Kitchen remodel summer 2016

Here are a few photos showing how we spent most of our summer. Whew!

Home Improvement Version 28.212

The big old house we bought years ago keeps insisting that we do something about her sagging good looks, and this summer it's the kitchen that's getting all the attention.  The poor old kitchen, with its 50's style metal cabinets, the plywood paneling "improvements" to the door and drawer fronts, and the poor lighting and electrical setup, has been crying out for years to be upgraded.  But nothing has bugged me more than the wonky floor that dropped more than an inch just from one side of the back door to the other.

The floor culprits were several--stones and cement packed between the joists on one end that over time heaved up the floor, and on the other end plumbers and electricians who sawed away joists to nothing.  Add to that the fact that the kitchen was at one time expanded out over what I think was a little porch that sloped away from the house.

Nice mix, huh?  So now I'm at the stage where the floor is (mostly) flat and level, with the subfloor in place and electricians on the wait for me to put in new joists for the ceiling.  Cool.  It's been slow going, with lots of other stuff going on, but we're getting there.

Note that we'll also enjoy some warmer floors in the kitchen, so notorious for being cold in the winter!

Stones and crumbled cement are now removed from the inner wall and work continues on planing joists to even them out. 

Note the light colored areas where new joists are in place or old ones planed to level them out. And insulation!  

Solid floors, 3/4 inch tongue and groove wafer board, glued and solid.  No squeaks!  

Now on to the ceiling!

Jack Walters and Toyland at the Madison Public Library Today

We've had a good spell of writers appearing from the woodwork in Madison.  Eve Fisher, Eric Johnson, Jack Walters, and Ben Jones have all been acknowledged for their contributions to mystery and history in the past few weeks, and the attention continues tonight as Jack Walters discusses his book Toyland and how to get a novel from the inside to the outside.  Starts at 7:00 pm.

Long Long Winter

The winter this year seems to drag along like an old blanket.  It makes me think of the Robert Bly poems about the winter and cold, one of the few poets who approaches the effect of winter on the psyche.
Our winters in South Dakota require a changed mind about how a person lives his life, still retaining a connection to the patterns and seasons of nature and the cycle of death and rebirth.  It's NOT always sunny in South Dakota.  Sometimes, it's damn cold, and the wind blows, and we huddle against it.  That takes some work, and planning.  One day, you might be planning to get outside, take your skis, get in a little exercise, and enjoy the sunlight.  After all, it's the weekend!
But that morning the wind is hurling last week's snow through the air, and an outing loses its savor.
We learn to roll with those disappointments.  We recognize that we are small, we need warmth, and we sometimes need to bow to the seasons and protect the heat our bodies make.

Farewell Wave to David Bowie

In 1975, after graduation from high school and joining the Army, I ended the year being shipped off to Germany (West Germany in those days before the wall fell).  Music was at the background of much that I did then, whether it was on the radio or played through some other form.
In Germany it was the thing to have a good stereo to play music on, and I quickly began to set up a stereo that reproduced good sound.
On that stereo in 1975 and 1976, there were three albums that got a lot of play.  They were Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album, The Four Seasons album Who Loves You, and David Bowie's Station to Station.
One of my favorite songs on that album was "TVC15."  What did it mean?  I didn't know, but that song always got me jumping, feeling better, made me want to dance and move.  See if it works for you!

One More Marathon

Let's just say the resting up from a marathon has continued beyond what was necessary.  I've been essentially lackadaisical in my return to running.  Two days after the marathon in the Twin Cities (3:59:02, thank you very much), I got out and did a few miles with the pooch, but since then . . . nada much.

But I'll come around again, and maybe once again I'll toe the line as in this photo from the Star Tribune.  Dillon Dwyer and I are visible just above the start banner to the left, him in a black shirt, to my right (your left) and me in a green shirt with a white hat.  Both of us appear to be looking down.  Anyway, that's us.

It was a beautiful day for a run there, and I enjoyed the heck out of the entire event.  I ran smooth and easy enough, with little niggling things that didn't amount to much in the way of sore legs, tender feet, and all.  Carrying some extra pounds was no help.  But that's the way she goes, right?

We'll see about next year.

Change is in the Air

There's no time like the fall.  Early fall, when the leaves still hang greenly from their treelimbs.  When each day grows shorter so sunset comes nudging up against the end of the day like a puppy who loves you more each night.  When morning too comes later and later, night expanding so darkness seems as though it might swallow the day.  It is the end of things.  It is the winding up of the season, the end of growth and the reminder that all things come to a close.

D and J Do Europe

The wife and I recently spent about five weeks in Europe.  Want to read about it?  Check out our travel blog here.
We had a great time, visiting seven countries (and setting foot in a couple more), tasting the fare, drinking the local stuff, and hob-knobbing with the natives.

Kent Meyers and "The Quietest Place in the Universe"

Congratulations to my fellow writer and long-time friend Kent Meyers, who teaches at Black Hills State University and has written several novels and other books. His essay, "The Quietest Place in the Universe," appears in the new issue of Harper's magazine. It's an amazing piece that wrestles with the complex issues of astrophysics and renders them poetic and compelling. Kudos Kent!

Kent Meyers (photo by Kent's wife Zindie Meyers)

My sense of Kent's writing goes as far back as seeing him reluctantly draw from the bottom of an office desk drawer his first publication--a poem in a book of poems collected by one of those "poetry contests" that profit from selling the collection to the proud recipients of letters of approval.  

I've seen Kent struggle through writing essays, stories, poems and trying to publish even romance stories of the sort you might read in Woman's Day.  But his persistence paid off, slowly, incrementally, until, suddenly, in 1998 and 1999, he had two books in print--The Witness of Combines, a collection of essays that he wrote over a period of 20 years or more, and The River Warren, a novel that describes horrific acts in a small town.  He hasn't looked back.  

Since then he has continued his writing and teaching career, winning awards and publishing consistently.  Congratulations to Kent.    

What Are You Saying, Dear?

I love this little film about how English sounds to people who don't speak English, or at least very little of it.

Das Biblio-mat

Ja, so I saw something like this in a little coffee shop in Fargo, ND, one time.  This baby is a one-off awesome machine that dispenses wonders like Wunnerful Wunnerful, the autobiography of Lawrence Welk, that happening music man.  Two bucks!  The little one up in Fargo dispensed, for fifty cents, a little book of poetry from a made-over cigarette machine.  So how many poetry book-dispensing cigarette machines do you find in the world?  My guess--just not that many.  Nor many Biblio-Mats.

More Progress

With a day that seems taken out of March, with melting ice and snow running in the ditch and down the driveway, it seemed a good day to take another step toward renewal and restoration.  So I put the leash on the dog and tied up my laces and hit the road again.
Oh, it's not easy, not by a long shot.
As I jogged down the road splashing through the melt, I felt like the young me again, but it was the young me that was climbing the steep hill up by Verendrye Monument in Ft. Pierre, a steep paved road that rose from the town and climbed so that a runner, even a young runner like me, fit and light, felt my heart throb in my chest like a slowly bursting bomb.
That's how the start of my run felt today.
But it got better.  I didn't pick up the speed any way, but I kept going.  Three miles worth.  That's enough.  A good day.

One Small Step

Okay, so today I committed once again to the running game, to getting some clothes sweaty with the effort of getting both feet off the ground at the same time, moving down the road at a steady pace.  I can feel the effect of that 2.7 miles on my quads, where the only work they've done is getting me up and down the stairs for the past two months.

I try to look forward, to look at the benefits of getting some miles in.  That's not easy when I think that I was in marathon shape just a short time ago and now I'm sporting some serious extra holiday baggage.  Looking back on that marathon, though, reminds me that all is possible.  My two companions--both first-timers--were fun to have on the journey, and they're both stronger having survived the long run.

Where was Andy?  Here's Dillon Dwyer and me at the start of a cool Twin Cities Marathon.  Andy Meyer also trained and ran with us, but we couldn't find him at the start!  

I'm confident, though, that I'll get there.  I'll be back at it.  My little Runkeeper app is a welcome companion in my efforts.

Today was a good day to get going again.  Warm, still, sunny.  Who could ask for more of South Dakota in mid-January?

House Project Progress

A colleague of mine mentioned that the photos of our nearly completed room look like a French New England mansion.  After taking some ribbing from his listeners for the odd combination, he insisted that the colors and finish of our dining room suddenly put the wife and me in some kind of elite "golden" status. See for yourselves.  We are just putting the final touches on it before we bring the furniture back in.

The wife and dog touching up paint. Compare this picture to the one below that shows the dark green trim and ornate wallpaper.  

Wallpaper, dark green paint, paneling, built-in plywood cabinets.  All gone.  

Still some paining to be done, but the corner looks a lot more inviting now than it did in the photo below.  

Those deep cabinets were good for storage, but they made the room and that passageway feel so small.  The doorway was like a little tunnel.  

Zoom in if you can and look at the floor in the corner to your right.  That seems to be an indication that there was once a doorway there as the fellow told us he remembered when his grandparents lived in the house.  Look below at my earlier post and you can see the outline of a former doorway.  

I found some cold air leaks that I was able to patch and make the room much warmer.  And that cold-air return?  A home-made remedy, courtesy of a 40 cent piece of expanded metal from the local metal recycler.  

We like it.  

Thanks go to our home's previous owners for saving so much woodwork and keeping the house in order.  They did a lot of work on the house themselves, and I hope they enjoy seeing the progress we make in turning it into our home. Thanks too go to DeLon Mork, whose gift of access to the old Mason's building in town gave us much of the woodwork and flooring that we used in the renovation of the room.

If It's December, This Must be Another House Project

We're working on the dining room, trying to get it up to speed.  We had taken the carpet out back in August and it's been a mess since then.  Now we're making a push to finish it up.  The floor in there was a nice maple, long covered by carpet and glue.  It's looking pretty good now, patched, stained, and finished.  I removed the false ceiling and fixed the holes in the plaster there.  I'm currently working on getting the east wall, long covered by wallpaper and paneling, into shape.

One of the improvements will be putting vintage mop boards and chair rails back into the room.  They are long gone, but it's clear they were part of an early version of the room.  We're interested in how the design of the room has changed.  In the first photo below, you can see outlines of where trim surrounded an old doorway, and the discolored panel to the right shows where there appears to have been another door.  But lath and plaster reveals that those changes were made LONG LONG ago.  

The wife is choosing colors to make it pop, and trim from the old Mason's building downtown Madison will surround the doorway and provide a new, vintage mop board.  It's going to be much nicer.

We are also refinishing the oak floor in the entry way.

The doorway from the kitchen to the dining room is opened up.  

Repairs needed on the east wall.  Cracks!  The chimney creates a little trouble.  

Once we took the carpet up, this glue hid the wood.  

Penny does NOT like the floor.  

Partway through sanding.  I had never used a big sander before.  

Sanding the edges.  

The completed floor, patched and stained.  I don't remember if this photo came before or after the final coats of poly.  

My Blue Heron Returns

There's a joy in seeing your life come around again, circle back to something you once thought was lost but returns in an unlikely moment.
I've mentioned my blue heron pond, where I used to run past often as I headed out to Lake Herman. Running in that part of town is rare now, and although I've seen herons elsewhere since then, it's never the same as when, early in the morning, I could come around the corner onto the gravel road, approach the creek, and see my blue heron rise out of the water and gracefully and elegantly wing his way into the sky.  It was like seeing the world find me again.
But I seldom run past the creek any more, and the blue heron hasn't followed me.  When I do go by, he's not there.  But I look for him, with expectation, a kind of longing for a past that isn't there any more.
So, on Sunday, as I was out for a long run, preparing again for the Twin Cities Marathon, I was out that way, coming from the opposite direction from where I once did.  As I approached the creek, I didn't have the heron in mind at all.
As he rose up from the creek and pointed himself in the direction of the sky, I felt my heart rise with him, Maybe it was that I'd already put in 11 miles and feeling the effects, or maybe it was my sense that luck had turned my way again.
But the heron was there for me, lifting both of us into something higher, something better.

Tree Fall (Pt. 2)

So, with two other trees under my belt, I called up my friend JB, who has performed well at the end of a rope as we sought to guide a tree down as it fell.
He was game for another tree-felling session, so we ventured over to B and S's house to drop a big old diseased pine tree that looked like it was on its last legs.  We looked things over.  It was a good day to work there partly because the tree would be falling into the street, but because the city was installing new water mains, the street was torn up and few people were using it.  The air was calm, no wind.  The construction crew was right up the block.
But we could see the drop wasn't going to be easy.
The tree stood next to the driveway in front of their house, its trunk split into three main sections that rose maybe 50 feet into the air.  Big.  Heavy.
And leaning just a bit toward the house, it seemed.
We examined the tree.
We walked around it, considering where it might fall.  We didn't want to hit the electrical can out front.  Or the fire hydrant.  Or the neighbor's tree across the street.
And we didn't want to hit the house.
So, we spent some time getting a rope into the tree as high as we could.  JB even climbed a ladder and threw the rope as high as could be.
We looked at the tree again.  There were some low branches on the house side we thought might be wise to eliminate, to avoid that dropping-on-the-house problem.  So we cut off several branches.
We tested the rope.
We warned the neighbor lady to get moving if she was going to keep her hair appointment.
I started my saw, adjusted my ear protectors, and I cut the notch.
Nice.  A good start.
Then I cut the back cut, deep into the tree, as JB put all his weight into the rope.
I could feel my saw binding in the cut.  I pulled my saw.  The tree stood, then leaned back toward the house onto the cut.  JB called, "I can't hold it!"
The tree stood.  JB pulled.  I ran into the street to join him, and we pulled on the rope, our desperation mounting.  It wasn't budging.  We were verging on panic, the huge tree all but cut in two, standing, barely, next to the house.  "I can't hang on," JB said.  I took the rope.
I'm not the best person to have in a panic like this.  I think my mind begins to skitter to a stop, the possibilities of what I might do going click click click like changing channels.  This one?  This one?  This one? This one?  Constantly stuck on not choosing.  JB does better.
One of us brought the pickup around as the other held the rope.  We tied it to the pickup.  It held tight, a taut line running from my pickup bumper to about halfway up the tree.  I could see the frayed spots on the rope, one knot where I had previously put my chainsaw through it.  Was there possibility of a breeze?
JB thought we could get someone from the construction crew to help.  I thought of other possibilities.  Crossed them off, thought of more.  All were pitiful.  And all would require that I admit that this tree fall was a disaster.
But JB decided to run up the street.  I talked to S on the driveway and couldn't help but make the dire situation clear.  Then JB came running back down the street.

Tree Fall (pt. 1)

This summer has seen several trees come down at the mercy of my Stihl chain saw.  It's never a happy thing to cut a tree, but these were sad, sorry, aged trees that were on the verge of falling into the yard or driveway, or--worse yet--onto a house where they might hurt someone or damage the house.

So, we cut down a tree that had a big branch come down off it and expose the rotten core, so that it only had about half of the outer bark even available to keep it upright.  Our friends Amy and Phil helped on an early Sunday morning when we thought the fewest cars would be out trying to get by on the typically busy street that runs by our house and where we would be dropping the tree.  But the, as the two women stood on the street blocking traffic, and as I made the final cut to drop the tree, a woman in a red SUV exclaimed (at about 7:15am), "I can't be late for church!"  She then zipped around our guards and continued on her mission from God.  And narrowly escaped the tree fall.

Once we had that tree cut up and hauled away and cleaned up the driveway, we had a little breakfast.

Then we journeyed to Phil and Amy's to cut down their tree, one split down the middle so that every breeze opened and closed a long crack on the trunk.  Theirs too, had rot down the center.  We dropped their big ash tree into the street, cut it up, hauled branches and twigs away, and then hauled the firewood back to our place.  Six or so hours and we had the two trees down.

But yesterday was another story.

A Photo from the BWCA

Our trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area a few weeks ago gave us one beautiful day, one day of perfect weather with sunshine, a light breeze, and some of the most amazing clouds.  We spent most of the day on Gabbro Lake, mostly just admiring the view with a fishing pole in hand.  I discovered that it was possible to take a panoramic photo of the sky, and after several attempts, got this beauty.  I love it.

BWCA Again

We look forward to heading to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area once again after a great time last year.  It's a beautiful and somewhat daunting place, where you face all the elements on your own, which, this time, might be even more daunting, as the forecasts predict rain tomorrow and Sunday, our first two days out in the boondocks.

But I think we're ready.  Big packed backpacks and much food and gear.  Better prepared than last year!