before

My sanding arm is all wore out. We were trying to figure out why we thought painting was 'fun' and realized it was mostly due to the contrast of the horrors of the sanding and surface preparation that comes before the painting. Still, painting is somewhat satisfying as it continues to cover up the annoying orange paint that covers ever foot of molding in the house. We had thought we'd strip the paint down to the actual wood, but in most cases the layers of paint so plentiful, the time involved so enormous, we decided to do what countless previous generations in this house chose to do: paint over it. I figure, once we win the lottery we'll have enough dough to really fix things up, but for the time being we're just gonna paint everything white until we can think of something better to do.

Here's a fun thing to do on a Saturday night: try to reassemble an old doorknob set on your back door in partial darkness while a gang war goes onone street over. Oaky, not a gang war, but there was a "disagreement." For reasons still unknown to me, I could not get the damn latch to separate from the exterior doorknob. Across the back yards, a bunch of guys were having some stupid argument that went on for a loooong time. Eventually it died down, and the crowd seemed to disappear. A few minutes later, somebody fired a gun six times. All the while of course, I'm still out back, trying to get the friggin doorknob to work. My theory is that the most aggrieved party in the argument went home for his gat, and when he came back to an empty street he wanted the neighbors to have the necessary closure, thus the dramatic gunshots that ended the evening. The epilogue: I finally pried the latch out, completely destroying it in the process. But we didn't get shot, which kind of puts home improvements into perspective.

after

The asbestos is gone and now it's primer time. We've got to prepare all the ugly orange moldings throughout the house and obscure them with heavy white paint. I really wanted to strip the paint and stain the moldings but preliminary stripping revealed at least 4 previous layers of paint; this is pretty much on every inch of molding on every door jamb, on every window, in every room of the house. I have neither the time, nor the inclination (ever notice how people who don't have the time rarely have the inclination, too?) to put that much work into restoring these moldings. Some appear to be fairly ornate, original pieces, but it's still not worth it to me now. After I win the lottery I'll be able to afford to have all these things ripped out of the house and sent off to a stripping facility somewhere. In the meantime, what's another couple of coats of paint?

So last night while Jeannie was inspecting the asbestos-free basement, she found something odd: a cat. This shouldn't be odd, since we have more cats than people in this house, but this cat wasn't ours. A stray cat somehow got inside and was apparently hoping no one would notice the addition. All I can think of is that during the asbestos removal, the cat ran in through the open cellar doors and hid behind some boxes until the guys left. We returned the cat to the wild, but not before she gobbled most of the cat food. I fear this means the cat will never stop hanging around, but so far it hasn't returned. I always suspect these cats have a round of places they hit up for chow. Like that old cartoon with the bulldog who pimps out that cat ("This time, I didn't forget the gravy …") Meanwhile, Freddie the Formerly Stray Cat is adjusting nicely to indoor life, but she still slinks around like a thief in the night. It's impossible to make a cat appreciate something like never having to worry about food or a roof over your head again. I guess children are similarly ungrateful.

Here's something weird too: I don't have a photo of the stowaway cat, but I searched the web for a picture of a cat in a basement and found a cat that looks very similar, also a stray cat in a basement somewhere. It's happening all over the country!

I'm falling behind in the Broken Angel issue, but caught this from the Clinton Hill Blog:

On 10/10/06 Broken Angel suffered minimal damage from a fire at the top of the structure. The cause of the fire is unknown and still under investigation. Broken Angel has been an active project of construction by my family beginning in 1979. Major construction was finished in 2002, and all work done thereafter has been for the purpose of maintaining the building. The fire brought the attention of the Department of Buildings (DOB), previous interactions had occurred in 1986, and 2002 with no action taken against the building. During the course of building and maintaining the structure there have been no accidents or complaints. Compared with most modern construction projects, such as the Time Warner building in NYC, this is an excellent record. It raises questions as to why large developers are allowed to continue construction when they pose a risk to the community, whereas Broken Angel, which has no history of construction problems, has been singled out as a danger. My mother and father, the legal guardians and owners of Broken Angel were threatened with eviction for 6 days. On the 7th day they were vacated by the police without a court order or engineer's report. We question the necessity and the humanity of this action. They were told that this was done for their safety; however action was taken prior to any inspection of the interior of the building by an engineer. Furthermore, we were told that the building would be demolished in 3 weeks if an architect did not submit plans to bring it to code. We have been compliant with this request. We are thankful to the firm of Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture http://www.jpda.net/news.html for all of their help and support. On Thursday (10/26/06) an engineer from the DOB toured the structure, and the next day the DOB released a different story. A DOB spokesperson recently commented to the Daily News (10/27/06) that any demolition orders, if warranted will take approximately 3 months to begin.

[emphasis mine]

Dig it, folks. As usual the DOB is full of shit. I love how everybody is so ready to buy their line and run around fretfully murmuring, "Oh Broken Angel is soooo dangerous! Why didn't the Woods bring it up to code in 1979?? Why can't there be a coffee house with a kids room on that spot?" The Woods stick to their guns, and the DOB starts slowly backing down. By the time it's all sorted out I bet the DOB will have forgotten all about this. I know, they're not exactly free 'n clear yet, but they've got backup, they've got a history of successfully fighting these allegations before. And the DOB is a pretty lame bureaucracy that seems to give passes to the truly serious violators while hassling small fry and people who follow the rules.

In other semi-good news: regarding the Clinton Hill woman who was attacked on her own stoop, her attacker is now on Riker's Island awaiting trial. Turns out he committed his crime on his way home from meeting with his parole officer (!) He had a couple hours before he had to be in for curfew (!) and apparently decided he had enough freedom for a while. His dropped cellphone led to his capture. I'm glad he's caught, but really, what an idiotic way to get busted. A real waste of protoplasm, this guy.