Holy Cow...

the kitchen

Somehow we went from a nice space to an actual kitchen today. I finished painting the wall behind where the stove will go, and with K's help installed the range hood. Hooking up the electrical for it was a snap.

Then I cleared a path from the refrigerator in the living room into the kitchen, and again with K's help moved the refrigerator into its slot. A bit of cleaning of the stove and lifting it onto some sliders, and K helped me slide that into place. I hooked up the gas, checked for leaks, et voilà!

Of course there's plenty left to do, like trim and flooring, not to mention the dining room, but today was a good day, ending with a fully functional kitchen.

crushed by the stove?

The Eyes Have It

my other eye

Well, one eye has it. Iritis, that is. Saturday I had a bit of a headache. Sunday it was worse, and it was odd because it felt like it was behind my eye. K noticed my eye was bloodshot, and when we went out, I discovered it was very sensitive to light. I called the advice nurse at Kaiser, and they wanted me to come in to check it out.

So today I trundled over to Kaiser for an appointment with my doctor. After checking in and a short wait, I was ushered in for a mini-physical (weight, temperature, blood pressure), then in to an exam room. My doctor is great. He came in and quickly asked some questions and examined my eye, then very quickly said, "It could be glaucoma. I'll make an appointment for you at the eye clinic right away." Eek!

Right away was the next available appointment, which was two hours away. Sigh. So I ran some errands and came back. Another pre-exam including a quick vision test, then the ophthalmologist came in. He asked some questions, then examined my eyes. Then some eye drops, and a glaucoma test. No glaucoma, but I do have iritis -- inflammation of the iris.

After a visit to the pharmacy and some more waiting, I have some eye drops to treat it, and a follow-up visit scheduled for next week. None of these things took that long (except, oddly, the check-in at the eye clinic), but it all added up to pretty much the whole day shot.

I also got a heads up that my other eye (shown pictured above) was showing signs of pigment dispersion syndrome. That's where the pigment of the iris flakes off (I guess they didn't prime it before applying the paint?), and can clog the drainage of the eye, leading to glaucoma. So when in the next couple of years when I have to get reading glasses (what?!), he suggested I get a glaucoma test, too, and every couple years going forward. Hmmph.

Two conditions I'd never heard of before, and I've got 'em. It could have been worse, so no complaints here. But the upshot is that instead of finishing the touch-up painting in the kitchen today, all I got done was moving stuff back in and putting the outlet and switch covers back on for the part that is done.

Fiat Lux

On Wednesday afternoon my neighbor helped me paint the kitchen, and I put a second coat on Wednesday evening. Since then I've been finishing up the electrical, putting down the plywood for the underlayment or flooring if we go that route, and getting ready to hang cabinets. Adding the main fluorescent light fixture made a huge difference. Now it feels like a real room. A room with a heck of a lot of outlets, to be sure, but a real room.

Top 10

The top 10 rejected titles for this post:
10. White Room (Cream)
9. Lay Down Primer (Eric Clapton)
8. You Make Painting Fun (Fleetwood Mac)
7. Any Colour You Like (As Long as it's White) (Pink Floyd)
6. Fixing a Hole (in the Drywall) (Beatles)
5. Paintin' on a Sunny Day (Bruce Springsteen)
4. Haven't Got Time for the Paint (Carly Simon)
3. When Paint Dries (by the painter formerly known as Prince)
2. Blinded by the White (Manfred Mann's Earth Band)
and the #1 rejected title for this post:
1. Primed, Sealed and Covered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)

In other words, the kitchen is primed and ready for painting.

Before and After

before

after

After doing some major spackling on the recovered 12" siding, sanding, putting up trim, and caulking, today the new wall was ready to paint.

Katarina came home early (she's been busy working on some of the docs for Android) and said it looked great, but in reality it's more like Fox News coverage. At first glance it looks pretty good, but when you look closer you see it has some dirt and has some holes, and when you see it in the full light of day you realize it just plain stinks. But at some point we need to repaint the whole house, so this will do for now.

Knock, knock

Knock, knock.
What's not there?
Isn't that supposed to be "who's there?"
So? What was the last thing about this house that was exactly the way it's supposed to be?
Good point. OK...what's not there?
The old front porch!
Hmm...interesting, but not very funny. Don't quit your day job.

Yesterday I touched up the paint around the tile in the bathroom, then I went into demolition mode. I hauled the last bits of debris from the front porch 'round to the back yard, chopped up some bits of rim joist that had been rotting away in the back yard, and then went to work on the front porch with my sawzall. After working on the media for church, I went back at it today.

The good news is that I got a lot of stuff removed. The bad news is that I need to take out even more, because the termite damage goes beyond the porch itself. The mudsill, the rim joist, parts of the floor joists...I hope it ends soon. I still haven't seen any live termites, but the damage is pretty extensive. And the construction was pretty sketchy in any event. The ledger board that the joists under the porch were resting on wasn't attached to the foundation, just to the joists themselves. So instead of it holding them up, they were holding it up. And not very well, give how rotted stuff was.

Sigh.

Old Things Made New

We have a L-shaped sofa bed that I probably bought 20 years (it still has one of the more comfortable beds in a sofa bed that I've slept on). For some time now, the built-in recliner has had a mind of its own. You can be sitting there comfortably, and then *bang!* the footrest flies up. We'd (sort of) gotten used to it, but last week we had some of Katarina's visiting Swedish cousins over for dinner, and one of them got the randomly-firing-ejector-seat treatment. So yesterday I decided to see if there was anything I could do to fix it. After carefully pulling back the cloth (and layers of dust bunnies) from the bottom, I quickly determined that there was a broken spring. (I cleverly deduced this by having it fall out when I pulled back the cloth.) Fortunately the spring was broken near the end, so by bending it a little I was able to reattach it, et voilà! We can now safely sit in the recliner without fear of ejection. As an added bonus, the footrest now comes up at a more sane speed than it has for a while. Of course, the upholstery still needs cleaning again, but it's nice to be able to sit in peace.

On house-related matters, Katarina and I painted most of the exterior a while back. But there's been a section under the eaves on the back of the house, above the bedroom windows that is a pain in the patooky to reach because the base of the ladder has to sit on the side of the hill, and with the windows, there's not much room for the top of the ladder to scootch around as things shift. I considered getting a Little Giant or the like, but some of the positions on the other side of the house would challenge even that. And then there's the fact I've already got 3 ladders (an extension ladder, a longer and heavier extension ladder, and a medium step ladder) and didn't really want to get another one. So I looked around and ended up getting some ladder levelers, and in the way that well done online shopping sites can incite one to do, I got a stabilizer, too. Today I installed the levelers (it requires removing the existing feet and drilling some holes in the legs of the ladder) and tried it out, and between the two, it's like having a new ladder. It's never been this stable before except in those few places where the ground is perfectly level. Good stuff!

Painting!

As previously reported, Katarina was growing tired of the unpainted addition. To be honest, I was getting a little tired of it, too, despite the, um, loveliness of primer gray and white. So after finishing off some bits and pieces of trim, we painted. And painted. And painted. Between the rustic-V siding, the ins and outs around the windows and doors, and under the eaves, the painting goes slowly. The fact the ground around the house isn't level doesn't help much, either -- setting up a ladder takes some doing. But despite the recent heat (it sure doesn't feel like June), we've managed to get 3 sides as well as the rebuilt wall where the doors onto the deck used to be painted.

I did a little demo work around the old front door, too. I recovered as much of the 1x12 siding as I could for reuse later. And I bashed at the stone step for a while with a sledge and chisel, but I'm going to have to rent the jackhammer again to take it out.

And here's your gratuitous kitty shot, with the Rosie and Star admiring the weed-whacked and raked yard. Yes, it's fire season again, only earlier this year because we had a dry spring. I had the yard in compliance ahead of schedule because of it, but I think a lot of people have gotten more urgent reminders from all the fires we've been having in California lately. A recent one here in the Oakland hills started very near the origin of the massive Oakland Firestorm of 1991. If that wasn't enough to motivate people to clean up their property, I don't know what is. The firefighter who came around to inspect said it gets a little easier with inspections every year, but that doesn't change the fact that state-wide more and more people are living in a wildland interface, in areas prone to fire.

Zappity-do-don't

I put a second coat of paint on the bathroom ceiling and walls this morning, and figured out the layout for the tile floor. While the paint was drying, I rolled out the grid for the radiant heat, and started hooking it up. I was listening to music ("Master of the House" from Les Misérables) and happily working away. (*cue the suspenseful music as the protagonist realizes something may be amiss*). When I went to strip the end of a wire, I got that little tingle that reminded me that this junction box is not switched, just the ones for the lights and fan are. But the it's now safely installed, and I'm ready to start tiling the bathroom floor. And yes, I'm generally more careful with electrical stuff, and doubly so with 240V circuits.