Got the Jimmy Legs

March 5, 2007 – 12:46 pm

Baby needs a new pair of boots

Sean appears to be more interested in the present than Max

It was Max's first birthday party this weekend at Two Boots in the Slope. I was super late because the J train conspired with the F train to screw me over and make a 30-minute commute take over an hour and a half. I would love to know what they're actually doing in the tunnel that requires the F trian to run on the A line. Anyway, I got there in time for the highlights: Max getting his presents and Max 'eating' birthday cake.

When presented with the fabulous homemade monkey cake, Max started playing it like it was a conga drum. Soon, the monkey was no more. Apparently this cake was the young man's first taste of refined sugar! Soon, he will be a peanut-butter M&M addict like I am.

Here, Sean appears to be more interested in the present than Max. A couple more photos on the Flickr site. Happy birthday, Max!

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Babies, Birthday, Friends, Park Slope | Comments Off

March 5, 2007 – 11:35 am

Heavy equipment

Sheetrock, originally uploaded by Jimmy Legs.

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.

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in House, Renovation, Soundproofing | Comments Off

March 2, 2007 – 1:03 pm

Wee Ones Parade

Soundproofing Supplies, originally uploaded by Jimmy Legs.
(Whoa, I just realized the tape is same color as the blog. Freaky.)

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 4×8' 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.

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in House, Renovation, Soundproofing | Comments Off

February 27, 2007 – 11:15 am

Give me convenience or give me death

Here's a breakdown of car ownership (or actually non-car ownership) in the 4 boros:

Most NYC residents don't own cars. New York City total: 54% (vs. 57% in 1990), The Bronx: 60%, Brooklyn: 54%, Manhattan: 78% (vs. 77% in 1990. Unclear if this is actual decline in car ownership or from rounding the numbers.), Queens: 34%, Staten Island: 20%. [bicycle universe]

I should be heartened by these figures, but I wonder how accurate they are. On the one hand the stats are from 2000, so things are probably different now. Also, lots of people who live here keep their cars registered in other states to save on insurance costs. Then there's this article in the Times that notes how New York is falling behind other more enlightened cities who are shutting parts of town down to car traffic. Not surprisingly, Mayor Bloomberg hasn't been very inspirational for bicyclists. Commenting on one of the many bike/car fatalities of the past year, he advised cyclists to "pay attention."

The article suggests the reason for the increase in problems over the past few years has something to do with the city attracting an increasing number of people who, for the past 50 or so years, normally would opt for the suburbs to roost. As usual, these folks know the melody of the song but get the words wrong. They flock to the Big City, but want to take their suburban accoutrements of convenience with them.

If something is convenient, it seems to nullify all debate. Case in point is the ongoing moral struggle seen in patrons of Fresh Direct. They love getting fancy food and fresh produce delivered to their door, but have serious misgivings about the pollution, congestion and waste produced by the company's trucks and packaging. While I do think FD could probably find better packaging methods, I'm not sure I see a way the company could feasibly maintain their delivery schedules without using those big trucks. It kind of seems like the people who are complaining about them are trying to assuage their own guilt over using the service in the first place.

The Brooklyn Record had a recent post which led to a lot of discussion about ways in which food delivery companies could reduce pollution. I commented that it was important to remember what a luxury it is to have such a service, and how it comes with a price. At that point I was told that FD is a 'necessity' for certain people, mainly because there is no decent grocery store in their neighborhood. This got me to thinking, we live in a city with one of the most extensive mass transportation systems in the world which, despite its problems, provides its citizens with flat-fare access to most of the city. Yet despite this we have a whole bunch of people who apparently live so far off the grid that they must compromise their ecological morals and, regretfully, have to have their avocados brought to their door. Yes, they have to do this because there is no other option; it's not like they could hop on the bus and get the stuff they want.

The unspoken, irreducible element here is convenience. Nobody wants to really use that as a defense but that's what's going on here. It's not like I'm above this, I'm a slob for convenience as much as anyone. I'd probably use Fresh Direct sometimes, if only it came to my neighborhood (it's amazing I haven't starved to death yet). But I wouldn't kid myself as to what I was doing, I'd at least be honest enough with myself to admit I could get pretty much anything I wanted if I just hoofed around the city more.

People will claim they don't have enough time and so simply must use services like FD just to keep it together. I sure hope these aren't the same people who whine about emissions from the trucks. Maybe you need to reorder your priorities more than you need to worry about some fumes and some cardboard boxes.

But like I said, I'm not immune. Lately I would kill for the convenience of a car or big pick-up truck. I have all this stuff I need to get into my house, but have to jump through all these hoops to get it there because I have no vehicle. For the basement soundproofing project, I'm having a bunch of drywall delivered from a local contractor's supply house. The delivery charge alone was $75. Now, I could have rented a $20 a day van from U-Haul for less, (usually it's more like $50 a day when all is said and done). But getting the van is a pain, and driving it is particularly stressful for me. So not only am I paying for not owning a vehicle, I'm paying for the convenience of having it delivered to my door. I admit it.

But if I want some exotic vegetable, I also know I'm gonna walk over to 49th street and go to the fancy grocery store before I go home tonight. It sure is nice we have all these subways to get around.

By Jimmy Legs | Posted in Cars, Mass Transit, Renovation, The City | Comments Off

February 26, 2007 – 10:37 am

She'll ruin you like she ruined me

Saturday was a busy day in SoBu (South Bushwick, think this name will catch on?). We hit a snag with the plans for soundproofing in that my research I discovered that the air cavity we'd end up with would be maybe too little. Essentially, more air space means more sound isolation. It appears to go again logic, but we need fewer layers of drywall up there to get the best results. Please consult this handy diagram for relative STC (Sound Transmission Class) ratings (higher is better):
By keeping the original ceiling intact, we'd have a "triple leaf" which is less effective than a correctly-built double leaf. Of course, we're not really building a full double leaf (which would involve two sets of separate joists and is something that doesn't really fly for a ceiling that's only 6.5').

Ripping a ceiling down is fun. It took like a half hour to rip out some 150 square feet of double-layer drywall. It was a little tricky getting it out from around the pipes and conduit, but everything came out fine. Before we knew it, we had exposed all the joists (that probably hadn't seen light in 30-some years), happy to find nothing rotten or any human skulls or anything. The downside of course was the clean-up.

I had like 5 contractor trash bags left and those filled up within minutes with at least half the floor covered with rubble. Lucky for me, there's a contractor supply place two blocks away (Henry Distributors, 1674 Broadway) that sold me a box of 100 for $30. We bagged up the rest of the debris and Buzz started hauling the bags outside. Our cellar has those horizontal metal cellar doors with cement stairs leading down. While this is way better than the hole-and-ladder configuration most houses have, the stairs are really steep and the clearance of the doorway is minimal. And these bags were really really heavy. I don't know how we got all 10 (!) out onto the areaway so quickly. We basically were done in two hours (though it would take four hours to begin to recuperate for me).

As of Friday all the supplies have been ordered, most of which will be delivered Saturday morning. I'm annoyed with the new snowfall, as it almost definitely means nobody will be showing up today to pick up the trash, and it means it the plywood I've been storing out back will be all snow-covered, and I need that stuff indoors so it can dry out. There are still a few things I'm not sure how we'll handle but at least we're getting there.

The rest of the evening was spent going to the early show at the Knitting Factory to see Trans Am, Oneida and Big Bear. I wanted to go to this show because I really like Big Bear. But I was disappointed by the set; one of their guitarists left the group and appears to have been replaced by some keyboardist (red flag!), and worse, the lead singer is no longer barking in that shredding 'hardcore' screamo voice and sounds now like a little girl shrieking into the mic. She mentioned something about being sick, but it occurs to me that she says this at nearly every show. And wouldn't a cold actually make a voice more guttural and scratchy? I guess singing that way has finally taken its toll.

Oneida was good, as usual, but I don't think I like seeing them at clubs like this. They played some old stuff like "All Arounder," which was always one of my favorites. They didn't play "Up with People," which was fine with me, I'm getting a little tired of that one. We went to Nancy Whiskey Pub at the early hour of 10:30 and somehow stayed until the bar closed. There was a bacherlorette party going on there with a lot of sorority-types present. At first irritated by their presence, we concluded that it was admirable for people like that to have a bacherlorette party at a bar known mostly for its grizzly old men who hang out there.