Mizell Lumber & Hardware

We recently went to Mizell Lumber & Hardware in Kensington because we needed to buy some doors and they had given us a very reasonable price quote. Mizell is one of those old-timey hardware stores that has all kinds of things no one else carries. It looks like it could be about 100 years old.

I remember when I was a kid I would sometimes get to go there with my Dad back when we lived in Kensington. I really liked being there because it was right next to the train tracks, nearly directly across from the Kensington station. Anytime I got near train tracks I would daydream about jumping on the train and going off by myself to who knows where. I don't know why, but this was a recurring fantasy during my childhood. I loved hearing the sound of the train at night. There used to be a wooden bridge that went over the tracks off of Howard Avenue. It was rickety and felt dangerous but I just loved the feeling of going over that bridge.

So as a grownup going back to Mizell, I enjoyed remembering my little childhood fantasies (which I sometimes still have) but it was also a good experience for a grown up (I think!?) consumer. The salespeople there are knowledgeable and very helpful. They aren't snotty and rude and/or dumb the way they are at some hardware stores. I got some very useful information about thresholds there.

This lovely formica display made me start thinking about how much less expensive our countertops could have been, and they would still be very pretty. But it's too late now.

They sell nails by the pound!

Their shelves are stocked full of all kinds of cool stuff. If you are ever in Kensington, be sure to check out Mizell Lumber & Hardware.

It doesn't take much

Here are ten things that have made me very happy recently:
1. The weather has warmed up to a somewhat normal temperature.
2. Doug has put most of the floorboards down on the back porch and has finished nailing most of what he has put down.
3. Yesterday we finished putting up all of the Tyvek inside the back porch and we put up most of the rest of the siding inside the porch. It will look even nicer when it is finished
4. Today I put up most of the rest of the siding on the outside of the back porch. I'm just waiting for Doug to cut the final piece. It will look even nicer when it is finished.
5. Today we took down most of the scaffolding on the south side and some of it on the north side. It will look even nicer once it is all down.
6. Today Doug finished putting up the soffit trim on the north side so the north side is almost finished. It will look even nicer when it is finished.
7. Today we loaded up the truck with a huge amount of construction trash and I drove it to the dump and they didn't make me go in the truck part which is great because I forgot my dust mask.
8. We might actually finish most of the outside of the FoamCoreFantasy before we start working on the inside. Maybe. But I'm not holding my breath.
9. Most of the things we've done recently are much closer to being actually finished than usual.
10. I was able to accurately use the word "most" more often than the word "some" for a change, in describing our recent accomplishments on the house. I'm happier than usual about our progress because "most" is much closer to "all" than "some" is.

2007, The Year in Review

2007 started off like this. I totally trashed my hands working on the house, but I guess it didn't matter since I didn't have any gigs. It takes a while to get back in circulation after being on the road for so long. We got a lot of work done on the house on the house, but it is nowhere close to being finished. We were over there day in and day out and finally we had some professional help as well, although there were some mixed results in that regard. There's a full description of the year's events over on our house blog.

We got all of our back taxes done and it was a huge relief to get this major area of tension finally resolved. I am putting this mildly. At least we didn't owe any money, so we didn't get in trouble. I kept wondering when they were going to come after us and throw us in jail. I am just going to have to be a pain in Doug's ass about this in the future, that's all there is to it.

I took a jazz arranging course at UMD.

Our beloved Ted is no longer with us.

In the fall I took a trip to Montana with my parents and brother to visit my aunt and uncle and cousins. It was a little bit of a road trip because we went via Salt Lake City and Yellowstone.

I started gigging a lot more from September through the end of the year. We are still renting and insurance is no longer covering it, so we really need to finish our house as soon as possible. But it feels like the pace of work has gotten slower. We are wearing ourselves out. I'm trying to be cheerful and supportive, even though this was not how I would have done it. I guess I'm stuck. It sure will be great when the house is finally finished, sometime next year.

Visualization

We were down in Pensacola recently and we visited our friend CJ who lives just over the line in Alabama. He is an infectiously joyous person who has spent a great deal of time exploring his spirituality.

One technique that has worked very well for him is visualization. I believe that everyone does a certain amount of visualization and in order to feel optimistic about something, visualization is practically a requirement.

So I started thinking that maybe if I began to visualize a little harder about my house being finished, it might happen even sooner than I realistically expect it to. I realize that the end of that sentence kind of negates the whole visualizing effect. Nevertheless, the time I spend waiting for the house to be done will definitely pass more pleasantly if I am visualizing its completion. And our lives are going to be so much better when we are back in our house. That is a fact and is very easy to visualize.

Then I remembered all of the times when we’d come back from tours or vacations and Doug would comment on the fact that the house hadn’t burned down. I think he was joking, but for some reason we were always relieved to see that it was still there the way we’d left it. I guess in our case this could be an extreme example of visualization gone awry. You just don’t want to mess with those bad vibes, I’ve learned. They might come back to bite you!

WORK, WORK, WORK

We have been slaving away on our house all summer long. We spent most of June shovelling the charred remains of the last 20 years into huge dumpsters in our driveway in preparation for the teardown of the house. It was incredibly hot, we got totally filthy every single day, and it was also rather depressing.

Our house has been a total eyesore for the neighborhood for the past year and a half and there's nothing I can really do about it except keep the grass mowed. Now it looks even worse because we had some people come in to remove the 1950's asbestos siding. The unacceptable appearance of our house doesn't really seem to bother Doug at all. Oh yeah, I forgot - he's the guy who had 9 or more rusted out dead cars out in our backyard for years and years. I guess I just can't expect him to be appreciative of my desire to just have a pleasant and normal looking house. But he's charming and delightful and that makes it all worthwhile. Yeah, right.

Speaking of thwarted efforts in the direction of a pleasant and normal looking house, I can't believe how the heat from the fire made the fresh coat of gray paint I put on last fall just peel right off of the wood siding. So now part of the house is back to Doug's pink color, and some of it is down to the original barn red, and where they took down the siding it's beige. The shingles on the addition are still gray. The whole thing is pretty damn ugly.

Also we have been working in the addition to prepare it to become our new house. This involves removing the basement steps and putting in joists and subflooring in the stairwell area for all on the main floor and the upstairs.

Before we can put in the flooring we have to get the foam core panels that will become the new front exterior wall all moved upstairs. They are big and heavy so we have to use a pulley. Then we put in the floor. We are now getting to the upstairs via a ladder that goes through a hole in the floor. We are mostly doing this work at night because it is too hot during the day. This is stuff we were planning to do ourselves anyway, to save money, before the professionals came in to do the finish work.

If you are really interested in what all of this work looks like, click some of these links:
Installing the Floors and Moving the Panels
Cutting the House in Half
Almost Ready to Install the Wall
Preparing the Foam Core Panels

And if you want to see some additional pictures and videos of our house demolition, click here.

Putting the foam core panels up on the front wall of the addition after the roof is already on and before we separate the front of the house from it is a weird and scary operation. And physically pretty difficult. But Doug has figured out a way to do it that is completely structurally sound. He is amazing that way. So I put up with him.

This construction work is not my cup of tea at all, but I'm doing it. I really hate getting all dirty and sweaty and having to wear work gloves in this heat to protect my hands. It's really the only way that we can afford to get what we need in the way of a house. Although we are building a house that is actually much better than what we need.