Certified Idiots

A) FUCK YEAH! I agree with the central thesis.

B) Last night, I called out a neighbor for being a certified idiot. My friends Ian and Heather are visiting, they happen to be of the darker persuasion. We decided to sit in the hot tub after running. While attending to the dog I overheard a lady ask them, "From your behaviour, it looks like you two don't live here." An educated person will quickly recognize that this is passive racism. What types of behavior would would one exhibit to live in my neighborhood? Or conversely, it was not like Ian and Heather were stealing hub caps or gardening.

I walked over and laid into her, "That's really rude and fucked up of you."

She replied tersely, "Do you live here? What unit? I've never seen you before."

I replied with my unit number and street. I asked her where she lived. She only gave me her unit number. I pressed her on what street she lives on. I recognized her street and dropped the Del Mar bomb.

"Oh, you live on this side of the street, we live on the other side."

I let the statement hang uncomfortably between us. She apologized for her fucked up behavior.

That was the end of the conversation. My complex is divided in half: one half lives on the bluff overlooking the ocean while the other half lives close to a noisy road (and likely rent instead of own). The price differential between the two halves is substantial. We live on the bluff side.

I hate to floss, but it was appropriate in this context.

I wanted to ask if she rented or owned, I'll ask next time.

PS. It must be tough to live with four sets of tits. What a fat fuck.

Lights

Lights and switches were installed this week. Jim made the call to the A-Team to install the electrical. Steven and Alfredo were unsuccessful earlier in the week with the electrical. However, Alfredo was successful in destroying the dry wall while attempting to install the dining room light. Watching them was frustrating, they had no clue how expensive the fixtures were. The A-Team consisted of a senior electrician with a bad head cold and an assistant, an Ivy League educated lawyer. The assistant struck me as a little odd, his hands were extremely soft. I got it out of him that he had switched careers less than a year ago. In the end, the A-Team installed the dimmers, chandelier and dining room light.

Roberto, the over qualified carpenter with a MFA from Carnegie Mellon, is installing cabinetry tomorrow. He is another guy I cannot figure out.

The architect sent an invoice for his visit two weeks ago. He invited himself over to check the progress and billed me for it. How do you like them apples?

Random shit.

The sights and smells of life (Mong Kok, HK).

I love the city (Mong Kok, HK).

Stanley Market boardwalk (Stanley Market, HK).

Tugboat (HK from Kowloon).

Year of the Rat.

Too cool for school (Goldfish Market, HK).

My favourite Honky (Stanley Market, HK).

Look familiar (private residence, Kowloon Station, HK)?

Rhine Valley Yogi Bear (St. Goar, Rhine Valley).

One of those rare mornings.

A lot has happened in the last little while. For starters, we have a new member on the architectural review committee. We are expecting the arrival of a little one this fall to join our kooky family. The new member demanded that changes be made to accommodate his/her fussy needs before s/he takes residence at our abode.

The architect and I are best friends again. He stopped by yesterday to check the progress and revise some details. I said I would have to think about the changes. He replied half-jokingly, "You don't need to think, just agree! I'm here now!" He is a funny guy. His latest project is on the cover of some architectural digest journal. He must be feeling pretty good about himself these days.

I woke up this morning feeling relaxed and settled about the design changes. For me, waking up at ease is a low probability event. There were some details I was never entirely convinced, however with the revisions everything comes together. Simplifying the design facilitated the transition between living areas and building materials.

Enough jibba jabba, here are the pictures.


In the kitchen, we are going to use the orange stone on the back splash. By eliminating tile, we eliminate introducing an extra material that would have required an awkward transition with the dry wall and counter top (This would have required the introduction of yet another material, likely a Fry Reglet product. You can see the reglet to the left of the countertop leaning against the wall.). We are also running the bamboo up the vertical face of the counter to provide symmetry.







Here is the handrail in progress. We are not using cable rail anymore since little people have a tendency to use them as ladders. Plus, I personally feel that cable rails are overused and are a lazy solution to provide a "modernist flair" to an otherwise uninspired drab build. We are doing something different to preserve the openness of the stair case. Stay tuned ...



This is the serpentine trim detail from the bottom staircase. I found out this is not typically done, you either love it or hate it. We repeated this detail on the other side of the staircase that runs along the drywall. Some members of my family probably recognize this detail.

Heidi, Esq.

I can add a couple of letters after my name now. I'm done law school.

Goddamn I Hate Studying

Canadian income tax law sucks more than finding out that WWF wrestling is fake.

source

Orange rhyming dictionary

The counter top company came by today. They installed half of the counter top. The other half of the slab was off by 1/16 " on one of the corners. It is a very slight difference at the corner, but this difference grows non-linearly away from it. As a result, the reveal distances with the other slab is entirely thrown off. It is subtle, but I am sure it would drive me crazy over time.

They are taking the piece back to the workshop to correct. If you look closely at the waterfall detail, you can see that we used a mitered joint. As a result, the slab appears to flow uninterrupted towards the floor. I am happy we choose orange, it certainly does brighten and warm the space. If Alfredo dings the counter, like he did with the cabinet door, I will certainly punch his lights out. He starts to fidget when I am around, I wonder if I make him nervous.

Moribund week

The build is creeping along at a snail's pace due to the serial nature of the renovation at this point. Each sub-contractor creates a bottleneck for the next sub. Unfortunately, due to the nature of each item there is minimal slack in the schedule. The only slack created is waiting for the bamboo to season.

The stairs were installed this week. Larry and Sally did a fantastic job with the grain selection and matching. Each tread is composed of nine separate pieces of Douglas Fir. It took five days and 60 clamps to glue the treads. It is unfinished at this stage, Matt the floor person will be applying the stain. Matt loves finishing and constructing staircases. It is reassuring to meet people that are passionate about staircases, I'll never have to worry about them collapsing.


Matt's assistant Donny dropped off the bamboo this morning to acclimate to the seaside humidity. I am glad we hired Matt and Donny. Donny weighs 150 lbs, the other flooring company wanted to use a 300 lb guy. This maybe workplace discrimination, but I do not want to empirically determine the mechanical failure threshold of Douglas Fir. In addition, I would likely be sued because my staircase discriminates against morbidly obese people.


Here is the 2x4 that supported the temporary staircase. I cannot believe that single post propped the entire load. Go figure, vectors are amazing!

In other news, the winter was tough on my San Diego friends (i.e., life not turning out like they expected or wanted). Hopefully, the spring weather will wash away their winter blues. Someone must of swapped my regular contacts for rose colored ones.

Up next is the counter top, cable rails and cabinets Mk 2.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to SFS. Wish I could watch J and Little Thingies give you a wedgie and a wet willy.

She smells like fish!

Check out Jeff's new fish tank:

It's a monstrous 50L tank with real plants and stuff. It's still a work in progress, but it's massive. Still waiting to put fish and shrimp in that thing.

Divorce #2

I received a terse e-mail from the architect -

W, this is not the first time you have said this, so lets not do it, just do the panels...without the back lights, S

In an earlier e-mail I voiced concerns about the lighting optics for the bookshelf design. I did not expect such a response. I imagine this is the end of our working relationship. My perception is that architects tend to be overly sensitive and that their designs are not open to discussion. Of course this is a gross over generalization but anyone want to debate this with me? I find the same sort of attitude in my line of work. People tend to be overly protective of their theories or models even in the face of conflicting data. On the other hand, I orphan all my papers and ideas. If someone wants to take shots at them, then by all means. Except know that I'll likely be refereeing your paper next time asshole.

Moving on, here are pictures of the installed cabinets. The cabinet construction was select vertical grain Doug Fir, Maple interior, full overlay slab, eased edge, no trim, Blume and Haefle hardware. I could lose myself for hours in the Haefle catalog. Imagine a telephone sized catalog of just hardware. The drawer inserts were all Haefle. Note the new storage space underneath the stairs. I intend to put our children in there when they act up. The best part of the storage space is the trap door to the crawlspace. I suppose our kids could imagine all sorts of unpleasant things coming up from underneath the trap door. These fears of course will be compounded since it will be pitch black during the time out.


This is the tread sample. In the end we went with an eased edge instead of the half round. Brazilian Cherry Wood will be applied on the leading edge of the tread, this is to minimize wear on the leading edge. I wanted a steel strip, the contractor and stair craftsman talked me out of the steel detail, they said it would be uncomfortable for bare and socked feet.

PS. To all my neighbors who doubted our design, renovations and my abilities to manage - You can go FUCK YOURSELVES.

Cabinets being installed.

The cabinet and assorted bits arrived yesterday. They installed part of the kitchen yesterday, today they are finishing the install. They will come back to install the hardware. We need to decide and order 21 pieces of door pull hardware. At $20/pull, that is not chump change.


Looking at the cabinets makes me so happy that Chad did not build our kitchen. Chad tried to bid the kitchen build. Chad is a fuck-nut amateur. The dovetail on each drawer is a thing of beauty - the joint is completely tight. The cabinet person was able to fix the misaligned doors with minimal interruption of the grain pattern.

Stairs are to be installed Monday/Tuesday. The flooring arrives next week and will "season" for a few days. Carmelo is hard at work finishing the painting. We met with the new carpenter yesterday. Jim's initial impression of him was, "bold," while I viewed him as eccentric and quirky. I imagine this may comes with the territory when the carpenter is a MFA graduate from the Carnegie-Mellon's industrial design program with a minor in sculpture.

Wood-work, doors and staircase handrail details are still being worked out. Other then that, things are moving along. I am getting tired of cooking and eating in the kitchen. I am sure the neighbors are tired of seeing me in my underwear eating breakfast.

Just for a Day

A quick update:


1) My loaner car is a 2008 SUV, I felt like a Southern Californian just for a day. Immediately, I had this overwhelming desire to vote Republican, shop at Wal-Mart, eat McDonald's, wear flip-flops and a trucker hat, drink Starbuck's coffee and be a fucking dirt-bag rat bastard.



2) House update - Carmelo has been showing up at 6 am every day much to my better half's chagrin. He typically sits quietly for an hour before starting the day's work. Today, Luis helped Carmelo paint. This Luis is different from Big and Little Luis, who applied the dry wall. Carmelo's car is broken so he gets dropped off every morning. Poor guy he has to deal with wifey's ire at the start of his work day. The walls are primed and ready to be painted. The floor has been prepared for the bamboo flooring. Cabinets to be installed tomorrow. I received the staircase tread sample, we are going over final edge details. Slowly getting there. I did manage to effectively let go the carpenter. I meet the new one tomorrow. I was told last week that there is typically one divorce during the build - the spouse, contractor or architect. For me, it was the carpenter.


3) We drove to the desert to look at the wild flowers. Note to self, I hate the fucking desert.

Snow Daze

A massive storm is expected to hit K-Hole this weekend with 30cm (11.8 inches for the imperial system users) of the white stuff. I prepared by securing a covered parking spot for my car and stocking up on milk. I'll have lots to do inside my apartment since I need to research and write my ALR essay.

In other news, I'm currently obsessed with kimchi and jPod, both the book and tv show. I was curious the other day and added kimchi to my canned vegetable soup. I've found my new comfort food. I'm going to go to the Asian market tomorrow to stock up on kimchi for the weekend. I also need to buy more scented candles since heated kimchi is a pungent mofo.

Snowing in the house.

Fig 1 - Tuesday night after work I was greeted with this sight - Christmas wonderland!

Fig 2. Wednesday evening I came home to this.

The last few days have been awful, the house was covered in a layer of fine white dust. Big and Little Luis sanded the mud for a tight and smooth museum finish. The walls look much better now, previously the walls and ceiling had a horrible texture application.

Fig 3. The rickety staircase is still up, the new one has not arrived yet.

The appliances arrived today, the build is moving quickly ahead. Even the kitchen cabinet fuck-up is being fixed (it was my fuck-up, I need to proof plans more carefully in the future). I must admit, our contractor is a great guy. His easy temperament, professionalism, good sense of design and ability to give me the bottom line has made this re-model relatively painless. He never goes into specifics unless I ask for them. All I need to know is if it can be done and the costs involved.

Fig 4. The kitchen has been put back together - the lid, electrical, plumbing, pony wall, ventilation.

In addition, Steven and his extended family are fantastic carpenters, plumbers, electrician, HVAC and drywallers. Another telling sign is the bathroom, they always clean up after themselves. Other contractors (i.e., Chad) make a mess in there (missing the toilet, pouring plastering mud down the toilet etc ...).

Fig 5. The appliances in the garage.

Kitchen Cabinets

I ventured to East County this morning to look at the cabinets. I had my doubts after seeing the sample last week, I was going to have a do-over and choose the skins myself. My concerns about the wood grain were allayed when I saw the mock-up. The wood grains were still too far apart, but seeing the doors together facilitated the grouping of the grains so that they appeared cohesive and thinner (those Gestaltist were onto something I suppose). Once the header and toe kicks are installed it will look clean and tight, sort of like my ass. My only concern is the finish. I want a more natural low sheen finish, I do not want a glossy finish. The last thing I want is for it to look like an Ikea showroom piece. or worse yet the typical North American kitchen (read: ugly as fuck and expensive to boot).

The corner unit is pretty cool. We chose to go with a unit that utilizes the hard to reach corner space. I hope the mechanism can withstand the wife's gorilla hands, she is tough on hardware.

As far as the house, nothing new to report. They are sanding and priming this week. The pictures are pretty boring so I'll spare you the photos of giant dust clouds and piles of white particulate.