theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Home Improvement

  • wall photos: europe

    [Views of Old Town, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.]
    [Eiffel Tower, Paris, France.]

  • into the closet, pt 2

    ecpa20090525_2077
    this whole baby thing is going to have a profound impact on the lady sparkler’s life, but in no way more than the loss of the second bedroom as her own private boudoir.in a vain attempt to soften the blow, baby mama’s birthday present this year is a container store / elfa makeover for her closet … because she now has to make room in there for baby sparklet (a conversation which we’ve already had with her spleen and bladder).

    the purchase was easy enough. i sketched something out beforehand — with Google Sketchup because i am a dork — and the store turned it into a “parts” list. someone in the back readied the order and put it into our car, while the sales clerk walked us through how to assemble the new system.

    my personal life-goal now shifted to not having to paint the closet.

    first, i unloaded all of the crap from the closet … and tried to ignore that the closet needed to be painted. then i took down the existing shelves … and tried to ignore that the closet needed to be painted.

    then i repaired the 30+ holes from the use of railroad spikes to hold up said shelves … and tried to ignore that the closet needed to be painted. then i went to bed … and tried to ignore that the closet needed to be painted.

    and then i woke up, and painted the closet.

    in the end, the closet went together fine and the baby now has about three-eighths of the closet (two hanging bars, two shelves and three drawers). it’s not quite the space savings i was hoping for, but it will do for now.

    i sure hope baby sparklet is small, and doesn’t grow much.

  • nesting, pt 1: into the closet

    img_7955pregnancy 101 says that the lady sparkler and i are supposed to start nesting pretty soon … although apparently we are to hold off as long as possible, so that we have something to do in the last couple of months when we are both going to be mentally insane.we’ve already identified some of the things we “need” to do:

    • fix our fuse box — during the buying process, our home inspector begged us to replace the fuse box, pointing out that it had a bad habit of bursting into flame as opposed to tripping the breaker. seems like now might be a good time.
    • do something about the (until recently) spare bedroom — we’ll want to paint, we need to do something with the closet (currently t.l.s. dressing chamber with no room for baby stuff), and we need to kill a 12 year old ikea wardrobe that is an accident waiting to happen.
    • do something about the hall closet — it is a complete waste of space, and we need to move a bunch of crap in there from what used to be the “spare” bedroom.
    • think about the car — we love our jetta, but it has a tiny trunk that is already too small when we travel. we’re thinking maybe a $200 roof-top rack would allow us to not buy a new $12,000 car.
    • water filter — for some crazy reason, t.l.s. wants to get a water filter. (for those not in the know, D.C.’s tap water was once so bad it qualified as hazardous waste, and has a history of both lead and chlorine contamination.)
    • baby proofing — funny, but we are already most of the way here due to our anti-clutter lifestyle … but there are some basics like anchoring some bookcases to the wall, wrapping up electric plugs, boxes and cables, etc.

    but, good news … this past weekend, we ticked one item off the list, and managed to not add any new ones.

    we got a couple of shelving units (one set of industrial strength wire shelve procured by my father, and a hanging wall unit from the Container Store) and all of a sudden, we can fit (quite literally) four times as much stuff in there.

    i could get used to this “nesting” thing.

  • wall photos: oregon

    [Sunset over Henningson Lane, Jefferson, Oregon]

  • the furnace man only knocks twice

    so, the lady sparkler went away on tuesday … and all of a sudden, i start having problem sleeping.

    is it because i miss her loving presence? because i can’t sleep without someone kicking me the bejeesus out of me throughout the night? or maybe because the moment she left the furnace started knocking like a nuclear powered jiffy pop machine?

    we had been getting some light pinging from the new family furnace ever since it was installed last month, but nothing particularly noticable. being a slacker, i was giving it a couple of weeks to see if it fixed itself … because inanimate objects often do that sort of thing.

    then, all of a sudden, yesterday the noise became loud enough to wake the dead — seriously, if sparkler would have been here, even *she* would have woken up.

    the very nice people from the local furnace conglomerate came by this morning, tweaked a few screws, and — poof! — didn’t make another sound. until five minutes after he left when it started shaking it’s milkshake again.

    turns out it was something in the exhaust pipe. the very nice people came back again, replaced the whoe thing, and now it is as silent as the lambs … and not just the ones with the fava beans. now, sparkler can come home and continue to sleep through absolutely any noise — hurricanes, tornadoes, motley crue concerts — uninterupted.

    all is well with the world.

  • some assembly (not) required

    well, i’m officially old now. interestingly enough, this realization didn’t come from a mortgage, or a life insurance that gives the lady sparkler financial incentive for my death, or from friends having wedding after wedding after wedding, or from going to a party and being the only one there without kids.

    it came, instead, from pottery barn.

    last week, we went anniversary present shopping and settled on a 33%-off console table to replace a piece of crap we bought at Ikea five years ago. it wasn’t in stock, but they had extras at the big, bad warehouse in the sky, and promised to ship one over to a store-near-us as soon as they could.

    well, we got the call yesterday, crossed the bridge into rural Arlington to go pick it up. when we pulled up front, a very nice boy wheeled the box out to our car … and that’s when all hell broke loose.

    the box was enormous. like really big. like “size of a piece of furniture” big.

    there are apparently places in the world where you can buy furniture that doesn’t require assembly. more importantly, there are apparently places in the world where you can buy furniture which requires something bigger that a Volkswagen Jetta.

    now, don’t get me wrong … i had heard rumors of such extravagance, but bushed them aide as if tales of the fortress of Atlantis, or a land filled with Unicorns, or a country of people who’d reelect some one from the Bush family. i mean, really … would would have thought such a place existed?!?

    after getting a grip on our new found alternate reality, “very nice boy pottery barn boy” led us to the conclusion that the Jetta just wasn’t going to cut it (and we galloped off to rent a pick up truck from ZipCar).

    but, let this serve as a cautionary tale for the youth of america. there comes a time when you will be allowed to vote, sent to war, drink, and afford to buy furniture that comes assembled — assuming that you catch a really good sale.

    so, excercise your rights (responsibilities?) with caution …

  • home installation: cropp-metcalfe vs. the aircraft carrier furnace

    so, i’ve been fibbing about how idyllic our life in dc’s mount pleasant is …

    sure the neighborhood is great, and the food authentic, and everything is walkable. our space is big, with lots of windows and beautiful hard wood floors. sure, we’ve decorated and painted just about every square inch of our abode.

    but, our ac/furnace sounds like you are living on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

    … right at the base of the aircraft catapult.

    … during the first 24 hours of the Operation Desert Storm.

    so, i did what any reasonable home owner would do, which is coincidentally what the lady sparkler did when she wanted a new coffee pot: i bribed our cat to destroy the heat exchanger with an acetylene torch so that it “had” to be replaced by a quieter model.

    (and, by “bribing our cat” i mean “it was at the end of its lifecycle” and, by “destroy the heat exchanger” i mean “it apparently kept catching itself on fire.”)

    being the expert and savvy city-dweller that my wife is, we quickly came to the conclusion that uncontrolled fire in our home was a bad thing, and that we should (indeed) replace our beast with a model whose white noise wouldn’t encourage me to kill the Beatles.

    so, we solicited ourselves some bids (by “we” i mean “she”), selected a vendor who ridiculously underbid the job for the equipment they were giving us, and i stayed home from work today to see it through (by “see it through” i mean “sat here and stayed out of the way.”)

    cropp-metcalfe was great. our home inspector couldn’t believe their price, and we had a friendly install team comprised of a 60-year old west african who couldn’t really speak any english and a 20-year old latin american who couldn’t really speak any english.

    the language barrier was funny enough during the installtion — they seemed to have fundamental differences of understanding on the words “up” vs. “down” and “back” vs. “forward” — but the situation became farcical when it came time to explain to me the many features of our brand spanking new (and shiny!) Carrier Infinity Series 2-stage, variable speed high efficiency furnace (58CVA).

    but, it’s up and running, works like a champ, and the whole unit makes just a whisper of a hum, compared to our old unit’s voice of God which passeth all understanding and causes our frail human melons to explode.

    if i sound giddy … it’s because i am. it’s like christmas, only in october. it’s like that independence day movie when the fireworks going off after the alien ship blew up, only better. or like when hellen keller learned to sign the word “water,” only more poignent.

    so, i’m going to celebrate tonight by (a) sleeping through the night, (b) watching TV with the sound about 20 decibels lower, and (c) going out with my wife to celebrate our anniversary.

    good night, and god bless you, and god bless the United States of America.

  • one down, one to go …

    well, we (finally) polished off that hallway-painting-project that we started way back on labor day weekend.

    actually, we finished up most of it last week, but still had a couple of touch-ups left for today … a switch plate here, an empty picture frame there, that sort or thing. we’ve got a couple more things left in the bathroom, however, so we won’t be able to slay that beast until next week.

    never thought such simple projects could take so long. they say that, for home improvement projects, you should take your original estimate and double it … but, i think we are somewhere around 16x.

    well, at least it looks purdy.

  • home (dis)repair

    the lady sparkler and i decided to do a little painting this labor day weekend. [insert punchline here.] as you can guess from the picture, it isn’t going terribly well.

    we decided to paint the hall and the bathroom.

    unfortunately, the hall has five doors, two archways, and a whole bunch of heating and air conditioning objects to dodge.

    even more unfortunately, once we moved stuff out of the bathroom, the wall had 30+ holes left over from at least three remodelings, the tile work (under the sink) wasn’t ever completed, there is a hole through our wall going down to the neighbors below, the last paint job peeled off on in the face of light sanding, and our light fixture was cracked to the point that we became retroactively frightened for our safety during the last year.

    needless to say, this one is going into extra innings.

  • the cat and the coffee maker

    Emily the Catthe lady sparkler wanted a french press for as long as anyone could remember, and only the possession of an existing coffee pot stood in between her and her dreams.

    in the wee hours of monday morning, however, this caffeine-driven lust percolated into a plan … with shattering consequences.

    according to initial reports, late sunday night ms. sparkler slipped treats to one “Emily the Cat,” who then proceeded to destroy said coffee pot as part of her 3:30 am caterwauling. the victim, a solid yet uninspired resident of the kitchen, was apparently pushed off the silestone cliffs near the sink district onto the cold, slate flooring below.

    when apprehended, ms. the cat declined to comment. old crate and barrel gift cards, left over from ms. sparkler’s recent wedding, have already been mobilized as part of the relief effort.

    in other coffee related news, sparkler fan-favourite burkina boy has recently published a sustainable coffee guide on the web site of some leading conservation organization working to protect life, preserve nature, etc., etc., etc.