The Original Reason for My Hiatus...

...was that I was doing a site design. This one:

 Heaven's Pavement is a promotional web site for the book of the same title. I coded it from scratch, and spent quite a bit of time with the site's owner getting the art just right and making the layout perfect. We went live right around Veterans' Day.

I didn't want to take time out from the design process to edit and post anything. Things began to gather. I got intimidated. I put it off a couple of weeks, with the very best of intentions.

And then, it was the Thanksgiving holiday. As everyone with small children knows, school holidays are not holidays at all for parents. For us, it was a full week of nonstop parenting and turkey wrangling, the latter of which went very well indeed, for my very first turkeybird  in over 16 years, and the very first I have cooked with my spouse.

I also made my usual pumpkin "pie" in a springform pan. This year, due to developing food sensitivities, it was eggless. It came out quite well, except that Eggless Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie needs about 48 hours, rather than 24, for the spice flavors to develop properly. It was great the day after Turkey Day and even better the third day.

Recipe for Eggless Pumpkin Cheesecake "Pie"


Ahead of time: 
Prepare and bake your favorite baked pastry crust in a 9" springform pan. I make a recipe for an 8" double crust pie , then put the crust bottom in and cut strips the same width as the pan is deep. Set them in the pan, sealing the seam with a little water, and crimp lightly close to the top. Line with aluminum foil folded lengthwise into a strip as deep as the vertical wall to prevent slumping and prick the bottom or weight. Pre-bake according to your crust recipe. Cool before using.

Ingredients:

• 3.5 cups cooked pumpkin
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 3 tbsp cornstarch + 1 tbsp of egg replacer (or 4 tbsp cornstarch)
• 1 tbsp soy lecithin
• 1 package cream cheese
• 1/3 cup powdered milk
• 1tsp "pie spice"
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• pinches of ginger, nutmeg mace to taste
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup brown sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Mix all dry ingredients, then beat in all wet ingredients.
3. Pour into your pre-baked shell, and set it on a cookie sheet.
4. Place in oven, and bake for 25 minutes at 450 degrees F. 
5. Turn oven down to 350 degrees F for an hour and a half. Pie is done when a toothpick can be inserted and pulled out fairly cleanly.
6. Cool on the counter in pan.
7. Cover and refrigerate 48 hours.

Serve with whipped cream.

After that, I was just out of the groove. I have a couple dozen posts queued up, and partially edited, but I had let everything slide. Excuses aside, I think I'm back now!

Pardon Our Dust

I've been doing some consolidation, some redesigning (just now I threw on a nice skin from the handy blogger template thingy just to make it look different), and some other waffling about. I have decided to roll my old art blog into this one, since I doo ALL my infrequent updating over at deviantArt for the time being, and also my perpetually-on-hiatus house restoration blog. I'm going to leave the posts on those blogs that are linked from elsewhere in place, with notes that they have been relocated, and delete the other posts.

There are a few other things I am planning to roll in as well, like all my public posts at my livejournal, which go back to 2003 (this may take some time), and older stuff from my personal websites, in order to make it all searchable, taggable and accessible in one easily backed up place. Eventually, when things get better, this may get embedded into my future new personal site.

I have quite a lot of Real Life commitments to deal with at the same time, so this may take a few days.

Q&A time! More Sticky Tile Advice

We are still on Hiatus, but I got a question today that I think is worthy of a small update. A lady named Marie posted a comment on this post asking for help with her self-adhesive tile installation:

i had tile put down this summer 12x12 good tile he pull up all the old tile & cleaned the floor put down some wood then the self stick tile now every time i walk on it ,it sounds sticky.What can i do about it. THANK U MARIE

Marie, I'd have emailed you but you didn't leave an email address :)

It sounds as though your installer did not level the floor properly. Applying a new substrate is only part of the job - the substrate must be levelled and smoothed with a filling compound and allowed to cure, then sometimes re-levelled, before tiles are applied. This is even more important with larger or self-adhesive tiles, as they require a perfectly level surface to adhere properly.

The right application tools are very important. Having some way to press the tiles down, such as a roller, is crucial to bonding the tiles in place. If this is not done immediatley after the tiles are applied (usually after the entire floor has been laid), the tiles can release from the floor due to temperature fluctuations, and make a sticky noise when the floor is walked on. It is equally important not to walk on the new floor for the time recommended on the tile package, as walking on it may cause the adhesive to slip while it is curing.

Also, the quality of the self-adhesive tiles can significantly affect their sticking power - I've used expensive tiles and cheap ones, and universally had cheap tiles slip, peel and creep, even when thoroughly pressed down with a weighted roller. I've had best luck with the Armstrong brand of self-adhesive tiles, though the quality of tiles they produce is also affected by the price range and intended use. Some cheaper tiles will peel right up on a hot day, for example.

A slightly uneven surface is one of the reasons we chose small, ceramic tiles for our bathroom. The cost would have been approximately the same for inexpensive tiles (our ceramic tile was about 1.80 a square foot) + grout + substrate + leveling and filling compound vs quality self-adhesive tiles (generally about 3.00 or more a square foot) + substrate + leveling and filling compound.

On the positive side, it tends to be fairly inexpensive to pull up and replace self-adhesive tiles in order to correct insufficient floor leveling. Good luck!

Writer's Block, or Living in the Project

NOTHING says "house restoration" like patched plaster walls, an extension cord, and a bale of toilet paper. Except possibly the direct view to the bathroom from the front door, and a nifty sepia effect courtesy my camera.

So, here I am, camera in hand, readied to relate the news of living in the house for a whopping 2 weeks, and I find that my grasp of words has failed me.

Utterly.

I find myself thinking "Kitchen ... NO! Bathroom ... wait. Bedroom. Plaster? Yardwork? Snow?" This is followed by a dull moaning sound as my brain's gears fail. Madly, I continue to hunt for things to write about, grasping at "Scrubbing floors, perhaps? Or the kitchen drains? Oooo! How about the cellar?"

I'm not short of things to write about. I'm spoiled for choice. My brain is whirling like a magpie in a sequin factory. Too much to do, too much to tell, not enough focus.

Therefore, with this decision (or lack thereof), I give you some photographs. And some captions. That's all I can muster right now.


Bath, before and after. See if you can guess which is which! My best clue for you is that there's no Homart plastic tiles in the restored bathroom. Or pink. I'm not a pink person.








Here's the Original Medicine Cabinet, the one I bragged about finding so long ago, in her almost completed state (note the smears of wood filler). All installed, but not really finished yet. I'm putting off the rest of the paintjob until I get time to pull and strip (or replace with chrome copies) the hardware. The existing stuff is brass and would look ... odd, with the rest of the bath hardware being chrome.












Look, that's food in the kitchen, and not tools! Okay, some of those are tools, but mostly it's actual kitchen stuff. We can cook in here now, as of about a week ago. The first week, though, it was pretty grim, and we didn't get the tools packed of to the cellar until we were nearly starving for a lack of cooking space.





And, as promised, an image of (part of) the Giant Bed. It really does barely fit in the expanded master bedroom. This was the best picture I could get, as it's what was framed in the door. That's the baby napping on the bed, he gets his crib tomorrow. It's huge.









I will close with an image of the no-longer-hellish dining room ceiling, with the pretty, new, unfinished, "beam" for all to see. The real beam is actually much further up in the wall, and the posts against the walls are as cosmetic as the cladding over where the beam ought to be cosmetically (structurally, it's fine where it is). Don't look at the piles of boxes, please. Just pretend they aren't there.

That's what we do.

Amazing Progress, Due to Unbearable Pressure

As everyone knows, we are under a lot of pressure around here to get done and moved in as soon as possible. So, with that bearing down upon us, (and the help of our dear friends) we have made some progress.

Thanks to J, the furnace is on a real electrical line (meaning, of course, the electric pilot sparker and the thermostat line), and most of the heat vents have now been vacuumed. The rest will be cleaned out tomorrow, and then the intake filter will get cleaned and we can throw the switch, turn on the gas, light the pilots and work in a warm house. We also magically have lights in the kitchen, with a bonus lightswitch!

The dining room bay has been reframed (where necessary), insulated (Hurrah! now the heat won't be sent directly out of the house from the vents in the bay!), and sheetrocked. It looks astonishingly civilized, barring the untaped seams.

The last remains of the old, nonfunctional, passthrough closet in the master bedroom were demo'd out, and the floor given a temporary patchjob. Relaying the boards and refinishing can wait, honestly. We have a nice seagrass rug I intend to tack down over the ugliness. All that remains in there is to remove Far Too Much Wallpaper, patching where that pesky wall was torn out, painting, and replacing the mouldings. We are now, as of tonight, properly armed with a scoring tool and more blades for the scraper, and I expect to be doing battle with the Powers Of Evil (six layers of old paper with two layers of paint) by Thursday.

The bathroom isn't any closer than last reported, but we did buy the rest of the tile, and found out how to return the extra. How did we end up with nearly 10 extra linear feet of edging tile? You tell me. The math checks out, but I must have overbought. Oh, and we did buy more grout, just in case. We can return that too, if we have to.

Yet to do, and urgently needed, is the ripping out and replacement of the hopelessly fractured dining room ceiling plaster. In addition to the quarter of it that has already fallen away, leaving a breathtaking view of the attic through the exposed lath, there is a large section - say 1/3 - that is partially keyed, but hanging onto lath that has almost entirely separated from the beams down the center of the room. This problem was made worse (as was to be expected) by our re-squaring of the dining room when we added the support posts a couple of months ago. The plaster's not salvageable in the time we have, so it must go. We have already purchased the drywall, and we have a plan of action that includes saving as much as possible of the original plaster, even giving our pressing schedule.

I still need to scrape, patch and paint the West wall of the kitchen, and re-engineer the sink cabinet drawers and doors, but mostly, the kitchen is at a "usable" stage, once the gas is on. There's stuff to do, but it's little stuff, by comparison.

I think we might just get moved in before Chris goes. This is my driving force, to have our home be our home, even for a little while, before he is gone for so long.

No pictures today, and probably not for a few days. The work is more important than the talking about it, but I promise to keep y'all posted on progress, even if it's short.

Silly Google!

This week, my house apparently has an eating disorder. All the ads are for eating disorder help information, or live-in clinics.

I know she's ugly, but we love her anyway. And she gets better every day.

This would be less funny if some of the links weren't misspelled: "Balemia?" What's that? Fear of eating baleen? And "bilimia" just sounds .. ew. Bile. Yuck.

Reading: Plus ça Change...

Houseblogging isn't new. It's just the medium that's new. Writing humorous (or simply sarcastic) essays about attempting to do things has been around for ages.

Last night I read a short essay entitled Down With the Restoration! about how sickening those perfect-scenario remodelling articles can be. It was written by S.J. Perelman in the 1930's. Another piece of his that I highly recommend is Insert Flap A and Throw Away, about trying to build something from a kit.

This morning I was talking to my mom about it, and she suggested I read Please Don't Eat the Dasies, which is (unlike the film) actually mostly about the Jean Kerr's life in her enormous rambling house, while they are renovating it. It's from the 1950's. Of couse, now that I'm intrigued, we can't find our copy.

Any other recommended readings about living with any sort of restroation or DIY? I'm now dying to know if there's more.

I must be psychic.

Many months ago, I wrote this:

There's a sag in the diningroom, at the join between the bay and the original construction. Things Must Be Done About This, as it is just sort of hanging in space. I see beams in my future, and screwjacks, and pain.

Wow, was I ever right. Last night we pretty much rebuilt the dining room wall where it meets the bay addition. There were beams, and jacks, and pain. My back hurts, and I bet K's head hurts. The planned posts are in now, and the look as nice as I thought they might, even without the mouldings and with unfinished walls.

We used 2 boxes of screws, and we are going to use more when we finish the job. We spent 50 bucks on securing hardware to prevent wigglyness today.

As an aside, while I LOVE visiting the hardware store, I HATE how it eats up a whole day. I also hate how money flits swiftly from our wallets seemingly by our very presence in the store.

It's the price of our passion, I suppose. The house, she demands it, and we must obey.

Also, StuccoHouse noticed that we were mentioned in print. I am shocked, honestly, that anybody reads this at all. It's nice to know that somebody reads from time to time, but I've been just sort of madly raving into the ether for months now.

Comments encouraged ... and now enabled

I just went and checked my comment settings. I had NO IDEA that the default setting only allowed other Blogger users to leave comments (slaps head).

If there's anything you wanted to tell me, I've fixed that now. I did turn on word verification, though, just in case some enterprising spambot wants to make life tough.

Back to work.

some progress on the "Placebo Room"

What's the "Placebo Room?" you may ask. Or, you may not, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

It's the room I can work on to feel like we are making real progress on the house, while I'm stewing in slow-electrical-upgrade hell. The kitchen is all cosmetic, and cheap cosmetic, at that, work. I can feel like there's hope when I look at it and see real change. It's a mental health thing.

So I call my kitchen the Placebo Room, as it has the effect of maintaining hope for the rest of the house, as a sugar pill might have "effects" in a medication study.

Now that I've bored you, on to the real stuff. No work today, but yesterday, I got half the kitchen floor laid, all the cabinets painted except the upper doors, and got to see how the Red Drawers with Newly Polished Chrome Handles looked on the chalkboard black cabinets.

Oh, and I forgot my camera. Again.

But they looked really snazzy. I'll post a plan image, when I can get my butt in gear and transfer it from the other computer (no network, natch - it's the stone age here at mom's). Then, at some point, when I finish enough to remember the camera, we might get a sort-of-after picture.

And, we decided that the upper cabinet doors should also be Saftey Red. Because, it looks really cool like that in my cheapo home design program. And also in real life.

So we have to buy another can of spraypaint, but I think we can elbow 5 bucks into the budget.

Superficial kitchen facelift

Today was the day I worked alone. SO, in an effort to prevent injuries, I worked on our temporary kitchen facelift (we budgeted about 200 bucks for this, just to make it livable until we can do the Big Kitchen Renovation, say, 5 years down the road). Let me just say that I LOVE appliance epoxy - it makes old, ugly kitchen fixtures look at least acceptable, if not fantastic. Our stove now matches our fridge, and the 1930-1950's steel cabinets are well on their way.

Things I got done:

1. Painted the drawers red.
2. Painted about half of the lower doors steely metallic (it got windy and I had to quit).
   
3. Primed and laid sticky tile on a test patch of the floor.
4. Painted the first of three coats of blackboard paint on the exposed ends of the cabinets (both for adults and the kids).

Things still to do:

1. Wire the kitchen
2. Install new light fixtures (will probably stay after the BKR)
   
3. Install the new faucet set (will probably stay after the BKR)
4. Paint over the beigy-marbled tile-patterned wall board (white, I'm thinking, and probably with Kilz.)
5. Finish laying floor tiles ( the test was successful so far)
6. Fix broken/missing drawer rollers in sink cabinet
7. Patch and reskim the two plaster walls we've revealed, then paint.
8. Paint cabinet frames black, pull and paint upper doors black.
9. Pick the six least shiny chrome handles and paint them black (for lower doors)
   

That's a lot of stuff to do yet, for this superficial makeover. I did, however, discover that the nylon washers I bought to replace the several missing drawer wheels in the sink cabinet were the wrong size - I need 1 1/4 inch washers instead of 1 1/8. Grrr. That's a long drive to return 5 bucks worth of nylon washers. But I also need to buy another can or two of epoxy paint. I sense that I'll run short if I don't.

Score!

Went to Lowe's yesterday, and scored several lovely bargains. In other news, my blog doesn't seem to be showing up on Houseblogs' feed. If you see it there, please comment, so I know I'm not going crazy :) Also, I just noticed (okay, it was actually on Friday) that the banner for Houseblogs shows a lovely old deadbolt that's shifted slightly. Just enough to not work ... I'd seen so many of these over the years that it just went right over my head every other time I'd looked at it. Mom saw it and laughed, saying something about how emblematic that was of the whole rehab experience.

Bargains, itemized, sort of:

2 cans of paint in a nice mossy Arts & Crafts green, off the "orphans" rack in the paint dept: $5.00 each

1 can of a nice sky blue for The Boy's room, again an orphan: $10.00 (higher end decorator brand)

4 rolls of paper appropriate for placing above the borders in the livingroom and dining room (in the "frieze" area): $1.50 each

A new chrome bakers rack for our kitchen: $40.00 (down from $80.00)

And ... A cool Deco-streamline style white and chrome vanity 3-light fixture (like what my husband wanted) for the bathroom: $10.50 (down from $80.00 - discontinued, and it had all its parts)

I got some other stuff, too, but those were the nifty bargains.

Progress!!!

The new light fixture (a flushmount with stars, moons and suns areound the edge) is up in my son's room, and it has a functioning switch. Looks great.

The last vestiges of the enthusiastically nailed dropped ceiling in the dining room and hallway are GONE! Gonegonegone! Yay! Now the repair of the cracks in the plaster can actually commence.

There is no longer a vast swath of stained, old, glued-down, blue indoor-outdoor carpet in the kitchen - I ripped it out with shouts of glee this afternoon. Now, of course, the inexplicably ugly linoleum (no pictures) can be seen, in all its blue-green, grey and red glory. At least it gives me a guide for laying the new sticky tiles.

The kitchen cabinets have had all handles removed, and the doors and drawers are off in preparation for painting. We even fixed the wonky hinge on one of the cabinets that's been bothering me since we walked the house initially.

The wall of the long, narrow (and unusable) pass-thru closet that we're incorporating into the master bedroom is now completely stripped down to studs. Interestingly, the studs all have pencilled notation on them. We also have a HUGE pile of plaster & lath debris to dispose of now, and some nice mouldings to use in places where original mouldings or edgings were damaged. There's also about 50 pounds of plaster roughcoat that dripped down onto the plate when they were coating the walls, and that's just peachy-keen to chip out.

I also took hi-res photos of the wallpaper fragments. Might get to reconstruct the stuff now :)

Still to tackle:

Bathroom. We're almost avoiding it, because it MUST be gutted and re-done. All the fixtures and associated bobs have been bought, but we still must buy Wonderboard, tile, adhesive and grout.

Dining room posts, beams and ceiling. We need to figure and purchase lumber, as well as figuring how much drywall is needed. That'll come this evening, I think.

What to do with the paint in the master bedroom... So far the only input my husband has given is "Warm. It should be warm and cozy." Which I agree with, and which really doesn't help much. The lights for the master bedroom and the dressing room are an antiqued copper. That should help, but it doesn't. Quandary.