naladahc | tripping along the golden path

And so today I started on the first skim coat of plaster/joint compound to try and smooth out the walls where the hutch resided and also where the chair rail was around the entire circumference of the room.

It has been 11 months since I did any work like this. I completely forgot how messy even the simplest mudding can be! Ack!

I'm rebuilding the two north corners where the plaster behind the chair railing has totally broken and degraded.

I was going to totally rebuild the entire corners from ceiling to floor but I decided against it for now for the sake of momentum and getting the room done by the middle of the week.

I'm taking a stab at trying to repair the holes in the ceiling where the previous owners had plant hangers.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why they did not remove the damn plant hangers before they textured the ceiling.

I mean, I wish they hadn't destroyed the ceilings by texturing them but at least remove the hardware when you are doing work like this!

I'm using spackle and trying to pull it a bit to make peaks to hopefully totally hide the holes. We'll see how the first attempt worked tomorrow.

The thing that I really can't believe the previous owners survived without is an adequate basement utility sink.

I've had to commandeer the crappy 1st floor bathroom sink as my tool wash-up area.

How can you live without a utility sink?!?!?! Arghhhh!!!

Tomorrow: First wet/damp sanding and possibly a 2nd skim coat of plaster. I'd really like to have all prep work done by Saturday evening and have everything primed Sunday morning. I could get the walls started Sunday evening then.

Methinks I over extended myself yesterday.

Ow.

I can happily say tomorrow is my final day of the steroids and then I have a couple of days trial of a different formulation of naproxen to try out.

I feel so bloated and disgusted I literally feel like I've been out of control for months and months.

I've avoided the scale but believe me, the mere fact most of my clothing is tight indicates NalaJabba lies under the surface if I don't get some control over this once the drugs are out of my system.

The upper and lower back pain, the stress of September, my mental illness... all of it has contributed to an extremely unhappy Nala.

And that extremely unhappy Nala has developed an often uncontrollable urge to consume tortilla chips covered in imitation crab, sharp cheddar cheese, and Frank's Red Hot.

I don't want to become Really Fat Nala again.

I don't.

But I have no idea where that willpower I had for 2 years has gone.

It was stolen by crab nachos and pumpkin ice cream.

Christian Charity Raising Money To Feed Non-Gay Famine Victims

I decided to do a 2nd coat today over the areas that I did yesterday, trying to ensure I can create a surface that will sand smooth.

Well... or as smooth as I can make it.

I put up drop cloths to try and contain the dust since I had to do a brief sanding.

The dust (and dachshund) containment shield, along with using the shop vac while sanding will hopefully keep free floating dust down to a minimum.

I really forgot how much I don't like doing this.

I mean, if I did it all the time I'd have some technique and do it well but man, I'm hoping I can make up for the errors in today's work during the sanding phase tomorrow.

So today was the first really messy day of work.

I spent the afternoon wet sanding everything I've plastered these past two days.

It really is a thousand times better than electric sanding or standard dry hand sanding.

Last January, when remodeling the small bedroom, I was generating dust left and right and I could barely see.

Now?

The wet sanding drops most of the dust only 14" or so from the wall. Totally acceptable.

Sure. Some does get in the air but on the whole not that much.

After a break and talking to The Cousin for a bit, I started back to cleaning and accidentally knocked over my bucket of filthy water.

There's nothing quite as shocking as watching gallons and gallons of dirty water spread over your hardwood floors. It was like a slow motion nightmare.

It cleaned up though.

Deep down I knew I had to do it.

This was confirmed by both The Cousin and even Giga when he got home.

Yup. I woudn't be happy without another coat of plaster.

So I've done a third coat (above) on areas I feel I want to have in as good a shape as possible.

Tomorrow will be the final sanding, washing of the whole room, and then hopefully a full priming of the ceiling and walls.

So The Cousin sent me videos of his remodeling work which has been going on for what seems like years.

Now all the work I've been doing both at the new Domicile and even at the old House of Love III is minor and trivial compared to his casa-forming.

He ripped off a good chunk of his house and then added out and up, putting in a substantial amount of living space and a kitchen from which I could make enough pierogies to feed the entire 15th Alpha Tactical Armored Corps for a year or more.

I finally got to see the almost-finished kitchen yesterday and it is impressive beyond all belief. I mean, from what a small grainy video can show!

Kudos to The Cousin! Fantastic job there.

Now about those 14 gallons of accidental paint...

So if it isn't my neck it is the center of my thorax and if it isn't that it is my lumbar region.

Pain. Pain. Pain.

Today it is kind of different.

It isn't that lightning flashing kind that shoots down into my limbs or makes my muscles freeze and contort like John Hurt at the end of Altered States.

No. It is more like a strange pinpoint pressure in my vertebrae. Just so much tightness and then these pinpoint pressure triggers kick in.

Weird.

Anyway, I just did some vinyl spackling patching of a few other areas that the plaster missed.

I'll head down in an hour or so and start the messing sanding again.

I really want to get everything primed today and maybe get the ceiling painted. I'm not going to bother priming the ceiling at all since it is unlikely it needs it.

I do need to go out and get another gallon of Mayan Treasure though. I'm thinking it will take at minimum 2 full gallons to cover the walls.

I need to find a decent paint roller that will give a bit of texture to the walls so the freshly plastered areas aren't so smooth but at the same time not add too much texture. If there's no texture you'll easily be able to see where I've done all this plaster work.

S'funny. I really don't like the look of drywall at all.

There's something wonderfully alive about plaster walls with all of their aged old flaws and bumps and nicks and such.

New builds, with mudded drywall, have such cold and empty surfaces regardless of the color that eventually covers them. That super smoothness is just missing "something" that plaster walls with years of paint layers have.

Yeah. I know. I've bitched about having to patch and repair cracked plaster walls due to house settling and so forth but there is a certain character added to the house by doing so.

So I spent this afternoon wet sanding the 3rd coat of plaster and doing a general clean-up and scrubbing of the walls.

Everyone's old friend the blue painter's masking tape visited and all of the trim and baseboards got covered. (What sucks is there's previous paint on them because someone didn't clean it up during the last time it was painted!!!)

I noticed that the ceiling under the light fixture didn't look painted properly so I removed the base to prime there and I made an amazing discover.

The ceilings were apparently wallpapered at one time, and then some kind of moisture or water damage had a significant impact on them.

You can see the stain all over the place under the fixture.

Based on evidence in the basement, Giga suspected that they had done some kind of carpet washing in the past and the water had soaked through the carpet, then the pad, and into the hard wood.

Well... that may just be what has destroyed the ceilings and why they put that awful textured paint up there.

The priming went fairly quickly.

I decided that instead of going with a tinted primer and risk having waste I could not use elsewhere that I'd do a good foundation coat of a quality stain-blocker overlay primer. This is usually thicker than some of the cheaper shit I've used in the past and also will hopefully be thick enough to hold the slightest bit of roller texture and make the freshly plastered areas less noticeable than the other parts of the walls.

Even with the primer up the room has now started to come together in my mind as a cohesive whole.

I don't think anyone will be able to really tell there was ever a chair rail up or that the corner where the hutch was is really that much different from the other corners.

After dinner, and back and shoulders willing, I'm going to try and get the ceiling painted and that pointless dull crown molding. It isn't even that really... just a piece of trim around the room. That'll just be the ceiling flat white.

If I had the time, and was 10 years younger, I'd consider ripping it down and replastering perfectly up to the ceiling. The thing is that I just can't do the standing on the ladder for a long time thing. And that would be a shitload of ladder time.

Now something that we still haven't found is a new main chandelier for the dining room.

The Domicile was built around 1925 and while a lot of original style has been killed off here, the house's soul still has a lot of Mission and Craftsman style to it, unlike the House of Love's heavy Arts and Craft design.

We need to find a lighting fixture that will make the room feel like it did 60 years ago but not accent the flaws of the horrible textured ceiling or mediocre trim.

Now truthfully, any Arts & Craft, Mission, Craftsman, or even Art Deco style would work for the room.

I'm all for finding something cheaper but quite frankly, your standard Lowes/Home Depot selection is godsawful and every time I go into other people's houses I keep finding the same light fixtures over and over.

Rejuvenation Lighting, while pricey, does have some nice stuff.

We need to find one soon though.

I'm sorry if this applies to you but...

There is a special place reserved in Hell for those who put texture on their ceilings.

Awful.

Awful.

Awful.

I wish I had the time right now to rip the entire f'n ceiling down and install a new smooth one.

I HATE TEXTURED CEILINGS!!!!

Even with the color-changing ceiling paint I can't what's getting paint and what is not. This color-changing shit is just not practical for anything other than a smooth surface.

I've used an entire gallon of paint and yet I cannot say for certain if I managed to paint everything!!!

I did 2 entire circuits around attempting to put 2 coats on and I don't know if I succeeded!

I HATE TEXTURED CEILINGS!!!!

Never ever ever have I encountered a surface so f'n messy to deal with!!!

I am going to do everything possible to avoid trying to paint the living room ceiling!!!

Man I did a shitty job.

Or should I say the stress of attempting to perform a "quality paint job" on that shitty textured ceiling resulted in a shitty job.

I'm going to have to run to Lowes and snag another gallon of the ceiling paint to try and touch this crap up

I really really really wanted it to come out ok so I could immediately start on the 1st coat for the walls when I get home.

Alas, that will not happen.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

So I got 2 coats of the "mayan treasure" on this evening.

The photos don't really look like it does in real life.

Well... and it hasn't fully dried yet either.

Once the first coat was up I sat back and realized I really really really like it. It will work well with the stained glass, sorta-ok with the trim color, very well with the wood floors, and very good with the deco furniture set.

Now we gotta find the right lighting, the right window treatment for the west side, and the right floor rug.

Tomorrow I'll tacking spot painting the ceiling and that crown molding. Man that paint I used did not work well.

So I started removing the tape today.

I managed to completely damage the wall above the doorway to the living room (above) and once the tape was off, it became totally obvious that the previous owner's didn't clean up after their own painting (below).

I'm going to spent the next few days detail scraping with razor blades to try and clean up the previous paint that is on the baseboards and along the window trim trying to make it look solid and clean and straight.

Taping the molding up top also didn't produce as clean a line as I need for this room to look ok (above).

I'm going to have to figure out a way to fix this without removing that shitty molding and then renailing it.

I still need to 3rd or 4th coat that shitty molding too.

So I'm kind of shocked that RuPaul of all people is on Stern this morning.

Talk about a name I haven't heard in over a decade.

I remember that annoyingly megagay Supermodel song/video that he hit it big with in the early 90s.

Apparently he's promoting some movie called Starrbooty, described on IMDB as "Supermodel goes undercover as a hooker to rescue her niece from an evil body parts broker."

I think he needs to consider going into UFC.

I'd watch! That much is certain!

I started physical therapy on my neck yesterday.

After a deep heat session I was hooked up to this traction device that pulled my head up and held it there for a bit. Then it released, paused, and repeated.

The goal is to try to relieve some of the vertebrae pressure to allow the disk bulge to reset back to a normal position.

I'll admit, I did feel a lot better last night.

Of course, that changed today and I feel kind of like shit again.

The work I need to do on the dining room is going to involve a lot of standing on the ladder or crouching on my hands and knees scraping.

Methinks it is time to call Giga into service tonight to assist with the scrubbing of the trim and woodwork to get the plaster dust and any paint drops off. That'll kill both my neck and my knees.

So I'm reading this article in the USA Today about the resurgence of bed bugs.

Debbie Wunder and her husband, Rusty Pistachio, picked up the insects from a hotel in Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles. They didn't realize until later that they were bringing them home to Manhattan. He was eaten up all over; she didn't get a single bite, which isn't unusual, experts say. Bugs often feast on one person and ignore another.

I mean, the only other Pistachio I know of was Yaz Pistachio, an extremely super mega minor character that appeared briefly in Bloom County in the early 80s.

P1010149


Originally uploaded by ThePickett

Nothing quite sums up Comfest other than someone holding one of those big ass turkey legs.

So I haven't done much the past 2 days except a little cleaning and scraping.

I'm so not wanting to hurt my back worse than it already is that I've only done about 1 hour a day of cleaning.

Definitely have to get everything scrubbed down and the floor cleaned of all paint drops today.

I'll focus on the wall touch up this weekend as well as replacing the outlets and light switch with a modern dimmer.

I've decided I'm going to use a brown paint or something to go over the mostly non-visible areas on the trim where the chair rail butted up against the vertical wood. That way they won't be noticeable unless you look.

There's nothing like a little debushifcation on your Saturday.

Dining Room: Day 16 - More cleaning and some touch up.

Final painting done.

Dining Room: Day 18 - And then there was light(ing).

It must have been the iced tea during dinner.

I ended up needed different screws to do the new chandelier so on the way back from the hardware store Giga and I went to Villa Nova to eat.

I shouldn't have had the iced tea that late in the evening.

All I can say is around 2:30am I woke up and really never fell back asleep.

I putzed around the internets from like 3-4:30 and had hoped that would make me tired but nothing.

I should have just come into work earlier.

I so hate insomnia.

Day 1 of the Living Room revamp started today and when I started looking at the walls I realized I would indeed have more plaster work to do.

The color will be flat Olympic Golden Buff which should work well against the dining room.

Quite frankly, the living room needs 2-3 more solid days of plaster work, vinyl spackling, and sanding and smoothing.

Alas, that is not going to happen with Turkey Day poised to strike in one week.

But... Day 2 just had a lot of sanding and spackling involved. Not much swearing like yesterday.

So the prednasone plus the 4-6 weeks of out of control eating have completely taken their toll on my body and I weighed in this morning at 265.

That's 25lbs I've put on since the the last few weeks of September.

Not good. Not good at all.

I haven't been over 247 since December 2005 or so with my lowest being 221 back in August of 2006.

My bad back has had serious repercussions on my weight and my loss of willpower (and my newly found weakness to the color yellow) hasn't helped one bit.

My physical therapy program is going to change a bit next week to focus completely on my back from my cervical vertebrae to my pelvis and depending how I feel I've been told to try to get back to the gym and start doing very simple elliptical cardio routine. We'll see how the next few days go with all the work I need to do in the living room.

Basically, by trying to baby my neck, I've retriggered the problems from last May in my mid-back and my lower back.

If one isn't hurting the other is. Not good. Not good at all.

I'm thinking that maybe I should just try and get through Thanksgiving and then try to start going to the gym at least 2-3 times a week for starters and dropping back to 1000-1200 calories a day. Then somehow survive the holidays and then get back strict in January.

It sucks.

My clothes don't fit. I can barely move some times during the day.

Sucks! Sucks! Sucks!

Oy! I'm going to hurt like hell in the morning!

So today is one of those miserable days that happens once a year in the Cowlands.

Yup! It is the OSU Buckeyes versus Michigan Wolverines orgy.

Now I'm sure you all are familiar with the insanity of collegiate football regardless of the city you live in.

This is the day when thousands of people scream and yell and let their emotions devolve into an orgy of pointlessness yet somehow justify that your group-think mentality is ok because a thousands of other people are doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment.

But you know... something great happened this week at work.

While surrounding by all the inane "Beat Michigan" shit and events and other crap I encountered and openly talked with other people who share the same apathy about all this pointlessness as I do.

And that felt good.

It is good to know that we are legion.

You don't realize that we are there but we are.

And I think that our little groups grows larger and larger all the time.

Yup.

There are a lot of us that... and I know it is impossible for most of you to understand this but... we just don't give a shit.

Nope.

Not one bit.

And no matter how much you try to make us care we just won't.

We will not wear your buckeye necklaces. We will not wear your scarlet and gray. We will not paint our faces.

We are not a party of your collegiate-football-cosplay-furry-klingon orgy.

See.

We know something.

We know that no matter how much you make fun of us for our "geek shit" no matter the flavour it may take you are just along a different part of the same exact continuum of pointlessness.

While yours is culturally-sanctioned it is in fact the same exact pointlessness as all other geek shit out there.

Day 4 of the living room revamp brings the first coats of paint to the room!

So we spent last night over at Mister Power's abode eating turkey and stuff.

Max made one fine moist bird that. Damn! And his dressing/stuffing with the sausage was, as I used to say in the early 90s... totally titz!

I also finally got to meet Doctor Zoidberg (above).

What a chatty cat... but in a good way... not a Chester-asshole way!

I'm amazed that I'm getting so much done and am so hurty.

The living room may just be ready by Tuesday.

So today brought more cleaning, new outlets, a new digital thermostat, and heat to Jesus who has been hanging out in the foyer.

Um... does 12 people constitute a "rally"?

I'm just saying.

Mr. Whipple is dead at 91.

What's funny is I remember him more as the drunk he always played at the bar the real Darrin was always drinking at in Bewitched.

So I made my deadline and managed to complete the basic revamps of the dining room and living room about 2 hours before people were coming for dinner.

Not bad.

The final (more or less) dining room.

The final (more or less) living room.

Still need to find and commission some new custom art.

And with that, I'm done with revamp work until January.

Time to let my back heal.

Enjoy your turkey day.

If you are Native American, I'm sorry. Please don't blame us Poles. We didn't get here until the 20th century!

Enough to feed an orphanage.

Of all the unexpected things to be birthed from Glass City I give you... "The Polka Floyd Show".

Holy shit!!!

See... for years and years I tried to run away from my genetic past of accordion-fueled music. But I'm 100% Polish, born and raised in the Polish Diaspora of Lagrainka in Glass City.

It is genetically impossible for me to run away from the awesomeness of a properly used accordion!

First it was my discovery of The Polkaholics that brought me closer to the accordion rage.

And now... I think I may have just fallen in love with The Polka Floyd Show!!!

Just listen to their tracks at their Myspace page!

It is like the Baby Jesus came down and gave me an early birthday present that didn't transform!!!

So yesterday was all about Leftovers: The Revenge.

Mister T., Toddler T, Jamie, and Jay were over to eat and Kelmeister and The Pickett stopped by later in the evening.

I'd say that other than a few deserts, 98% of the food from Thursday is now gone and that's a good thing.

Today we went to German Village Coffee Shop this morning for Club Sammiches and stuff and then Jay headed home.

Yup. Even though today is Life Day, I've decided not to celebrate it this year. I think this is the 3rd year in a row where there are no Life Day festivities going on and the last one was celebrated back in 2004.

Maybe next year. Enough time has passed.

I'm looking extremely fat, having put on quite a bit of weight since Labor Day. Now that Thanksgiving is over with I need to focus on taking this off.

I'm seriously wondering if my goal shouldn't be just the taking the weight I put on off but actually making it to that 200/210 I want to be.

I will be 38 in March after all. That'd be a good goal date to try to lose that much weight.

Arjun mildly taunts Chester. Or is it the other way around? With Chester it is often hard to say.

---

Arjun approves my beaujolais nouveau. I must remember to thank TA for turning me onto beaujolais nouveau a few years ago.

---

Thankfully I don't look as fat as I've been feeling lately. Yes. I've put on the weight with all the back probs and not going to the gym or strict dieting. Thank will hopefully change starting tomorrow.

The past few days have been really great back-wise.

But man oh man this afternoon is awful.

I think this may be the best knife set I've ever seen.

Well... I don't know how good the knives are though!

I'm pretty hot and cold when it comes to Christmas time.

I can take it. I can leave it.

Sometimes I want a little holiday decor around. Most of the time I don't.

But the past few days involved dragging out the tree and decorating it, purchasing and decorating a tree for the foyer, and even going so far as to put lights up outside and decorate.

Outside (above) got a wreath on the window and for the very first time ever I did lights in an exterior tree. I hung the huge ass cheap plastic ornaments we used at the old House of Love's porch on the tree.

Giga inspected the rather expensive programmable lights we bought a few years ago. Some of the colors are out.

Now normally I really hate blinking lights and all but these have this controller that has like 12 different settings. The fade in/fade out is really cool because it is random and doesn't look forced.

Wedge is on the tree again. Alas, I can't find the other RID Predacons who normally grace the tree. They are still packed away with the plastic crack.

It feels odd not having them Slapper on the tree for some reason.

This Superfriends lunchbox and thermos is one of my favorite ornaments.

Now what's kind of sad is the ornaments I have are a hodge podge of super mega cheap Odd Lot plastic ones that I use as "filler" deep in the empty parts of the tree, some cheap glass ones, and a ton of novelty ones my mother bought over the years.

That's where it gets weird.

See... she would literally buy tons of Star Wars and Star Trek things year in and year out. These are the expensive Hallmark ornamanents too. Some light up. Some have sound. And they run the gamut of eras and everything.

The thing is... I really haven't liked Star Wars or Star Trek for decades.

Of course, my mother didn't know this and kept buying them.

So if you come over to the house, you'd think that we where huge Star Trek or Star Wars fans instead of Transformers or Doctor Who fans because of the ornaments.

The thing is, I have so many of these that I'd feel bad not putting them up.

I do have a few vintage glass bulbs that were my Busia's. Hopefully I can convince my mother to give me more of these kinds and some of the ones I had as a kid. Those all mean more too me than the novelty ones ever could.

Now not all the Hallmark things are sci-fi. There are some awesome NASA ones that she's gotten me over the years such as this Space Shuttle.

The John Glenn Mercury capsule is great because it plays audio of John Glenn in space. Same goes for the Apollo 11 lunar lander that has audio of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

Steamboat Willie is pretty cool too. He's in black and white (like the animation) and actually plays the whistling from the cartoon.

Of course, over the past 9 years I've gathered or been given quite a bizarre little assortment of dachshund-themed Christmas stuff such as this stuffed dachshund-like thing. (That's my Great-Grandfather holding my dad back in 1942 back there.)

I don't know why but I saw these the other day and had to have them.

Now like I said before, I can take or leave the decor shit. But there's something about most snowmen and penquins that I can handle.

I suppose because they are more winter and less Christmas makes a difference. You can use them as seasonal decor instead of just stuff to make Baby Jesus bring you presents.

There's a few penquins I've really wanted for some reason. I may yet get them.