The Impossible Before Lunch

Getting (Rocky Mountain) High...

2010-06-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

After our wonderfully well recieved (even though it poured on Saturday) show in Minneapolis at Edina, we took off toward our Island Home on Lopez in the Pacific Northwest...

Victoria, mistress of the keyboards, goddess of all things to do with trip planning, and all around great planner, arranged to end up at our friends in Gardiner, MT the week that the Yellowstone 'opens'. Of course Lu Harlow, V's friend from College, is the Food and Beverage Director for the entire park and so we did have a fabulous meal at the Mammouth Inn the first night we were there... but that is not what I was thinking of when I started this post!

We (Vand I) got up early and went for a wonderful walk through the town of Gardiner with Lu in the morning... it is a real rough-n-ready sort of frontier town that perches on the steep banks of the river squashed by mountains and the national park. This is the town that has store-front churches and probably 25 different drinking establishments in a place with fewer than 2000 residents. The architechture is a mix of the handi-man-get-it-up-before-winter specials and the 140 year old stone cottages that made alot of sense back in the day...

The rivers are full... so full and fast that you really can't go fishing in them- bummer- and, apparently, people fall in the water and aren't found ever again... yowser!

We spent the entire rest of the day (really until well after 7pm) hiking around in Yellowstone! Started by meeting a mare(?) Elk with her baby that was about 2 hours old! V got great pix of that but I did not...

We went up to the Geysers and walked around looking at the various holes in the terrain that were bubbling and spewing and steaming. Of course we had to remind ourselves that we were not looking at Fox News.

From there we did a bit of Waterfall inspection... and of course they are not conveniently placed near the road- one of them Xan and I hiked down 600 (vertical) feet to get to- but it was worth it. They don't tell you that 600 feet down is a bit over a mile and a half, each way, on the switchback paths that you take to get there... Stunning panorama when you make it there though. There was another way to come down to look at the falls from the front instead of the side but we did not do that...

We did find another hike- down to the base of the Hellroaring Mountains- that was so desolate and devoid of human evidence that, if the romantic pathway through the woods was not there, I would have lost my sense of what century I'm currently in.

On our way back to Lu and Chris' house we did run into a 'park' phenomenon... all of the vechicles in front of us were stopped, in both directions, and all of the folks were on the side of the road... turns out there were a couple of Bull Elks grazing right next to the road! People were completely fearless about walking up to these 6oo pound creatures and sticking a camera in their faces... somewhat insane behavior, to be sure, that our hosts warned us about before we left in the morning...

We made it back home to an everything-on-the-grill dinner and great company...

seems like I'm posting this without all of the great photos for now- transmission errors here at the Library- more Later! Blessings abound!

Oh, I know, Let's have a Festival!

2010-06-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

I suppose if I’d had even an spare half an hour over the last three weeks, I’d have stopped and posted a blog entry or two- just to keep everyone informed and up-to-date… but believe me- I did not have that half hour anywhere…

The Arts and Music Festival for 2010 is just a pleasant memory for most folks here… I’m still zooming around and making sure that storage is good for all of the signs and other ‘festival properties’ and answering emails from officials and phone calls from media. That is dwindling off now and we are working like maniacs to make the transition to driving across country to Lopez.

The Festival.

Who knew?

Well, actually, I guess we did… at the beginning of it all was about 5 (completely unexpected) months of really insane Politics- shall we call it the politics of transition?; maybe the politics of allowing?- that devoured all of the luxury of time that we thought we had to plan and build and dream this to fruition. In the end we pulled the whole thing together in about 100 days.

We had to start with the name of the festival, (the Lower Town Arts and Music Festival), and really little else… the city office that had been in charge of the festival for the last 7 years was unable (or unwilling?) to give us any of the contacts for the services they used or the Artists that had participated. They did not have a budget to share of what they spent money on at the last festival, which would have given us clues about where the money went. Amazingly, after producing this festival for years, they didn’t have a single bit of ‘management product’ to pass forward. Not to worry.

Over the next few months we discovered that there were a lot of folks, in and around town, that were heavily invested in the festival either not existing any longer, or existing in a very specific way that conformed to their singular vision.

We went ahead and held brainstorming sessions with anyone invited to participate- we wrote down all of the ideas of what people would like to see at a festival in the neighborhood and did not allow any pre-filtering nay-sayers to shoot ideas down. We took all of these ideas and developed a huge (15 page) on-line survey that allowed anyone in the neighborhood to vote on all of the ideas and rate them. We discovered, in that process, that there were a few folks who had decided to be actively opposed to anything happening. (Didn’t see that coming).

At this point the City group that was thrusting the festival toward us was given a small budget enhancement and now wanted the festival back… oops.

They even went so far as to say the Lower Town Neighborhood Association couldn’t use the name Lower Town Arts and Music Festival because they (the city office in charge of promoting Lower Town and Downtown) had it under copyright… that was too silly and the Mayor shut the down in a heartbeat.

Then the good stuff… the business community- the Bank, The TV Station and Paper, the Railroad, the Car Dealers, the bridge builders- all chipped in and supported the regime change for the festival. People stepped up into the leadership roles for each of the different volunteer positions (organizational heads). Even the City, as represented by all of the department heads with their various clipboards, created a harmony hitherough unheard of in a public event. It was FANTASTIC and the show has even happened yet!

So, Stef and I are running, running, running and then… it’s the day of and all comes together- certainly with excitement and thrilling moments of WTF! But no killer problems and… everyone seems happy… shhh… walk softly… don’t disturb it… everyone is happy!

Wow.

I mean WOW!

And here it is a couple of weeks later and still… everyone is happy!

not Granny's quilt...

2010-04-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

Some of the major insanity of the past week has been a national phenomenon that occurs here... It's the Quilt Show.

To the tyros, that seems like a gentle and bengin sort of event, populated with possibly a half-dozen grey-haired ladies of a certain age, slowly looking at fabric swatches...

Wrongo!

This is more like 35,000 folks of every description descending on MY neighborhood for 5 days- it's not a single rentable bed available within a 30 mile radius of the show- it's every imaginable color, texture and pattern of fabric offered for sale, either by the bolt or "fat quarter"...

It is amazing. One of our dear friends is a nationally acclaimed quilter and this show is why she choose to move to Paducah. The quilts that are on display are not your grandma's quilt- we are talking about paintings done in collaged layers of pigmented fabric and constructed of single continuous threads measuring in miles.

They are inspiring to look at as anything that I've seen in the Smithsonian- I kid you not!

These images are just an appetizer- a tease- of the more than 100 quilts that made it through the jury to get to the show...

When I think that I spend too much time in the studio and have no life, and then I look at the work that goes into one of these quilts... I'm not at all suprised that they can take years to complete and isolate their creators effectively from all human interactions...

It's whats for dinner...

2010-04-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

I had a fun assignment today...

Our friend, and world class (really!) quilting Goddess, Caryl Fallert hosts a huge number of folks each year as part of the Quilt Show that happens- no that's not right- as part of the Quilt Show that engulfs Paducah at this time of year. As part of that hospitality she has a fancy dinner on Thursday night for about 30 folks...

This year she ended up asking me to pinch-hit the cooking of this meal for her...

So my day has been a layered phenomenon of planning, chopping, pounding and such... the big challenge, of course, is the limitations of the kitchen at Caryl's house... did most of the work here at home and then ran a semi-hysterical shuttle service for foods between the two houses.

Everything came together, as meals have a habit of doing, and the crowd seems sated.

The menu?

I made 3 different foccacia- a garlic herb and Olive oil, a two cheese and curry, and a chicken sausage mozzerella and sundried tomato- for appetizers. The main course was a Chicken Rollantine with feta and fresh spinach layered with all sorts of herbs. I laid the spiraled medallions onto a bed of mushroom sauce... the side dishes of jasmine and wild rice with julienned sun-dried tomatoes and minced olives and sauteed asparagus with the most beautiful medley of different colored peppers... a salad, of course, with a palette of different garni... dessert? of course! I had Victoria and Xan make 5 different types of cookies and I figured that people would have to be able to find something they liked and the leftovers would be appreciated for days afterwards.

After the food was laid out and people started serving themselves (with a certain gusto), I got to come home to dinner that Victoria made... that was like having dessert!

Happy Earth Day...

2010-04-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

The library here in Paducah is sponsoring a strange and wonderful art show in the lobby... they've given out a pile of discarded books and asked random community members to alter them into art pieces-as a re-purposing project, if I understand correctly.

So, don't throw those old books out, but carve them, stack them, add to them and reduce them into art that you can then throw out later!

The stack of books that they dropped off for me were, of course, all Readers Digest Condensed Book collections... what choice did I have? I did this piece that is titled "abridged"...

I am not fond of adbriged books- just philosophically- 'cause when I think about it, that author struggled over every word, then the editor forced them to reconsider and choose even more carefully. The publishers all had their crack at it and someone finally decided that those words- the ones that were so carefully selected, ordered and edited- were worthy of getting into print.

Now someone comes along and gets rid of all of the 'extra' words so that the book (all books apparently) is now a one hour read.

I thought of this sculpture the minute I saw that I got the Readers Digest books... the guts of the books being torn out and thrown away seemed so obvious and fun...

You know what the toughest part of this was? Finding someone with an 'old style' paper shredder that plooped out the long strings and not the confetti.

The show is up at the Library and opens today... check it out... think about Earth Day... and don't forget to take time to smell the quilters!

Arts and Music- Paducah Style!

2010-04-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

So this will be my first, but certainly not the last, entry about the Lower Town Arts and Music Festival...

I have agreed, though no power on earth can reveal to me why, to be one of the Co-Directors of this years Festival here in Paducah, KY... Don't get me wrong- this is going to be a truly great little festival- one that I'll be proud to say happened in the town that I live in- I just didn't really need another full-time occupation this year!

I have to say at this point, that a lot of the heavy lifting has been done: we have lined up a great list of community partners and corporate sponsors, the Artists have been juried and the logo is designed (see above- thanks David L.)... in fact, I just designed the Information Volunteer's T-Shirt, below, to be printed on bright yellow so that they can be our (wait for it) yellow pages...

Now, I am looking deep into the site plan of our neighborhood and working with Stef, (my other Co-Director) to make all of the parts into a harmonious whole...

All the little triangles are chatting amiably with one another and I have a sneaking suspicion that this will all work out!

You know what the biggest challenge has been so far? Making the emotional transition with folks who have been here much longer than I have, from the way the Festival has been run to the way we are doing it this year.
People tell me they have not been happy.
They tell me that they have not been treated well.
My job has been, (so many different times in the past month), to walk folks through the plan, the players, the strategies and the finesse for this year and the next few years.
People are a bit skeptical- and I have gained a real appreciation for that... but the best politics are the politics of community growth and healing- those are the only ones that I can personally make time for!

Must be Spring...

2010-04-13T06:26:00.000-07:00

Clearly this is not the appropriate 'spring' hat for the Easter Island head of Lower Town that seems to have taken up residence in front of our home...

so the first thing in the hat-changing manual requires that you don't repeat the folly of how you put the Christmas hat on, (leaning an extension ladder against a wobbly foam sculpture in the middle of the night), and back your giant van up onto the sidewalk, creating a semi-stable platform to put your borrowed 8' ladder on...

Once you manage to haul yourself up on the van, (our 'new' van has none of the fine places to

grab onto that the old van had), you pluck the Santa hat off and ascend the new spring chapeau.

and now, and probably for the rest of the summer, we have a new ridiculous hat for our guy, in our town...

The community fervor to change the hat didn't really start until the middle of March, but then things really started smoking!

I tried to take an informal survey of what the next hat should be and found out that I should never have opened that door... I instantly had a full calendar of Hat Suggestions- bonnets with bunny ears for Easter, Broad-brimmed hats for the Racing Season, Baseball caps in size XXXXXXXXXL for the summer...

At first I seriously entertained these ideas, immeadiatly thinking of how to 'make it work' in the full scope of weather that we get here... (the high winds are the toughest to factor for), and then it occured to me that I probably didn't need another full time job making giant hats for a temporary sculpture.

I thought of that one just in time!

Clearly, it is officially Spring in Lower Town, now... we have a new can of propane for the grill, new diets, and a new hat!

Starting this up again...

2010-04-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

Well, there have been many, well justified, smacks about the head and ears to start this up again. Most notably from my dearest friend Penny, and so it is my intention to keep up fairly regular postings... really it is!

Just back from the NCECA conference, (National Clay Educators get together every year), in Philadelphia... I arrived there with a bit of a snorffle and by the time I got home I was full-on coughing, sneezing sick. Who cares? I didn't want to miss anything and so I just filled up on all of the great herbs and vitamins that I could, stayed away from recreational beverages and ate as 'raw' as possible.

The Conference was emmense! There were over 90 galleries outside of the conference that had shows 'officially' and just about everything in the city had something 'clayish' going on unofficially. For those of us in the business, it was a marathon including speakers that had to be heard, symposia that had to be attended, panels to participate in, and then shows to look at... I am pretty sure that I logged about 35 miles of walking in the 4 full days that I was there...

Aside from phenomenally 'geeky' conversations about reduction and quartz crystal formations and rotatations, I did manage to negotiate the construction of another kiln that I've needed for about three years... It will be built in Georgia and they will do all of the groovy special wiring so that I don't have too! (That is a big Hooray! in my world right now)

The other treat for me was running into to people that I've known for years and meeting people that I've only corresponded with online... I was actually approached by a fellow ceramicist who I've only known through FaceBook- She teaches at a University in San Palo, Brazil!!- thank goodness she was paying attention to the little photos next to each posting...

I'm not going back through my notes right now, but I'm pretty sure that I looked at somewhere around 40 shows... I will not bore you with the details but I thought I'd share some of the interesting things that people were doing:

and so much more that Blogspot does not want me to show you... It will just have to be more later! (did I mention I was sick?) Signing off, blessings abound!

Edible Building Project... a side-bar...

2009-05-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

I know, I know... I've been a lazy slacker and haven't posted in forever... but here is a fun thing!
Victoria, Xan and I made the entire city of New York for a wedding gift for David and Kirin... here's the tale...

It started about a decade (or more) ago when Victoria made the comment to a very young (probably not-even-shaving-yet young) David that when he got married, he'd have to let Victoria make his wedding cake. Fast forward a bunch of years to this last Fall when David says to V, "Hey remember when...? Well, it's time!"

Next came the conference calls about flavors and textures (White Cake, cannoli filling with minichocolate chips, Italian Merange Buttercream frosting... you know the usual) and then, to the local delight of our neighbors and friends, all of the experiments!

Victoria, a true food artist, made sample cakes to find the right 'crumb'- the right 'loft'- the density, the right... well you get the idea. Then she wanted to answer the question of what the best combination of buttercream/filling would work... like a mason fitting the last keystone block into a perfect arch, we experimented with tweaking cake/filling/buttercream recipes until at last we had all of the things we needed to know for this adventure.

This is one of the samples
The stars are all made from chocolate... completely edible and so much nicer than fondant!

All of the actual baking/construction for this project took place at the grandmothers house on Long Beach Island (about 2 hours away from the City) and we arrived with Mixer/Pans/tools/whatknots/ etc. and totally co-opted the kitchen (and half of the house).

Here's V making batter...
and the assembled layers of cake (waiting for decoration)...

Now, you understand, that there was easily ten hours that passed between pictures? One of the special challenges we had was discovering that we were working in someone's retirement house that only had an 'appetizer' oven... too small for even a standard cookie sheet! Everyone of the 7 pans of batter had to be walked to the neighbors house to bake...

While all the baking was happening, we started making the chocolate decorations for the cake...

a neat process where you actually draw with melted, colored chocolate on parchment, peel it off and place it smoothside out! Here is the drawing for the Ferris Wheel at Coney Island:
and here is Victoria, adding the chocolate to the back of it...

We made about 230 different chocolate mini-sculptures over the next two days...
with buildings, and trees and bridges and statutes and taxi-cabs...
and then laid them carefully on to stackable bakery trays for transport to Brooklyn...
Ultimately, we had 5 bakery trays filled just with chocolate parts!

Then came the Italian Merange buttercream phase... once you start a batch of this silken smooth buttery goodness you cannot not pause, slow down or ever stop without ruining the whole deal...
Victoria was at the mixer while Xan and I put the filling inbetween the layers and flipped the layers together (ready for cover)...
This is enough cannoli filling to satisfy a bakery for a week...
and here it goes...
Once we had all of the layers stuck together, we spent the next few hours delicately mixing colors and transforming the pristine white merange into a palate of outrageous color!

Here is the ocean and Central park (bottom layer);
Didn't Victoria make the best waves? Next was the 'Sunset layer' (second tier):
and, last but not least, the Night time layer:
This was done at some ridiculously late point in the day and early the next morning we packed the van with all of the parts and moved the whole show to the restaurant in Brooklyn...
The next step was assembly (a short four hour process) that started with fitting all the cake layers together...
cutting the 'legs' that fit into the little plywood furniture we built for each of the different layers... there is some math involved in keeping a giant cake from self-destructing y'know!

Then stacking it all...
but it's practically naked! Now while Xan and Victoria added the taxicabs, statues, trees, and buildings...
I took the parts of the brooklyn bridge and the Wonder Wheel and put them together with royal icing...
and then we all got to play together getting the city to 'pop-up', like a children's story book, out of the table top...
until, after about four full days, we had a cake!

The Wedding was a great deal of good fun! Heartfelt toasts and music performed by friends were were awesomely talented and food and more food and CAKE!

Blessed Be!

Bricks and Mortar... graduation to the next phase

2009-02-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of flaws in the brick work, especially on the original end wall of the building... These are the natural result of floods, minor earthquakes and building owners with sledgehammers banging holes in the house over a period of many years...

On the 'raw brick' side of the wall we have made the old bricks flow, one into the next, with an apparent ease... but this is the side of the wall that was finished with a smooth coat of masonry cement that has cracked and weakened as it has been pushed around.

I interviewed anyone who would still talk to me about mortar patching in this situation... in the olden days we used to use something called "webpatch" (nothing to do with internet security) but I am assured that the product has not existed for at least a decade... it was a great product- high adhesion mortar with fibers added for extra strength- and had a duce of a time finding it's current incarnation.

The Problem:
Create a visually intriguing patch that will add strength to the stressed brick wall and will still be somewhat flexible (in case of new shocks)
First you have to re-create the good stuff... after toting the wheel barrow upstairs into the Lounge, I put together a recipe of 80 pounds of mortar with 1 pound of polyester short fibers and a gallon of acrylicploymer binder/waterproofing (that was the only Thing on the shelves that I could find that had the right chemistry) and mix it carefully...
The stuff ends up very stiff but if you keep slaking it (mixing it back up again) every couple of minutes then it has a long 'open' or working time... BUT! you have to keep slaking it or it all seizes up and that's the end of your work day!

Next it was 'simply' a matter of grabbing a board full of the good stuff and stuffing in the cleaned out cracks and crannies...
This is the cleaned out Crack (or is this a cranny?)... and this is what it looks like with some new goop in it...
Doing the repair work for about 600 square feet of wall took about 5 non-stop hours of rocking good fun! (Then I got to do the rest of it the next day...)
Look! All better! I was just about to float a smooth top coat over everything (old and new) to make a smooth wall like all of the new sheetrock when I actually looked at what was in front of me... I kinda liked it... Now that Victoria is right here it was so easy to call her over and say "Hey, look at this with me for a minute?"

Victoria came upstairs and before I could express an opinion and ask a question blurted out "That looks very cool! Can we leave it like this?"

Obviously, I married the right human! Blessings abound...

Like a Ghost with a machine...

2008-12-09T21:19:00.000-08:00

We have 14,000 square feet of surface to paint in this building…

That’s the math!

It’s a couple of weeks worth of painting work with a team and rollers and brushes so… we bought an airless sprayer with the hopes that it would make things go faster…

Well “faster”... what does that mean, really? Victoria and Xan spent a full day masking off the floor upstairs so that no paint would end up on the wood…

Then I assembled the sprayer (how come nothing from the hardware store ever arrives in one piece?) and read through the instructions that assured me that I would get gangrene and have parts of my body amputated if I made even the slightest error. Apparently the spray has enough pressure to cut through cloth and flesh if it’s pointed at wrong moment at the human body! We decided to use it anyway…

First thing first, I went through the house and dusted all of the walls and ceilings with a dry mop so that any of the drywall dust that was left from the sanding would not be under the new paint job!

To use this machine you actually have to strain all of the paint that you use- yuck!

And then you have to use the death gun!

Low and behold, after about 7 hours of spraying, cleaning, and straining, and spraying, and cleaning (the machine parts need to be very clean all of the time) we went from this:

To this:

I know it’s just the primer (a pale gray that allows the final coat to have greater hue density) but, ZOUNDS!, this spraying thing has something to it!

On the other hand, after the machine is completely disassembled and completely cleaned, oiled and put to bed, the operator ends up looking like this!

Like a Ghost! (good thing I wore a respirator mask!)

Up, up and Away…

2008-12-09T20:58:00.000-08:00

Duwayne was kind enough to lend us his snorkel-lift- a wondorous machine that unfolds itself to send an operator to great heights without benefit of a classic ladder.

It took a moment or two to figure out how to drive it in and out of all of the obstacles that are on the ground and how to actually get the extension part to unfold so that you ended up where you thought you wanted to be, but after a few experiments, I was off!

When the siding and the windows went up, we did not caulk the seams… so now we had to do it before it gets too cold and wet (winter)…

Here we go… up and up and over and Bingo!

Caulking is so much fun!

Windows on the World (or Neighborhood at least!)

2008-11-30T19:28:00.002-08:00

When we got this building we'd spent all of 20 minutes in the winter, walking through with penlight in hand because the windows were boarded up.
When we unwrapped this gift, we discovered that the windows themselves were not as well preserved as we had hoped...

Oops!
We had some possible options here:
a) take apart each window and rebuild it (ooh... what about the dry rot in the surround of the windows that announced itself when we were able to lay a finger on the inside around the window frame!)
b) replace the windows with new sashes (but the wood holding the windows up is leaky and soft and new windows without new support would be like putting lipstick on a pig...)
c) strip out the windows to the brick and start from scratch...

Oh! is it C? Can we choose C?

well, we did choose C... and we made a bit of a mess in the process...

We pulled out everything that wasn't a brick and threw it on the ground... then, because the structural brick is so thick, and we added the 2 x4 to the inside of the walls for the added insulation, I had to come up with a new way to hang these new windows.

The new method: make a plywood sleeve the full depth of the wall width and hang it on the studs that we installed for the insulation!
As we built each sleeve, we included the 'stops' in outside edge so that we could slip the new windows in from the inside instead of lifting them from the outside (too heavy and god-forbid-we should-drop-one!).

I want to say something about the windows themselves.

Because our building is in the Historic District... we have a special group of rules to adhere to if the work has to do with the visible part of our structure! Soooo! When we had to replace the windows they had to be EXACTLY like the windows designed for the house when it was originally built... has to be wood- has to be the same number of panes- has to be exactly the same dimensions... we had to negotiate to get energy efficient glass! By the time we found out what kind of windows we were required to order they became $550 each! Ouch! Except for the one that goes in the bathroom which was $990 (because it is tempered).
They arrived! (after about 4 weeks) and moments later... they were installed!

Then we managed to trim out the exterior of each of the windows so that it looked better than when the place was fresh!
Looks great, doesn't it?

The painful part of this was that meeting the materials requirements for the windows tripled the cost of this part of the project... very tough on us penny pinching artist types... the additional $10,000 could have gone a long way!

On the other hand, they do look faboo and will be there for the next 100 years for us to enjoy, piercing the envelope of our private world and filling our universe with light and the sound of all our friends and neighbors.

Snowing in the house!

2008-11-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

This post is a quickie... I prepped the site for this part but then just got out of the way!

We decided to 'over insulate' this old lady of a house... with three layers of brick on the ground floor and two layers of brick on the second floor, this house was pretty well insulated by regional standards but...

I'm thinking:

the cost of energy is not going down...
My ability to make more money every year may not be going up...
It is waste-feul to heat and cool that much space thoughtlessly...

so we added an entire 2 by 4 wall around the entire exterior of the building so that we could add another R-17 to the building...

We spend alot of time looking at the different options : fiberglass batts; foam of various kinds; and blown insulation of various kinds and ended up choosing a totally green option...

We are using a cellulose blown in insulation made entirely of recycled material (old news papers... who says there's no good news?) They blow it out of this giant truck
and they run out big hoses that look like giant vacuum cleaner hoses... now this is neat... while one guy is shooting the material against the wall, the other guy is sucking up the stuff that falls down and it gets instantly recycled!

Trent is putting it in here...
and his brother in law is sucking it up here...

It was very much like a rich New England snow at midnight-- everywhere bits were flying, and the silence was deep and comforting...
at the end, because everything is hosed up during the installation, there is very little waste and the material has packed itself around all of the plumbing and the electrical... it looks like this just before we hang the sheetrock...
Suddenly the house has become quiet. It has become softer. It is changing from the construction zone into the home we are visualizing... ooh!

Inviting the World Properly...

2008-11-01T05:44:00.000-07:00

When we found our lovely home it had a fairly new Lowes-issue glass door that replaced the original... the first step was to remove that door and all of the jim-crackery that was pushed in around it to make it stick-
until we had a perfectly empty place to start! The problem with this particular project is that you have to be able to begin and end the project in one day- otherwise there's a huge hole in the front of the building... not so good!

One of our neighbors, (Pat Blue), had in her yard sale a 120 year-old door that she had acquired with and eye toward installing it in her house... that never happen so now it gets to live the next phase of it's life attached to our house!

It's resting here, for a moment, before I trim it up to fit in the new opening... Because we added a whole new layer to the inside of the house for all of that wonderful insulation and electricity, we have to create a pocket that now reaches from the outside of the brick face to the inside of the new wall.

I decided to do this with layers of A/C exterior grade plywood as soon I as figured out that even though the walls that I put in the interior of the house were plumb, the brick walls on the exterior of the house were not! By using the plywood I could cut a trapezoid that gave the appearance that both sides were level and true!
This also allowed me to attach the wood to the fairly random places that were allowed for in the brick and the nice and secure places in the new framing.

Next it's all about the chisel! I suppose that there is some new fangled thing that makes a bunch of noise and dust that zips out the insets for hinges and the door hardware but... we did it 'old school' with a mallet and chisel.

This takes a while and has to be done, tested, done again, tested... Kind of like adding salt to the soup! You can always do a little more but you can't take it away once you've done it! So... no stopping for lunch today!

After re-milling the door to match the new opening (the door was previously in a space that was not square and so I had to trim bits off of the sides, top and bottom to make it square again), and with a little help keeping the door vertical, I get to attach the door to the new opening:

If everything is as it should be then the door will 'hang' (without moving) in any position open and will swing smoothly to close with a 'snick' when it reaches the jam...
a little primer, a doorknob, a little molding and some doodads that came off of an antique wardrobe that someone trashed...
and it looks like it was that way from the very beginning! Later, if we can, I'll replace the door mechanisms with some of the antique stuff that I've been collecting... we'll certainly paint the door something fun!

Welcome y'all!

A Hole in a perfectly Good Roof...

2008-10-11T19:32:00.000-07:00

One of the artifacts of our nifty old building was an additional set of 'service chimenys' in the old kitchens... Just an 18" square column that served the ovens and the 'trash burners'(the alternative heating at the turn of the previous century- waste not, want not).

They appear to be right in the middle of rooms that we were hoping not to be burning trash in so we have to take them out! This is a brick-by-brick process that starts on the roof and creates a serious hole that goes right through the building in two places!
That's the Sky!
That's our basement... well our crawl space... well, calling it a crawl space is a bit grandiose... it may be really a slither space...

So Victoria and I came up with the crazy idea that we had a hole anyway, why not put in a skylight (or two)? There is, of course, no standard skylight size that fits this situation but that hardly even slowed us down...
We created a wood light-chase and painted it with three coats of heavy duty white oil based primer which will grab any sunlight and send it into the house... Then, up on the roof, we secure it to the old chimeny penetrations...
and make sure that the banding has alternating, overlapping ends so that water has to really, really work to get into the house...
Now we put the skylight on top, using lots of goop and goo that promises complete weather-proofness, and it looks like this:
Getting it centered is the only option in this moment... once that goop sets up there's no going back!
Looks good from here! (Of course, I also went down, off the roof, and checked from the inside as well- had to...) Then, we attach the skylight for the rest of its natural life...
and, just to be sure, we put even more goop over the screws, just because we can!
So now, even on an overcast day, we have a flood of the sky coming into our home...

Slow News Day....

2008-09-10T04:24:00.000-07:00

The streets were cordoned off and the prisoners were desperately attempting to elude capture...

well, not exactly...

Our friend Duwayne was working the little backhoe for the electricians and the folks who had come by to mark on the ground had done their deal... but they did it with a certain 'lack of precision'...
Here you can clearly see the yellow line indicating the gas line, well centered in the grass area next to the sidewalk... if you look at the top, right hand side of the picture, just below the edge of the sidewalk, you can see the gas pipe in question... not exactly even 'close' to the line!

Duwayne managed to nick an inch long tear in the plastic pipe, the first one that he's had in 30 years of this sort of fun, and when he heard the hissss...

The electricians were gone in a flash! and people were called and the cops came and asked folks in the homes nearby to grab their pets and wander away for a little while. Then...
The news anchor, one of our neighbors, came and then
the camera guy showed up and the interviews started and the newspaper guy came over with his giant telephoto camera...

While all this was happening, the guys from the gas company dug up the pipe about 10 feet down the line and clamped it off (pretty simple trick with the new soft pipe stuff) and made a repair...
and everyone had coffee and went back to work... but it was on the Channel 6 news 3 or four times that day and in the paper...

We went to a fundraiser for a local councilwoman that evening (or the next) and in the course of everyone giving me a gentle hard time about shutting down the neighborhood, it turns out that there have at least two other gas leaks within a couple of blocks- within a couple of weeks!

Must have beeen a really slooow News Day...

The newest Pole on the Block

2008-09-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

What's wrong with this picture?

... seems that among other things that we can't live without, we need a new power pole... and if we are getting one then it seems that all the neighbors to the end of the block get them too!

It looks so innocent, sleeping quietly on the side walk, currently using no kilowatts at all!

They did the whole thing in a day (shutting down any activity that required 'juice') and started with this Transformer-type vehicle
which unfolded into this giant thing...
They blasted, in about a minute, the receiving hole for the foot of the pole, positioned the bottom, and, in a really elegant series of small moves, brought the 60 foot piece of wood into vertical and dropped it into the hole that was only about 3" wider than the base.

The rest of the day was the wiring...
Here he's taking apart the old pole (the new one is in the background to the right) and transferring everything to the new pole- line by line- and adding three phase power to our section of the block! Everything I'm told by manufacturers and folks is that this will save us money operating our big power things like kilns and heating and air... the folks at the power company tell us power is power, but we are going with it anyway.

There's our new friend! Proud, tall, ready to get to work!

The only part left on this task is to get the cable company to come and take their stuff off the old pole so that it can be taken down... apparently this sometimes takes years...

Birthing the Staircase...

2008-08-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

This is the "before" for the staircase... in the center of the house- walk in the front door and there it is leading into the heavens... well... No Longer!

We are going to be living upstairs and, in re-thinking the spaces and the flow, we don't want the retail traffic to be 'naturally' directed to come upstairs.

This means that the stair case needs to rise from the back of the house and end toward the front AND it means that we need to move it from the center to one side of the center weight bearing wall, (making the space for the Kookie Bar).

We stripped away all of the things that used to be on either side fo the staircase and Volia!
A free-standing staircase! (These are very expensive and trendy in L.A.)...

Here is the old staircase, quietly resting on the floor after it's hundred or so years of service:
Because we were changing not only the location but also the orientation, we had to walk the staircase out of the house and turn it around and walk it back in from the rear to make it work...

I framed all of the "receiving" places standing up on ladders and then The Crew gathered for the big lift!

Gnngrrgh!
Mrrghnghth!
Quick! Stick the big stick underneath! That should do it!

and now, presenting for the first time in its new location, The Stairs!
It was days in prep and moments at the end... "don't know nuthin 'bout birthin' no staircases, Miss Scarlett!"

It's an Inside job...

2008-08-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

Well...

Starting essentially from the beginning, Victoria and I have looked at the envelope (the outside of the house) and TOTALLY re-imagined the space... this, of course, means that we have to remove all of the walls in the interior and put in new ones where-for now- only we can see them (in "FutureLand"!)
Putting up walls in new construction is a snap- lay it out on the deck- nail it together- tip it up into place! Putting up walls in an old house is not a snap... it's not a button, or zipper or even a buckle!

In an old house, with chimenys and stairs and bearing walls, etc., you don't have a big flat place to layout your entire wall so you can put it together. So you get to look at each individual wall as a puzzle that has to be divided into parts that get individually assembled (usually at the other end of the house where the room with the biggest open floor is) and then passed through openings and doorways, to be reconvened as the wall that you imagined in the correct location.
It's a lot of math. Oh boy, yes it is...

One of the "Funny" things about old houses is that while we know that they all probably started out true and square with flat floors and ceilings, 100-or-so years later they don't have any of those things. Often, as you measure to fit the new wall into the old place, you have to measure the ceiling heights along the path of the wall and cut different stud lengths for each position along the way. And, Yes, it's almost as much fun to take apart your new wall, after putting in the studs in the wrong order, as it was to put it together the first time! Squishing closets in between masonry is fun!
Eventually, if you do a lot of this for 3200 square feet, it begins to resemble what you imagined when you looked at the back of the napkin together...

The language of framing sounds like a badly written piece of Film Noir- your day is populated with 'studs' -King studs and Jack studs- and 'cripples' and 'headers' and 'sills' and 'plates'... Heady LaMar brings lunch and there's always scratchy violins playing in the middle distance...
Here is Xan in front of the left-hand wall of her Kookie Bar!

The Back is Back!

2008-08-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

Well... out with the old and in with the 'new-just-like-the-old-but-so-much-better', as they say down at the building department!

We took the wood framed part off the back of the building so that it looked like this:
and now we have to make it bionic- you remember? "we can make it better, faster, stronger..."- the first step is, of course, the mud work.

Duwayne has all of the big toys and brought his Bobcat over to make a hole for the footings... took him about 2 hours to do the whole thing!
then there was some shovel work and some 'dressing' before the hole was ready for mud...
In the course of the excavation, we found the handle of an old chamberpot, a bunch of a shiny green stone (jasper?), some square nails, and an old brick path leading to the back alley...

When the cement had a few days to toughen up the block guy came over and in quite short order had all of the cinder blocks assembled for the foundation.
Seems only a moment later and the 'deck' was on the joists and the framing was under way!

Now, the 'new construction' framing is fun! You have this big empty flat place that you can work on ...
and you can put the entire wall together on that flat surface, lift it into place and tack it down. You do this well, and the bones of the house leap up and reveal themselves to you quickly!
This is the first floor, almost framed up! (with Xan supervising- of course!). Things proceed apace until...
The second floor is in place and the sheathing is started on the ground floor...
and we barrel along until the rafters and the roof deck are in place!
We made sure that the roof extends well over the rear so that even in inclement weather we'll have some protection out on the kitchen deck...
and now the back is back where we started- only all new and shiny! ready for bits and parts!
and there is Xan, up until the last, making sure that everything is exactly as it should be...

Another one bites the dust? the dirt? whatever...

2008-08-05T05:24:00.000-07:00

In order to make the changes that we want inside, we need to move some of the bearing walls inside the house around... not far, but far enough to warrant putting more support under the house directly under the place where the walls will carry the weight of the roof and the floors above...

In order to do that we have to feed the 'skinny guy' to the house:
Corey is ready... Hair is covered, Mask in place, knee pads on...
Going...
going...
and then there was a slurping noise and a loud burp and that was the last we ever heard from Corey...

Well, not exactly...
Here he is, sliding around under the house, looking for the blue wires that we drilled down through the new framing so he would know exactly where the holes had to be dug for the concrete pads that had to be poured.

Either that or he's looking for a cool, dark place to take a nice nap...
Special thanks to all the skinny guys who can, and did, fit under the house for this project! We'd make you a cookie but then you'd gain weight and then who would we send under the house?

Bringing the outdoors in...

2008-08-05T04:33:00.000-07:00

This is the 'new' part of our sweet old house!

The House was built somewhere around 1900 and, sometime in the 20's we think, when they thought that indoor plumbing was the wave of the future, they added this wooden framed addition to the back which has all of the substantial plumbing in it...

Well... it's gotta go! We've struggled with the idea of how to make it work but there isn't enough there to make into something that isn't there so...

Duwayne and his crew go to work and
cut the roof off of our house!
Then, like some giant munching through the christmas gingerbread, parts of the back began to disappear!
The walls of the upstairs cascaded down to the backyard leaving that open airy feeling to the place that is so appealing...

The second floor disappeared into the dumpster and we had a moment to really appreciate the fine color choices that the last owners had made for the bathroom walls...

Until, with a huge cacophony of saws, bad language, and the sound of heavy things falling from great heights...
it was all gone...

The canvas back here is prepped and now?

How About This One?

2008-08-05T04:08:00.000-07:00

Xan is not fond of going to the lumber store...

You see her here in front of a pile of two by fours with one reject standing behind her against the wall...

How, you might ask, could there be a way to not LOVE a two by four?

It amazes us what is offered for sale - ones that are warped, twisted, cracked, moldy, knotty (maybe even naughty), cupped, spalled, chattered, and even covered with bark!
OOps! another reject!

This trip we were only purchasing 40 pieces of lumber... about one afternoon's framing for the two of us...

But we had to sort through about 160 pieces of lumber to get there!

This is our reject pile:
Sooo...

Xan likes to go to look at formica samples for the Kookie Bar counters, loves to look at the sparkly ceiling fixtures (potentially for her new room), and doesn't even seem to mind the quick scans of the clearance shelves...

No more lumber please!

Dirty Faces are Happy Faces!

2008-07-28T20:31:00.000-07:00

Xan is smiling under there... really she is! The kid is fantastic and makes great choices on the site... Somehow she manages to stay cleaner than the rest of us though... I guess that makes her the boss!

We have alot of folks who are helping on this project and all of them have our thanks!
This is Michael who is a delight to be around on any day of the week... a newish father and even tempered and smart...

Duwayne, our local Contractor and wizard of the wierding ways of getting it done in the City of Paducah... He is great to work with and lives in a castle...
This is one of Duwayne's characters, ?Larry?, came to help with the back...
Corey, the demon with a sledgehammer! the son of Artist Friends who preceded us to the Arts District, he's a great soul to connect with... hopefully he'll have some sculpture at the house before too long...
Another one of Duwayne's regulars, Chris has found a treasure in the demolition of the back addition: a porcelain double flower pot!
Tristan is another one of our ETC. coffehouse finds... He could be at MIT, but instead he's getting down and dirty with with us in the growing heat of the Kentucy summer. This is a deep well...
James, a solid man who carries a cigar all day, came riding by on a bicycle one day and we've had stay on and on... This guy has a finely tuned sense of humor and a soft spot for his children like you wouldn't believe!
Kevin! What can I say about mister white? He slides by as a volunteer (!) occasionally and pitches right in... a brilliant lover of food and fine guitars- always welcome!

We have some of the dirtiest faces smiling at this project!

Making it Official! City Hall Joy!

2008-07-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

After many many visits to the building department and many revisions with David to accommodate all of the different city obligations, state obligations, and state obligations to various codes that may or may not apply to an Artists Studio home...

We have actually received the building permit!

April has done the thing that she does that creates all of the official presence for the project in all of the right places, (Thank you April), and she presses a special button that creates a huge sucking noise as the money disappears from the checking account to pay for permits...

Then she hands us some papers and we are go to go!

Yippee!

Rocket Girl, or out of the Burrito...

2008-07-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

This is Xan as the bed burrito... she has to get up especially early so that she can make it to Rocket Camp at the Paducah Challenger Center...

This is five minutes later and this,
is ten minutes later... She does, (as the story continues), actually get up, eat, and go to Rocket Camp where she learns all about the NASA space program and builds, in progressive strengths, five different rockets including the launching and parachute recovery of a raw egg! Twice! Same egg!

Here she is making the final presentation to the assembled and admiring parents on the last day:
Turns out that she was the 'Team Genius'... well, we could have told them that!

Discoveries...

2008-07-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

"Discovery" is easily the most terrifying word that a homeowner can hear from their contractor... it means more time, more planning, more problem solving, more expense... at the very least!

When you are your own contractor it isn't any easier to make discoveries... so far we've done 'okay':

Discovery 1:

A postcard sent in 1941 that slid between the mantle piece and the brick, complete with a canceled stamp...

Discovery 2:

The Kitchen Fire...
on the ground floor in the right side kitchen there was a serious fire. It started at the stove and quickly engulfed the entire ceiling heating the room to the point where the walls on all sides were scorched five feet down.
The previous owner had simply put another layer of sheetrock over the damage, moving on, making no mention of it to the city.
When we had the rest of the sheetrock off we were relieved to discover that the tongue and groove saved the day! It kept the heat from getting into the joists or studs and so, after we lose the charcoal, we still have complete structural integrity... whew!

Discovery 3:

The Trivet of Whompaquanesset
We discovered the ancient burial site of this regional artifact when we looked between the tongue and groove sheathing and the flue chimeny.

Discovery 4:

Strength in the Attic...
If you look past the knob and tube wiring that was still in use when the building was shut down by the City, and past the feeble attempt at blown in insulation, you will notice that there is great structural health in the way that the roof is supported and the size of the weight bearing cross members!

Discovery 5:

Movement in the structural brick...
This little space between the original (non-weight-bearing) wall and the outer wall means that the brick has moved out of plumb. Not the best thing. Not so severe that we have great concern but it does lead to further investigations.
We found the flaw is in the very upper left side of the building and that it was repaired some time in the late 60's (mortar type and technique) and hasn't moved since then, so, if we don't blow it things should be fine... should be...

Discovery 6:
Sometimes it's a good idea to sit down with a lovely piece of toast and figure out what to do about all of the discoveries of the day...

"Layers" or unbuilding the building...

2008-07-07T05:09:00.000-07:00

If we were working on one of them new-fangled buildings (made since WW II) we'd be able to tell you about the fun knocking-down-walls story of demolition... Because we are working on the1900's building we have a different tale to tell- a tale of layers!

Good News!

Our building was built very well and has literally lasted through both floods and fire (more on that discovery later) and poor decorating judgments!

Bad News!

Our building was built very well and has lived a very long and productive life that each succeeding generation of folks has added to in the form of another layer on the walls.

Each wall surface (both sides of each wall) in absolutely every place in the structure, was framed with Fir and then sheathed with tongue-and-groove 3/4" thick pine boards. Then, for about 50 years people would change the wallpaper about every two weeks (not really but the papers layer is impressively thick in some places). Then sheetrock seemed like a good idea so that was added, sometimes more than once, on the same surface... Then, mostly is seems in the 1980's, they felt that putting crappy paneling up would be ultimate insult to this very fine old lady.

And so we get to peel away the layers...

the paneled wall

Xan taking off the paneling to expose the sheetrock...

Michael creating a starting point to get between the sheetrock and the next layer...

Xan peeling away the sheetrock to reveal the wall paper...

Xan peeling away the wallpaper to get to the tongue and groove sheathing...

Keith (a local wood artist who came by and volunteered several hard hours!!! Thanks!!!) attacking the tongue and groove...

Tristan, with the Sawzall, surgically reducing one of the walls into manageable sections... this old wood is very dense and heavy...

Revealing the brick that was hiding underneath all of those layers...

We've been saving little samples of some of the different layers that we've found.

These are the wall papers from different eras and a post card from 1941 that I found behind one of the mantels.

In our 3400 square foot space there are 12,740 square feet of these layered surfaces to undo...

Xan was intrigued the for the first 100 square feet or so and one of the first rules of the construction world is that if you have to do anything over and over again, it stops being cool very quickly!

A Social Occasion to share...

2008-07-06T04:37:00.000-07:00

Victoria and I had the amazing good fortune of meeting and spending time with Laura and Bianca when we were here in Paducah during our first trip... Laura is a real estate agent that showed us a bucket load of properties in two days with all of the crawling around under houses and into attics that I do; Bianca is her assistant who magically produced the full disclosure forms for almost all the properties...
Victoria, the the manner that she has of asking people the most intimate and direct questions and have them answer her, asked about their personal relationship and, as the conversation took it's inevitable turn toward whats-it-like-here-in-Paducah, we found out that they were going to be married in June!

Somehow, (Somehow! Victoria's charm is how!), we were included on the guest list and received an invitation to this wedding... We made a traditional gift of bread, baked with shaved dark chocolate and toasted pecans inside, so that they could begin their new life in the 'breaking of bread' and nourishing each other...

Xan wrapped our gift of 'the conversation' goblets stunningly taping to the top a great fortune that we'd found at the end of a dinner with Gretchen...

The wedding started with a gathering on the upstairs plaza of the new Arts Center... this little town did an amazing thing with this building! We were under a tent but looking east over the Ohio river and Illinois about a mile away... beautiful sky, slanting light...

The ceremony was opened with a sage smoke purification and some drumming, followed by a chant to gather the energy of the assembled (that's us) and bring it forward to create a space of honor and sanctity for the wedding party...

Please remember that we are telling a story that occurs in Western Kentucky!

The wedding itself was simple and joyous with the families of both espoused in from distant places... here are some photos of the reception...

Gretchen and Xan

The room, done in an asian theme, with this chandelier that was made by sewing thread through the centers of white rose petals!!!
Along with all of the other things that Laura and Bianca did, they grew these flowers and made this hanging themselves...

the cake... the couple...

A busy Wednesday...

2008-07-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday began like any other here... up around 5:20 and working on the taxes for a few hours before waking Xan...

At 8 am we read aloud for half-an-hour on the couch in the coffee house
At 8:30 am we met with Caryl Fallert who has offered her space for the potluck that we are having for Mark and Terry Smith (wildravens.net) who are visiting/shopping the Artist relocation program
At 9:00 am we met with our banker, Larry Rudolph, and we signed the papers for our loan!
At 10:30 am we were at City Hall with the 'before and after' drawings for David Flowers and he gave us permission to begin demolition!!!

At 11:15 we began demolition on our new house...

Now we wait...

2008-07-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

Xan is cutting in the hole for the new Deadbolt lock that we've added in the front door... handily using her chisel and hammer!

This is one of the last things that we can do before the building permit clears City Hall... we aren't supposed to do anything that resembles demolition until the plans are reviewed and we are given a 'green light'.

This is April at the Permit Desk in City Hall, and here I am watching her do her magic with the reams of papers and walkie talkies and wall-mounted scheduling charts and phones... We are being told that our project is so small and, because we are not changing the outside of the building (especially the side that faces the street) we should have very little impact on the system in general.

We are being told that we can expect things in the middle of next week...

Now we wait.

Waiting involves revising floor plans (based on 'discovery'- what is really under the wall covering...) and doing the taxes, and doing math for load bearing (ovens in the middle of upstairs floors), and work time tables... you know waiting!

Waiting also involves taking the old fishing gear that I stuck in the van and getting hooks and sinkers and the old sliced turkey and teaching Xan how to fish on the river!

As it turns out, we were there on the Barge with 'Shorty' and Terry and a young couple (at the far end) and aside from the miniature catfish that Terry pulled in, Xan was the only one who caught a fish!

This is a 1-1/4 pound white perch that Shorty says he'd eat if he were hungry enough... but...

We took it home and learned how to clean it and we cooked it up with all sorts of wonderful seasonings on it and decided... Shorty was right!

Tofu and Broccoli for dinner!

A Post Clean-Up walk-through

2008-07-04T05:44:00.000-07:00

This is my first attempt to use the video on the little camera... hopefully I'll get a bit better as this progresses... actually I'm hoping that Xan wants to do this!

I goofed up and here is the other half of the walk through...

This is after we pulled out the 2 refridgerators, 3 stoves, 4 water heaters, 4 furnaces, 2 metal kitchen sinks sets (you remember the ones from the '50's with the metal cabinets?) and any other recycleable metal parts that we could no longer use.

We loaded the metals onto the giant trailer and the word went out through the magical town drum system and, by the time that DuWayne came to haul it away to the dump, four pick ups almost clean us out and put dinner on the tables of four households we won't even see! ($10-25 per appliance, depending on the weight).

You can finally see what we are starting with. Already it looks more possible...

Ready -Aim -Fire!

2008-07-04T05:11:00.000-07:00

This is Xan on the second story porch with one of the many many bags of items to donate... we have an idea that rather than walk through the house and down the stairs 23 times we are going to launch these puppies down to the road side....
Ready, aim, Fire!

We bought the alligator super tough contractor grade bags and they made the vertical transitions without any unsightly bursting or spillage!

We dropped of 23 bags of reusable clothing and shoes from 4 households. These folks had a lot of wardrobe choices! We did not pass forward any 'junk'- there was everything from polo shirts to Hot Topic rock band tee shirts; everything from pink high heels to sturdy work boots...

As we cleaned up there were no pots and pans, no dishes, no utensils... very little of that part of the household was left behind.

I do get the impression that these folks actually 'moved' and weren't run out in the middle of the night...

Many Hands make LightWork...

2008-07-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

This is Jimmy from Langston electric he's getting the electric layout plans and is one of the guys that I hope will expedite the process for us...
This is Xan and her friend Gretchen who was visiting from Saratoga Springs, NY for the first 6 days that we were here, taking a much needed puddle break during clean up...

This is Daniel, on loan from our contractor buddy, who, with thick gloves and a weak sense of smell, is on the clean up crew...
This is Corey, the son of some Artist friends of ours who preceded us to Paducah, who is having all sorts of legal fun here...
These bags are what the girls filled... clothes and shoes for Katrina Relief....
One of the many trailer loads that has yet to include any actual demolition... this is just what we took off the floors!

Other Peoples Lives...

2008-07-03T05:09:00.000-07:00

As we were cleaning up in this space, picking up the residue of the lives of about a dozen different individuals, we had to deal with the things that they, for whatever reasons, thought were not worth bringing on to their next stop.

It was disgusting to look at, smell, and physically handle.

The first emotional reaction is "Who are these people?" "Who would live like this?"

But...

As I look through these things I notice that this was the home of a single mother with three kids... she had one in high school and two in the elementary school. She worked two jobs and had a parent that lived in Tennesse. She did not manage to pay all of her bills. She had her kids drawings up on the 'fridge...

I notice that this was the home of the young man who worked last for the Dish Television company... he was still trying to finish up his high school diploma... he was supporting two other people who were not working... he loved to read, (mostly fantasy and science fiction), and had a number of books on eating more healthy...

I notice that this was the home of somewhere between 4 to 6 people with no visible means of income. They ate only packaged foods and played a lot of video games... the only words they left behind that were in paper were the dunning letters of people whose goods and services they enjoyed but as yet had not paid for...

These are the lives of people, the lives of our neighbors.

When I look at these apartments, with the crappy toilets (oooh the pun, the pun!), the ceilings falling down, the broken windows and shattered ceiling fans, I realize that the people who lived here didn't create these conditions...

The Slumlord who overcharged these people for rent and collected every week is the guy to look for! He made sure that he took just enough from them so that they could make it to the next week, but nothing more. He had so little respect for the people who paid him for their homes that he wouldn't repair any of the basic services that failed in these residences...

He's the one that would rent to these people whose lives we don't see on weekly television sitcoms. Our neighbors who, like my family, are doing everything they can to allow their kids to not feel the pressure of adulthood until they are ready and find some measure of security? safety? comfort? all of these things but maybe more, maybe Home.

I'm sure I left it here, somewhere...

2008-07-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

Where to begin? right here...
What do we have?
The building was built around 1907, it was last legally occupied about fall of 2006, it was acquired by the city and scheduled twice for demolition in the past 18 months.

Somehow, we recognize this as an opportunity.

Wanna peek inside?

Xan is the first to unlock our new door....

This is how all 3400 square feet look, more or less...
they left many things for us to treasure:
14 contractor bags worth of clothing (donated to Katrina Victims this week)
3 contractor bags of pairs of shoes (donated to Katrina Victims)
Smashed televisions, papers, smashed furniture, family photos, Cat box (complete with cat sand and well... you know...), old food both in and out of refridgerators that had been sitting warm, closed, festering for months and months...

The first job is unloading the tools from the car:

There's almost everything we need in here to build a house...

and then there's the clean out...

What's This?

2008-06-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

This is a new blog... sort of a combination of historical document and inspiration to all those folks that know that what they want to do is "impossible" but are willing to walk off the cliff with the full confidence that they will fly.
This is my wife's new Dream House. This is a building that the city of Paducah wrote a condemnation letter for in 2005 and it was scheduled for demolition twice.
This is where we start.
This blog is going to take us from here, (disaster? undoable? insanity?), to the home where Victoria can "unpack all of my Stuff".
We are not people of means.
I am a full time working ceramics guy and we can write all the checks that we want but they're mostly just paper...
This will be a story about some folks (us) who are making things happen by being clever, resourceful, reusing, recycling, and by sheer force of not quitting, when that seems to be the 'logical' choice that 'reasonable people' would choose.
This is the first post. I needed to get started. The scope of this can be a bit over whelming and my typing is crappy...
Remember to believe several impossible things everyday!