fence Before & After

Well, the crew has finished building my fence, and I must say, it's beautiful. If my neighbors are drinking champagne to celebrate the sudden increase in their property values, it wouldn't surprise me. The only thing that's saved me from everyone's wrath (aside from my innate charm, of course) is the fact that most of the fences around me are in similar shape to the "before" pics, this being an older neighborhood and fences being a big expense.

As beautiful as the fence is, the gates are ugly. You may recall that my neighbors, Charles & Melissa (of the armadillo races) have terrific custom gates on their fence, with clean, simple lines. I wanted gates as close to those as could be built, and to that end, the fence salesman and I spent about an hour over there with Charles a couple of weeks ago, with the salesman taking pics to use as a guide in building the gates for my fence.

Then I guess he must have gone out and experienced a major head injury or smoked crack or something, because what I ended up with bears no resemblance to the clean, simple design we agreed upon, and doesn't begin to go with my contemporary house. No, these are gates for a corral on Little House on the Prairie or worse...e.g., if I were a madame in a New Orleans bordello, packing a pearl handled pistol, the gates would be perfect, however...that not being the case...I've told the company they're going to have to change them. Don't get me started on contractors deviating from specific instructions to go rococo all on their own.

I hope to post before and after pics of the gates soon...wish me luck.

Before & After - master bath

OK, time for some Before and After shots to document some of the changes that have been giving me headaches this week...

These are shots of the master bath. I removed the wallpaper and painted the walls in January. The tub is a nice, deep tub, and it's in great shape, but I hated the yellow cultured marble...a picture is truly worth a thousand words here...so I had the tub recoated, for a fraction of what it would have cost to replace it...I think it looks great!

What I Did Today, or Go Ask Alice...

I had the piano tuner come to tune the piano for my Christmas party, but the best laid plans, and all that...this guy (piano tuner now, diamond wholesaler in another life...uh-huh, there was my CLUE) said there is no point in tuning it, because what this piano really needs is to be repaired...$23,000 worth of repairs, to be exact...

It's a lovely piano, a 19th century Steinway baby grand, with real ivory keys (badly in need of repair, but not the only thing that needs repair on this piano), however, not having $23,000 for piano repairs (and having had an estimate from a very reputable company not that long ago for the same repairs for a fraction of that figure), I said thanks but no thanks...actually, I laughed and said, "Well, if I win the lottery..." Then the crazy piano man proceeded to tell me, completely out of context (why was I not surprised?) how his mother-in-law had tried to stab him, not once but 3 times, how he was able to disarm her each time because of his army training, yada yada yada...I swear, I LEFT psychiatry...and yet as he told me this long, dramatic tale I found myself wanting to run to a mirror to examine my forehead, to see if I have some huge tattoo there that I'm not aware of that says "TELL ALL!"...

The crazy piano tuner was leaving just as the tub and shower reglazing guy was coming up the walk...and of course, the two of them hit it off like syrup and waffles. Can I pick repairmen or what? They got into such a long conversation about musical instruments that I simply walked away and worked on my laptop until they'd talked themselves out. Then the reglazing guy had me show him the guest bath shower and master bath tub he was going to work on, and he spent some time telling me that although the tub would have to be sanded, he'd have to use some strong chemicals to etch the tile in the shower to prepare the surface..."These chemicals will make you high," he warned me, "but not me! They have absolutely no effect on me, and no one knows why!"

Uh-huh. That's what hatters (people who made hats) used to say, too, about the mercury they used, but there's a saying, "mad as a hatter..." and the phrase came about long before Lewis Carroll made it popular in Alice In Wonderland...

Yesterday, when I was checking references for these maniacs, being something of a maniac myself, I agreed to go see a reglazed tub at the house of one of the reference numbers I'd been given. I was supposed to talk with the man's wife; she wasn't in, but he asked where I lived, and when I told him the neighborhood, he said, "Well, you must be 5 minutes away, why not just come by to see for yourself?" He was German, with a charming accent. "Are you sure?" I said. "Yes, of course, come over, there's something else I'd love to show you too..."

Hmmmmmm, I thought, I'll bet. Suffice it to say, if this guy had come to the door in a raincoat, I'd have been RUNNING back to my car...but that wasn't it at all. A tall, attractive man a little older than I am met me at the door. First he showed me the refinished tub, which looked great. Then he took me to his den and invited me to sit down at his desk.

"Now just look out the window there, what do you see?" he asked.

There was a mural painted on the wall of his garage; multicolored, narrow lines, carefully painted...symmetrical swirls, with, upon closer inspection, a couple of faint figure 8's...

"What do you see?" he repeated.

I looked at the wall..."Well, it appears to be a cylinder of some sort," I said, studying it...

"Yes, but what IS it?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said, but then he showed me a photo of himself standing in front of it, and I saw how his shadow fell..."Oh my gosh! It's a vertical SUNDIAL!" I said. I was immediately fascinated, because I've never seen a vertical sundial before.

He laughed. "Yes it is," he said, "actually, it's an analemma sundial," and he proceeded to tell me that, because our alleys are true east-west, it was the perfect location for this type of sundial. He spent some time explaining how he'd designed it, and showed me the lines for winter and summer equinox...he was very interesting, and a nice contrast to the craziness of most of the guys I've been dealing with this week.

Tomorrow morning: the reglazer returns to finish his work and the garage door guys come to replace the garage door. And maybe, just maybe, the fence crew will reappear...well, some of them have to reappear, as there are a zillion bags of cement stacked up against my garage door, and those have to be moved before the door replacement can happen...

...a new fence and some old memories...

These are some images of preparation for the new fence. The first pic, which reminds me a bit of a poppy field, is of some of the zillion flags planted last week by the cable and phone company, both of whom are taking no chances this time around. They'd flagged their lines before I had the pool removed, but as the lines were cut anyway, they apparently decided to err on the side of caution this time. Nevertheless, if I were a betting woman, which I'm not, I wouldn't give odds of more than 50% that some lines won't be cut again...it seems to be the nature of the business.





The second pic is Leo, supervising the workers, and maybe spraying a little "eau de Leo" on the posts, just because he can...






The third pic, of the wooden post, looks like nothing, I know, but I have to admit I teared up a little, looking at that post...because it's the last of the posts that my Dad put in, over 20 years ago.













In April 1987, when Mike and Chris were just 20 months old, my Dad, recently widowed, took the train from Wisconsin to visit us. Dad was then 83, and considering the amount of alcohol he'd consumed in his lifetime, his liver should have been the size of Manhattan, and add to that the number of truly bad cigars he'd smoked, you would have thought he'd have emphysema...but in spite of those facts, he still enjoyed excellent, robust health (and looked considerably younger than his years...see pic). He could not abide being idle, and he must have been here for all of a day when he said that it hadn't escaped his notice that our fence needed some repairs, and if it was OK, he'd just as soon replace a few of the posts.

I bought a post hole digger, and he paced himself, and he ended up replacing 6 of them, I believe. 20 years later, a strong wind could have taken out most of my fence...and a summer storm did exactly that to about 12 feet of it last July...but those 6 posts remained firmly upright, and, thanks to the way he'd seated them in the concrete, none of them had rotted at the base...
so I found myself smiling, this afternoon, to see that the wrecking crew had to take sledgehammers and saws to those 6 posts, and then had to dig the concrete bases out of the ground.

I loved that, and Dad would have loved that too...

What I Did Today - Sunday, December 9, 2007

1. I was sick...it being Sunday, I slept in today, having worked until quite late last night cutting tiles in preparation for tiling the guest bathroom. Still, I was surprised at how late it was when I looked at the clock this morning. Left to my own devices, I don’t usually sleep beyond 9:30, but this morning I did. In the kitchen I decided to fix myself a cappuccino. The smell of the coffee put me off a bit, but I persevered and toasted a slice of sourdough bread, and consumed both...which turned out to be a big mistake.

I spent the next couple of hours being violently sick to my stomach; the kind of sick where you just curl up on the cool tile floor in the bathroom between bouts. Eventually, I felt somewhat better, and crawled into bed, where in spite of a load of blankets I couldn’t seem to get warm. Then I remembered I own a heating pad, and that solved that problem...and I promptly slept the entire afternoon away.

This evening, my stomach is still rocky, but I’m sipping coke, and feeling grateful for hot water, and indoor plumbing, and automatic washers and dryers, among other things...

What I Did Today - Saturday, December 8, 2007

1. I went to Sears to look at range hoods...a wasted trip.
2. I went to Lowe's to look at range hoods - no luck there, either, however, I bought subway tile (3" x 6" white ceramic) for the guest bathroom.
3. I went to Home Depot to look at range hoods (no cigar). While there I FINALLY bought new furnace filters (although I still need to put them in) and Tung Oil (great oil for unfinished wood). Walking down the tile aisle in search of a new trowel, I discovered the same tile I bought at Lowe's for 66% less, so I picked up more subway tile at Home Depot. I'm pleased with the savings, but dread schlepping the other boxes back to Lowe's...those boxes are HEAVY!
4. I spent a couple of hours beginning the arduous task of cutting tile to size, polishing the edges on the belt sander, etc., in preparation for starting to tile the guest bath. I hate prep work.

What I Did Today - Monday, 3 December 2007

1. I mailed a check to the construction company for the pool removal.
2. I made a copy of my property survey and mailed it to the fence company.
3. I worked 13 hours straight to make up for some of the time that I missed last week when my internet connection was down. Then I went online to post my hours, and had a pleasant surprise when I saw that I’d worked almost 24 hours on Monday and Tuesday of last week. Yeah, I have these work-a-holic tendencies, I admit it...
4. I talked with Mike, who’s making arrangements to come home for Christmas break. I can’t wait to see him!