No Longer White

Despite getting the green light from Patty and Jacque, I just couldn't leave well enough alone and had to screw with the colors again today. The other Jacque was out of town, which may have been a blessing. You know, too many cooks in the kitchen.

It's late and the garage is painted, but not without a good deal of drama. I had to get rough with a certain deity. By "getting rough" I mean drinking beer and acting nonchalant while I waited out his antics.

See, I'm pretty sure I ticked off Shadeus, the god of color common sense. I had painted three sides, when a thundercloud parked itself over me for about an hour. I guess it wasn't a capital offense - it eventually moved on. But in the meantime he screwed with me and made me do a lot of re-work and work a lot later than I wanted to. Hey, it's not like I didn't try. I made a wholelotta trips to the paint store today to pick up "samplers". These are little jugs of paint mixed to the color your just *know* will be the exact right shade, even though you've screwed it up every other time you've tried.

The original "approved" color:



My Sunday morning brainchild. Totally gross:



My next great idea. Not perfect, but it's the one that stuck. Life goes by fast. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can, make a decision, and move on.



I still have to trim it out, but it's all downhill from here. I think.

Color Test

Speak now or forever hold your peace. I'm not trying to pressure you, but you don't have much time.

Quite White

Moving Day

Deciding On Man's Best Friend

It's a close call between your dog and your workbench.

I Am My Own Slave

My dream was to have a couple of sons. By this time they would have been just the right age to drive into slave labor. That didn't work out, so I'm doing all my own damn work. Sonofabitch.

I thought for a time that I could find temp help and by paying them well, they'd be available when I needed them, but that didn't work out. So for the time-being, I'm cracking the whip on my own ass. Actually, it's pretty satisying figuring out how to do things by yourself. 10 bucks worth of plastic pipe made it possible for me to move this workbench into the garage tonight. I think the cheapskate in me gave me extra strength - I'm paying $75 a month for the Conex and I need to shed that useless bill!





I'm burning the candle at both ends and can't begin to find the time to blog about it all, but shit is happening. Because of all that's going on around me with my family I'm extra aware of our human frailty and so grateful that I can still do this stuff. I'm out of gas so I guess these pics will have to speak for themselves. Yup, that's a white trash extension cord feeding power out to the garage!






The first light is up. Yay!

More Of The Same

Pressure-washing concrete by the light of the moon:



Sealing concrete by the light of a different moon:



Fighting off black widows in 85-degree weather with my home-brew super-hero-spider-fighting suit. (The duct tape keeps them from crawling up my arms and legs. Yes, my paranoia is irrational and uncomfortable.)







This is where I live:



I wonder if we qualify as a Superfund site. Or maybe we're eligible for some stimulus funds. We're definitely shovel-ready.

That's my neighbor Bob. Yup, that Bob. He's smiling because he just decimated a bunch of foliage. There were come-alongs and crow bars involved and this obviously provided all the satisfaction he needed for the whole three-day weekend.





He's now boxwood-free and we have a boxwood farm.



If you've priced bushes lately, you'll understand our motivation. We're gonna need some shrubs. They're kind of Charlie Brown Christmas trees, but I'm sure we can bring them around.

And then there was the garden. I did the "mechanical" part.





The girls did the rest.





This weekend was pretty much now-or-never time for planting your garden in Spokane. So we did.

As soon as they got to work with the planting, I got back into my black widow spider suit (that I thought was overkill until my friend Joe told me about his friend who was my age and died from a black widow spider bite, thanks for that Joe!) and crawled back under the deck. There will be pictures someday, but not now. I'm too busy battling spiders. They don't call them black widows for nothing.

It took a lot of beer to figure out the logistics and the execution went late into Sunday night, but I also hung the ladders up in the new garage, which was immensely satisfying because of the fact that I've been tripping over them in the storage container for the last 6 months.



I'll be so glad to get back to work tomorrow so I can rest up.

It's Memorial Day Weekend

Somebody told me I should cook up some stakes.

Stopping To Smell The Tomatoes

When we bought this place, one of the things that appealed to us the most was the double lot. It's SPACE in the middle of the city. I don't know why that was so huge, but it was and still is.

And now we've cleared the empty lot so that we can build another house and eliminate the space and . . . well, it's still the plan. But I'm just not sure we're in such a big hurry. What we're all about right now is cleaning up the mess left over from last year so we can feel good about our place again and then letting the ideas come to us instead of forcing them. And letting ourselves enjoy our space.

Clearing the space has opened up the sky and let the sun in and there are all these possibilities. Like a righteous urban garden. I'm seeing the stuff that is happening in other places and looking at our space and thinking what could be. Despite how it sounds, this isn't spur-of-the-moment. I've been thinking it about it for quite a while.

We're gonna grow a few things this year and tonight I was out building some raised beds. Modest stuff. Maybe it will lead to something bigger or maybe it will kick our butts and inspire us to get busy and build so we don't have to take care of that damn garden any more.

Yes, I'm a Doork

Masking The Pain

Today was a disaster. I'm trying to shore up our rotten deck from underneath. It's way more rotten than I thought. I'm seriously depressed and the pictures are too ugly to post.

So I'm going with the ultimate comfort food tonight - chicken fajitas, done by me, just how I like them. I don't know if tomorrow will be any better, but right now, I could care less.

How It's Really Going

Not The Day I Had Hoped For

The concrete pile is gone. A concrete outfit was doing some work next door and we hired them to haul off our pile of rubble. Good deal. Money well spent. Even if their skanky bobcat did leak oil all over our driveway.



The garage we built last fall needs finished. Kinda the first thing that has to happen is we need to run electricity out there. Unfortunately, the power has to run under the deck and the deck is a rotting pile of krap. Today, was supposed to be the day I rebuilt the underside of the deck.

The job got a little too big for one day . . . especially when it started raining. Trying to rebuild rotted stuff is the worst. It's best to stay calm.



I got the temporary bracing in and the old rotten stuff demo'd. And that's about it. Depressing. So I'm having sloppy joes tonight. Best comfort food ever.





I'll keep at it.

Finally!

Last time we talked, this was going down:



Well, after tearing the shit out of everything last fall, those friggin' crazyass neighbors totally shut it down all winter. Which was fine, until the snow melted and revealed the dump they had created. That was a while ago. Nobody wants neighbors like these. You have normal neighbors. You have no idea how lucky you are.

At long last, there was some activity tonight. I think maybe they are getting ready to do something with those piles of concrete. One can only hope.

Early-To-Mid-Winter Status Report

Everything has pretty much come to a screeching halt. I busted tail to get the trench dug, I had Greg on board to run the power, and then I had to leave town. And in the meantime, winter hit. And oh yeah, the garage door guy wouldn't return my calls. What-HEVVER! Time for a new garage door guy.

That monster snow pile sits right above where the power has to go. Guess power's not happening anytime soon.



Apparently, Matt and I sunk enough nails to keep things from collapsing under the weight of the snow.





But I'm not that confident, so I cleared both roofs!

Even though we have no garage door, we're thoroughly enjoying not having to scrape our windows or brush snow off the roof.



We had looked forward to calling the container company to come pick up their steel box. Looks like it could be a while.