Wisdom of old was to keep the dregs of paint from each fresh coat applied to rooms in your house. This allowed touch ups – dabbing a bit here and a line there when accidents dented or chipped the finish, or a bit of decoration was moved. As long as the same paint was used, the result would be invisible.… Read More »What is up with flashing paint?
Inspiration to get through the no longer chilling sub-zero temperatures, drudgery of wearing at least twice as many garments1 than in July, and brief, blinding glimpses of the sun as it slides below the horizon at 6:00 pm.: planning the garden, once the ground is no longer frozen and/or covered in snow/ice. Is it cheering to think of all the things… Read More »Seeds of Future Garden’s Past
Next stage in the replacement of the window casings. Done all the painted ones, and a couple of stained ones. Moving to the main floor. Should be routine because I’ve done all the steps before. No problems. Well, there were a few breezy steps. A few new snags. It’s an old house, and there are always surprises. 1. Go to… Read More »More Trim. These ones should be easy, right?
The spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement – the style of my current reno project – is high quality craft in building and finishing. Perhaps that is why I find the poor quality of many of the ‘improvements’ done in my house so frustrating. But frustrating in a good way, because when I fix them, I feel I’ve done… Read More »Details. Craft details.
ChatGPT is all the rage right now. An artificial intelligence that combines the functions of Google/Siri/anything that searches the net for information and a contract writer, such as one you might hire on Fiverr to create a poem/essay/ode to the sugary drink you are currently addicted to. The likes of chatGPT may soon answer our emails, write documents and create… Read More »If an AI Wrote my Christmas Letter…
I’ve written about the extra challenge replacing painted window and door casings1 with stained wood. The miracle of caulking is a perfect finish, covering up minor variances in carpentry on painted wood. Working with stained wood doesn’t have this luxury. Every minor error shows like a gapping chasm into the hell of imperfect execution. Stained casings were hard. Baseboards even harder.… Read More »Baseboards, like 100 Years Ago.
Previously, I posted about why I DIY, full of ideological and good ethical reasons to preserve and restore the existing versus throwing it into the landfill and building something new out of inferior materials. Now, I want to say why I really enjoy DIY, at a visceral, riding a rollercoaster, kinda level. The conceptual stuff is motivating, but hard to… Read More »Why I Really DIY
The universe smiled on my DIY last week. It started in the usual way. I sat down for coffee and googled my latest idea. Thanksgiving designated me the preparer of family dinner, so I thought it was time to fix my wobbly dining room chairs. Google was quick with the answer. The first video wasn’t quite right, the chair was… Read More »Chair Repair
As the summer days get shorter and cooler, and the plants start to whither, stop flowering and quit producing fruit, I’m very sad. I hide indoors, preserving and freezing the harvest so there’s goodness to enjoy later. I wonder if I’m giving up too soon, whether there are crops that could be raised into the fall. There are still a… Read More »Fall Gardening, Bah-Humbug
Another unsexy thing I recently embraced was some salvage operations in my garage. If you know old properties, you’re probably familiar with the circa 1950’s garage. Detached, built sometime after the house and not to last, long before the modern almost-as-structurally-stable as the house outbuilding. The door isn’t tall enough for a large pickup truck. The concrete floor has no… Read More »Even more unsexy renovations: Garage salvage.