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.