Tuesday, February 27, 2007

It's amazing what a little scraping can reveal!


Rehab, I have learned, is often more "un-doing" than actual doing.

For example, today I spent the afternoon scraping these small window panels which had been completely painted over.

Guess what? There's stained glass under there!










Here's what it looked like from the inside, with 4.5 panels remained to be scraped.





Weirdness.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Another House Bites the Dust

I am delighted to see a blogger over at the Star Tribune's Buzz.mn has taken up the subject of house demolition.

This is a serious issue for Minneapolis, as several commenters on his post have noted. Demo-ing old houses does NOT fix a problem neighborhood, but in fact makes things worse as we eradicate our neighborhoods' history and replace it with modular shit which elicits zero pride and furthermore breaks up the continuity of the housing landscape.

At least that's my view.

Perhaps we need to re-enact the "dollar house" program, and encourage rehabbing. In addition to preserving quality, craftsman architecture, it would also provide psychological benefits as neighbors AND outsiders see that some people actually CARE enough to invest in North Minneapolis.

Oh, and it could be profitable too.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

And if YOU were constructing a bathroom...

I'm sure you would select cardboard as your preferred wall-surface as well!

I mean, it's just so, well, durable and waterproof and sexy... right?

Yeah.









And for those discrimminating decorators who choose this classy paper-board option, there is only one acceptable means for joint adhesion, right?



Tape, of course.

Of the masking variety, that is to say...









Oh, and what do you need instruction for? I mean, it's cardboard, not rocket science, people:








Upside-down is the new right-side-up anyway, haven't you heard?

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Oh my...

North Minneapolitans quoted on Overheard in Minneapolis.

Yikes.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Drywall woes

I really don't mind patching drywall, in fact I kind of enjoy the mudding part.

Unfortunately, hanging full sheets in a completely gutted room is rather difficult, and requires at least two people.

Since I am only *one* person, and no one I know is sucker enough to help me, I decided to throw an ad out on Craigslist and see if I could find a handyman to take care of this for me.

So far I've had two bids, (for labor only) at $600 and $480.

But I don't wannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnna pay that much for a flippin' tiny office!

Grrrrrrr...

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but



Today is day one of a three-day juice fast.

I'm already hungry.

Monday, February 12, 2007

The woes of being impatient

I cannot bring myself to show a photo of today's work on the house. It sucked.

After spending a zillion years at Home Depot cutting quarter-round moulding for the bedroom and living room, I was oh-so-ready to install it this fine Monday morning. So ready, in fact, that I neglected to google "intall quarter-round" as I had meant to.

Why bother? It's easy, right? Just hammer that crap in at an angle.

Yep.

Until the first piece breaks.

No problem! I'll just caulk that little flaw up later. (I keep hammering.)

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

I gave up after having destroyed a good 30% of the moulding.

Then, I went to google, and learned that I was supposed to pre-drill my holes to prevent such cracking.

Argh!

Saturday, February 3, 2007

And in our neighborhood news...

5th Ward City Councilman Don Samuels is causing a stir again with his comment in Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine about 'burning North High down.'

And of course Nick Coleman was quick to snap up an easy opportunity for ridicule here.

I can only imagine how this could swell to ridiculous proportions by virtue of people hearing about Samuel's statement without actually reading it in its context. (Such as if they read about it in Coleman's article, or worse, if they hear about it through North High gossip channels.)

I can see it now, with mothers at a NH PTA meeting:

"Did you hear what Don Samuels said?"

"No, what?"

"He said to BURN OUR SCHOOL DOWN!"

"Nuh-uh, for real?"

"That's what the Soc teacher just told me!"

"What an asshole. Who does he think he is??"

Oy Veh. His point as I understood it was that he has no reverence for so-called community institutions if they are in fact failing the community. (These are my words, not his.) His criticism did not stop at North High, but extended to some local churches as well, asking why they did nothing to combat crime which occurs right outside their doors.

CM Samuels made a political mistake with his phrasing. He should not have said "burn it down" because he should have been saavy enough to anticipate the scores of teachers, parents, students and alumni that it would piss off.

The underlying sentiment, however, was spot on, in my view.