Windemere

        For a rare change instead of getting home from work and plunking down in front of the TV and loosing myself for hours to the addictivness that is the boob tube I actually forced myself to do something slightly more productive.

        It all started this past weekend. With a solid day of rain on Saturday and scattered showers on Sunday I was actually fairly motivated to do some work around the house. Normally a weekend of beautiful weather is just too tempting for me to stick around the house and do projects. I'd much rather be out doing something. Even if that something invloves staying inside and not enjoying the beauty of the day. But this weekend was cloudy, stormy, and rainy. The perfect kind of weather to stay in the house and not feel like I was missing out on something more fun.

        This weekend's project was to scrape more paint and wallpaper off of the walls in the living room. I made a pretty substantial dent and pretty much finished up scraping two of the living room walls. Once the scraping is complete though there is still a long way to go before the wall is ready for paint. The scraping has been doing a great job of removing the paint and most of the backing of the multiple layers of wallpaper. But there is a bit of the wallpaper adhesive and stubborn pieces of wallpaper backing left behind. To remove this we move onto phase three of the removal process. Scrubbing with hot water.

        There doesn't seem any really good way to shortcut this whole process. I've tried it several different ways with varying degrees of success. The best thing I've come up with so far is to start with a paint scraper / putty knife and get the many many layers of paint off of the wallpaper. Then follow behind with a serious tungsten bladed paint scraper to remove the multiple layers of wallpaper and backing from the walls. The final step is to use hot water and a scotch scrubber sponge to soften and remove the remaining stubborn pieces of paper and the wallpaper glue.

        Tonight's project was to complete Step 3 of the process above for the walls that I had stripped clean this weekend. I didn't feel like words alone could convey the mind numbing tedium and work involved in the process so I put together a short video. Enjoy!

        Despite the tone of several recent posts I really don't have any problem with nature, plants, etc. I really do enjoy nature , I just dislike when nature doesn't like me back so much. Having gotten two horrible doses of poison ivy in the past couple of months with just the barest interface with the nature in my back yard I think I'm pretty justified.

        In an effort to help maintain the karmic balance of life I undertook two projects last week. The first of which was a concentrated kill every god-damned thing that even looked like it might be a vine or had anything even close to three leaves. Trusty sprayer in hand I unleashed gallons of chemical death upon the green things in my yard that may or may not have contributed to my weeks of tortured itchy/scratchiness. In doing so I discovered a truly amazing number and variety of invasive weed-like plants, trees,etc throughout the grounds of stately Windemere manor. I discovered, and promptly sprayed, american pokeweed, thistle, crabgrass, nutsedge, poison ivy, poison oak, english ivy, porcelainberry vine, and a very elm-like tree that will not die.

        The most ironic thing for me is that I have all of these various things in my yard that will not die or go away no matter what torture I impose upon them. I have a holly bush/tree and a crepe myrtle that I have cut back to just a stump only to have them rebound with a vengance. I am hardly a green thumb gardener by any stretch of the imagination but these things seem to be masochists and the more I work to eradicate them the stronger they become in their resitance and fortitude in coming back with renewed vigor.

        After all this death and suffering I felt it only fair to work on restoring some nature to the back yard. So the second project, aimed at restoring the karmic balance, was to re-do one of the backyard flower beds with some new plantings that are less invasive, nicer to look at, and appropriate for being planted within 2 feet of the house. One of the things that frustrates me so much about the existing plantings at my house is how inappropriately scaled everything is. Holly will grow into a 20 ft tree and crepe myrtles easily get to be 9ft tall with a 9ft canopy. These two things were planted 4ft apart and 3ft away from the house. I'm sure that when the were bought from a nursery and planted they looked great cause they were the plant equivalent of a labrador puppy. But just like the small cute puppy these things grow into great big giant beasts. (to be fair there is far less drool associated with the crepe myrtle)

        I have been meaning to work up a comprehensive landscaping plan for the whole property so that as time and resources are available I can tear things out and start over with new plantings that are appropriate for the climate, reasonably low maintenance, and are scaled to fit the spaces they are planted in when they are full grown. Although I haven't even begun to work on the big plan I needed to at least do something with this flower bed to help keep all these invasive weeds at bay.

        Without a whole lot of forethought and planning I ran to Home Depot and browsed through their perennials and carefully read all the tags on sunlight, water requirements, plant spacings, and dimensions on full grown sizes. It is baffling to me that people screw up plantings so badly when the nursery and growers provide so much great info right on the tags on the plants. This really isn't all that difficult. Within a few minutes I had picked out some nice grasses and a few colorful perennials.

        With plants, mulch, potting soil, and a keen desire to clean things up I headed home to get things under way. The first step was to dig up about 4-6" of the existing bed to remove the top layer that was just over run with all of the invasive things I've already mentioned above. Despite having treated things several times it seemed like nothing would keep the Ivy and weeds at bay. After whole-sale removal of the plants and the bulk of the root system I'm hoping to have an even chance of keeping things weed free for a while.

        Although weeds seem to grow with great abandon here I'm not sure how they do it. The soil here, and in most of baltimore, seems to be almost entirely clay. I'm pretty sure that with a good soaking and a really hot summer day I could pretty much turn my back yard into pottery. Which, in hindsight, might have been far easier than all this planting work. Just bake the backyard until it is pottery and then plant alfalfa and treat it like a chia pet. But I digress... With the ground having the consistency of earthenware I had grabbed a couple of bags of potting soil to give the new plants at least a gilmmer of hope of having some nutrients to get started and something other than concrete to push their roots into. Then came plants, then mulch, and then watering.

        Voila a new flower bed. Below are photos showing things as they were before I moved in and then the fabulous results. Click through either image to see a gallery of the work in progress.

Before:

After:

        Things may look a little sparse but that's the whole idea. I think that people read all the instructions on plant spacings etc but then see these tiny little plants spaced 2 ft apart and loose patience and just fill everything in so that it looks "full" on day 1. Planting doesn't usually work that way unless your prepared to spend outrageous amounts of money on mature plants. While things may look a little thin for now, after a few seasons everything will fill in nicely and I won't be continually fighting the creature that ate Cincinatti.

        With a little help from mother nature in the form of one of the cooler and wetter summer's in recent memory the new grass has taken quite a strong hold in the front yard.

        This weekend it looked like the new grass had finally reached the point where it was ready for a little trimming. It is so nice to look out the door and see a field of mostly green rather than just a big pile of dirt. A little overseeding and some more watering this weekend. Along with the help of another series of summer storms this weekend, should get everything to fill in nicely over the next few weeks.

        Since this is the first weekend in a long time that I actually haven't had some sort of work or plans or other other jam packed social activities I actually took some time and did some other yard work in the back. Trimmed up some bushes and overseeded and fertilized the back yard a bit to fill in some of the bare spots in the grass back there.

        A couple of bags of mulch and a few minutes of weeding and some other little outdoor maintenance items made for a very fulfilling afternoon of putting in a little bit of effort and finally feeling like there was a little bit of a payback. Things are moving towards looking less like and abandoned sand lot and more like a yard.

        While most people who get time off for national holidays take some time off and rest and relax or go to the beach or visit friends etc I stay home and work on my house.

        After months and months of settling and compacting, the trench that is my front yard had finally gotten to the point that there was at least some chance of turning the great big pile of dirt back into a lawn.

        Naturally I waited until the hottest part of the afternoon to go outside and do physically demanding labor in the hot sun to finish leveling out the front yard and raking it smooth.

        Pictures of the progress so far are here. More to come as we check on the progress of the grass growing.

        I did also get a some time to do somehting other than working on the house and headed down to DC for fireworks on the mall.

       That's right folks the next few posts are likely to be as exciting as watching grass grow. Stay Tuned!

Update 7/9: Grass is growing!

       Since I have been a bit stalled in making home improvements because of a fairly hectic work schedule I thought I'd at least take a few minutes to freshen up the blog a bit. My goal in starting the blog was to come up with the most simple and low maintenance way possible for me to share all the stories of my home experience. To that end I have done pretty much nothing to customize the blog in any way. What you saw was what came out of the box from wordpress. So let me know if you like the new look or not and if the spirit motivates me (and I finally stop working long enough to have the time) there may be some more changes to come.

        A typical summer thunderstorm blew through this evening as the sun was setting. The cool breeze and lightning show were a welcome change to the still muggy heat of the day.

        Not only did I get a great shot of the lightning, but the best part is that nothing blew down on the house and the basement is still dry.

        This weekend I have discovered that I have not only english ivy but several other varieties of ivy around the house. I wish that I could tell you that I found out about the various varieties of ivy through photos and research and things like that but my research and discovery was of a much more 'hands-on" variety.

        On Friday I did a bunch of pruning of the bushes and shrubs along one side of the property. Unbeknownst to me I apparently have both English ivy, pyracantha bushes, privet hedge, and poison ivy all mixed together along the fence where I was working. You know how I know there was poison ivy there. No it wasn't because i recognized the three shiny leaves. It wasn't that I noticed the hairy tendrils on the vine. Nope it was when I woke up this morning with my right eye severely itchy and swollen.

        Poison ivy has never been my friend. Getting it pretty much anywhere on your body sucks. But getting it in your eye is terrible. Of course it isn't limited to just my eye. It is all over my left arm, in-between my fingers on both hands, along the side of my jaw and neck, and of course on my legs. But I think the eye is probably the worst. There aren't a whole lot of topical itch creams that work so well around the eye. And you just can't scratch to relieve anything. And the stupid blinking means it is constantly stretching and moving around. Plus the fact that my eyelid is all swelled up makes life grand.

        Now that the house has resorted to chemical warfare I feel that it is only fair for me to escalate things from my side to assure a balance of power. Two can play this game. Rotterdam convention or not, I'm sure that a little 2,4-D and maybe a splash of 2,4,5-T will have ivy of all varieties singing a different tune around here.

        Last Tuesday I actually got home from work at a reasonable hour and still had the energy to do something other than flop down on the couch and become a zombie. I spent a productive couple of hours outside mowing the lawn, pruning some bushes, removing more of the ever invasive Ivy from the garage. Generally enjoying the fact that the weather was completely beautiful and that I was actually outside enjoying it. The sense of accomplishment of also having gotten some things cleaned up so that my back yard actually looks less like the wild kingdom and more like a city/suburban yard was nice too.

        On this rare and miraculous occasion the sun set before I had run out of energy for projects. I must have had an extra cup or three of coffee that day or something. I cleaned up and went inside to start on one of the many many many inside projects I still have on my list. I decided to finally put up a light fixture on the upper landing of the basement stairs. I've had the fixture for quite some time but just hadn't gotten around to getting things wired up etc. I did a quick inventory of what I had lying around and decided I needed a quick trip to my buddy Homer's for some supplies.

        No trip to home depot is ever quick and short. There are always exciting new things to see and often I'm standing in an aisle puzzling out how to solve some home improvement woe so these trips often take 45 mins to an hour. This particular trip was pretty quick. About 45 minutes later I pulled into the alley behind the house. As the headlights washed across the garage I noticed something odd. There was something in the garage that hadn't been there previously. After pulling into the driveway I got out and checked the garage and there was a huge pile of branches in my garage.

        There are few things as despicable as dumping your trash in someone elses house/garage/yard. The worst thing is how powerless you are once this crap has been dumped in your house/garage/yard. Whether it is branches, or tires, or toxic waste, or a dead hooker. It really doesn't matter. It is now your problem to deal with, clean up, dispose of, and or explain to the cops. I guess I could have picked up the branches and "paid it forward" and dumped them in one of my neighbors' back yards or something but that's even shittier than having stuff dumped in your yard.

        I have countless projects on my to do list at the house. Painting, cleaning, flooring, walls, counters, cabinets, the list goes on pretty much forever. One of the minor items on the list that has stayed pretty near the bottom of the list was to install some doors on my garage so that I can lock up some of the outdoor tools and things outside and I can stop dragging my lawnmower up and down the basement stairs every week to mow the grass. This project has been low on the list because it hasn't been that big a deal. Now that I have once again had to deal with a whole load of crap appearing in my garage thought this project became a top priority and I vowed to spend my memorial day weekend putting in some doors.

        Of course with my tendancies towards being a big dork I planned the whole thing out and drafted out every detail of the doors, took detailed measurements and did everything just shy of creating a 3-d rendered model of the whole thing in software before beginning my door project. Of course even with this anal retentive level of planning, all projects of this nature require at least 3 trips to the hardware store before they can be done.

        After coming up with the plans I knew I'd need some help to get this done so I prevailed upon poor old dad to come slave away in the hot hot sun for a day to help me haul away the trash and then fabricate my grand vision for new doors.

        Things went pretty smoothly with the whole construction process. Only one unplanned trip for some more 2x4s for framing out the doors and after many hours and only a few Advil later.

This is the part where the chorus of trumpets plays the regal fanfare. Ta Ta Ta Ta Tum De Dum Te De Dum etc etc.

Behold there were doors.

        For more photos of the process and the final results with paint etc check out the gallery here. Special thanks go out to my Dad for helping me out with this project. I'm sure it took far longer and was way more involved than he had planned for but he stuck it out to the end and was invaluable in helping me plan things out, fabricate the doors, and providing wheels for hauling around the trash and plywood plus a few key tools to get things cut and measured and built.

        I'm pretty thrilled at how everything turned out. I think the doors look great and will both help to keep people from dumping crap in my garage and will give me some much needed storage space for all the outdoor maintenance stuff I've accumulated in the past year.

        If these doors aren't a deterrant to the random acts of dumping all your unwanted crap at my house squad then my next step will be to build a moat and fill it with piranha, crocodile, alligators, or friggin' sharks with laser beams. Stay tuned for more on this developing story.

        This weekend will probably live on for quite a while as one of the best weekends ever. For once, instead of a solid dockett of work and responsibilities I had almost entirely fun activities planned for the weekend. The best part of which was the Joint Services Airshow at Andrews Air Force Base on Saturday.

        To say that I was excited to go see this was an understatement. I went with my friend and her two sons aged 3 & 5. They are my for all intents and purposes my "nephews" and are at amazing ages that make it so fun to do stuff like this with them. Truth be told though, I was probably way more excited than even the two of them combined. If you've ever seen the Disney vacations commerical where the family is going to sleep the night before their big vacation I'm the little boy who says "I'm too excited to sleeeep."

        The weather on Saturday was absolutely perfect. Very few clouds, nice breezes, and temps in the low 70s. You park at Fedex field and go through a pretty intense security checkpoint before getting onto busses that take everyone over to the base. The boys were very excited about the buses, perhaps moreso than for the planes. The security lines were a bit long but the rest of the day proved to be worth the wait. We played the game "If you sit down the line will move faster", which totally worked. Every time the guys sat down it seemed like 30 seconds later we'd move forward. We also played "What do the wheels on the bus do?" Duh - They go round and round. David was particularly excited by both the wheels on the bus song and in getting to the ride the bus who's wheels were going round and round.

        Once at the airfield we were all blown away at how many aircraft were on display and how huge the event was. The airfield is probably close to a mile long and was just covered with every conceivable plane from huge C-5 transport planes to the B2 Bomber to the Stunt Bi-planes to the Blue Angels, to the Amazing F-22 Raptor. Not to mention there were in excess of 100,000 bazillion people there too. They had a bunch of the larger aircraft opened up to walk through and they had others where you could sit in the cockpit with a pilot and get your picture or ask questions.

        The Navy had a dive tank with a Navy Seal diver playing tick-tack-toe with a dry-erase marker. I am proud to report that Jeffrey beat the diver despite his occasional confusion at whether he was playing as x's or o's.

        I knew this was going to be a great photo opportunity so I rented a special super zoom lens so that I could get some close up shots on the planes and paratroopers. You can check out the pics here.

       The kids had a total blast. I had a blast seeing everything and got a kick out of seeing things through their eyes too. There was a great atmosphere of American pride surrouding the whole event. Whatever your position or views on war or the military this show was a great reminder of the value, and the cost, of some of the freedoms we often take for granted. How many other places in the world allow the general public to come trooping onto a military base to see all of the cool military hardware and to speak to the pilots and troops and see this amazing stuff up close.

        Normally I try to keep entries here in the realm of things at least peripherally related to home ownership and my trials and tribulations there in. This post has pretty much nothing at all to do with anything related to the house but is something that I am so proud of and just had to share.

        When not dealing with phones, parking, auditorium rentals, and capital projects at the museum I dive into the phone booth and put on the cape and boots and head over to my other job as a partner in Fisher Theatrical Last summer we had an amazing opportunity to provide lighting design and engineering for the Chevy Icon billboard in Times Square. This was a huge project for us even though we were only one of many companies with teams of people bringing different elements together.

        I had the good fortune to be involved in some of the programming elements of the job and spent a week on the 42nd floor of a hotel in Times Square last fall getting all of the bugs worked out of the control system so that our design team could do their work to light up the chevy icon billboard.

        One of the many elements we had to coordinate for this project was establishing a wireless communication link to the billboard in order to control the lights. We used a great product from Wireless Solutions to make this happen. Today they released a case study of our project that features commentary from yours truly. There is also a link for the full text of the case study which includes all of my long ramblings and lots of techno mumbo jumbo. I'm fairly astonished that they included all of this in the full case study. I can be long winded and entirely too nerdy at the best of times. It seems I was in rare form for this one.

        I'm thrilled with how the piece turned out and couldn't be more proud of everything we did to make this project happen. It is awesome to be able to point to something that we've done that people can recognize and understand. All too often our hard work goes into something behind the scenes that helps make a show but when we do our job correctly the effect is often so transparent that the audience may not even realize what it is that we've done or how much grueling effort went into that 5 minutes on stage.