Powering Through

Jon has set up base camp in the Coat Shop. He is operating his business, North Coast Adventure Centers, from his laptop and cell phone in the storefront while building a roof top garden, replacing the water heater, and re-finishing the floors. He is a powerhouse, as evidenced by the fact that the pace of work has increased three-fold in the last two weeks.

Here are some things we've accomplished:
The illuminated signs for the building are up AND working!

We replaced the broken glass in the storefront with a wood panel, complete with address numbers and a mail slot.



We started re-finishing the wood floors and walls, using my all time favorite tools - a sander AND a crowbar.

Good times...


We spent the weekend trolling hardware stores for tools for these projects, and on our way back to the Coat Shop we passed an Open House sign in front of a beautiful Victorian house. We walked in and cased the joint. It had high ceilings, original built-ins, leaded windows - all spectacular. There were 4 bathrooms and the house seemed to go on and on, a labyrinth of lace curtains, ancient wallpaper, and more than a few "trouble spots."

The real estate agent chirped that there were hardwood floors under the carpet, but she didn't know the condition of the roof or the plumbing. Two years ago, I would have walked out of that house full of fairy tale visions of clawfoot tubs and mahogony floors. Now, I calculated engineering fees and feet of insulation,

As we walked out, I said to Jon, "Wow, that's a lot of house." Jon replied, "That's, like, $750 in dump fees." Word.

2 roofs, a back upgrade, and beam hanging

OK, despite the month lapse in postings, we've been hard at work. We've hired and fired contractors, redistributed job responsibilities, done more demo, met and came under budgets, had contractors mess up (a lot), recruited friends to come help us out, and have started to get into a house-building rhythm.

Our major accomplishment of the month was repairing the roof. We added 6 skylights and a roof hatch and replaced the asphalt roof. All for $11,000, so I think we did OK.

What we've learned:

Amy is great at sourcing materials

I am good at making decisions and implementing plans

Amy has great taste

I can implement her choices and styles to look good

Amy is wonderful at researching options and presenting choices

I can negotiate to meet our budget and then push to stay on it

We are really good for each other

Below is a porch roof that we installed in the back of the building. Also, Amy installing wood beams on the front of the building. Note the High Life and stylish graffiti. We do have some nice trees on 5th street!

The back porch- our future entrance- is a work in progress. Note 1 of 2 installed steel gates (from the salvage yard. See previous post and video), redwood fencing, aluminum roof, redwood trim, flowers. I wrapped aluminum around the door hinge attachment points, trying to create a theme. But please don't look at the white window trim. It's coming off next week to be replaced by redwood like the fence. You can also kind of see the grey paint job as well. Amy's color choice coordinates well. I bought Amy the flowers.

Thanks for reading,

Jon

Paint it Black

Sorry folks! Jon is out of the country, so there will be no glamourous and exciting projects posted for the next few weeks. You're all stuck with me, Queen of Drudgery and Introspection. Apologies in advance...

I spent the morning clearing ivy out of the alley between the Coat Shop and the Chinese food restaurant next door. What made this especially exciting was the fact that our neighbors, the Lost Coast Survivors, were having a meeting in our shared backyard while I was yanking and bagging. The Lost Coast Survivors, if you didn't already know, are a sober biker gang/club. Yup, that's what I said. I am in awe of them and they in turn seem mildly amused by me. I'll take what I can get. So while I was pulling ivy, they were planning logistics for a Gaberville rally and saying the Serenity Prayer. BAD....ASS.

I applied a coat of polyurethane to our back door, which is ancient. We would like preserve it exactly as is, peeling paint and all. So I'm sealing it with a few coats of thick, clear plastic. Each coat needs to dry overnight, so this is a week-long project.

Then I decided to stain the risers in the storefront. Jon has moved into the front of the storefront, turning the tiny space by the windows into his makeshift office. My fantasy was to stain the blond wood a dark teak, but alas, first I had to sand a thin layer of whitewash off of them, which proved to be futile. For those of you who are fans of sanding (And who isnt?), sanding off multiple layers of latex or oil paint is incredibly satisfying. But a thin coat of primer is dang near impossible to get off without chemicals and hours of labor. And if there's one thing I've learned about myself through this project, it's that I'm hella lazy. So I went with the next best thing: a quart of black latex semi-gloss I found in the basement.

Awesome, right? WRONG. The thing I did not realize about this project is that painting something black takes a million years. Your first coat is really more of a symbolic gesture. Yes, I plan to paint this object. The wood grain shone through like a rescue flare. The second coat gets you in the general vicinity of a paint job. The third coat makes you cry with futility and conclude: I am a terrible painter. My brushstroke technique is obviously flawed. I am not meant to paint. Why did I think I could do this!

At this point, you must assess the terrible situation . Also, you run out of paint. So I went to the hardware store (did I mention that my car is filled with 4 contractor bags of ivy I need to take to the dump but can't because the dump closed while I was PAINTING? So I'm driving a crazy person's car, with vines and leaves trailing out the windows.) and got more paint. They guy at the paint counter assured me that his black paint would match MY black paint. He said this with that tone of supreme confidence that pretty much guarantees he has no idea what he's talking about. But I was a black paint junkie at that point, sure that this next coat would really do the trick and stave off the shakes of a task failed. So he gave me my paint and some new paintbrushes and I climbed back in my Secret Garden of a car and returned to the Coat Shop.

On the fourth coat I experienced a revelation. Actually, two. One: Definitely not the same shade of black. GOD DAMN IT.
Two: The new paintbrush I bought was amazing. So even though the paint was a bit more blue than I was expecting, it was going on like butter. Thick butter coverage. In that moment, I realized that from now on, instead of deciding in the middle of a troublesome Coat Shop task that I suck at said task, I will curse my tools and upgrade.

Stay tuned for Before and After photos!

Old Town Walkabout

Summer is slowly creeping into Eureka. Tonight after doing some chores at the Coat Shop, I decided to savor the evening light.

Lo, the photo tour of the Coat Shops environs.



The Lotus Lady recently appeared on the brick wall behind the Coat Shop. It's not graffiti, exactly. It's a huge pen on paper drawing that someone carefully affixed to the wall. I'm intrigued by our neighborhood guerilla artist and fantasize about leaving out plates of cookies and pastels for him (her?).

Our corner of Old Town is filled with Art Deco remnants of the neighborhoods 1940s heydey, Before The Mall. Patrick's still makes candy by hand. The Eureka Theater hosts bands and film festivals. Swanlunds is still developing photos the old fashioned way (they also appear to be holding on to the Glamour Shot school of portraiture).



My favorite mural in Eureka. Jon dreams of rappelling down it, wearing hospital booties to protect the art. Such a Renaissance man.

I followed the sun towards the water, into Victorian Old Town.

So nice to spend time tonight remembering why we choose to live here. Old Town is beautiful and haunting, not just because it sits on the mouth of the bay, but because so many of its historic buildings are still standing, held together by redwood and memories.

Good night...

A Visit to the Scrap Yard

I would like to state for the record that I looked cute yesterday. Navy slacks, navy blouse, black high-heeled boots. I looked professional and mature and real cute. Then I decided to visit the scrap yard with Jon at lunchtime.

I can not say my outfit served me well.

Jon and I were hunting for something to make gates for our back fence project. We need two pieces, both 6 feet tall, but one 5 feet wide and the other only 4 feet wide.

So on a rainy afternoon, we climbed through piles of steel and aluminum. We looked at old McDonald's doors, satellite dishes, a phone booth, highway signs and mailboxes, before we found a stack of steel punch-out sheets- industrial scrap. They were gloriously heavy and rusted. They were also the coolest.

The guys at the scrap yard graciously carved a path through the metal to get to the exact two pieces we had picked out. They even let us attach the chains to the metal sheets ourselves. Then we got to watch as the huge dinosaur-like machine moved our gates into the back of Jon's truck.

We hauled them back to the property and now they await our welder buddy, who will help us attach them to the fence to complete our project.

For those of you who have never visited Arcata Scrap and Salvage, might I suggest a visit? It is the best place of post-apocalyptic scavenger hunting in town. Even in heels.

Demo, Reinforcement, and Redwood Style

After the success of the interior barn doors and our fence contractor friend's schedule filling up - Amy and I decided to tackle the back fence on our own.

We agreed on Redwood and scheduled our contractor (Jason from Configurations) to come out and reinforce the awning.  He replacing the rotted wood with new plywood and pressure-treated 4x4's.  

Step 1: Measure the fence and go to the resale lumber yard to buy the wood and have them cut it.  Amy is supervising the cutting in the picture to the right.

Step 2:   Load the wood, how pretty!

Step 3:  Bring Amy to the airport for her wedding shower and second bachelorette party.  Yes, second one.

Step 4: Go to Redwoods and Rivers and lead a adventure park and zip line training.  The picture to the right is a zip line conscious rescue drill.  For more info look at North Coast Adventure Centers.

Step 5: Build the fence on Monday morning and night before and after work.

Step 6: Pick up Amy from the airport, schedule a dump run, then design and build gates!

Thanks for reading,

Jon

Labor of Love

I woke up on Saturday morning eager to demolish some bathrooms. I donned my (now) usual gear of respirator and safety goggles and set to work pulling up broken tile and filling bags with debris and garbage. Demolition is a blunt instrument. You don't have to be smart or careful. You just have to be a workhorse.

The mindless, repetitive movements of scraping, pulling, and bagging lulled me into a meditative state. I meant to spend an hour or so doing this, but the sun moved steadily across the sky as I lost track of time.

At 3 PM, Jon called me downstairs to help him with some carpentry. This annoyed me.

I don't like leaving a job unfinished and I don't like carpentry. I don't like the precision and focus it requires. I don't like the tools involved. I don't like that it's complicated and hard and usually ends with me feeling frustrated and disappointed.

But I love Jon and I like to think I'm a good sport so I headed down to the front of the building, where Jon was building a barn door. For real. Actually, he was building three barn doors. Enormous doors to be built from cedar planks and hung from steel runners on the ceiling.

Some people build raised beds as a weekend carpentry projects. Jon decides to build some barn doors.

For the rest of the night and into the next day, Jon and I measured, sawed, drilled, re-measured, re-drilled, and hung three beautiful, heavy cedar doors in the our storefront. During that time, I felt frustrated more than a few times. Carpentry is NOT meditative.

Fortunately, I was working with Jon. While I was cursing myself for sawing crooked and cursing Jon for making me do this stupid project that I wasn't any good at and keeping me from my bathroom demo, Jon was a sight to behold.
He was patient and focused. He moved quickly, even gracefully. When the barn door hardware didn't roll smoothly through heavy steel rails (that he had hauled up a ladder and painstakingly drilled into the ceiling), he didn't panic. He didn't curse himself or get disappointed and decide he hated carpentry because it never worked out the way you wanted it to.

He fixed it. He found a shim in the basement and he wedged it between into the rails until they were flush and held the roller hardware perfectly. He solved dozens of problems last night and woke up at dawn this morning to solve some more.

At 3 PM today, our barn doors were in place. They glide across the width of the storefront. They hide our tenant's furniture storage from the street and create a small, day-lit workspace for Jon.

We didn't get to gut a bathroom this weekend. Instead, we made something beautiful.