The Last Nail

Not Enough Detail? Me?

2005-04-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

This is the Man-Room as of two hours ago. As most of you know already, it is my prison. Within it's spidery confines I have crafted the set of plans which will guide me through this adventure. I have this thing: I pace like a caged tiger - back and forth, back and forth - drives people nuts. But in the Man-Room it doesn't matter. So I finally got rid of the stool and jacked up the front of my drawing table so I can stand and draw. Stand and draw and pace. "Need to see more measurements," the building dept. tells me the other day. I was keeping the plans simple and elegant - Japanese style - but they didn't go for it. Wow, for the first time in my life I didn't give enough detail.

Museum of Unnatural History: Part 7

2005-04-22T19:12:00.001-07:00

an ongoing log of the bonus items that came with my house...

Real Estate Rule of Thumb: Property value is always elevated by the presence of haunted kiddie pools. Kiddie pools hidden away in the woods are creepy enough, but when you lie awake at night imagining moonlit snarling demon kids dancing in a kiddie pool filled with human blood, it makes you want to cry yourself to sleep in Man-Diapers.

Unidentified Rotting Object (URO)

2005-04-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

"Hey, nice thing with trap door and handles." That's what I would say if I had the honor to go back and time and walk by the property when this contraption was first built. Imagine this thing when it was BRAND NEW. How impressive it must have looked. All handle-like and trap-door-like....
... Can someone please tell me what the hell this is?

Blasted Rocks!

2005-04-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

Depth is in the eye of the beholder. To some this may just look like a rock. A rock that could be flipped over with a spade shovel and then harvested for its tasty supply of centipedes and earwigs. Did your mouth just water? Are you one of those run-naked-and-feed-at-night types? Good, come on over and harvest, I will recruit you into my army of ghouls. However, I look at this rock and you know what I see? Dynamite. Fucking dynamite. Because that's what I'm going to have to use on this thing if it goes as deep and wide as I think it does. I was walking around and they're everywhere, surfacing in gray humps like a Loch Ness Monster photo. Lets hope they're just big rocks that can be moved with an excavator - Or bedrock that's tame enough that it can be broken up.

Card Trick

2005-04-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

Everyone gives me business cards, and in a week I can’t remember if I met them a week ago or a year ago, or if I like them or hate them. See, my present day self always tries to trick my future self and play pranks. I'll get a card from a subcontractor and think, "I'll remember meeting this guy, no problem. His name is Robert Janey. Bob. Bobby. He's wearing a yellow shirt. He's an electrician. He's flesh and blood, I can smell his bad breath and his eyes are blue and he's a real-life human and this is really occurring in time with witnesses and a dog barking in the background and therefore it is burned in history forever" and then a week later I find the card and think, "who the hell is Robert Janey?" I never ever remember. It's pathetic. Then one day I became a genius and now I write on the back of every card where and when I met them and I check the backs of the cards to refresh my memory. It's like that movie, Memento.

Bread and Butter

2005-04-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

Ahh... the Full Length Roof Framer by A.F.J. Riechers (yeah, that's RIEchers not REIchers. Don't be a smart ass and try to trace the German spelling and prove that it should be Reichers like some kid already tried to do to me when I told him about it) And Yes - it really is that small. Back pocket action. Although I have a bunch of construction book recommendations, this particular one is really is not for the general masses, because it's really just a big list of rafter lengths according to pitch, span and type with some instruction on roof framing in the intro. I'll be using this book all the time when I start framing the roof. I used it just a week ago when I was consulting about a blueprint takeoff to decide what length rafter stock I needed. The book is old school - trusted companion to carpenters since 1917. That was when carpenters had one giant arm like a fiddler crab from swinging a hammer and ripping wood with a hand saw all day. Those old timers must be turning in their graves when we bitch about our high-tech nail guns and circular saws -- "The new foam grip on the Senco is giving me a blister inside my palm, Jesus, can't they get it right? Hey, Barry, could you pass the cottage cheese and lowfat ricecakes?"

Museum of Unnatural History: Part 6

2005-04-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

An ongoing log of the "bonus items" that came with my house...

This is without a doubt the rarest find ever that I have ever found ever. Can you believe it? - an ACTUAL PREHISTORIC SEA LION SKELETON. Fully intact. And I own it. Just a stunning discovery. Scientists have been theorizing for decades about the giant saltwater rivers that used to run all over Massachusetts five hundred pentaquadzillion years ago, and now I found proof that not only did those huge rivers exist, but they were, indeed, teeming with the shy and elusive Marsupial Sea Lion or, as it is affectionately known as on the third floor of Harvard's Ancient Studies wing: "The River Yeti."

"Holy Quick Fix, Batman!"

2005-04-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

Bathroom plaster unsightly and crumbling? Need a temporary fix until you renovate? Do like my girl did and wallpaper over it with comic books. Get them at tag sales for a nickel a piece and go nuts. Just make sure you're not playing cut-and-paste with Fantastic Four #1 or something. If you can't afford used comic books, then use newspapers. If you can't afford used newspapers then ... I don't know what to tell you. You got major problems.

Garage Gets Extension on Life

2005-04-08T06:59:00.001-07:00

Don't be fooled by the photo. My garage may look cutesy "ye olden tyme" rustic, but it's really a rotting dank shanty house that smells like burnt mouse heads, spent motor oil, and steaming cat shit. There was a time way back when I was considering pouring both the addition foundation and the new garage foundation at the same time, but I scrapped it for money and time reasons. It's common to break up the pours like that actually. Oftentimes because of space issues - can't always have two giant holes next to eachother or the diggers and trucks have no way to get into the back and nowhere to put all the fill. Mixers can't get back, so you have to have hire a pump to sit in the front yard and boom over the house, and that's another 700 bucks -- there can be a bunch of reasons. It varies job to job, of course. With me, I just don't have the lettuce to do both right now. I don't want to be in a situation where I can't afford a plasterer on the main house because the cash is tied up in the garage foundation, know what I mean?

Trowel Movement

2005-04-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

This is me troweling a freshly poured footing. Rough on the left. Smooth on the right. Any questions? Good, now we'll study "how to take out the garbage."
No, no, no still not my house, dammit. Pretty straightforward this work. Like making a cake. Pour the batter in, let it bake, and presto! - a foundation! Someone asked me if this work is difficult. I thought about it, and no, for the most part residential foundations are not that difficult (unless you get into a really weird shape or dicey conditions). It's back-breaking, but it's not difficult. I think tricky is a better word. It's definitely tricky. The layout, the assembly, the steel. To me tricky means that out of the 50 things that you have to remember during the process, not a single one is difficult, but if you forget one of those fifty things or ignore one, you fucked everything up. And it's not like my mistakes doing carpentry where I pull some nails for a morning and rebuild it. When you botch concrete layout, you could be stuck with an 80 ton mistake. We're talking jackhammers, excavators and dump trucks fixing your stupid mistake for a week. You feel like a total retard - like the time I was working at a deli counter as a teenager and I asked a fat lady when she was expecting and she wasn't.

Museum of Unnatural History: Part 5

2005-04-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

An ongoing log of the “Bonus Items” that came with my house...

This pleasant addition to the Museum of Unnatural History is missing its eyes and both its forelegs. So cute! The arrow holes in the chest and neck give you that warm fuzzy eggnogy feeling. Makes we want to have a whole giant army of life-size foam humans. I could crowd them together in the backyard, stand on the top of my van, and yell commands to them through an orange safety cone like I’m their king. “Rise, young Foamulans! Mount your StyroSteeds and rise up AGAINST YOUR OPPRESSOR!!!... Oh wait, that's me. Scratch that. Uh... rise and... go get me some barbeque.”

Another One Down!

2005-04-01T06:16:00.000-08:00

Doing a home renovation is like being Bruce Lee in "Game of Death." Faking your own death and getting fitted for a bumble-bee-colored race car suit are not crucial parts of the initial stages, but that's up to you. There's this giant Chinese temple and you got to waste each dude on each level with LIGHTNING QUICK!-HITE! HITE! HITE! Jeet Kune Do moves. One by one you paint the bamboo floors with enemies' sorry-ass blood and move up until you are the martial arts master and have exacted revenge on the underworld that has wronged you. Yesterday, I got past the first level with hardly a scratch. The new structural plans came back from the engineered lumber supplier with all the calculations, and I met with my guy and we went over every detail. All I gotta do is make adjustments to some of the other drawings, and then I'm ready to battle the next guy: The Building Dept. And those guys know crazy karate moves and will have you in a choke hold and eagle-claw your eyes out in seconds, but I will reverse! Double thumbs to the ears! Praying Mantis HITE! HITE! to the nose!! And WATTAAAA! SPIN KICK! How's your larynx, SUCKA!!

Actual Progress vs. Perceived Progress

2005-03-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

Yeah, OK. You may know you're making crazy progress on your home improvement project, but a lot of times you're the only one that can see it, and your wife/girlfriend/significant other just thinks you're a procrastinating sack of shit who is getting nothing done and ruining her life. You have 4 ways of dealing with this.
1. Shut them down: Tell your accuser, "Buzz off - It'll get done if you quit your bellyaching." Bad idea. I don't recommend this unless you feel like having no sex for a month.
2. Take them to a safe island: Pretend you're a grown man and muster some patience. Walk them through it one more time explaining the process (again) and what the target dates are for each stage (again). Get a shoebox and make a diorama like in 3rd grade. Use Lego people and cream cheese for plaster.
3. Give the appearance of progress: This sounds like a joke but it's not. It's something that subcontractors do for contractors, contractors do for developers, etc. it's not a bad thing. This doesn't mean that you craft a fake world in which your life is a pathetic charade of phony progress. I'm saying sometimes you have to drop what you're doing and go start something else just to make someone else see with their own eyes that things are getting done.
4. Get Freaky: Make up an excuse that has nothing to do with construction, and find a way to tie it in with shaving your entire body and receiving "powerful instructions" from the jackal-headed God, Anubis. You will be left alone for the remainder of the project.

Museum of Unnatural History: Part 4

2005-03-26T06:12:00.000-08:00

Keeping these creepy rotted doghouses and the rusted chains inside them was pivotal for our end of the sale. They're like condemned mental hospitals haunted by the souls of all the patients that were tortured and abandoned within it’s evil confines. But like a good version of that with dogs and it's not state-funded and it's way smaller and there's no nurses.

Ugly Situation Thwarted by Steel Plate!

2005-03-24T16:04:00.000-08:00

On the evening of the very first night that we slept in the new house, I took a long look at the back door. The wood around the strike plate was badly damaged. The jamb had been crudely repaired a number of times, and one of the solid fir stiles of the door was split all the way through. Great - I thought - someone bashed the door in. And it looked like it may have happened more than once. I opened and closed the door eight hundred times and watched everything and I didn't like it. Things just didn't catch right. And the repairs were flimsy. I got to work. Removed all the cheese-dick "repairs," put in a steel plate, and replaced the flimsy knobs with a deadbolt. Well, several hours later my fiancée and I woke up to the sounds of someone trying to bash in our back door. She reached for the phone, and I grabbed a table leg and went to confront the soon-to-be dead person. When I got to the back door they were gone. I lurked around in the shadows in my underwear the rest of the night with the table leg and a carving knife, but he never came back. Lucky I put that plate in!

Intermission

2005-03-23T00:58:00.000-08:00

In Brooklyn for the weekend hanging out with future family so I didn't post anything on the site. Wish I could get my mitts on one of those brick row houses and restore it. Run down, most of it, but twelve foot ceilings, roof gardens, the whole nine. Lot of work but what a score it would be, huh? Snapped this photo on my way to a pastry shop for some layered deliciousness and a cup of steaming black coffee. Hot coffee and pastry on a cold rainy day... a swell combination I assure you.

Theory of Relativity

2005-03-18T05:12:00.000-08:00

No, no, no, it's not my foundation. Not yet. Poured a footing for an addition on a house that's already got 4,000 sf. Weird. Whatever. You see how stiff the mix is? That's good - (even though I was supposed to be over there poking it instead of taking photos, hence the overflowing you see). Higher compressive strength when it cures. So right after I take this photo the Mixer Driver starts giving me pointers on photography.
"Know what I learned about photos?" he says "My niece loves this shit. She says you gotta put something in there to get the idea of how big something is. Something alongside it. Or in the beforeground of it to see--"
"Perspective," my boss chimes in. "things arranged in the different layers to give an idea of space or relative size ."
"Chrissakes, how the fuck-"
"He knows everything," I say. And no kidding, the guy does. I've seen him translate Latin, flirt in French, correct people about Native American history, Napoleon's defeat, and the economic significance of the Cotton Gin. More about him later.
My boss spits, harpoons a snowbank with a shovel, leans on it, and says "Yeah, I use that all the time with my girlfriend. Whenever I take my pants off in front of her I always make sure to hold a Bic pen a few inches in front of my dick to make me look huge. "
Mixer Driver laughs, "Trickery, I like it. Fuckin David Copperfield."
My boss: "Yeah, but the problem is I end up making the pen look big."

Magic Ticket

2005-03-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

There was something blue on the floor of a diner I ate at the other day. I usually don't pick shit up off of diner floors but I liked the color blue of this thing so I picked it up. Flipped it over and it was a ticket. A ticket to "Admit One Adult" to the Circus that was coming to town. Now c'mon, if that's not fate I don't know what is. Plus, you don't understand, my fiancée loves the circus. So double fate on you, sucka. Couple weeks later I took her to see it. Not a fancypants Cirque Du Soleil circus, mind you, and not a carnival - a circus. A blow-through-town circus. But a real ace one. Boy, it was like sorcery. Like a dream. I can't get the image out of my head of the aging Ring Master with his back turned to me, a giant embroidered tiger crawling over his shoulder and down to the tails of his worn cutaway coat, gloved hand stretching eerily through the machine-made fog toward the next act. The image keeps crashing into me, popping like a blown light bulb.

Museum of Unnatural History: Part 3

2005-03-16T17:40:00.000-08:00

The house came with some truly beautiful details. This rare and attractive “Placeless Fireplace” offers the corner-of-the-eye impression of a fireplace, but a straight-on glance reveals no actual place in which to build a fire. Kind of like when you’re in a store and some freaky guy is staring at you, and you turn and say “what the fuck are you looking at, Jack” and you realize it’s a mannequin. I was considering making this the centerpiece of the whole foyer design, but I was shocked, shocked I tell you!, to find that the stones were stick-on foam replicas of real stones.

Crime Scene

2005-03-15T05:31:00.000-08:00

I want to start a new division of the police called the Forensic Building Squad. Their sole job is to recreate home improvement scenes to figure out why homeowners love to take out the SUPPORTING COLUMNS OF THEIR OWN HOUSES. Problem is: "tax dawlahs, baby" - no one's gonna want to dish out for this new unit, so I gotta do this myself. The crime you see here was particularly heinous. Lally column removed under the carrying beam. Shoe scuffs on the floor indicate a repetitive spinning motion - a motion we forensic experts like to describe as "festive." We believe the homeowner enjoyed twirling around with their eyes closed like in the beginning of The Sound of Music and removed the support column to achieve a running spin or "lunar orbit" motion. Temporary jack-posts (seen above) have been installed by our team to support the victim.

An Alliance is Made

2005-03-13T06:14:00.000-08:00

A new and improved lumber supplier stepped up to the plate and the guy's belting my fastballs out of the park like I'm a second string pitcher for the Latvian Nerf Softball Team. Such a relief when someone actually gives a shit (see this, this, and this to get up to speed). My rep was a contractor for 35 years and then went to work for the lumber supplier that he used for all those years. All around good karma with that circle. He sent my plans to his structural guy who is drawing up a brand spanking new set of framing plans using the engineered structural members that are appropriate for the job. Everything in apple pie order. Now I can relax, drink a bottle of Old Crow and go sledding.

Museum of Unnatural History: Part 2

2005-03-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

This is Fatty. Fatty's our cat because he came with the house. I don't mean he's a stray cat that scratched at the door and we let him in. I mean he really came with the house. So actually, he's not our cat, we're his new set of humans. He got his tail chopped off in a door slamming incident before we knew him. He’s super cool and knows when to hang and when to scram. When he sleeps he likes to hug those plastic trolls like in the photo on the right.

EX-Lumber Supplier

2005-03-10T06:19:00.000-08:00

Some private lumber yards are run like a battleship with kickass employees and dedicated knowledgable staff, and other times you get a place that should have been shut down years ago. Well, I got one of the bad ones. My lumber guy just dropped the ball completely like the semi-retarded knuckle-dragging dope that he came to be. How's your cranial ridge doing, pal. Passing it onto your offspring? Greeaaat. He seems to be waiting for me to drive over there, kidnap him, bring him to my secret CIA lab, do an entire 3D body scan of him, create a full size latex suit based on his digitized virtual self, put the suit on, steal his car, drive back to his lumber yard, sit at his desk and do his fucking job for him. I don't know if you ever digitized someone and walked around as a latex version of them, but it's a pain in the ass and I have to go make some money today. I'll make a stop at his competition before work and see if they want the business.

Museum of Unnatural History: Part 1

2005-03-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

The house we bought came with lots of "bonus material." One of the things that first drew us to this property was the solid concrete Lawn-Mammals. We negotiated hard for these beauties. You see, ever since my fiancée was a kid she always wanted statues of animals that look like they got caught in boat propellor. Look how the paint peels off their eyes in that endearing zombie kind of way.

I Can Predict the Future

2005-03-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

This is the wonderwoman jet version of what my house will look like when I'm through adding on to it. Twelve feet out the back and a second story. From a sardine can 3 bedroom 1 bath 950sf ranch to a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath 2300sf straight-front colonial. A master suite with walk-in-closet and full bath, open plan downstairs with fireplace, library, breakfast area and formal dining room. Big ass project, indeed. But whatever, forget that crap -- the house is just a reference point for the giant in the back. I put a giant in there so you can see just how big giants can be in comparison to a house and how freaky it is when they wear neckties. They can dig too. Boy can they dig, so don't even try to go underground when they decide to attack.

Go Away, Dumb Snow

2005-03-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

As soon as all this annoying white stuff goes away it's time to dig. The structural lumber guys are giving me a buzz later about the house plans I dropped off for review. Then I implement their changes and calculations and resubmit the plans and application to the Building Dept and within a week I'll have my permits. Been researching precast bulkheads (cast off-site, shipped and installed as a unit) vs. doing cast-in-place (formed and poured on site with the rest of the foundation). I've seen a lot of both, and I think the precast makes more sense both financially and logistically even though I work on a concrete crew and will be getting the foundation for the price of the concrete and coffee and sandwiches for the guys. Tough to beat those precast guys for that standard stuff.

A Whole Lotta Bull

2005-02-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

Dammit. This happens all the time. Just when you think you're a toughguy, you read a story about a guy who got crushed by a 1100 pound bull and then got up and had a beer.

"In 1989 or '90, a young bull gets my number. The bull, Rocket, short, fast and meaner than Hell. We come out of the chute into a fast flat spin to the left, all is going good until I lose my right foot..."

Read his tale...

The Man Room: Guy Turf or Prison?

2005-02-25T22:04:00.000-08:00

Upon moving into our new house I quickly declared the west bedroom the official Man-Room. Off limits to anyone but me. I could smoke cigars, drink whiskey, dissect things and my girl couldn't say a damn thing about it. I was shocked when she openly supported the idea. Even helped me set up the joint. Soon after my announcement, the truth behind her support became horrifyingly clear when she announced that entire rest of the house would now be the Woman-Lair.
Shanghaied again. Damn, she's good!

Demolition Man

2005-02-24T10:43:00.000-08:00

Today I dumped the debris from a kitchen renovation job I'm doing in Weston, MA. 940 pounds of plaster and wood. I love checking the slip to see the poundage. For some reason, making a house weigh less brings me great joy. When I start the demo phase on my house, however, trips with the van aren't going to cut it. Have to get some 30 yard containers in the driveway. If you call local disposal companies from the yellow pages, they will work with you on selecting the size container that best suits your project, and where to place it when it arrives. They charge by the container with a time cap and a weight cap and when you go over either of those then the price goes up.

Code Violation #274

2005-02-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

Feast your eyes on our 21 inch wide hallway! Everyone who has visited is jealous.... I think. I call it the "Hall of Romance" because when two people pass at the same time, things get real close. Evidently someone tried to box out around the brick flue (on the right) and squeezed the hallway to it's current cozy proportions. I can't wait to introduce this fine piece of American craftsmanship to Mr. Sledgehammer.

Get Pumped

2005-02-23T22:08:00.000-08:00

This is what engineered lumber looks like. Thrilling, huh? Yeah, well, I really didn't feel like posting anything but my fiancee told me to "go shit out a post so we can play Silent Hill Two." So here it is. I took this today at the lumber yard. I-joists, they're called, by the way. In case you were wondering.

I Think I Might Be a Secret Agent

2005-02-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight, I'm making my lady a fancy pizza because she's working late. I hit the supermarket to pick up pizza ingredients and other various items. After the check out I start pushing the shopping cart to towards the door but I can't move. I look over and the Spanish girl that bagged my groceries has her hand on the cart. She winks at me real sneaky-like and then says, "have fun with the chicken." I say "Uh... I will" and roll away.... but then I get the funny Mission Impossible doublecross feeling. I feel my eyebrows scrunching towards eachother, and then it hits me: I didn't buy any chicken. I stop and look back toward the Spanish girl and she is looking at me. A quick search of my bags reveals no accidental chicken, and none of the items I bought even resemble chicken or chicken products. This is why I think I might be a secret agent with amnesia.

Lumber Supplier: MegaCo Vs. Local Fellas

2005-02-22T15:56:00.000-08:00

Gotta start a relationship with my lumber supplier. Question is: do I go with a Goliath like Lowes or an independent. My gut instinct is always the local family-run places, but I'd be a moron if I didn't check out what everyone has to offer. And since I'm using engineered lumber instead of dimensional lumber for most of the framing, the Building Dept wants to see manufacturers design calculations to prove that these new-fangled products will indeed hold my house up. Lowe's had a couple nice guys at the Prodesk but it had two drawbacks: 1. Lowe's doesn't offer any service that helps you select engineered structural members - "that's the architect's job" and they're right, but some lumber places do offer this as an in-house service (and I want to double-check my choices). 2. They have a cool third party service called AccurateEstimates.com that does a blueprint takeoff (exact materials list based on your blueprints), but this is an outside service and their engineered lumber has to be ordered special. Basically Lowe's would be a middleman, farming out services and engineered product knowledge to outside companies. I imagine this will change as the engineered lumber market grows. Tomorrow I'm going to a couple local places.

Ninja-like Reflexes

2005-02-18T20:17:00.000-08:00

Once in third grade me and this Italian kid with an afro were messing around with a stapler and he stapled his hand. We started laughing because it was kind of weird and funny and then all of a sudden he screamed and cried like a third grader. Anyway, that was one of those cute tiny office staplers and the whole thing was a gas. Now, construction staple guns are bigger and powered by 120 pounds per square inch of compressed air and the staples are two inches long. Couple years ago I'm on a crew doing big huge additions outside of Boston. One morning I'm putting up red cedar shingles on a fancy garage with a staple gun, and I'm getting in that rythym, you know, where things just flow. Easy peasy Japaneasy -- I throw a shingle up, I staple it to the wall... I throw a shingle up, I staple it to the wall... I throw a shingle up and WHACK.-- I staple my hand to the wall. Right through the bone. How do you spell R-E-T-A-R-D-O. Apparently I was kneeling on the air hose and the gun stopped short. Nice one. In the emergency room the Doc says "what the hell is it with you construction guys, don't you pay attention?" and I say, "No."

I hear this story later from the guys: While I'm at the hospital, one of the other carpenters picks up the staple gun I was using and starts working where I left off. He puts a cedar shingle up on the wall and POW - hits it with the gun. But nothing happens. Must be jammed. He slides the chamber open and calls over the foreman to take a look. Turns out the gun's NOT jammed - it's empty. I shot myself with the last staple.

"Blue"prints

2005-02-16T22:03:00.000-08:00

OK, so I've already been drawing a set of plans for the addition. I wish they were the cool real life BLUEprints that are all blue with white lines like in The Aviator, but mine are just a bunch of xerox copies of my pencil drawings. Granted, I worked my ass off on these things and they look hot as far as xerox copies go. I'm a lucky bastard, because my proposed project is as big as you can get in this town without being forced to hire an architect to draw up a set of legit "six-years-of-fancy-architect-college-so-up-yours" plans. In place of the architect's stamp I have to make sure that these plans are 100% flawless which is impossible because I'm not an architect so leave me alone.

Use the Fork, Luke

2005-02-15T06:30:00.000-08:00

I was pleasantly suprised to discover that our 220 volt stove receptacle has the patented "Pronged Voltage Redirection Unit." What is a PVRU, you ask? It's a nasty dinner fork jammed into the socket. Every home should have one. Makes dazzling sparks when it ignites clusters of cobwebs and melts portions of the fusebox down in the cellar -- fun for the whole family. Our friend Charlie did surgery on it and now everything is cool. We definitely have electrical issues that go beyond flatware. When someone says, "whoa. I've never seen anything like this before," and they're talking about a painting or a piece of jewelry, then it's a good thing. But when it's your home inspector talking about the wiring in your house it's a bad thing.

My Garage Blows

2005-02-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

My garage is a dilapidated spider/squirrel/ant infested rotting house of shame. I've never seen a structure in such utter neglect. Think the only thing keeping this thing standing is the weeds surrounding the perimeter. I can't wait to tie a clothesline from one of the studs to my cat's flea collar and watch her tear the whole thing down with a few kitty steps. Definitely going to need a variance for rebuilding that, because that thing is smack on the lot line. Deal with that after the house is done.

Smooth Sailing

2005-02-12T11:10:00.000-08:00

Just got the call from the Building Inspector. He said my setbacks look fine and to go ahead and get him a set of plans. That was close. For someone to come and do a thorough survey of the land and set stakes and pin corners is big money. And then after I pay to have that done, the surveyor might only confirm that I'm too close to the street and then I would have to go in front of the board and apply for a variance. Friggin scariance. Ugh. The inspector could have stuck it to me regardless of eyeballing the property, cause these guys can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want, but he didn't, so he's cool in my book. He just saved me hundreds of dollars and months of time. Gotta send him a card or a DVD player or something.

Glimmer of Hope!

2005-02-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

Aha! On a hunch I go outside and check the setbacks old school: by eyeballing them in a general fashion. Sure enough looks like my two neighbors are indeed closer to the street than I am which means I am well behind the average of their two setbacks. I distinctly remember the inspector telling me that if it is obvious to the naked eye that I am farther from the street than my neighbors then I'm off the hook with the surveyor. I go inside and give the inspector a call and he tells me he'll swing by later and eyeball it himself. I could be vindicated.

Inspector Foils Master Plan

2005-02-11T11:38:00.000-08:00

Just met with the Building Inspector. Bad news. I have to hire a surveyor. He just wasn't convinced after scaling out the maps available that I have enough of a setback in the front to build the second floor flush with the front of the house. I suppose I could set the second floor back four feet and make my house look like a Mayan temple. Gonna have to have a bake sale or something to get that suveryor money.

Setbacks Could Mean Setbacks

2005-02-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

Setback requirements are key. Setbacks are how far back from your lot lines your proposed structure needs to be. Varies town to town, state to state, just ask your Buidling Dept. If you don't have your minimum setbacks you may have to apply for a variance or special permit and that takes a minimum of a couple months extra time. In my town it's 15 ft on the sides, 50ft in the back and in the front it's a formula: Have to measure how far my side neighbors are from the street, take the average of the two, and I have to be at or behind that distance. The way to know for sure is hire a surveyor, but I'm short on cash so I'm hoping a meeting with the building inspector will iron things out when he looks at town records.

Why this Blog Exists

2005-02-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

I've always been into designing things. As a squirt I made drawings all the time. Blueprints of all types. Office buildings that were huge giant seven-hundred-story upside-down pyramids impossibly balanced on single points, factories and scientific machinery that transformed entire city's human waste into delicious popsicle treats called Billiard Pops. Young kid mind you - like ten years old. I designed boats, flying machines, cars (land, air, and subterranean rock-boring), I charted neighborhoods and patches of woods, I made scale drawings of my family's house and marked every hiding spot (color-coded, of course, according to hiddenness). I invented an alligator clip banana peeler, a new kind of bicycle, and a breakthrough home computer based on etching black crayon off the back of an illuminated screen. Use it once and throw it away! A one-shot computer! Genius! I called it the Scratch-o-Matic.

Eventually around 12 years old I started making actual house plans, figured it was time I guess, and yeah, I slaved over a couple sets of plans for ill-proportioned custom homes but all at once it bored the shit out of me. Snap of the fingers washed over me like food poisoning. All those fucking measurements and straight lines and right angles and height requirements. I remember looking at all of them and thinking that yeah these plans are cool and orderly and all that but what the fuck am I sitting inside doing this in the middle of summer. I'm a kid for chrissakes, Am I semi-retarded or what. Might as well take everything I own and line it up in perfect rows in the driveway. Go kick a ball. Go play some hoops.

Whatever. Didn't work. My obsession with pointless time-sucking scale drawings marched forward with robotic creepiness, acquiring new appendages, growing bigger and stronger like Voltron. Pointless repetition, unwavering and bland. If I had a company it's motto would have been "Providing You with Endless Detail for No Reason." Reams and reams of exact replicas of animals. I recently discovered all of these drawings. Weird stuff. It was like going through some sicko's case file. All the birds from that big fat coffee table bird book. Fish, freshwater and saltwater with and without habitats, reptiles, every dog breed that was ever bred in the history of everything, book jackets, shit from the Encyclopedia Britannica, and then finally, and this has to be my all time favorite: huge sections from the Old Testament copied word for word in handwritten typewriter font. Hundreds upon hundreds of hours of precious youth spent toiling away as the human typewriter. Why you ask? Cause c'mon, why would you go and buy a heavy expensive machine to type a copy of the Bible, when you could hand draw a replica of a typewritten copy of the Bible with a fraction of the money and no unsightly machines to collect dust. Always thinking, see, even at a young age.

So flash forward and I'm seventeen working in a bakery with a bunch of lesbians and some carpenter comes in to get a coffee. He sneezes and I say "bless you," and he says, "I don't need your fucking blessing." We throw some convo back and forth a couple minutes and then he offers me a job laboring for him. I take it instantly and thus begins my career in construction. This guy turns out not only to be an amazing carpenter, but the carpentry is a part of his way of life. He's like a carpenter Buddhist. Teaches me all about the philosophy of it, the respect of the tools and the wood, appreciation of the different architectural styles -- he had you seeing ghosts. Ghosts of all the artisans that built and carved Boston with their bare hands.

So this leads into a job working on a framing crew, and it just keeps going from there. Finish carpentry, drywall, roofing, painting, masonry, hardwood floors, concrete. Big huge fancy additions where the windows alone cost more than it would take to buy all my organs and dismantled body parts on the black market. Ultra high end restorations of carriage houses all the way down to painting the back fences of slumlord tenements with discount paint. Stories. Endless stories along the way. All for another time.

Then I meet this beautiful super talented girl and fall madly in love with her and she strives like hell to funnel my crippling attention to random detail into large labeled bottles. Realistic projects.

We decide to buy an old crusty house and fix it up. We search Mass for a house we find one: a 650 square foot dumpy-ass bungalow twenty minutes south of Boston. Previous owner had a yen for scattering player pianos around his backyard, making walls out of toasters and TVs, flashing people in his bathrobe, but not for cleaning or home improvement. Rough shape, but good bones, so we pick it up for short dough.

For the next few months my girl and I hit the bookstore, slug enough coffee to fill seven space shuttles, and sketch every cool house design that we see in all the fancy books that we can't afford. All styles, all eras. We get a design together, get the permits and before I know it, I'm gutting the house down to the studs. My girl is ultra organized, number one. Number two, I'm good at the work. And number three, the house is teeny tiny so yeah, the project ends up getting done because of those three things, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with my grasp of time management. Aside from some before and after photos I have very little to look back on and learn from and reference back to in the future.

See, here's the catch with me: I'm good with details, designs and doing super creative artisan work with my hands, BUT, as it is fully demonstrated by the aforementioned Bible thing, I have no big picture. No higher meaning for anything. No ability to see the layout of time be it retrospectively or futuremindedly. So my fiancée does as much as she has time for, but I'm an organizational boat anchor that can never be reeled up. She's just gotta set sail and drag my barnacle-encrusted ass along the ocean floor. You can ask me how long the project took and I can probably piece it together like a crime scene but I don't really know.

So the history of my first house starts off well documented and then gets spotty and rapidly trails off into darkness, a screaming shuddering subway train, and all I'm left with is the smell of it having rushed by me. I just pick up my cap off the pavement say "what the fuck was that all about." I am determined to change all that.

My fiancee and I bought our second house, a 954 sq. ft. run down ranch in Boston's Metro West region, and we're doing a massive addition and renovation. This house is different than the last. Bigger house, bigger scope, bigger money and it could be a financial and emotional disaster if I don't keep my documentation razor sharp. That's where this site comes in. At any stage of this project I want to be able to look over my shoulder back down the road where I've been and see every gas station, burger joint and motel in crystal clear detail. This site will be my tool to map, chart, and thus maintain constant control of the timeline of this project. This time I'm logging everything, every step of the way, every detail, down to the last nail.