delay

=^^=

Icynene Insulation: I hope its worth the trouble

After much contemplation I've decided to cut open the ceiling in order to use Icynene insulation, which is a foam that is sprayed in between the roof rafters. Its a major pain to install, and about twice as expensive as loose fill fiberglass, but it supposedly insulates really well and has no toxic gasses, particles, etc. It is a petrol byproduct, but for whatever reason its racking up green building awards. The main concern for me though is that fiber glass is a health hazard for hypochondriacs. Now, whether or not its a serious problem for everyone else I can't really tell from all the research out there, but I wouldn't be surprised - it makes sense to me that little shards of glass would cause all kinds of trouble in lungs and eyes and skin. So I'm taking my chances with a new material which we are now assured is perfectly safe, the unproven over the doubtful record.

I'm really excited, this is the homo-stretch. The sliding wall, the tiles, the floor, the insulation, its all going in within the next few days! Sadly, I couldn't get the Durapalm for the sliding wall after all, I'm going to use Plyboo instead. Pics to follow...

I don't need plumbers, electricians, or carpenters, I need to call Ghostbusters!

Just when I thought this renovation couldn't get anymore absurd, this morning the 100 year old main waste pipe for the entire house snapped and flooded the basement. Luckily it was just shower water. I called the plumbers at 7:15 and they're here at 9, and guess what they found? A basket of porcelin dollies with no eyes right under the leak. The electricity also seems to be disconnected on the third floor, where the carpenters are... it seems the house is haunted by a ghost with a Kafka-esque sense of humor.

UPDATE: 12:08PM They finished fixing the pipe and ran the water through it to test for leaks and THEY FOUND ANOTHER ONE!!! This one, further up along the pipe, didn't leak before apparently because the water poured out of the other leak so fast it didn't back up far enough to leak through the other hole. The 100 year old pipe strikes again... or is there a ghost?

Renovation Burnout - No Pun Intended

...although that's just what I'm trying to avoid in the literal sense. The electricians came on Saturday (damn that's quick!) and found a bunch of splice boxes burried in the walls, those are boxes where wires tie together from different outlets and fixtures, and they're where trouble of the electrical fire sort start apparently. Thanks again to the jerko contractor. So we're down a few more walls... two steps back. Now I know that if anyone actually had skilled people in to check out their apartments on a regular basis there would be a ton of nasty surprises, this is probably nothing compared to the place I live now. I got really worried about electrical fires last year, after some of the fabric that covers the wires in the old lights started to sizzle. I called an licensed electrician I knew from growing up and he said "Ya live in a tenement?" me: "Uh, I guess... although I paid a great big realtor's fee to get it" electrician: "Landlord never fixes anything?" ..."yeah" ..."got renter's insurance?" ..."..." ..."well you could never afford to have me fix the place, it probably won't catch fire as long as you don't overload the circuits" ..."you mean like when the microwave and the toaster can't work at the same time?" .....you get the picture. The important thing I learned was, electrical fires usually start when people are home, charging up gadgets with all the lights on. Turn off the juice when you leave the house and the kitty will be safe - which is what really matters to his two moms. Cat safety: the bottom line of homoimprovement. (And those rascaly little French bulldogs that are so popular in this crowd too, although I don't understand why, a bad design if you ask me.)

Lucky on craigslist!

I have been lusting after this Ali Turning Mirror from Waterworks for months. Sometimes I even fantasize about shelling out the retail price for it, but I have just been in denial about the whopping $1,675.00 price tag. I randomly searched for Restoration Hardware on craigslist thing morning, and luck of luck, scored two knock-offs of this piece for $175. They're not being made anymore, heaven know why, and they're a little smaller: 22"H X 9"W instead of Waterworks' 12"W X 8"D X 30"H, and mine are chrome instead of stainless steel, but I am absolutely thrilled. I was even thinking of trying to get one fabricated by the place that made the steel plates for my beams. Finally some good homoimprovement karma!

Phallic Faucets vs. Feminine Deluge

I bought faucets for the bathroom and kitchen almost six months ago, but since then the bathroom has gone one step forward and two steps back, twice - but luckily we're on a forward step finally and it looks like the third time is a charm. So it seems to me that almost all faucets are phallic. I didn't realize what they all had in common until I found a few that weren't - and guess what they look like? My absolute top priority when I designed the bathroom was a waterfall bath faucet, so I replaced the bath spout that came in my Koher Stillness set with this one, the Kohler Souris. And for the sink, I replaced the stout little modern phallic substitute with this, the Kohler Vas ceramic spout. Who wants a controlled stearm of water that can put out a campfire? I prefer the rainhead shower, the waterfall faucet, modeled on nature's apparently feminine anatomy. Any associations? Flooding, overwhelming, oceanic feeling... now that's what I LIKE in a bathtub. Thanks Kohler, for this perfectly saphic piece of interior design.

Prisoner of my own renovation...

I've been cooped up in my house waiting for what seems like a million different people to come and go and do this and that. I'm thrilled with the progress, but I'm going stir crazy!

My Fire Escape is Flaming!

Yesterday I looked outside to see this fire engine red roof hatch in my front yard. The contractor assured I could paint it. Absolutely not! I love it, I'm going to leave it red and have my hallway look like the inside of a fire truck. As I was contemplating that aesthetic, I heard the neighbors yelling about a burst water pipe at the one remaining rent controlled apartment building accross the street (the one next door has been filled up with hipsers, and then right next to that are the new condos). How many firetrucks do you think came to the rescue? If you guessed 4, you'd be right, except that wouldn't take into account the 3 fire police vans that showed up to join the crowd and watch while 2, count 'em 2, firemen climbed in a window and went in to shut down the water. I didn't know they do plumbing! If I'd have known that I'd have called them a long time ago. Although it was just a lucky aesthetic coincidence, getting a close up of the fire trucks to solve my design quandries, all those guys in uniform made seem like an extra special homoimprovement moment. Back to the firetruck aesthetic: I've finally got a front door on my apartment, a heavy duty fire/burgler-proof steel door, which doesn't go at all with the old victorian house look of the outside. I'm going to paint the door matte black and turn it into a chalkboard where I can leave notes for people, 'don't forget the meow mix honey', 'nothing worth stealing beyond this point'. Black, white, red, yellow hazard stripes... this illy coffee maker matches perfectly too!

HomoImprovement: Urban vs. Rural

Come on!!! Of course we need gay neighborhoods! And I obviously need to stop critiquing the New York Times. But when I read about "Local institutions like Cliff’s Variety, a hardware store selling feathered boas (year-round)..." - I think, all this homoimprovement on the inside of the house would be useless if I didn't feel great about where the house is: the URBAN lesbian-ville USA - that's Park Slope, Brooklyn, not Northampton Mass. I know there are lesbians, gays, etc. living all over the place in communities that aren't particularly gay, or even gay friendly, and that there's lots to be said for a world outside of New York City. For starters, there's a much better possibility of being able to afford a great house or space to build one, like this fabulous Catawba House which is being built by a couple of lesbian architects in southwest Virginia!

HeteroImprovement vs. HomoImprovement

Well apparently it's not much easier to get your house renovated as a heterosexual. The New York Times has an article today about comparable contracting disasters... more money, more time, less damage than my experience, but all around bad, and familiar. But what strikes me about Why We Needed a Prenup With Our Contractor is the metaphor of heterosexual privilege casually embedded in the article's title. The article aptly compares a contractor to a bad boyfriend, and the combinations of difficulty letting go and anger at holding on to him are illuminating - with this difference, the model relationship isn't with a good boyfriend, it's with the writer's husband. And the model includes a state sanctioned method of regulating and controlling the relationship: marriage and the obligatory prenuptual agreement. In other words, a contract. Now, this is exactly what I didn't have with my first dipshit contractor. But interesting, I've now got a second contractor who's also working for me on the gay model, i.e. without a contract. I think he's excellent (despite just receiving a report about a leak in the skylight his workers intsalled on Friday), but this article makes me revisit the whole cost-benefit analysis of the marriage, straight and gay alike. On the one hand, it affords numerous benefits and protections, most of them financial, but these translate readily into social, familial, and eventually psychic investments into the relationship, which can stabilize and improve it. On the other hand, in the process of going from straight to lesbian, gay, bi, queer, etc., one loses the floorplan of what a relationship is supposed to include, and gets the chance to do a gut renovation. This frees us from convention and allows us to redesign the system - and yes, that means that homosexuals are a threat to the structural beams of society. Still, it would be NICE to be ABLE to get a contract, just like it's nice for lots of those free thinking heteros to work without one. In the meantime, I'm putting my energy into the design end of homoimprovement rather than negotiating the legal system and trying to get alimony from my former contractor, and I think the gay rights movement would be better off setting our sights Beyond Marriage too.

Handy M'am

Megan Shipley, a.k.a. Handy M'am

Straight Walls for a Gay House

I had no idea what an actual professional carpenter could get done in one day. Maybe I had time to contemplate the homo subtext of the renovation because the improvement was happening at a snail's pace - actually, a snail moving backwards for the most part, leaving a nasty trail to boot. I finally got a liscensed contractor in here, ironically his company is called M.R.S., and with luck he's been willing to do things on a time and materials basis. In five days so far, two competent guys at a rate of $800 a day have gotten done what it took the previous numbskull a month to do - and guess what? These guys use LEVELS, make RIGHT ANGLES, and leave the place incredibly CLEAN every single day. Day 1: Demolition of the bathroom and exposure of the butchered beams, Day 2: fixed the beams, Day 3: put in the new subfloor, framed new bathroom wall and entryway, Day 4: framed skylight, sheetrocked walls, prepared for the wall hung sink, Day 5: that's today, and they're putting in the skylight, the bathtub maybe... I can't wait to see what!

Check this out: the old bathroom wall including the pocket door was a whopping 9.5" thick, with six different layers of moldings and crap on it. The new one they put up is 3" including the door and room for the bath shelf - we'll see it today.

Expedition to GreenDepot

Is all that stuff really green? Well no, most of that belongs to the non-green building materials company next door, but it could be, all that metal and stuff comes in a green version. I took a major trip to the Green Depot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn yesterday to get 3, count 'em 3, pieces of "green" plywood for the subfloor of the bathroom. Green plywood is made without any formaldehyde, and with glue that's low VOC (that's volatile organic chemicals - organic like carbon based, as in chemistry, not like a environmentally friendly... although plants and animals are mostly carbon based - wich is why VOCs are so bad for us, we incorporate them very easily). Its also Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, which is nice, although to be perfectly honest I wasn't that worried about it for my 3 pieces of wood. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for less than 100 square feet of plywood, and really, it was. So I thought I'd get a few pics of the stock yard where my bemused car sevice driver had to wait around for one of those tractor lift things to deposit my wood on top of the van - I paid extra for that. Worried about coming off like the green yuppie that I am, I tried to explain to the car service driver what was so special about this plywood. Recyled, etc., didn't make much of an impression on him, but when we talked about allergies and asthma -one of the biggest health problems for children in the whole city- the air quality thing started to make a lot of sense to him too. So the thing is, there's green for me, and green for the rest of the world. Green for me is healthier and smells better than the usual materials, and is even more important to animals who spend most of their lives inside the little box known as a house (or apartment). I've taken up the green ideology that it would be like putting poison in my house to build it up out of formaldehyde soaked wood and such, given that I know better and more to the point, can afford it. On this small of a scale the different doesn't add up to that much, but percentage-wise its much more expensive - the plywood cost me $36 a sheet, about three times the normal price. Then, there's green for the rest of the world: recycled materials, manufacturing processes that don't produce a lot of toxic waste, or a lot of waste period, buying stuff that's available locally to minimize shipping. This is important to me too, but given the scale of the project it isn't my top priority. The main thing I've learned about green building though is, most of the innovations apply to big suburban houses that waste a ton of water and energy, are usually poorly heated and full of cheap, shiny new materials put in by McMansion developers. Want to go green? Live in the city - in an apartment or a row house, with no lawn. Just take out that lead watermain and you'll be left with a lot of natural materials like wood and stone that have done the trick since before the cave got its first reno.

Beam Makeover: Before and After

Before: after removeing the bathtub we could see the beam right up in front, which I called "the toothpick".


After: Check out all that steel; now this feels sturdy.

Beams Tomorrow, Pipes Monday, Apartment on the Horizon

Little boxy fixtures for a little box of a bathroom. Here's one of two four foot long tubs out there: the Kohler Greek Soaking tub, which is 24" deep - much more appealing to me than the other by American Standard, a mere 15" puddle. But make no mistake: these fixtures are trouble, especially the Kohler Escale toilet, which every plumber hates, but every queer eye so far loves. And that's a Lacava Aquapiccolo sink, 15" wide. After all I've been through with the rest of the house, these devils are getting in!

Dressing the Part

Nice accessories for construction projects really make the whole thing a lot more enjoyable. I saw a fabulous tool bag on the subway a few months ago - not a dirty hard working bag - a spanking new clean one on a pretty gay man. I was never able to find the same one - open topped white canvas with light leather handles and pockets on the outside - anybody? But I did get ahold of this classic Kline's Toolbag at the HomeDepot in Chelsea. which well deserves this logo (which I didn't make, just found on someone else's blog - thanks!):

The Square Toilet Is Going To Make It!

WIth all this trouble, the one good thing to come of it so far is that the big 4" pipe needed for the fab toilet is going to be put in after all. The plumbers and contractors think its the most bizarre thing they've ever seen, and one had the nerve to inquire if I had a square behind. Not yet...

A Fully Integrated Cat Scratcher and Perch

At the Upper West Side home of two beautiful Bengal cats yesterday, I saw an impressively well designed and functional interior design innovation: cat perches and scratching posts artfully distributed around the house, matching the furniture upholstery and the hardware that held up the bookshelves (which belong to some queer friends). Finally, a homoimprovement catering to specially to lesbians:

Hmmmm

Daily Affirmation: Demolition Is Fun.

House of cards

Looking on the bright side...

The front of the apartment is looking fabulous. I keep thinking, this room is the size of plenty of whole apartments in Manhattan - why not move right in? The light and the fan went up yesterday and I love them. The floors are done, and I had three meatheads (the minimum) in to move all the appliances - fridge, toilet, microwave....- right into the middle of the living room so the rest of the house could retain some semblance of normalcy. All that's left to do in there is painting, plastering the fireplace, and fixing up the baseboard with grrrr... quarter-round. And find some kitchen cabinets. I moved my Heywood Wakefield desk up and set out a few chairs, to make it look a little like home. Tomorrow though... a demolition crew is coming to take out the remaining bathroom walls, the bathtub,the floors... and make room to fix the structural beams. We'll be able to see right through to the second floor. At least things are changing!!!

Do I like these floors?

They're a little more brown than I'd planned. I wish I'd had Verrazano Flooring do a second coat of stain. But they're really starting to grow on me, and they're getting good reviews from the ladies so far. Right now I like anything that's DONE.

Electrician coming Monday!

I'm blazing recklessly ahead with half the apartment, while the other half is about to be sent back to the dark age. Monday I've got Cerillo Electric coming to install my brand new School House Electric light in my eventual kitchen - this one with the turquoise striped shade and a longer fixture, which I hope will diffuse the overhead light in all directions and make it more pleasant. My pair of Modern Fan Co. Cirrus Hugger fans (in white) have been hanging around in their boxes for several months already. Finally one will go in my living room - the room with the fewest problems, which is the only one that's remotely close to being done. Just in time for winter. Good thing it can be turned on backwards to blow the warm air down rather than wisk it up out of the room, to compensate for the lack of insulation in the roof. I'll have the electrician check out the wiring for the whole house while we're at it - because, as one contractor said to me recently, we don't want to fix all the f-ups just to have the house burn down once we're done.

"I wondered why you didn't flirt with me"

This whole project just isn't funny anymore. This, compounded by the loss of my pirated wireless connection, is why I've neglected the blog. This is what's happened in the last two weeks:

1. Larry Ubell the super queer-friendly building inspector came back for another pass. Last time he came the bathroom floor was still down and he didn't see the worst of the beams. He told us how to fix them. And, he told me that I "reacted to him like a guy" and made him worry that he'd "lost his mojo" as a straight guy when we met the last time because I didn't subtly flirt with him the way straight women usually do. Now that's a historic homoimprovement moment! Now this isn't a conversation I'd usually have with someone inspecting my house, because even to talk about it is to potentially open doors to undesirable attention. But this is a pretty unusual situation, and I really appreciated actually getting to hear how I was perceived in this context. He hit the nail on the head: to flirt, not flirt, react to inquiries that are implicitly about why I'm not flirting with plumbers, electricians, contractors - this the subtext of all of my homoimprovement interactions. The shocking thing is that he noticed himself, his own reactions, and could understand what it all meant - once he saw my rainbow do-hickey. I guess his gay daughter deserves a lot of credit for this? I don't know. But he complained that I didn't put up his name on the blog, so here it is, the very first real endorsement from HomoImprovent: Accurate Building Inspectors: "We're SUCH a gay friendly buisness." By the end of the meeting I was angling for a job there... but he said I'd have a lot to learn. I guess I'd better stick with what I know a whole lot better than building codes: Foucault.

2. The beams, the plumbing, the roof, the electrical: a total and utter disaster. The beams need steel braces like a bucktoothed kid. Everytime we look we find more cuts in them. I think if we'd gotten the bathtub filled up with water it would have crashed through to the floor below. Of course we couldn't get it filled up because the drain pipe leaks so much. All the plumbing is coming out, along with around $5000 for the beams. Even the bathtub has to come out now! While we're at it, down comes one whole wall of the bathroom - the one with the sliding door that just makes my blood boil every time I look at it. My girlfriend and I went at it with a crowbar already and discovered a million little pieces of wood, plaster, metal framing, crap in other words, all nailed and screwed in so securely that we couldn't get the damn door out. The structure of the house, in shreds, and this tinker toy project is like a brick shithouse! I can't wait for demolition day.

3. One bit of progress: half the apartment floor is sanded and stained, 1/2 Ebony 1/2 Jacobean Minwax, as suggested on Apartment Therapy, followed by 3 coats of AFM Safecoat water based polyurethane. I think it looks pretty good, although I wish I'd gotten a second coat of stain. The poly is great though, doesn't smell bad at all. Verazanno Flooring got the stuff for me from Green Depot and didn't charge any extra money. I'm hoping they liked it and will start using it, so much better for the residents and the workers. Next I'm going to get the ceiling fan and a new light fixture installed, then this half of the house will really start to look finished. I'm so excited. Above is a before picture of the floor and the fireplace I wanted it to match with.

Don't believe the plumber when he tells you that THE PIPES WILL HOLD UP THE HOUSE!

A PEPSI CAN! Not at all refreshing as a building material.
Here's where the pepsi can is, in the would be kitchen:
A public service announcement from Dineen Contracting, who came for a second estimate on my tragic beam situation. But first, I don't think I've mentioned the discovery of a certain Pepsi can that was cut up and used to secure the water pipes in the kitchen - thanks Mike the contractor! He was a little shocked that "this is my competition?!*?!" I would have never known about the Pepsi can if we hadn't just ripped open the kitchen wall to vent the sink and dishwasher. What dishwasher, I'm sure everyone wants to know? The $1200 18" Miele Incognito dishwasher that has been biding its time in my mother's living room, right next to the embattled square toilet, whose fate is still uncertain. The absurdity of the situation is creeping up on me... the high end fixtures, beautiful tiles, hip design magazines piling up in an apartment that I might as well have hired a kindergarten class to renovate. At first I felt screwed. I'm starting to feel like a fool. I had no idea how wrong it could go.... I guess the lesson is, you want the contractor to be at least half as technically skilled as your dishwahser. The problem is that, even going for the GE instead of the very best (looking) dishwasher I could find, getting a comparable contractor is a lot more expensive. But since you can't sheetrock over a dishwasher, like you can over beams and sewer pipes, my priorities were out of order, like the rest of the house is now.

Take me back to Mexico!!!

Honestly, things have gone from bad to worse and worse and worse with my apartment in the last few weeks. I needed a vacation from it all... including the narrative documentation. I went to Mexico with my girlfriend. To two "design hotels, " to rejuvenate my enthusiasm for this endless project. Now I'm back and I'm ready to paint my kitchen turquoise like the beautiful hotel Condesa DF and plumb my bathroom like the unimpeachably hip Hotel Basico, with the pipes right out there where I can see 'em. I think I'll put them in and then hold a seminar for all the hack plumbers running pipes to nowhere in this city. Three principles of amateur plumbing: 1. follow gravity 2. water tight seal. 3. DON'T CHOP DOWN THE REST OF THE HOUSE TO PUT THE PIPES IN. We've already dealt with the violation of principle number 1, and we've paid another two grand to have that fixed. Now, the update: here's how I learned the next two principles.

About three weeks ago, the day before I left for my vacation, I had the friendly guys from Komfort plumbing in to test the pipes they'd straightened out (i.e. fixed from being "back pitched" so that they now pitch towards the main waste stack), and the vents extended right up through the roof to take the sewage gas OUT of rather than INTO the house. It all seemed great, it had cost a fourth of what the other plumbers proposed because they charged me by the hour instead of by the job, and best of all, it seemed DONE. Luckily I was sitting on the top of the stairs waiting around while they tested for any leaks. I glanced down into the wrecked floor, and guess what I saw? A big stream of water pouring out of the main connection to the waste pipe for the entire apartment! They hadn't even touched that, they hadn't even looked at it before they fixed everything that led into it. So I left for my trip knowing that when I got back I'd have to deal with tearing out the downstairs ceiling after all so that they could get at this pipe. I'm not even going to mention the gas leak... it had me seeing stars... but its easy to fix compared to the rest.

I made the judgement call not to tear out the pipes and redo the whole thing underneath the floor. I was wrong. My mistake for listening to the Komfort plumbers instead of the building instead of the building inspector. Yesterday I got a new *LISCENCED & INSURED* contractor in to look at fixing the beams in the bathroom floor and the first thing he said was that he didn't know what to do to fix it - and again, who the hell would cut beams like that? The worst part is, he pointed out something the building inspector missed, which is that the beam that is the worst off holds up four other beams around the chimney!!!! And its a goner. No steal plate can save it. So out come the straightened out pipes, the chopped up beams, my decrepit but beloved wide plank pine floor boards (just in the entry hallway though). So we're going to have to redo the pipes after all, but at least not all of them, and he figured out what seems like a good way to brace up all the beams around the damaged area. I won't try to describe it... this is what 1/4 of a beam looks like.

Analysis of the liabilities of trying to DIY being a contractor: although the plumbers did the wrong thing, I paid them so much less to do some good work and some useless work than I would have to get the whole job done by someone else that I think my mistake was less costly than turning over the job to a contractor or even one of the other plumbers who wanted to do a lot more unnecessary work. In the end, we have to redo half the waste pipes - only the ones in the bathroom, but not the ones in the kitchen. If we'd done the whole thing we'd have made a big ugly box hanging from the ceiling below. This way the who redo is ending up exactly where I though it should go six months ago: in the closet right underneath the bathroom.

"Smile, its not that bad" ?

Aladdin Plumbing: rub on a drain pipe and out comes the heteronormativity! This guy seemed to know his plumber's butt from his elbow, but when he told me to "smile" on his way out the door that was my cue to rely one of my first homoimprovemnt lessons: when someone sugarcoats a bad plumbing situation with a little heteronormative gender banter its reason to be suspicious of what they've got to make excuses about. Not to mention whether I want to deal with more "who's that on the phone, your husband?" No I'm not exagerating at all. Is he reading my blog? And, he won't give me an exact estimate, because the job is too tcomplicated. Nope, he's not granting my three wishes... But he did suggest a company who could do my water main, and guess what they're called: MAIN MAN!!!

Need I say more? This whole industry is built on and in the buisness of maintaining the status quo of the hetero gendered division of labor!

Inspecting the foundations...

Well this building inspector was a horse of a different color! A super gay-friendly building inspector! - it almost makes up for all the things he found wrong with my house. Here's the thing: it makes such a huge difference to be on the same page about what's getting built and lived in. Its hard enough to make sure everyone's clear about which way the tiles are supposed to lined up, which direction the drain is supposed to flow (that should be easy but it isn't), what's really or not really needed to keep the house warm and the roof from leaking. All of that usually takes place against the assumption, so basic that it never needs to be stated, about what a house is, to say the least of a home. A house is a thing that involves a whole host of gender relations. It stakes out the private domain, the domain of women - and yet things are pretty well organized so that a woman needs men to build it for her, maintain it for her, and get it locked up tight so other men can't get in. The house, built by man, is then transsubstantiated into a home by woman. Women are then enagaged in the maintenance of the home and everything that is supposed to go on in it; private activities. So when I invite a man into my house to help me get the house itself into working order, I invite in all these assumptions about what the house is and what kind of home it will become, who I am and what I will do in it. And the first and most important piece of information that anyone learns when they come to help improve my house is that I'm hiring them and know where the wires are, i.e., where's my husband? Women, straight, gay, young, old, are familiar with the need to work extra hard not to get ripped off by mechanics, plumbers, etc. Men who don't know diddly in this department may also fear for their wallets and their masculinity in such situations. But my worry here is about much more than getting overcharged or shoddy work. Its hard even to know the difference until you see it.

Which brings me back to the building inspector. How did I find out he was gay friendly? I hung some rainbow dangly thing out of my back pocket. I just got it recently 'cause I'm so darn tired of being an invisible lesbian, and guess what? It works like a charm. He saw it, mentioned his queer kid, and before you know it we were onto gay politics and gossip between rotting beams and open sewage lines. Two things: I was with my mother during the inspection, whereas I'm usually alone when people come to work on the house, so I felt comfortable being much more out. Still, the rainbow is on my cell phone, so pretty much everyone who's been here has had the chance to see it. I guess unless you've got a queer eye open, this thing is not enough to disuade the average heterosexual from assuming that its just a fashion accessory to go with my jewelry and pedicure. On the contrary! Its a untility item, I wish with all the design savvy in this community we could get a better looking signifier. (Problem is, if it looks too good the straights get in on it and it doesn't do its job anymore - single earing, nice hankie anyone?) The thing is if this doesn't do the trick, I don't really want to go the extra mile to out myself and attract interest in my private, read *home*, life when I'm staring down a broken skylight with some dude. I don't want him to get distracted trying reconfigure our cultural gender norms and my place in them, especially vis a vis him. Unless its really going to be homoimprovement, I just want him to fix the skylight. So I guess the rainbow also acts as a sorting device: something to notice for those who care (hopefully not the god fearing homophobes), and nothing to those whose interest wouldn't interest me. Perhaps I'm being to conservative... I've got plenty more chances to test out my gender performance on the home improvement scene.

...because the house has lead pipes bringing in that delicious NYC drinking water. It doesn't have flues in the chimney, which is why it reeks of burning oil all winter long as the smoke seeps out between the bricks of the chimney, instead of up out of it. The basement floods and needs pumps installed to keep it dry(er). The beams that the bird brained contractor cut all need to be reinforced with steel plates, and all the new apartment's pipes rerouted. And the open drain pipe problem remains. Tonight we'll bust up some more walls to look for the stinking culprits.

I didn't get much done on the Danish chair yesterday, I wasn't mad enough. Lesson of the day: the politics of this rennovation are what really get my panties in a bunch. When they're straightened out - or queered as the case maybe - I can think about the house like the inert object it pretends to be and focus on fixing it up. Then, finally, I'll get to decorate it.

Homo Scavenger spots discarded Danish chair from a distance of 1 & 1/2 blocks...

The homosexual sapien is widely held to possess a unique ability to identify items of high quality and fine design, items valued but often less quickly and accurately identified by the rest of the species. This capacity likely evolved as a consequence of the increase in reproductive fitness it conferred on the homosexual, allowing him to establish a niche in which he is tolerated and appreciated for his contribution to the appearance and lifestyle of the more numerous heterosexual type, much as the disposition towards altruism is believed to have evolved. Whether it is a heightened perceptiveness for such features as color and texture - the so-called "queer eye" - has yet to be scientifically confirmed, however studdies on rats offer preliminary support for the hypothesis. Although the inversion remains a controversial explanation of homosexuality, it has been proposed that the practice of "antiquing" in the homosexual male may result from residual expression of the ancestral female gatherering role.

I've been so concerned about plumbing, roofing, sanding the floors, that I haven't had much time to exercise my more rare lesbian queer eye lately. Its Sunday and you can't get anything done unless its at the emergency rate, so I was pretty excited this afternoon when I spotted this chair languishing out on the street. I was eager for a small project and some quick satisfaction as my dream renovation drags into its fifth month. Its not a gorgeous chair... I thought maybe someone had lifted it from a public library, but I liked the squared arms and the overall shape and decided to drag it in. Before I even thought to take a picture of it I started in on the dirty upholstery. With the current urban bedbug crisis plagueing even featured house tours on apartmenttherapy I wanted it off and out of my house right away, but I took the time to have it inspected by an expert first. With his approval I carried on, cutting away the wool cover to expose two nasty layers of crumbling foam, in both the seat and the chair back. Yuck!

With most of the foam out of the way, except for some bits that had partially disintegrated and stuck to the wood, I tried to figure out how the fabric was attached so as to conceal all staples or nails: so that's what piping is for. At first I thought it would be too much trouble to get it off and almost gave up on the whole thing. I turned over the chair to get a better look at the label - Rudd. Denmark/Washington D.C. I can't find much about it on the internet, it seems to be an office furniture company that may or may not still be around. Any information out there? Its not worth any great trouble but I have a soft spot for Danish furniture, it deserves a chance. A wrench with a clamp solved my problems in a heartbeat. I grabbed the piping and pulled. The upholstery came off in one long piece with most of the staples stuck in it. The rest came out easily with the wrench.

Here's my new chair after about an hour of fun. Instead of upholstery I think I will make cushions to strap or maybe snap on, much cleaner. Tomorrow I'll sand it lightly and seal it while I burn up about what I learn from the building inspector.

Queer Roofing Solutions: advice from a man in uniform

This morning I took a walk to Dyke's Lumber to order a skylight get some all around straight advice about about the other hole in my roof that was the cause and effect of my contractor's last day on the job. Let's start with the skylight: the old bathroom had a hole in the roof with a dinky plywood hatchcover, and a ladder that extened down INTO the clawfoot tub - yes, I let that little treasure go in order to make way for a smaller and better fitting tub. A story for another day. As you can imagine, this was about the most useless and unsafe way to have roof access, and in the twenty odd years that this was my family house, nobody every went out onto the roof through it. Now, however, the hole sits directly over my bathtub, and I have big plans for a skylight which will make it seem like the sun and the rain are coming right in, a virtual outdoor shower.



Before I move on to practical matters, let me observe that the virtual shares its domain with the faux, the unnatural, the queer in an oldfashioned sense that takes on its more gay meaning in relation to kindred terms like camp and drag. For example, I love that a crowning achievement of Paris' gay mayor was to create Paris Plage, a fake beach on the cold grey Seine that has become ubiquitous on the river banks of cold northern European cities. Its a river in drag as an ocean - and everybody plays along, joins into the performance! So when it comes to blending indoor and outdoor, natural materials and modern design, I always have that queer eye towards the little absurdities that makes it work and gives it away at the same time.

The roof. I ordered my Insuladome skylight for the bargain price of $483 including a lip to give it a pitch for the rain to run off on my flat roof, and a rod to open it up when I want to let the rain it (or the steam out). I decided to order it myself after a roofer told me it would be $1700, another $850, another that it would take five weeks to deliver: I'll have it delivered by Dyke's next week. So while I was taking care of this, a guy butted in and started giving advice about the other hole. I was going to put in a Bilco - a big, up to fire code, heavy duty deal that would require cutting a roof beam. He offered to do the job. No thanks. Oh, no matter, I work for the fire department now.

OK, now I'm interested. Do I need the big ol' Bilco? Everyone told me that the 18" between my beams was no room for a fireman to get out of with all his gear on, and to be honest, I can't picture any of the handfull of firedyke's I've met getting out of there either, they're a pretty burly bunch of ladies. But this guy pointed out that a fireman would never use my roofhatch anyway! He'd certainly rather use his ladder to access any part of my little three story row house. So, I asked him, all I really need is enough room to get up there with a cocktail, and saftely back down again after I've drunk it? Even better, why don't I cut the hole 18"x32" , save the beams, and get a custom hatch and a good graduated ladder - that'll make it easy to get a cooler up there. But what about the roof itself? If anyone walks around on it much it will get ruined quickly and this will void the garuantee from the roofing company. I'd love a deck, and my long term fantasy plan is really a green roof - as in an urban oasis for birdies and native grasses which also serves as an insulator and moderates rainwater runoff - and gives the house that ultra high end sustainable design feel.... His suggestion was more affordable and more practical: get a roll of fake grass and cover the roof, this will protect it and let me hang out on it. A faux green roof!!! That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm even going to call Greene roofing for a fourth estimate. I've learned to keep the estimates coming until I figure out exactly what I want, how I want it to be done, and how much it should reasonably cost - not too high or too low, and always on paper.

This was going to be a DESIGN blog...

I'll start with the good news. My shower is fixed! For the bargain price of $175 + tax, my shower valve is now flush up against the beautiful Akdo seaglass tiles, the shower pipe is six inches higher, and my waterfall bath spout is in place. The bath spout, it turns out, will be the only part of the original plumbing job that's a keeper. So, as far as getting the water into the bathing facility, things are looking up. The other side of the wall is another story.

This morning was an experiment. Given the varried and costly advice I've gotten on dealing with my bathroom, I decided to roll the dice and try out a company recommended by a random guy who was in the tile store when I regailed the staff. They called me to ask why I'd had an order of tiles shipped express and then not come to get them for the last three weeks.... Komfort Plumbing. They don't advertise. They've got plenty of big customers already, how did I find them, friends and family only. They said they'd do the job by the hour, two guys for $145. Since Martin was going to charge $600 for the shower situation alone, I figured I could try Komfort out for comparison at pretty low risk financially and in terms of how much damage they could inflict on bathroom. They even suggested I bust open the wall myself to save the time they'd charge me for doing it. Apparently, drywall comes down pretty easily with an exacto knife and a small crowbar. (In time we'll see about getting it back on.)

Turns out, this was a pretty precient suggestion. I thought, if they're quick, I'll get them to put in the sink too. Then it will start to look like a bathroom. Since the hack plumber had left a rough iron pipe with no threading sticking out of my wall, I broke away the wall around it to leave room to get it out and put in whatever is supposed to go in its place. I also know that a wall hung sink needs a sturdy piece of wood inside the wall to be bolted into and I wanted to see if that had made the cut. Yup, it was there, right above a piece of pipe sticking up above the trap that extended outside the wall. What's ...that? I placed a call to an interested party to document my suspicions. Moments later the plumbers arrived and immediately wanted to know who the hell did my plumbing. Did I do it? I might as well have. What that pipe is is just that, a drain pipe sitting there open right in the wall, so that when the drain pipes get clogged up the water has somewhere to go: into the wall.

For $175, charging only for one guy by the hour ($95), I've got the water coming into my bathtub. For $6000 they'll redo all the drain lines. This was even worse than I thought, but I fear its even worse than that. I've been complaining viciously about a stench in the lower two floors of the house for the last couple of years. I chalked it up to bad catbox maintenance by my family, who own the house, but now that I think about it, its SINCE THE LAST RENOVATION by the same jackass contractor! Could it be that there are open sewer pipes breathing foul gases throughout the house?!?!!!!

Lesson of the day: its actually not that the men that dominate these professions are or pass for straight that irks me. Its the ones for whom this absolutely the only qualification they have for the job. I guess its when you don't have a fucking clue what you're doing that defensive hetero-masculinity comes out of the toolbox. In fact, when I sense it now, I'm going to take it as a good reason to suspect that there's not much else in the toolbox. Moreover, it scares me. I don't like being alone in my house with strange straight men, period. But what struck me today was that when they are competent and professional, they're also more comfortable with me, less threatened by a woman with an interest and a clue, so they answer my questions and listen to my input, show me what they're doing and explain how to do other things myself. This not only is good for my house but I feel safer, which is even more important. Homoimprovement isn't just about the house itself, its about all the social interactions that it takes to turn it into "a home" in the generic sense that turns out to be the core of the heteronorm.

Is that a plumbing license in your pocket?

Another lesson from the plumbing school of hard knocks: a license is not JUST a ticket into a beauracratic maze that will certainly cost more than hiring that nice unlicensed neighborhood guy with the undocumented assistant who knows exactly what to do and doesn't want to charge you more just to turn it over to our lousy government in taxes. I was on site with said plumber, assistant, and my all knowing contractor who'd done the rest of the house when he ran the pipes in what looked to me like a maze that would challenge even the most intelligent sewer rat. I had a twinge of doubt, but being that we had all my new fixtures and the installation guides on hand, I trusted that this was probably the only and therefore the best of all possible ways to squeeze everything in to my 4 x 6 1/2' bathroom. I had the fixtures shipped express for this precise purpose, but after three months the new fangled Kohler Escale square toilet was still in its box in my living room, and the bathroom floor was tiled over in black slate. Pipes stuck out of the tiled shower wall, and the drain and water pipes patiently awaited the tiny but gorgeous Lacava sink I'd so carefully chosen.


Mad as I was about some other problems, like a big hole in my roof (more on this to follow), I figured that with the tough part of the plumbing all done, I should be able to do the rest. After a few hours on various DIY websites, including trusty homedepot's small project's department, I felt prepared to put the trim on the shower body, install the showerhead (I'd replaced one before), put on my beloved waterfall bath spout, and tackle the toilet and the wall hung sink. The first thing I realized is that the shower body is sticking out from the wall by more than an inch - could this be fixed? I called Kohler technical: 1-800-456-4537. The answer: NO. Damn! I moved on to the toilet: more bad news. The plumber had installed a three inch drain pipe while my fancy toilet needs a four inch one, not to mention that the inlet was too low, and there was a flange, which is not necessary for this toilet. This is when I realized that not only hadn't the plumber read the manual, but the contractor hadn't bothered to take it out of the box during the three month interval before he tiled over the whole bathroom. I bit it and started calling plumbing COMPANIES in my area.

First came Aladdin Plumbing, who noted that the wall hung sink pipes were also non-functional, or at the very least would look absolutely terrible hanging out under my sleep little sink. The toilet? Forget it. Buy a new one and unload this square thing on craigslist. He could fix the rest, but there was no way to do it without opening up the walls. Yes, we could do it without disturbing the tiles - by chopping the sheetrock from the bedroom on the other side of the wall. He didn't think it would cost more than $1000, and he'd do the kitchen sink and dishwasher too for the price. Not so bad... at this rate, I should have just hired them in the first place, paid more to him instead of to the contractor's cut off his plumber's fee. Now I'm beginning to see how lucrative contracting could be.....

Always get a second opinion. Really, estimates are free advice, free school. Next came Martin Plumbing, highly recommended by the grape vine. They actually called to say the guy doing the estimate would be an hour late! Greater shock, he got there right then! I'm not looking for timeliness particularly, but this was very considerate, and unusual. Usually they call two hours later to reschedule for the next day. Same verdict about the shower body, bath and shower, cut the bedroom wall. The bathroom sink, same story, cut wall, replace drain valve, put in a nice shiny chrome P-trap. After another long talk with Kohler Tech, it seemed like a possibility that the toilet could be made to work with the 3" pipe, with a little improvisation. Could they do it? I must be crazy, no. The estimator, Leon, pulled the plastic cup out of the toilet drain pipe, releasing a vile sewer smell that had motivated me to quickly replace the cup when I'd gone to measure it the first time. He pointed to the fetid water hovering at the bottom. The pipe is pitched backwards, away from the main drain line, not towards it. Where did this water even come from? This is the top floor apartment. Not only wouldn't he put the square toilet in, he'd be worried about the way any toilet would function with this pipe. Why didn't the plumber just run the pipe under the beams, directly into the main line? THAT WAS WHAT I ORIGINALLY SAID TO DO!

Lesson of the day: If you have any common sense at all, TRUST IT and follow it out until you know for sure whether its right. E.g. if you suspect that water should flow down as directly as possible, find out if you're right and if it can be done. Also know when you really don't have any sense about something.

To make a longer story just long, it turned out that the pipes to the kitchen were also pitched away from the main line, and at the expense of several beams, including the one that holds up the staircase! Wrong size gas pipe... and the final kicker, the continuation of the drain pipe jungle down in the basement. Common sense tells me that I'd want turds and waste water to depart from my house as quickly and efficiently as possible. I'd want to to take the most direct route - as the crow flies, so to speak. I don't want it meandering along, born gently on by that water saving flush. Who in the world would set up the drains for the whole house like this?


So now we're talking about ripping out the ceiling of bathroom below, and straightening things out all the way down. I can't wait to see how much this is going to cost. I can't believe it! The estimate is already here, the very next day. $5000
Now I know everyone's got a living to make, including this trouble shooting licensed plumber. What to do? Get another estimate....

How many dykes does it take to unscrew a lightbuld, remove the fixture, and install it correctly this time?

This blog chronicles the trials, tribulations and elated moments of my apartment renovation... which is now stretching into the fifth month - this is a 600 square foot apartment we're talking about. Here's the new floorplan and the old floorplan - click to launch and wait a few seconds for it to load, then use handy Jordan's Furniture Room Planner to design your own rooms. I registered the blog in April, when it was just getting started. At the time I was excited to do as much of the renovation as I could myself, and with the help of some of my favorite ladies, got started by tearing out the vile linoleum floors - multiple layers of it, then the crumbling subfloor - and the equally gross tenement special kitchen (circa 1982).









I carted out the trash in the wee hours to a dumster set up for the incoming condos down the street. This fun project afforded me the satisfaction of saving the !!$6000!! a nice man offered to charge to do it for me. But then a reality check set in: I have to work, not just renovate my apartment. So I swallowed my pride and hired a contractor and got excited about having the whole thing done in four to six weeks. Yeah right.... that never happens. I know that. But four months later, after endless infuriating arguments with men who never wanted to believe that I could tell when they had botched a job, or that it was indeed very possible to do something they claimed couldn't be done, a pipe should go here not there, I realized I was doing a lot of the work myself after all. To make a long story short: we fired the contractor.

I learned a lot, and its a good thing because the job is only half done and there are some major F-ups to contend with. Lesson 1: be your own contractor. I read this everywhere, but at the beginning I didn't think I had time or knew quite enough to do a lot of it myself, and have the sense to hire other people to do what I can't. I still don't, but now (for better, or in this case worse) I know that doesn't set me apart from lots of men out there confidently hiring themselves out as contractors. Its not just the work, its the whole 'straight-man-knows-best' in his special domain of home improvement presumpltion that drives me crazy! I searched high and low for a woman contractor when I was getting started, but to no avail. I wanted to keep my buisness in my chosen community of women and homosexuals, would have felt more comfortable having them in my house, appreciated their skills more and resented their mistakes less, as I do my own. If I was in Charlotte, NC I'd surely call Handywoman Home Improvements Inc. Since then I've heard of a few in the vicinity of my NYC 'hood, and found lots of skilled tradeswomen and largely closeted on the job gay men, but nothing like LesbianBuilder and its brother company GayBuilder - alas these are UK outfits!

Next: pics, floorplan, and more socio-political analysis of getting the job done.

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