Upstairs

As I look at the photos of the house when it was in escrow, what was I thinking?



Well, to start,  this room is larger than the house I grew up in as part of a family of four.  The other attractive aspect was a 13 foot ceiling at the peak. But, as did the rest of the house, it needed work-lots of it.  Back in '94, the last thing on my mind was documenting a before and after project. Also, I did not have a wide angle lens, thus, along with the clutter of moving shown, the photos don't do convey the space as well as I'd like; it really wasn't in that bad a condition. Like other portions of the house, renovation were done in stages several years apart.

The first improvements were to get rid of the wallpaper, the drapes and put in two large windows in the south wall.

Here is office area as purchased

The bookshelf area was altered to accomodate a little secretary desk that has been in Geri's family for decades and is in poor condition. The parts that were not needed- front legs and top- are in storage. The lower shelf that it rests on was made from 12 x 2x20ft old growth fir joists that I saved when I demolished the original carport. Those beams were a storage problem for more than 12 years but they eventually made their way back into the house in a very satisfying manner.


The upstairs' original use was as a master suite and for a while it did serve as a bedroom. We rented out this room even after we married as my wife and housemate liked each other.

Here is the room post housemate. At that time I replaced the vinyl and aluminum windows with viny clad wood ones.



Once she moved out we needed that space as "sanity space" while working on other areas of the house. As digital photography evolved, I found myself using chemical printing less and less and traded up on printers as they became higher quality and more cost effective at the larger sizes. The space required for a printer, monitor and supplies resulted in that room becoming a home office/digital darkroom for myself and a sewing/crafts/painting area for Geri- thus it literally became an "Arts and Crafts" room.  Around 2008, the roof for this area needed replacing and I had a crew working on that.

While the construction dumpster was being loaded with the old roof debris we took a hard look at the carpet in this room. It was looking pretty bad and we had already replaced it once. During the past few years, I had developed a scratch for a upgraded TV . As mentioned elsewhere in this series, asthmatics, cats and carpet are not a good combination. Geri and I agreed that if I did the work to put in hardwoods and make the ceiling more interesting, that I could pay myself with a new TV.

So the carpet go put in the dumpster and off we went to Lumber Liquidators.



I was not in the mood for putting in 700 sq feet of 2" wide oak, then sanding and coating said product. Thus we agreed on a floor color and finish had it delivered. After two 16 hour days of pounding solid hardwood planks with a rented compressor, we had no more carpet. As DIY remodelers know, one thing leads to another.  In this case it was replacing floor electric heating units with a heat pump unit. This method was chosen because the upstairs is the only room where we wished we had AC in the summer and I could also use the outside unit to heat my shop. Space heater in the winter + sawdust= pushing my luck. The alternative: numb fingers in the winter + power tools= ditto. I made the faux beams using the above mentioned joists. I hate faux anything but that expanse of drywall ceiling needed some breaking up.

Here is the room post that remodel.


A portion of the bathroom and the walk-in closet were redone during this stage.
The bathroom area had a 70's clunky vanity with a formica top,  carpet in the vanity area and a big glued-on mirror.Here is a partial view.



The shower though was nice sized, with room to sit down comfortably and it was clean; thus I've left it as is as we only need bathrooms to be clean and functional. We replaced the carpets with hardwood, I made the vanity and the mirror frames. Geri and I put the stone veneer to cover the vanity and mirror wall


The walk-in closet is used as a sewing room area.  It presently also serves as a repository for some of Geri's books/school materials. Once we've accomplished our living room alteration to a home library, it will be much less crowded in there.


We then purchased the flat files for storage of digital printing supplies,unframed artwork purchased or made and matte board remnants. The rolling cart used for the cabinet under the PBP poster was purchased from Rejuvenation in Portland at 40 cents on the dollar compared to Restoration Hardware's offering. I had to put in a weekends work of cleaning, degreasing and altering to come up with the finished product. Even with that much "sweat equity", it is still a good time:cost outlay. The other cabinet base was made out of the carport joists.




The cabinet against the West wall was a DIY project to hold a minimalist yet quality audio system. The main music source is a Squezebox Touch- little $300 digital server. It can access a hard drive containing more than a 100 cds in uncompressed format in addition to some MP3 files. It can also access a kazillion internet stations, a number of which stream at 320 kbps which gives a quality close to redbook CD. It also can be linked either wireless or by ethernet to my computer which is 32ft away- other computer audio setups require USB which is not designed to run that length. There is also a serviciable CD player for the times we just want to pop in a CD, but the little server has better sound. The wonders of technology. Another bonus is not having to use iTunes, which has it's merits but very much also its flaws.

As we were spending more time in that room, Geri's longstanding concern that the french door had seen better days and was close to nonfunctional began to register with me.  Also the windows I had used in the first round of rehab were getting on my nerves.  I have always liked the "bank of windows" look and had tried to do that in the sunroom addition- but was deterred by B&S.  A moment of idleness last spring admiring an Audiogon poster's bank o' windows in his "virtual system" resulted in my impulsively taking the drywall off the West wall which meant I had to stop thinking about it and proceed with new french doors and windows. You can only imagine my wife's reaction.



My original plan was to have the windows and french doors installed; after the sticker shock at the bids submitted, I once again was faced with a DIY project. One good thing about looking at "professional" installation, one of the estimators advised- "you need to go to B&S with an alteration to the walls of that extent".  B&S then cheerfully required me to obtain engineered plans to satisfy code for shear forces.



A visit from the engineer found that a portion of the room did not have adequate support- this was the cause for the existing door to have problems functioning.

So, we revisit the "one thing leads to another" rule of renovation. New footing to support the wall, engineered plans with new beams b/w windows that need to go to the rafters, new headers, lots of strapping and since we needed to have a pretty substantial footing for the support, a new driveway once a concrete contractor was involved. One positive about the driveway was that we had lot of neighbors stop to give their appreciation for helping to maintain the appearance of the neighborhood- we replied to be happy to no longer have the worst driveway on the block.

A looming concern was that the delivery of the windows since they were custom to fit the openings specified by the plans s bmitted was taking longer than initially quoted.  I had been hoping for late august and now was looking at late september. Having a west wall completely down in late summer in the PNW is not a good scenario.




Luckily, the windows and plank siding were done when the first autumn rains came. I was able to install the cedar shingle portion working under a tarp hanging from the roof. To finish the interior I replaced the interior entry door and two Ikea bookcases.





Looking at the interior design sites, barn doors are candidates for the F*@k Your Noguchi Table site. That style has usefulness in this room. It helped with the symmetry of the bank of windows and a better support for a heavy interior door. That door was made with- you guessed it- the leftover carport beams and other materials left over from other projects. The other option- a pocket door would have meant drywall removal and wall framing alterations.
Little by little, I'm getting rid of my Ikea bookshelves and cabinets. They were a necessary evil; evil because they are somewhat representative of a lot of what is abhorrent in many of today's products. Superficially attractive and to paraphrase Redd Foxx- beauty may be only skin deep, but ugly's to the particle board core.

The room can be accused of having a Restoration Hardware showroom deja-vu feel.Here's my apology;for the use of 3 RH lighting fixture. The room is the size of a small house- and those 3 lamps by their design can cover a lot of territory without having to be moved. The metal scissor lift table can serve four different functions:

-side table for the little sofa (wife and I can sit there comfortably- we're not super-sized).

-standing height small table or,

-larger table with a tabletop I made for it.

-a extension for either my desk or Geri's worktable.

The items thus keep the furnishings to a minimum and allows for more wall use without the place feeling cluttered.

The living room alteration start is only 3 weeks away now so going over what has already been done has a deadline of sorts if these blogs are going to serve as a prelude to that.

Kitchen

This area makes for a long story as it underwent the biggest changes and is still a work in progress. Originally it was a galley kitchen with dropped ceilings, an electric range and cabinets stained a shade of brown that doesn't exist in nature.
The first repair was to strip the cabinets and apply a polyurethane finish. A friend from Los Angeles, who had worked with me before I left LA for med school, came up along with my mom and one of my aunts for work on structural changes.
Here is galley portion of the kitchen prior to the 1st round of changes.

Here is the central area of the kitchen.

My initial changes (pre-married) need a context. I like food but have a minimal interest in cooking. My lifelong interest in photography leads to a particular attentiveness to window light. That in turn led to a focus on the windows themselves. I'll elaborate on that elsewhere to stay on topic.
The following changes were done in '96: 
      Removed the dropped ceiling and the cabinet over the cooktop.
      Put in a skylight.
      Enlarged the framing to the ceiling as much as was structurally prudent.
      Opened the kitchen to the darkroom.
      Added a window to what was the darkroom.
Voila! Markedly improved lighting.
I added a wall to separate the galley from the kitchen in order to bring the fridge closer to the work area. I'm aware that big kitchens have been "the thing" since at least the mid-90's, which is when I started to pay attention to that sort of thing. Good light, a gas cooktop, and a workspace that made sense were more important than lots of cabinets and large fridges. I mention the fridge size because I allowed only 35 inches- who needs a big fridge? Here is the kitchen ca 1996

The kitchen was fine for my purposes, but needed improvement once I got married. As a friend put it, just as I needed tools, materials and adequate storage in my shop, Geri needed the same for her "shop". For I had the good fortune to marry a prolific cook. She's also a pretty good tile maker and installer.

I made the built-in the the pantry area in '98

The sideboard and hutch were made in '99 (Ger's Valentine's Day present)

The kitchen pretty much as below from 2000-2008.

In 2008 the economy in general and housing in particular was in the toilet. Contrarian that I am, it was a good time to work on the house. In 2008 we remodeled the upstairs room which was labor intensive but other than the hardwood flooring, did not incur a lot of expenses.  Which brings us to the fridges. The 35" opening had come back to haunt me.  In the present day, super sized USA standard size fridges are 36 inches and  also pretty deep. A white whale of a fridge in a small kitchen was not my idea of an improvement. Neither were the stainless steel low to mid price range choices. The metal gauge seemed closer to tin foil than a quality surface. When it comes to buying stuff, if I'm going to shell out money, it better be for quality products. While thinking about the kitchen update, we decided to make the breakfast room more of a kitchen extension by adding wine storage and cabinets. We decided to cough up for not one but two Sub-Zero glass-door fridges. The kitchen fridge has a shallow depth and is 35.5" wide, with heavy gauge steel and a glass door.  Glass also has the virtue of increasing the perceived size of the kitchen (at least to me). Geri was worried about the visibility of the inside, but thankfully she has a high need for order in her kitchen.  Luckily, the 1/2 inch increase required for the fridge opening was not as labor intensive or structurally invasive as I had feared. When removing the plaster on the wall adjacent to the dining area to make the required alterations, I was very pleased to find that doing so gave me a full inch additional width. So, I replaced the plaster with 1/2" drywall, used 1/4" plywood for the cabinet housing and was able to leave the adjacent cabinets and counters unchanged and meet the required dimensions for the fridge as specified by Sub-Zero.

During this round of remodel I made a new island cabinet, revised a bookcase for some of Geri's cookbooks and replaced the countertop. I made the first countertop from alder as it was an inexpensive solution to the original ceramic tile. But the polyurethane didn't like hot plates and pans, thus granite.

In order to make room for the fridges, we had to give up storage in the breakfast room where the wine fridge stands and in the kitchen area above the old fridge.

To compensate for this, I made the two cabinets shown and a smaller round table to accommodate the cabinets. The base of the table is a railroad jack that I found at Rejuvenation in Portland. Anecdotally, I was at that store a few months later looking around. I noticed that there wasn't the selection of stuff that lent itself to alterations. One of the salesmen said that another worker was using what was coming in to make furniture. He then said "one guy made a table using one of our iron pieces". "I'm that guy" I replied with a grin on my face.

That brings us to now.   As mentioned elsewhere, this year's project will be converting the living room  to a library. The kitchen still needs the replacement of the rest of the cabinets. That will probably happen in 2013.

Dining Room

I used to be asthmatic as a kid. While asthma flareups are pretty rare now, the condition contributed to my dislike of carpeting. Thankfully, hardwood in the PNW was pretty inexpensive in the mid 90's and one of the first changes I made to the place was get rid of the carpeting in the more public areas. I liked the stairs location but not the carpet or the handrail and balusters. The hutch was useful but the doors were outdated even then and the transition from the cabinet to the storage access door did'nt feel right. Here's the original dining area

My wife and voice of reason has been after me to put handrails for as long as I can remember. Now that our parents are older a handrail on the wall is on my to-do list. The stone wall was a 2009 weekend project that Geri's dad helped us with. The beam was a $16 purchase at the Recycling Center in NE Portland. The dining table was one of my earlier woodworking pieces. Here is the room in 2012 state.

And a view from the stairs. As for the cats, we've failed as parents

Darkroom to Breakfast Room

Back to the lack of light. Up to that point, I had a darkroom where I lived or at least access to a darkroom since college. That the house had a darkroom was great, but not in that location- west exposure, dark house to begin with.

Also, not having a window there contributed to a lack of balance/symmetry

Here is the breakfast room now

Sunroom

A friend's impression of the home was that it suffered from a lack of light. To address this, the initial plan for this room was to have windows and a door comprising the length of the 2 new walls. Bldg and Safety had other ideas like "too many windows" for example.  I revised the original plan to include tall windows and skylights which let in plenty of light.  I made the windows as I could not afford commercially made wood windows and I could not refinance the house until the addition had windows installed.  So, limitations imposed can be a good thing.   Here's the patio before the change. I'm fortunate to have even these suboptimal photos. I was focused on changing the house and before and after documentation was not on my radar. The east facing wall and shed roof did not help the ambient light of the living room. Replacing the aluminum sliding window with french doors was the first thing I did to the house.

Here is framing stage. The crew pictured are my mom, a non-biologic but by all other measures aunt who was visiting from Mexico, a long time friend from Los Angeles and myself. The photo was taken by a neighbor from across the street who very shortly after the photo was taken introduced me to who would become my wife. One of my favorite photos.

The sunroom now:

The Church of the Perpetual Remodel

I’ve been remodeling and fixing houses and apartments off and on since 1979 and for the first time have hired a general contractor for our latest project. At my age, first time anything qualifies as an adventure. The project is to raise the ceiling in our living room to help decompress our overstuffed bookshelves and relieve a sense of claustrophobia in that room that after 17 years of living here I haven’t been able to shake off. A running joke between one of my friends at work and me is to hang our heads in unison and mutter “we have ranch houses” when the topic of housing comes up. Our little ranch house has good bones, a great location and neighbors, and the price was right when I bought it. But after years of taking care of more cost-effective and important concerns, addressing the "want" for a higher living room ceiling will be somewhat ameliorated by the need to fix certain aspects of the existing roof. The contractor kindly agreed to bid for the shell part of the alteration and leave the inside for me to finish (we’re soundly part of the 99%). Interior details, windows and ceiling height are not yet specified, so I’ve been looking in libraries, bookstores and internet sites for ideas. While engaged in this, another motivation for re-opening this blog came when I found some negatives of my house before I bought it in ’95 while helping my mom unclutter her house. When I met my wife in ’97, I had already done quite a bit to the place. It was difficult to adequately in words communicate to her the changes that took place before she came onboard. I hope that by organizing and presenting the past, it helps me with the process going forward.
Here’s the floor plan (approx.) as purchased in ‘95

Here is the present floor plan

A Tale Of Two 600K's (mas o menos)

John M.- Sal, you seem to get lost a lot.
Me- Yep.
John M.- So, what GPS device are you asking for this Christmas?

The "mas o menos" is because the Windy Ridge 600K turned into a 400K (details below) and the Desert RIver 600K turned into a 403 miler (ditto for details).
First the Windy Ridge. As the time for getting my 600K in for the season approached, I chose it as it was all new terrain, advertised as very scenic and I was scheduled to be on call for the weekend of the OR event.. In preparation for the climbing involved, I kept the clothing to a minimum, but could not bear to leave my 3 lb camera behind. The Windy Ridge was as advertised- scenic and difficult. The day started with views of Mt Rainier. As the day went on the altitude began to take it's toll. The climb to Windy Ridge had an exhausting combination of steep intervals and disrupted roads (see photos)

Sept. 13 SIR 600K

- first time in 3 years that I had to walk the bike. This was offset by the spectacular and surreal sights of the Mt St Helen's blast zone returning to life.
Much of the time I was on my own, which in past rides has been a poor prognostic sign. I did have the opportunity to chat quite a while with Jan Heine. I asked at the Windy Ridge control "How am I doing on time?". He replied diplomatically- "you're OK for now but you should stop taking photos". He followed that advice by offering to lighten my load by taking my camera with him- advice I heeded as I had slowed down considerably. Our chat illuminated various aspects of randonneuring:
Stopping for pictures- Jan confirmed there was an penalty beyond the time lost in actually stopping to take photos or whatever else is done while stopping- it's a moment of inertia thing. He didn't think the weight of the camera was consequential, but sheepishly admitted he took it off my hands so I wouldn't have an excuse/reason to waste time/energy on photos.
How much to eat while riding- In my 1st DNF I felt that eating lots had hampered my efforts. Then my research came up with the theory that one could absorb no more than 200-300 Kcal/hr of food. So, I was trying to adhere to that intake. At the control Jan kept offering PB&J sandwiches. His rationale- when you're climbing you burn up calories as fast as you're getting them in. If you're in a less demanding state, then fat stores can be burned. It was a successful intervention.
He's a fan of the cyclotouriste mode- just not on brevets. I'm still resistant to a fast time being the sole purpose of a brevet. It seems though, that what gives a Brevet/permanent it's meaning (and it's magic) is the time limitation. If it can't be completed within the rules an empty feeling ensues- not to mention not getting credit for the ride.
At the 2nd Packwood control I met up with Matt M. and Robert H. who were calling it a ride due to Robert's Achilles' tendinitis. It was getting late at night and I would be going up a 3rd pass- it was tempting to join them. I kept on and reached White Pass way later than I had hoped for. Due to my poor choice in clothing, my IQ had decreased to about my body temperature. My sole priority was getting off that pass. As such when I misread the cue sheet direction to a control shortly after the pass, I could not consider any other option than the most direct route down the mountain. That this would result in a DQ did not enter my thoughts. I was more preoccupied with trying to control my bike while shivering violently.
I saw a second tier Ingmar Bergman movie "The Hour of the Wolf"- when I was much younger and more impressionable. The concept resurfaced with me during med school/internship/residency where it seemed that a disproportionate amount of bad stuff happened around 2-4AM. The scientific explanation is circadian rhythms. My experience with that time period in randonneuring has been that I'm much better off showered, tucked in and indoors during those hours. On this brevet, at about that time I found myself falling asleep on the bike and still about an hour away from the Naches control. Eventually, I found a safe spot to sleep and thankfully had heeded the organizer's requirement to bring a survival blanket. I made it to Naches with about an 90 minutes before the time limit. I turn in my card, and told Ryan I could not find the info control after White Pass. After returning from my shower Geoff asks if I see any point in continuing. As it turned out by staying on the main road I had taken a 3 mile shortcut. I went through all the stages of loss- denial (wrong instructions), anger, bargaining(I'll ride extra miles), depression and eventual acceptance (rules are rules). The ride ended at 400K and 3 passes.
Three days after, a new stage developed- the story doesn't have to end this way. There was no lingering overuse stuff, so I asked one of my partners at work if we could trade weekends of call. I presented the reason as a bike ride not having any importance or consequence except for me. He looked at me and said- "do you really want to do this or would I make your life easier by saying no and take you off the hook?"
So Friday afternoon finds me with Andrew and Cecil driving to The Dalles. The ride began much more auspicously. You have to like starting a 600K with a sub-6hr statute century as the first leg. I had Cecil and Andrew's good company much of the way- they are a chatty and erudite pair. The weather was not what I had hoped for, but it was a very scenic ride in many stretches.

Sept 2008 OR 600K

And I was in a warm and comfortable bed during the witching hours.
The second day began sunny, warm and still. This encouraged us to become a little complacent. Then the combination of wind and climbing came. "The English Patient" contains a quite poetic recital of names given to the desert winds. As you read the ride reports of the participants you can imagine what we were calling the offending winds and relate to the following-
"(Herodotus) writes about a wind, the Simoon, which a nation thought was so evil they declared war on it and marched out against it in full battle dress. Their swords raised."
Jan H. holds that effort is much more effective when climbing and that downhills are the time to relax. I fell off Cecil's pace on the climb past Mabton when I figured going from zone III to zone IV perceived effort was netting me about a .5 MPH gain. It was too early to risk exhaustion.
Upon arriving in Bickleton, I realized that finishing out of time was likely if I could not improve my pace. My response to the challenge of making the Goldendale control on time remains the most gratifying episode of this randonneuring season. It's like, I don't relish being put in that position, but the sense of accomplishment/transcendence of my percieved limitations in dealing with it is one of the reasons I remain involved in this loony sport.
I continued to feel bright-eyed and bushy tailed on the last leg. There was a long, fast descent past Goldendale that was encouraging. Then I blindly followed the cue sheet. I'm compulsive and, most of the time, functionally so. But the trait gets the better of me at times and this was one of them. Andrew asked- "couldn't you tell that you were going away from The Dalles"- No. Reading the previous posts which alluded to the unsafe nature of Hwy 14- didn't register with me. I was locked on that I should look for my next turn in 10.3 miles. Once I reached that on my odometer, I hoped that the distance was off by a bit and kept on going. Then I called Paul and my spirits sank. I had two chances to call it a night and get sagged in. All I knew then was that I needed to do the route and finish the ride.
As it turned out, I had company in straying the course, but everybody else figured it out before I did. Because of this, Paul gave credit for the detour and homologated the ride. It was a humanistic approach to "grading" a difficult ride and I'm grateful for it. I do know that when I was done, it did not feel like a "win", but it did feel like I did what I had to do.

John M- Paul cut you a lot of slack.
Me- That's one way of looking at it.
John M- congratulations on the SR.
Me- thanks.