"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.