End of the Year Schmear

To the Dear and Faithful Reader:

Ufffff, it's been a while since I've done one of these. And as I snuggle up in my comforter while it's minuswhateverbelow outside in Denver, I realize it's almost the end of frickin' 2014! It's the end of the third year we've been working on the house, and the one year anniversary of living in it. And I am...working in Denver aka not in the house. <tear>

But a lot was accomplished this year! We've been slowly chipping away at little and big projects, and with just a little more time and warmer weather, a lot of those projects will get finished. This is an ongoing process as you all know, but I've started to be more okay with the idea of constant transformation. (I may say this every year, but it does get more and more true...) It's just what this project is. Don't get me wrong, I can't WAIT for the house to be mostly done. But I've lightened up slightly re: the need to constantly explain to people why it isn't done. Most people get it and love the amazing things we've done so far.

This Year:
1. You can go potty and wash your hands in the downstairs bathroom. (The toliet flushes and everything!)
2. The trim upstairs is pretty much ALL INSTALLED!
3. We put up the siding on, and painted, the addition.
4. RJ created beautiful cedar trim for the living room.
5. Found an amazing deal on a wood pellet stove, keeping the house warm and toasty in the winter without using a ton of propane.

Recent Bits and Pieces:
1. We've put up a smidge of trim on the addition--but that's the main project where the weather just has to agree with us in order to move forward. And for most of the fall when we had time, the weather cried. And then I died...inside...Ahem.
2. RJ installed a couple more cabinet doors in the kitchen.
3. He replaced the boring-looking and kind-of-shitty IKEA overhead light in the dining room with a much cooler chandelier his parents found.
4. We temporarily fixed a couple of the hanging kitchen lights--shortening them and finally installing the ceiling covers to cover ragged, ugly drywall holes. A temporary fix until we can put up ceiling wallpaper, but SO much better looking.
5. A cool vintage light fixture on the back of house. Now we can see possible intruders! But mostly so we don't fall down if we have to go out the back door at night.

As we say goodbye to 2014, there's a lot more to do. But I'm (honestly) confident that by the end of 2015, we'll have most everything done. #famouslastwords

And in a year of tragic and difficult losses, I dedicate this final 2014 post to William Nunn, Molly Glynn, and Mary Louise Berry. Your lights continue to shine brightly in my heart.

Happy New Year, Folks.

Pellets!

Pretty light fixture in the ever more awesome living room

ohmygodadoor!!!

The Kindness of Creede, or The Benefits of Small Town Living

As I write a post about Creede from Colorado Springs, I'm pained that in my downtime, I can't work on the house. The show I'm doing, Psycho Beach Party, is going well and I'm having a hell of a lot of fun, but being away from one's handmade house creation has been difficult. RJ's working hard on other projects, meaning the house waits for me. Next weekend I'll be able to get to Creede to hopefully finish up the trim and soffit on the addition. Send good weather thoughts, everyone!

But on to the kindness part. Every once in a while, amidst the pain of waiting for things to get done or builder friends to have the time to help you, you get something amazing. Since last winter, we'd been looking into purchasing a pellet stove for the house. Our place is very well insulated (I should know) but winters in the mountains of Colorado give you several months of 40 below temps overnight. Up in the high country, the cost of heating a place can be pretty major.

When I lived in Chicago, I always lived in apartments with radiator heat. It was included in the rent and I typically lived on the top floor where I frequently found myself turning down the radiators as far as they would go and sometimes even opening windows. Heat was an abundance I didn't think much about.

Cut to five years ago when I moved into a cabin in Creede, where we lived for four years. There, I became much more aware of having to work for heat. The cabin is not really equipped for winter living. It's old, poorly insulated and drafty. It has a forced air furnace run by propane, but it's 40 years old and the pilot light blows out if any sort of wind picks up. It has an wood burning stove which is also old, and itself not terribly well insulated. It burns very hot for several hours, then usually goes completely out by the morning leaving the cabin at a chilly 50 degrees. Sometimes colder if the pilot light on the furnace has gone out. Suck City. Also, we would go through about 10 cords of wood each winter even with a backup source of heat. That's a lot. A LOT. Of wood.

In Creede, wood is basically free as all you pay for is the permit to cut the wood down. But what you save in money, you use in the manpower chopping down trees and cutting them into a useable size. You can easily spend an entire week doing this.

Figuring out how to heat your new home on a budget in the mountains is a huge consideration. The most popular ways are a wood burning or pellet stove (some daring mountain men of the wild west use ONLY this form of heat), radiant heat (aka in-floor heating, which is much more expensive up front to install), electric panel heaters (price based on cost of electricity), and propane. Forced air furnaces run on propane here. Each individual home has its own propane tank and it costs around $250 to $300 each time you fill it up. Depending on how well insulated your house is, you can go through that quickly. When we were delayed getting into our house last year--we aimed for October but ended up getting in there late December, well into the cold season--we had not stocked up on enough wood to heat the cabin. We went through over $500 in propane in one month.

Sorry for the mountain heating lesson. Most of you reading this have probably never thought this much about heat. I surely hadn't.

SO. After all this, we were looking into supplemental heat during the really cold months--typically Dec-Feb. Those are the months when the furnace is constantly on and with a pellet stove, it would cut down on propane costs immensely. Newer pellet stoves are fairly quiet, burn much cleaner than wood stoves and require much less installation and cleaning.  According to my research, the cheapest but still decent ones (from Home Depot) are about $1100--and the majority of good, solid stoves cost about $2500-$3000. Though it will save us money and pay for itself in the long run...Gah, that's a lot of money! Well, Creede kindness prevailed and a friend of RJ's happened to have a gently used, high quality pellet stove he wasn't going to be using. He recently sold it to us for $600 including installation as he knows how to do it properly. Once again, through the kindness and favors of friends in Creede, we were given an affordable option that will last and save us money for years to come. As you know, fair readers, I'm a Doer and not the most patient person in the world. But when I start to get depressed and anxious about how long this process is taking, RJ rightly reminds me that it does pay to be patient. So what I really want to express is Gratitude, Kindness, all those hippie dippy words that really do mean something in this magical place called Creede.

It's so cute! It still needs to be installed but this is where it'll live.
(Please excuse the dirty, pink chair. Mr. Dorky Doo has been using it as a perch while I've been gone. Ahem...)

My Kingdom for a Wrench!

Dammit. 

Dammit, dammit, dammit. 

Another (just peachy) variable in the house-building-saga would be the weather. RJ and I both have the day off today and the goal was to finish the soffit and trim on the outside of the addition. But...it's raining. And not like a-little-sprinkle-here-and-there raining. Like, a consistent drizzle and wetness all the livelong day. 

I've gotten a lot better about being patient with the inevitable wrenches that get thrown into this giant undertaking. I am not the world's most patient individual to begin with and I've had to get used to the stopping and starting of a project like this; when often you can't work on the certain project that you want to due to any number of reasons--time, money, assistance, etc. 

But today is slightly more annoying because, in about 48 hours, I leave for a six-week, out of town acting job. My first since the spring of 2013. The first since we've moved into this house. The first since I've put more of myself--physically and emotionally--into this project than most any other project of my life. I don't often miss things, or people for that matter. I'm very good at being by myself. Maybe it's being an only child growing up. But I have a strong feeling that this time I'm going to miss the whole package--the home itself, the working-on-the-home in my spare time, and the person I work on the home with. 

I also HATE leaving a smaller project unfinished. Last fall, when RJ and I were full speed ahead on the house and he'd want to stop for a break, I'd usually prolong mine until I'd finished staining or sanding a particular pile. I like to tie up my little project into a nice, neat bow or I feel mentally unfinished and a little bit sad. Ridiculous? Maybe. OCD? Probably. But you can see why living in a house with a bunch of half finished projects in it has been an adjustment for my particular personality. 

So, leaving town with such a big portion of a project half done is really HARD for me. There's a lot of stuff wrapped up into this place for me. This is serious. This is home. 

Now please excuse me while I go move some lumber into the garage while the rain takes a breather...

Hey, at least I got to do SOMETHING today. 

And I guess these yahoos are ready to come in out of the rain too...

September in Creede. Time Is On Your SIDE. (Get it? No? Keep reading.)

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

September in Creede (and at CRT) is like a magical unicorn. You think you'll never see the day and then, out of nowhere, there it is. (Well...I have yet to see an actual unicorn, but I can imagine... Whatever.) Anyway...

The point is: summer is winding down here and my days are slightly more free for other things. Like the house. It's a constant project, people! And we've got about three specific projects going on at the right now, and though I thought about waiting a few more days until one was nearly completed, I remember that this is a blog about the journey, the progress, the process. So I'm writing now.

We've pretty much tapped out the small second mortgage, which is fine because save for a bit more cedar for the interior trim, we've got just about everything we need to finish up the big projects. Since we had company for a wedding a couple of weeks ago, the downstairs bathroom is about two thirds of the way done. You can do everything but take a nice, warm shower in it. And some custom switch plate action has to happen--we suffer for our unique ideas at times--but it's looking real fine.

On Monday, RJ and I finished putting up all but the gingerbread trim on the back side of the addition.

Last piece of long siding on the back!

The gingerbread will go up in that triangle at the top, and will look similar to what we have on the front, which is cream and purple. It's more consuming to make because we'll have to cut out a bunch of little cedar pieces individually. But yesterday, in spite of intermittent rain, we completed the siding and most of the priming on all sides of the addition. I'm not sure I mentioned this the first time around, but the primer is grey in order to make the red cover better. I've probably mentioned this before (I'm at the point in this project where every post is starting to feel like I'm repeating myself.) With bright colors, if you put them directly over pure white, it'll take coat after coat after coat to cover the white. If you tint the primer, you can get the look in no more than two coats. The primer is a bit of a pain. It's oil-based, for-the-outdoors which protects the wood really well from the elements. It's consistency is very thick and though you only need one coat, it is fairly laborious. I can't wait to start with the red. It'll be a easy breeeeezy.

We also took on the task of back filling the last side of the house. When you do an addition, you have to dig out a big hole so you can lay the foundation. Even if you don't have a basement, you still need to dig down so you can at least access plumbing under the house if you need to. The west side was still a pit, filled with random rocks we'd found, and a pile of dirt beside it taunting us with the threat of physical labor. For months. It was a pain to put up a ladder there because there was no even ground to balance on at all. As I was about to give RJ the first piece of siding for the west side, he said, "crap, do you think we should just go ahead and fill this in?" I agreed that we should. It'll make the whole process of putting up siding WAY easier. Off to get a shovel and away we went.  I threw more rocks in the pit (gives the soil something solid to pack down upon) and RJ shoveled dirt on top. This is the definition of hard labor folks. RJ told me a story about being in his early 20s working at the Wolf Creek Ski Area and having a 12 hour day when he just hauled 100lb oxygen tanks, among other supplies a mile up a mountain. For 12 hours. So very Greek. He also noted that he's not 25 any more...

But we did it and it's amazing.

Ahoy! It's dry and even land, Capt.!

The siding went up from there.

Yesterday, in between bouts of rain, we completed the siding on the final side. And as I write this, RJ is finishing up caulking the back side of the house and momentarily, I'll start painting! Then it's "just" soffit, gingerbread, and then onward to lower insurance rates! Wooooooooooo!

More soon, folks...

Taking a break on the back of the truck. Doo too.

This One is for Molly

A few people have asked when the next house blog post is coming, and though I'm working on it, I wanted to get this out first.

A friend of mine from Chicago, Molly Glynn, who I have known for over ten years through other friends and her husband Joe, has passed away this morning from a freak accident. She was struck by a falling tree on her daily bike ride with her husband. I have mostly dealt with death in its most natural state. Meaning someone has been ill, or very old. Something that will happen to us all eventually. This is the first truly tragic loss I have experienced. It happened to someone who was vivacious, constantly working as an actor, had two teenage sons and a marriage to another amazing Chicago actor, Joe Foust.

I can't imagine what he, and their family are feeling right now. The hole, the loss, is inconsolable. I send all the love I am capable of.

When there is nothing to do for it, or help it, all I can think of to try is this: Tonight I will, to the best of my ability, with my fellow actors by my side, help bring the play Hope and Gravity to life. It's a piece centering around a very similar tragic event, and how those around it cope with the truly inexplicable. All I can hope for, all we can ever hope for, is that this helps people understand and connect with the human condition. This is truly what art is for. To bring the everyday, sometimes miraculous and tragic nature of life to others. I will do it for Molly. And Joe. For all of them.

Update: A memorial fund has been put in place for her family. Please consider donating here.

Radiant Molly.
Photo by Michael Brosilow

The Secret Affairs of Home Building

I may have just bought a couple of tops from Modcloth that have cats and dogs on them. Maybe.

But ANYWAY...

Progress is on the horizon! RJ's dad arrives in Creede tomorrow, along with RJ's nephew-age cousin (14 years young), and some shit is gettin' DONE! Particularly the siding on the addition, which I've been so anxious to get started on. This will not only make the house more aesthetically pleasing on the whole, but also lower our homeowners insurance--it will no longer be a home visually under construction. Along with the bonus of no more flapping house wrap.  We've got all the supplies, now we just need the Mann-power. (See what I did there?) I've also purchased the primer and the paint, and can't wait to get started on it in all my free time...oh wait, we're opening The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild on Friday, which gives me until about noon each morning. Well, we'll see what happens on my end...

I will be documenting all the home building deliciousness for the blog, so never fear. Another thing that should be happening (out of necessity) is getting the floor in the downstairs bathroom finished in order to hook up the toilet and a sink. The young cousin is supposed to stay with us for about 10 days, but we've all decided this is best only if he has a working toilet and sink close to the guest room. Our only bathroom is in our bedroom and in order to respect everyone's privacy, dis needz be done.

More soon.

PS. Everyone likes photos. So here's one. Ooooooh, in all its majesty...

Primer and Paint, READY!

It's Trim Time, Baby.

I want to add before I start that I am eating Zingers and drinking a slurpee like it's 1986. Up in here. Up in here.

As I type this, RJ's finishing nail gun shoots its rounds in the background. That's right, people, we're putting up interior TRIM! This is so exciting. One: because this is the biggest project he/we have had time to do in quite a while and Two: because trim is the glue that holds many home building processes together. Trim is what makes an unfinished corner look finished. It covers over the nasty edges of drywall and screws, or general unevenness and ugliness. It lines windows and doors and makes everything tie in and look special. It's kind of everything, people.

Our original idea was to paint all the trim white, so it'd look very classic. But RJ is creating all the moulding himself, meaning, he's found a way to put all the cool little decorative grooves in the wood without outside help. You can either buy moulding pre-made, which is expensive (and in many cases, the design is uninspired), or you can do it yourself. There is a machine that has super elaborate bits that create this look in one fell swoop, but it is also expensive to purchase the machine itself and each bit it uses is $100+.  RJ found some smaller bits his father had given him a while ago and realized he could make really cool trim just by using several different combinations of bits.

My finger is pointing to the blade that makes the design in the middle of this window trim piece, right above my thumb. 

It's, of course, more time consuming because you have to make several passes on the table depending on what the design is, but labor is free with this family. Another caveat working this way is that we've had to use cedar. It's a pricier wood but softer and therefore doesn't break easily when you try and carve things into it. It's also goshdang beautiful! So, we decided to leave it natural with only a coat of Watco danish oil to bring out the color. It's so pretty!

Fresh oil on the left, untreated on the right.

My favorite piece so far. That dark piece in the middle is also cedar. SO dark and red. Each piece is a little different.

I'm not sure how long this little work-on-the-house vacation will last, but anything is something at this point.

Trim added around the door.

RJ starting on the trim around the windows. Yes, baby jesus, YES!

The saga continues...

Quick Little Update

Like many things in life, the house is moving along at the pace of a turtle. It's full blown crunch time for RJ and his current job, so he's there every day doing finishing work. BUT, on Monday we closed on the small second mortgage that will allow us to get started (eventually--AT LEAST I can order materials) and then finish the downstairs bath, the addition siding and trim/baseboard stuff.

On my career front, however, I feel like I've been thrown into a pit of wolves. Well, not quite like that but I've been mostly unemployed with a verrrrrry flexible schedule for many months and suddenly...I'm not and have no free time at all. Do I love it? Yes. Is it causing me to snap at people and eat too much sugar? Perhaps. Working on that.

But before I run off, I got a small little pot of basil as well as a new purple hanging plant for the front porch--something I wanted last year when we finished the outside but didn't live in it yet. It is glorious. It is purple. And to RJ's relief, I can put off bitching about things not being done for at least another week.

Yay. 

Sir Basil. 

Fees and Finishing: A Neverending Saga

Mann House Phase 237:

This blog has a lot to do with building a house on an extremely small budget. Most of you know that this year has been rough for us financially to say the least. Rough mostly BECAUSE of this little house project.

A few weeks ago, I started thinking, huh...even though RJ is making money again and I'll soon be starting 4+ months of employment at Creede Rep, my mom and step-dad are coming to visit in mid-June. And staying with us. So...how are we going to get this freakin' downstairs bathroom done in a timely manner AND out of pocket...? And oh god the siding...

In any case, shit needs to happen. And soon. I decided to ask the bank what it would take to add a bit more of a balance onto our mortgage/construction escrow loan in order to finish our final, larger projects. These projects include the downstairs bath, siding/paint on the addition, and trim/baseboard throughout the house. We had tapped out the last of the original loan in December. Though it got us to the point of moving in, the loan is based on the appraisal of the finished house. And while there's technically no time limit required to finish it, for our mental and financial sanity we need to get this thing done.

I told RJ early on in this process that I never wanted to live in a construction site. And truthfully, he's kept it all pretty well under control. I also accept the fact that he/we will be constantly "improving" this house and I'm all for that. And I also know that RJ truly does want to finish it as much as I do. But I can only take uncovered walls and no trim for so many months before I start emotionally eating Hostess products on a daily basis.

I want to add that putting together an estimate for a construction loan/refinance when you've never done anything like it before is a huge learning experience, complete with a good dose of failure. As I may have mentioned before, when you apply for this type of loan and are doing the work yourself, they have you write out a detailed budget. VERY early on. So, you do the best you can. But, you always end up underestimating or leaving SOMETHING out. And oh...did we do both these things. Plus, when you work on an older structure, terrible surprises are around every rotting corner. We didn't figure in that the homeowner's insurance, property taxes, and flood insurance we didn't know we needed, would be escrowed in and therefore taken out of the total construction loan. That, plus realizing that doing the plumbing ourselves was basically impossible if we wanted to move in before the end of the year, left us with a lot less money for materials than originally anticipated.

So, I emailed the bank. They responded to my request and it's a bit more complicated than simply adding on to the balance of the original loan (of course). As I understand it, in order to balance out the debt to appraisal ratio of the original loan, we have to go from a 15 year to a 30 year mortgage and then add a second, short term mortgage for the additional funds, which are well under $10,000. We got a second opinion from RJ's former banker sister-in-law to make sure the details seemed sound. She said they did. On the plus side, we'll have a bit of a cheaper mortgage payment, though the interest is a bit higher on the second mortgage. But this will allow us to get all the major stuff finished. We've sent in the necessary fees (OF COURSE) to set this up and now we wait for approval in the form of an updated appraisal, which is done simply from a paperwork standpoint (and costs $150 frickin' dollars!!!) and then we can close for another couple hundred dollars. (Sick of fees yet? I certainly am.) Once that happens, we can start to pull money from the new loan to pay for the materials, exactly like we did the first time around.

In my ideal world, this will happen in a week--though I'm not optimistic. Then we'll need to order the supplies, and some of it will have to be transported from Denver. Plus, my season at CRT starts in less than a week, so my time will be much more limited. And all the while, RJ is furiously finishing his current work project. So...we'll put our faith in the gods of housebuilding to pull this one off. Otherwise we'll be sharing our master bathroom with my parents. Awkward...

In small time news:
*I primed all the downstairs windows so they'll be ready for paint once the trim goes on and paint colors are selected.
*I also painted the large back door blue. Because why not.

Blue door. But it's not sad.

Rethinking It

One of the perks of having a house that's 80% done is that you can still make significant changes that don't require major effort. Looking back at November and December, we were very much in "git 'er done so we can move in as soon as humanly possible!" mode. We have now been living in the house for almost four months, and RJ has pretty much recovered from his plantar fasciitis/bone spur repair. It still aches at the end of the day, and probably will for a while as with any foot surgery. Though fortunately, the pain is nothing like it used to be. In any case, he's full speed ahead for a job that must be completed in a month. My point: the time he has to work on our house is very limited.

I wasn't planning on repainting anything this week. We'd talked seriously about the fact that we should. The jewel tone color (almost ruby) I'd picked for the ceiling, once paired with antique white walls, red oak flooring and the blue stained pine in the kitchen, looked...well, terrible. The photo I'd used as my inspiration had a jewel tone ceiling with the stark white walls and trim of an old city apartment. But our house had way too many other colors and tones going on to pull the ruby color off successfully.

Unexpectedly, while I was in Denver last week for an acting job, the friend who I was staying with gave us a $30 gift card and a five gallon bucket of unused primer as a house warming gift. Awesome. When I got home to Creede on Tuesday, I figured what the hell. In a month, Creede Rep would be starting up and I'd have no time to do stuff like this. We had about two gallons left of the color we painted the walls initially (vanilla bean) and I had free primer. I spent the gift card on a couple gallons of a lighter white (to lighten the vanilla bean juuuuuust a smidge), some paint tray liners and super shitty rollers (more on those later). After my gift card, the grand total was only $16! Yes!

Now, it wouldn't be a Berry Mann blog post if I didn't point out something that sucks about this process. I don't know if any of you have ever painted a ceiling, but it sucks balls. I've gotten better at it. I'm more comfortable using an extender and roller kit. But it's a damn hard job and quite a shoulder workout. Your neck gets sore from constantly looking up, and using your upper body to smoosh paint all over the ceiling is not an action the occasional painter is used to. And you have to be somewhat coordinated or you'll get paint everywhere and in places you DON'T want it to go. (Side note: When not feverishly rushing to move into our house, I found taking things slowly makes for a much better job done.)

That said...about the shitty rollers. RJ had told me to buy the nice rollers but I didn't listen. Ms. Budget-Friendly thought, oh, the cheap three pack is okay it's just primer plus I can just throw them out when I'm done. FAIL! The thing about shitty rollers is--they don't hold much paint, they streak and run and are just altogether terrible things of the devil. But when a fantastic roller cost $5 for one, and the crappy ones cost $5 for three...well, we all make mistakes. The unfortunate result being, (though I did buy a better roller for the actual paint) there are visible roller marks all over the ceiling. The good news is that it's a very light color and not terribly noticeable unless you feel like starting at our ceiling. And it makes the house look old, which is an aesthetic RJ and I like. But I learned my lesson with the cheap rollers. Never again. NEVAH!

After you spend 4 1/2 hours priming over a ruby colored ceiling, the painting is like heaven. Paint is thicker, it goes on more smoothly and therefore takes less time. So, I had the whole thing finished in another three hours.

But why stop there?! I mean, the tarp and paint supplies are already out, the furniture is moved out of the way, let's do it! RJ and I met at the local hardware to look at paint colors for the wall. We'd talked about an orangish red for the living room. It would bring out the beautiful red oak in the floor and still create the visual pop I'd intended with the failed ruby ceiling. For an additional, yet reasonable 40 bucks, I walked out with a gallon of "Crush" and a cheap gallon of a mis-mix to use as a primer. A mis-mix occurs when a paint color doesn't turn out right and/or isn't what the customer wanted. They'll sell it for a big discount just to get it out of there. Oddly, this particular mis-mix was eerily similar to the ruby color we JUST painted on the ceiling. Weird. In any case, I was off!

Why the hell use a ruby colored primer you may ask! There is yet another crappy thing about painting I learned about while finishing the outside of the house last May. One would logically think that a dark color would easily cover over a lighter one. It's actually the opposite. If your primer isn't darkened, you'll spend the entire day putting on coat after coat after coat to cover that light color. For the siding we had them put as much black as possible into the white primer, so it would be grey. For those of you who've seen those photos, you'll notice this. And while a second coat is usually needed to even everything out, red covers grey easily. And actually...any darker color will work.

Clockwise from top left: 1. Priming ceiling. 2. Priming finished. 3. Ceiling painted and wall primer on (bizarro). 4. Finished! (Well...you know)

While hanging the artwork back up tonight, I found that with a colorful wall, I no longer needed the "art wall". I moved several pieces to other parts of the house. And honestly, even though we still have no trim or baseboard (yes, yes, RJ knows!), it's feeling more and more like home. And I keep being reminded that I really like making things!

A novel thought. Art in the dining room. 

Little extra awesome things:

We moved the refrigerator out of the center of the kitchen and it looks way better. After living with the small retro fridge at the cabin, a modern day side-by-side seems HUUUUGE. It had become the focus of the kitchen and that shit just ain't right.

We have drawers in the kitchen! RJ spent most of Tuesday making them perfect. We still need doors on the cabinets (as well as the rest of the cabinets) but it's the little things, folks.

As the weather is getting warmer, I installed screens on all the windows we have screens for. Colorado may not have many mosquitos, but man does it have flies. Horrid creatures. I spent 30 minutes Tuesday night chasing about seven of them around with a fly swatter. Dagnabbit. Screens!

Now I just need some baseboard and trim...someday.

Backyard Blues

There's so much left to do (on the 20% of the house that still needs doin') it's a bit overwhelming sometimes. As we've finally start making a little bit of money again, both of us have gotten antsy to get things moving on the finishing of our beloved home--though no big projects are possible until RJ gets his current job done by its late spring deadline. So, in sticking with projects that are easy on the wallet, we celebrated the joys of manual labor this weekend and sort of, almost, created a semblance of a backyard...that's almost ready for grass!

Recently, one of the top priorities in Houseland became moving things around in the backyard, which is almost more visible to people than the front yard, that contains two, big, pine trees. Right now, across the alley from us is the parking lot of the "Gift and Gas", which is the only gas station in town. Locals and tourists obviously frequent this location for gas, sodas, ding dongs, Colorado belt buckles and night lights (you think I'm kidding...).

When B (the previous tenant) lived on the property, in addition to the hoarding that extended through the entire backyard, he had a tall fence covered in an art-like installation of aggression towards the many persons he felt had screwed him over in some way. As I've mentioned in previous posts, this fence held upon it elaborate signs of anger and woe, nooses, even a toilet seat (you think I'm kidding...). The inception of this whole crazy house project started in that very backyard, where RJ and two of his friends had been hired to clean up.

Long story short: in the middle of the backyard clean up, one of RJ's friends had mentioned that the owner of the house had wanted to sell the structure and property for dirt cheap simply to not have to deal with it all anymore (it had been very close to being condemned). Though I'm anxious to see them now, I may have mentioned before that I was not allowed to see any of the "before" photos (or even inside the actual house) due to RJ's fear that I would wonder what in the name of Jeebus we had gotten ourselves into, and back out of the whole thing. But I do know this: that it was a complete shit show to say the very least.

In the last year, we've done a lot of work back there already. I've moved the same stack of random wood back and forth approximately 46 times (well, maybe three), and we've aggressively used a backhoe on it to remove the old addition and dig out a spot for the new one.

But back to privacy. We essentially have none back there. If we have the lights on, you can see right into the ground floor through our large glass door. Yes, we could hang some blinds, but it's low on the priority list for that particular spot--we've spent most of our winter evenings upstairs. We also found out that the new owners of the Gift and Gas may be starting their own remodeling project as early as tomorrow.

The new plan is to stabilize and move the garage (let's be honest, it's only big enough to be a tool shed, which we mostly cleaned out earlier this month) so that the length of it is parallel with the alley and then add some privacy fencing on either side, closing off the gaps. We will then add some high-altitude-loving grass and a small deck. RJ will re-side the garage (it's ugly as shiiiiiit) so it looks less like a white trash shop of horrors.

What remains one of the most satisfying things about these budget-friendly projects (usually costing only the paltry charge of a trip to the dump) is throwing. shit. away. I love it. I admit it. RJ has a slight tendency to want to hold on to certain things (for good reason--he makes old stuff absolutely sing in terms of design) but can easily be persuaded to let something go once I make "that face".

So, I spent yesterday once again hauling the pile of random wood to the other side of the yard to make way for the garage move, and created a pile of semi-organized "good stuff" and a nice big pile of "throw that shit out." We also raked leaves, filled in holes with rocks and soil and generally leveled everything out. Today, we actually put the pile of trash into the trash trailer. Sooooo gooooood.

Then I enjoyed a Dr. Pepper and a feeling of accomplishment.

You think I'm kidding...

Look, LOOK! It's even ground with a nice, organized pile of random wood.
Ready for grass, yo!

The pile for the dump. Ahhhhhhh.

Gift and Gas parking lot across the way, with just the top salmon colored gas station building visible to the left.

Other People's Surgery

I'm usually reluctant to write too much about my husband. He's a fairly introverted and private person. But I wanted to write about his experience mainly because I'd gone through something similar somewhat recently. As my six readers most likely know, I got hip labral repair surgery just 18 months ago. I blogged about it all--the pain, the recovery, the depression. Angry Crutches Game Face emerged as a sort of anthem of our time...well, not really, but because of it I felt slightly better about feeling fucking terrible.

This time, it was RJ's turn.

Two days ago he had surgery on his right heel to break up a bone spur and relieve some terrible plantar fasciitis. He'd been living with this pain for several years, almost as long as I'd known him. And perhaps due to the recent Medicaid expansion, he was able to have the surgery without sending us into terrible medical debt.

The foot. Poor foot. 

Lucky, I have had the time to be home with him, helping with whatever he needs. It's strange and difficult to see such a big, powerful guy first full of drugs, then in terrible pain, and now entering into the very real feelings of frustration, boredom and uselessness. Unlike my surgery, which was on a joint, RJ should be able to get around pretty well in a week or two, and at least be able to go back to work in a limited capacity. When he was released from the surgery with his big black boot, the surgeon told me he could walk on his foot at once with no damage to it. Jealous!

What they recommend with his type of repair is that you get a nerve block, which completely numbs your leg from the knee down and can last from 1 1/2 to two days. The anesthesiologist hooks up an ultrasound machine, locates the nerve, and then carefully injects the numbing agent around both sides of the nerve. This was pretty cool because you could watch the doctor perform the whole thing.

Just before, RJ had been given some meds to help him relax. Those lovely drugs are the best part of surgery, I think. Instantly I saw his eyes glaze over, and then out of his mouth comes this:

RJ: What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?
Nurses: What?
RJ: A stick. (Hee hee)

On his "four beer buzz," he told several more jokes before being wheeled off into the OR. Luckily for RJ, he was only put into "twilight" in terms of anesthesia. So, while not aware of what was going on in surgery, he would spend way less time coming out of it in recovery.

The few times I have been into surgery, they've knocked me completely out. I'm a lightweight with drugs and alcohol anyway, so when I come out of it, it takes hours and I struggle with nausea, dry mouth, and insanity. I. hate. it.

RJ didn't have ANY of that. He was what he called, "fuzzy" for a few hours, but he had no nausea or vomiting, so we made the two hour trip from Durango back to Creede and were home by 1:30 in the afternoon. We got him upstairs resting comfortably, and he complained about how weird the numb leg felt--as though you had a limb that was constantly asleep.

We'd been told that his nerve block would last about 36 hours. His lasted just over 12. I mean, he's a big ass dude, so this wasn't totally surprising. I had dozed off a bit around 9pm when he woke me in terrible pain. He spent the next 24 hours taking the blessed Oxy, not sleeping, and trying not to throw up from the intense pain.  He described it as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his heel. Thankfully, yesterday in the early evening, the intensity began to subside and he could finally sleep. Today has been much less of a battle. He's bored. He's not in much pain until he moves the foot, and hopefully in the next week he will be able to get around fairly normally with his boot.

Das Boot, which looks somewhat like this. But has a little pump on it for more stability.

It seems that the big difference between our respective surgeries is pain and recovery. While I didn't have too much intense pain, because my repair was on a joint, I could bare way less weight on my leg. I was on crutches for a full two weeks and had very limited movement. RJ seems to have had much more pain initially, but his mobility should return quickly.

In any case, the hope is that he will eventually be in WAY less pain in the long run and stop getting fatigued at 3pm because it feels like he's been standing on a nail all day.

This wouldn't be a Mann's World if I didn't post something about the house, even if a it's small thing:

Yesterday the parents of some friends of mine, who own a fine dining restaurant in Dallas, saved and brought to Creede several cool wooden wine boxes at my request. I planned on possibly using them as cabinets in the bathroom. Well...they look friggin' rad! They fit our house and our aesthetic, were cheap (read: free) and super easy to install. I did it myself in less than half an hour. Had I not had a connection to these boxes, you can usually call a larger liquor store--I inquired at Argonauts in Denver--and they'll sell them to you for cheap. They quoted me $5. Anyway...

Behold the majesty:

An elegant place for your petite tp. 

Stuff we regularly use in the open box, the other two contain storage.

Death, TV, and a Guest Room

As I sit at my desk, breathing in the fumes from the polyurethane and stain I used today, I can't help but think...what a fucking week.

But first...this is mostly a blog about my house, and though we've been on pause for the last month, RJ's brother mentioned recently that he wanted to come down for the Super Bowl this Sunday. This, in addition to another friend of RJ's who takes one winter weekend a year to go snowboarding at the nearby Wolf Creek Ski area, wanting to visit soon. Currently, we can provide a comfy loveseat that would likely suffice for someone under 30. But, dammit, isn't this what being a responsible adult with your own house is for?! Providing pleasant accommodations for your buddies! So, this weekend, I cleaned out the guest bedroom (aka tool storage) and prepared it for some flooring. Sunday, RJ installed more of the lovely blue stained pine we have in many places in the house. I put the first coat of polyurethane on Monday, with a second coat going on 24 hours later. By Weds., we'll move the guest bed out of storage and into the room. Combined with a kick ass little desk/table thing I picked up, we will now be able to provide a semi-finished sleeping experience for our visitors.

That's the good news. That, and I was on a network tv show last week, which was pretty cool. Yay, Acting!

In other news, we had to put our giant pup Buford down this past Tuesday. He was an amazing and loving English Mastiff we had for over 5 years. He was around 10 or 11. His age was only a guess because when RJ got him through his brother in 2008, the shelter said he was 4 or 5. Large dogs like the English Mastiff, have a life span of 6-10 years. Not long at all. Being so big is murder on their hearts and joints. So, for a giant dog, he was doing pretty well. But in the last year, his arthritic knees were clearly causing him pain. We put him on an anti-inflammatory as well as paid medication, but for the last few weeks, it didn't seem to be helping much. A couple of weeks ago, his back right ankle swelled up like a tennis ball and he could barely put any weight on it. It was around this time that he started hiding behind the dining room table instead of on his bed, which he's never done. He was clearly in pain and facing the end. We could either keep him around for us and watch him totally lose the ability to walk, or end his pain. We chose the latter. Tuesday morning, he was spoiled with treats and hot dogs, and I spent a long time with his big head in my lap. Around 11am, a couple of friends came by and helped us get Buford and his bed into the back of a truck. RJ rode with him in the back to our vet, Dr. Howard. They administered the pink vial of death in the back of the truck. Buford was a champ. Being as old as he was, his veins kept collapsing, so it took a while to find a good vein. But he remained calm throughout the pricking ordeal. We stroked his sweet face, while the injection slowly went in. He gave a couple of sighs, like he would do when I would rub his ears with my thumbs (his favorite thing) and let go. What a sweet, sweet doggie. We assume he is wherever doggies go, "running" after something little and fuzzy. Rest in Peace, dear Buford.

In addition to being sweet, he was also hilarious.

Then, early Saturday afternoon, I received a call from my mom that my last living grandparent, Bill Nunn, had died that morning. This was not a surprise. He was 91 and a half years old and had lost my grandma early last year. Honestly, we were all surprised he lasted nearly a year after her. My mom had called me earlier last week to tell me he'd been moved to hospice.

He spent his last year reading a lot, and having a lot of trouble with his short term memory. It was simply old age forgetfulness. One of my favorite memories of Grandpa Bill was the fact that up until a couple of years ago when he had to be attached to an oxygen machine because of emphysema (he smoked for over 50 years--don't smoke, kids!), he would get up in the morning, get on his rowing machine and then lift weights. He loved black coffee and sandwiches. He preferred to converse with you in the kitchen of their house in Terrace Park because, my mother told me, he could hear best in that room. For as long as I can remember, my grandpa had worn hearing aids. They would buzz and sing out loud every once in a while. His obit is here.

Toasting at their 60th wedding anniversary in June of 2004.

Together again. Or what you will.

Like I've said, it's been a pretty crazy week. I head out Thursday to Ohio to attend Grandpa Bill's memorial. I was unable to attend my grandma's because of a show. Then, in opposite land, I'll continue on to North Carolina to visit my best girlfriend and her 6 week old son, Isaac. Life goes on.

I recently read an article about Russians who just couldn't believe the one word answer most American's give to the question, "How are you?"  A Russian wanted to tell you EXACTLY how they were--bunions, divorces and all. Whereas Americans use the phrase mostly as a simple greeting. So...how am I? I'm okay. I've been lucky that death hasn't come to my immediate family in much of a tragic way. I've always been able to accept death in old age, when one has lived a long and full life. But one's awareness of death does eat away at you a bit. You can't help but think about your own mortality. And that a part of your own life is over. About 14 months ago, my grandparents moved out of the house and little town they'd lived in for 60 years. No more staying in their house for a visit. No more gatherings in the kitchen and eating Capt Crunch and riding the old Schwinn to the local pool. That is what I miss. Those little things are gone and it's time to make some new memories. As a result, I am kind of tired, and sad, and just...ugh. But looking forward to getting out of Creede for a bit.

Okay, enough Bummy McBummerton.

Come visit, friends! The guest accommodations will continue to improve. We can hang out around the kitchen table. I'll even pick up some Capt. Crunch!

And now...pictures!

Bathroom door now matches everything else.

Right after I cleaned. Ahhhhhhh.

Sweet little table I picked up and distressed, since the paint was peeling on the top pretty badly anyway. We really can put this anywhere.

Bedroom door. Voila!

Floor and first coat of poly down!

I wake up to these two animals eyeballin' me!