Some people are afraid of color in their homes. Or maybe they just don’t care about color. I was one of those people. I thought that walls in a home should just disappear, that it’s what you hang on them that matters. Maybe color on walls can take away from whatever it is you want to hang on them. But life is too short to live in a beige world, I think.
While working on the house, I’ve been working on these two as well. It’s getting better. Spanky (the cat) want to snuggle, while Rou wants to herd. This is the compromise. A somewhat tenuous truce but the beginnings of a real truce nonetheless.
Although I’ve had to scale back my expectations for the hovel as a livable space in the near term, I do have some goals. I want to be finished with the entry, media and living rooms as well as have one working toilet before 2011.
When I first bought this place, it was a tragic wreck. But I didn’t care. I was actually considering stapling AstroTurf to the floor and walls, adopting ten dogs from the pound and turning it into a big playhouse with balls and sticks, plenty of good food and fun - lending credence to the term rough-housing. It was going to be a space devoted to dogs, guitars, and beer.
My hero Greg has left town. Going back to school after a short summer working on my house. He (we) got a lot done. I owe him huge for his creative efforts.
We had been planning and plotting how to get this 300 pound gorilla in the house and into place, then we decided it was overkill. More beam than we needed, so Greg shaved off about 6 inches, reducing the weight by maybe 30%. Then another friend happened by to ask a question about audio interfaces and offered to lend a hand with the beam. So, we just did it! Ahead of schedule!
The beam is up! The beam is up!
In producing the as-built drawings, we discovered the roof was being held up by momentum. That is, there wasn’t much real support holding the roof up, so it looks as though the roof is staying up because it already is up. Since it’s sagging and big snow events may happen in the future, I decided to put in new supports. This means tearing out the old ceiling. A big mess. It also means new structural support, not only for the ceiling but for the floor, because support must go all the way to the ground.
