last month our gas bill was $24.

The flat "gas delivery charge" fee is $23; we had used no 'therms' of gas between February and March. It wasn't an estimated reading or anything, our meter just recorded no usage for those two months. Now, those of you who were in the city during this time may recall that it was not exactly pleasant for much of this time, so obviously we were using a lot of gas during that time. We received a letter from Keyspan a few days later, voicing their doubts about the meter's efficacy. Somebody would have to inspect the meter.

So last night, some guys came over and replaced the meter outright. The odd thing was that the meter appeared to be working when they arrived. They swapped it anyway, just to be safe. The guys seemed incredulous, asking if we were out of town for those months, or renovating or something. One of the guys advised us to say "You know, we just moved in here, the place needed a lot of renovation, so that's what we were doing." When he said this, I realized finally that Keyspan might continue to ask probing questions about the meter and why they're not getting paid, even the problem is now 'fixed.'

I hope they don't press us on the issue; after all, we did schedule to have the guys come and fix the problem, really we could have had them over a barrel (think of the Seinfeld episode when Kramer keeps making the cable guy wait). And they had better not charge us to have that meter replaced! But that does sound like just the sort of thing they might pull. If so, I hope that meter has been bilking them from the get-go!

Labels: House

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

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

Check out that fire! If you look just to the right of the fire you will see my first Brooklyn apartment, the 3 windows on the 2nd floor. I don't think I ever ate at the Chinese restaurant, but there was a vent in the back that produced a greasy stench of old sesame noodles all the time, so I'm sure I absorbed some of that. Plus the Mr Softee truck would double park outside every day during the summer and play that damn song for 20 minutes while the driver waited for his order. I wonder what it looks like in that apartment now, it was pretty lousy when we lived there, and I wasn't proud of the state in which we left it. The mind reels at what kind of rent it commands now, it was $1300 in 2000. We shoved 3 people (and at times, 4) into this place; it is of note that none of these former roommates are in close contact anymore. But it helped me get my footing here (come to think of it, we rented it sight unseen, guess it coulda been worse).


I'm rather under the weather, but I still expect to finish much more of the basement this weekend. Aside from taping the seams in the ceiling, our biggest challenge will be moving the remaining 12 panels of sheetrock into the cellar. What fun that will be. Sheetrock has to be one of the most frustrating building materials ever devised by man. Most supplies are straightforward; plywood, 2x4's, nails. They are what they are. But drywall has some very odd properties.

It is de rigeur for the interiors of most houses, yet it's pretty delicate and can be damaged easily. It's heavy and unwieldy, but a screw can ravage it if it breaks through the outer paper layer. It's very dense but it can be cut and split using a boxcutter. I got some patching pieces to fit by literally filing down the sides, producing a horrendous amount of dust. When the drywall was delivered, many of the panels sustained damage (before Buzz and I even got our hands on it). There were strap indentations, some corners were crushed, some had paper torn off. Any little thing that happens to it can greatly reduce its structural integrity (Just try smashing a small part of a panel and see how easily the rest of it crumbles). But in theory it can all be made right again with a few dabs of joint compound, which, near as I can figure, is just a pail of liquefied drywall. What an amazing product.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

I hate to talk about the weather instead of something more substantial (like, um, how smart pigs are or fantasy holidays), but this weather sucks. It's like March got really nice for a couple of days only to make us feel the pain of this crap all the more. I was lamenting that South By Southwest is going on, as it drains the city of most of our bands, for better or worse. But I'm not going out in this muck tonight.

What's worse is that as a homeowner, I'm supposed to do something about it on my little plot of sidewalk. I guess I'll throw some salt out (thoughtfully left behind by previous owner), but you can't really shovel this sleety/icy/puddly stuff. You remember the scene in Fargo when the cop talks to the guy while he's sweeping his driveway ("And then he says, 'Geez, I'm goin' crazy out there at the lake'")? Imagine that falling from the sky, that's what it's doing on the streets of New York.

Times like these I wish my building had its own underground connection to the subway. I think all building within a block of a subway station should have tunnels built so we don't have to walk outside. Better yet, let me stay the hell at home and not bother with any of this crap.

Plans for this weekend include hanging drywall on the ceiling in the basement. This will either go smoothly or the ceiling will collapse upon us and kill us. So if I don't update this blog for, like, a couple of weeks, you'll know I didn't make it.

Labels: House, Job, Mass Transit, The City, Weather

Finally, some progress! We finished ripping down the paneling and have installed the insulation in the walls and ceilings. This was complicated by the fact that the joists and studs have no particular rhyme or reason, so the fiberglass didn't really stay in place. I whipped out my trusty staple gun, only to find the huge box of staples I bought were the wrong kind. I went to the nearby hardware store but they didn't have the right kind, either. So what did I do? I plunked down $50 for a new staple gun. I felt wasteful and kinda stupid, but it is very nice, as staple guns go.

We tacked up all the fiberglass and started on placement of the metal furring hat channel. This is the narrow u-shaped track (whose profile resembles a hat sort of) that we attach to the joists (via Super Soundproofing Clips), from which drywall will hang. The trick was that we only had 30 sound clips for 5 rows of hat channel, which has to support two layers of 5/8" drywall. Oh, and there are 10 joists that span the room, which is 17' long. You do the math.

I ended using like quantum physics trying to figure out the best placement for each clip. This took hours. Then Buzz suggested that perhaps I was overthinking it a bit, so we took another look and started drilling in the clips. This took like a half hour. Now all that's left is the sheetrock. The 823 pounds of sheetrock ...

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

The contractor supply company delivered all the insulation and drywall needed for the soundproofing project on Saturday. They ran late, I'm lucky they got there before Buzz had to leave, as he was going out of town for the weekend. For some reason I thought I would be able to carry the drywall myself. But even if I could lift the panel, I'd never be able to maneuver it into the house, those things are unwieldy!

We moved 22 panels of 5/8" 4'X8' Sheetrock, at around 90 pounds apiece. This means we moved nearly 2,000 pounds of gypsum. No wonder I was exhausted afterwards (not to mention I was hungover and on less than4 hours of sleep). Why are these projects always so much harder (and expensive) than you initially think? Even when you try to compensate in your mind, the reality is always much worse.

I have no idea how we're gonna get the drywall into the basement, I'll probably have to cut it first (oh boy, more dust!). Actually I should cut an 8-foot long slot in the floor and just slide the panels through to the cellar. Hey, it's my house dammit.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

It's all coming together. Tomorrow morning we'll receive the bulk of the supplies, but the smaller stuff I'm having shipped to my office. I just received my order from soundproofing.org, which is probably one of the worst-designed websites still in existence. It has no set template from one page to the next, has no understanding of image sizing, relies on Java-based menu elements that only serve to confuse users, and I think they're still using the BLINK tag! I think that's actually punishable by chemical castration now. But at least I have my soundclips!

These metal/rubber things will hold the furring channels away from the ceiling joists so the new ceiling won't physically touch the frame of the house. This should keep things nicely separated, assuming I don't screw something up. The green stuff is padding tape, which I'm gonna put on everything I can until it runs out. This will further separate the new wall/ceiling layers from the existing framing. The stuff in the big tube is acoustical caulk sound sealant (made in my hometown of Mentor, Ohio!), which is just caulk that always stays flexible to absorb vibration. A few more pictures on Flickr. Maybe this will be of some use to somebody else out there, it seems hard to find actual photos of a lot of this stuff (as I said, the soundproof site is incredibly bad, much of the time if they have a picture at all, it's just an artist's rendition of what they think an item looks like).

I'm kind of worried about how we're going to get all the drywall sheets into the basement, some may need to be cut first. But that's pretty easy to do. I just hope the forecast is right (for once) as I don't' relish having to lug 22 4x8' 90-pound sheetrock panels through the rain. I feel very motivated to complete this project, not only so I can start playing the guitar again, but also so I can get back to dealing with the remaining orange parts of the house.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

For a brief time I wrote band previews for the NY Press. Some of the articles appeared largely unretouched, but as time went on, I noticed they were really going through the wringer. Somebody was hacking my tiny blurbs, not to shorten so much as add nonsensical stuff to somehow jazz up my writing. I talked to the shmoe who was doing this and he blamed me for not writing "tight enough." Somehow, adding "Spraying the audience with vomit and cheese" to my write-up of the Ex-Models didn't seem to be tightening anything up, yet he had the final cut. Anyway we were both unceremoniously let go a couple months later.

I was reminded of this heady time in my life today as I read JoshB's latest article in the Press, concerning the reticence of his livery cab driver to take him to my adopted neighborhood of Bushwick Brooklyn. It's a pretty funny read, which I read previously on his own blog. Now, I don't know if his writing is subject to the same dubious knife of editorial re-education, but there are some amusing discrepancies. In describing our house and its occupants' desires, the Press article states

My friends wanted to buy an apartment in Park Slope, sure. Who wouldn’t? Historic brownstones, lush trees, schools without metal detectors. Yet their bank accounts would only let them buy in Bushwick, two minutes from the jackhammer-loud overhead train.

Oh, the indignity of it all! Like I would ever want, of all things, an apartment in Park Slope. I know, none of it matters, it's just filler for the real meat of the story. I just hope it was the work of some anonymous editor and not Mr B Himself. He knows better anyway; we lived for years on the same longitudinal path in Clinton Hill and Crown Heights, respectively (he's still there). Truth be known, I had wanted to buy in Clinton Hill, but even that neighborhood had priced us out long ago, not to mention it is getting progressively full of the kind of reprehensible people I used to think would never cross Flatbush Ave (let alone come into Brooklyn).

But I suppose in terms of dramatic illustration, establishing the dichotomy of The Slope and The 'Shwick makes for a palpably wide spectrum of experience. Still, none of you Slopers better come out here or, you know, we'll beat you with a bat. For an hour!

Labels: Bushwick, Funny to Me, House, Music

Since I'm no good for regular blogging anymore, let's get back to house renovations. Actually, 'renovation' may be too strong a word for what we've been doing to this house. I always think of renovations in terms of totally ripping stuff out and putting in something totally new, like a bathroom or kitchen. In this case, I'm trying to soundproof a room in the cellar so the band can practice without making the neighbors throw bottles at our house (well, they already do that, so let's just say we'd like to limit the number of things flung houseward).

At some point in the past the basement was paneled and subdivided into a few small rooms. I took the two in the middle of the floor and removed the dividing wall (which, like all the paneled walls here were single-stud frames with paneling nailed to it). These walls will provide a base for the soundproofing to come, but it's the ceiling that has been taking up all my time lately.

Once upon a time, this ceiling was completely finished in acoustical tile. By the time we moved in, though, many of the tiles had fallen out, and those that had stayed put were water stained and hanging by a thread. There had been framing around the pipes running through the room, not to mention occasional framings that didn't seem to be concealing anything at all. This led to my theory that the whole cellar had been designed to thwart anybody over 5' 7", since as soon as you think you can stand up straight you inevitably smash your head on some box or something sticking meaninglessly out of the ceiling. In retrospect, the Fuck Tall People Party was kind to the long n' lanky set.

So I had to rip all this stuff out so I can put in a partially decoupled ceiling composed of a dual drywall layer separated by a visoelastic adhesive and sealed with acoustical caulk.* The walls will be simpler, just a dual layer comprised of plywood and drywall (plywood leftover from the floor refinishing). I had planned to rip the ceiling down to the joists to fill with insulation, but I just realized that above the tile level the topmost layer is already two layers of drywall nailed into the ceiling joists. In theory, this is a great start for sound isolation, but there's one big problem. Or, several big problems, it's full of holes.

Sound isolation (the more correct term for what I'm after) is all about sealing things off. No matter what materials are used, if things aren't securely separated, the soundproofing won't work. Two layers of drywall is great, but the gaping holes (from old light fixtures and BX cable) negate any good the drywall could do. At first I thought I'd just tear this stuff down, but upon reflection (too lazy) I've decided just to patch these holes really well and build onto them.

I patched all the small holes last night, and a few of the larger ones. Tonight I tackle the really big ones, for which I have to construct plugs to mount into the boards. The good thing about this work is that I don't have to be neat at all. As long as the seal is solid, it doesn't matter what it looks like since it'll be obscured by the next ceiling layers. When it's all done then, we'll have two discrete segments of doubled-up drywall and two distinct levels of trapped air as well (as long as it's contained, that air will actually help stop heavy bass tones from ruining someone else's enjoyment of Deal or No Deal upstairs).

*I'll explain this when I get the supplies in.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing