Wood-O-Rama Moved!

On the morning of September 11th, 2001 I was in my Mazda pick-up truck heading south. Instead of taking my usual route, which would have put me on the west side highway passing the World Trade towers at around 8:45 am, I was headed to Wood-O-Rama. This jewel of a molding shop used to be located on 108th street just east of Broadway. Because the shop opened much later than the industry standard (9AM) I was well north of the horrible events playing out just a few miles south. So I have an affinity with Wood-O-Rama.

Tomorrow I am driving to (gulp) New Jersey to their new location to select a large amount of necessary moldings. Baseboards, picture rails, crown moldings, window casings, and more. Wish me luck.

Drawers!!

Here’s a couple of snaps of the drawers installed.





To remind folks. The drawer boxes were ordered over the internet and built somewhere near the Great Lakes and shipped UPS. They are fine. The company makes a more expensive version (dove tail joints etc) but these Baltic pine ply versions are just dandy. They come unfinished so you have to paint a couple of coats of poly-urethane or whatever onto them before installing. The drawer slides I got from woodworkers.com and the drawer fronts I had made in advance. Remind me to blog a chunk about figure. No, not stock picks nor my wife’s curves, but another kind of figure we woodworkers drool over. If you look closely at the false drawer fronts under where the sink will go, next to the twelve inch-four drawer unit, you might see what I mean.

The Mind Does Funny Things. Installment One

During the summer of my junior and senior years of high school I worked for an outfit called Sno Valley Construction Company. This was six months after I dropped a 22 ounce hammer on my best friends head.

By the way, for you loyal blog readers who remember the incident involving Pat Brogan’s head and my framing hammer, you’ll be interested to know that a certain Seattle based big mouth passed on the blog’s link to Pat’s parents. His father is reported to have uttered, upon reading the blurb, “That’s why the kid was a little strange”. There was also some back and forth about Pat and I hiding some beer in the ravine off of Coal Creek Parkway. Let me just say, for the record, that I have no recollection of anything of the sort.

Sno Valley Construction was located in Snohomish Valley, Washington. This Valley was settled by my ancestors on my mothers side. The story goes that Mr. and Mrs. Cedergreen hoped off the boat in downtown Seattle back when it was a bunch of boat slips and a muddy board walk. Mister (who was carrying some cash) said to Mrs., “How about that hill over yonder,” only he said it in Norwegian. He was pointing to Queen Ann Hill, an extremely posh section of what is now Seattle proper. The Mrs. didn’t like the proximity of the hill to the stench of the ports and insisted they head east. And so, instead of being gazillionares, they were extremely comfortable farmers, with land and houses and children and horses. And the Cedergreens populated the Snohomish Valley.



I remember, as a young teenager, going to the family’s homestead and visiting my uncle Wesley. He had a few horses and cattle and jars of milk in the fridge, fresh from the cow. He would scrape off the hardened cream from the top and drink. I never could.

But I digress. Working for Sno Valley was an education to be sure. We worked four ten-hour days during the summer because the guys liked the three day weekends that resulted. I was on the road by six fifteen Monday through Thursday for the 45 minute drive from suburban Seattle to Snohomish valley. In those days logging trucks and pick-ups piloted by blue collar workers were the only AM traffic. These days it’s BMW’s and Lexus’s heading for Redmond WA, home of Microsoft.

But I digress. Late in June during my first summer I had my first industrial accident. We had been raising a small house that sat across a river. When the river flooded the house would suffer. The owner hired us to jack up the house three feet and solve his problem. We had spent weeks crawling under the house, dragging beams and jacks and rail road ties around and had succeeded in raising the little house three feet. A new foundation had been constructed and things were looking swell. Two of us were working on the skirting that would cover the enlarged space between the bottom of the house and the ground. I was ripping a board lengthwise. It was around four feet long and I had put one end on a post sticking out of the ground and my left hand was holding onto the other end. I was using a Milwaukee 7 inch worm-drive circular saw. It’s a great saw. The problem was, it didn’t have an operational blade guard. I completed the cut, removed my finger from the trigger and let the saw (it’s pretty heavy) down by my side. The still spinning blade, unguarded, hit my right knee.



All I felt was a blunt force thud. I looked down and my jeans had been torn from near the ankle to way up on the thigh. My knee seemed also to have a problem. And this is where the mind does funny things.

I wasn’t certain how I should respond to these new circumstances, when my co-worker gave me a clue. He looked up from what he was doing, took in the situation, got a good look at my leg and responded with, “Ahhhh!!! Shit!” This should have alarmed me, but like I said, the mind does funny things.

He suggested I sit down immediately. I didn’t think that was such a bad idea as, all of a sudden, I was not feeling myself. As I walked to the lawn chair fifteen feet away, I could not help noticing that the bone of my knee cap was making special appearances with each stride. When I sat down it was suggested that an ambulance should be sent for. “No”, I assured my friend, "not necessary." If he happened to have a bandanna handy, I could wrap that around my knee and its (gaping) wound and finish out the day. Then, on the way back home, I would stop in at a doctor’s office and get the thing checked out.

This was met with dumb silence. Seeing that I was not convincing, I said, “All right. Just help me back to my car and I’ll drive to the nearest hospital”. It was at least a half hour away.

The ambulance arrived and I was carted away. I received sixty stitches in three layers. I know because I watched. I still had a latent medical interest from the days when I wanted to be a doctor and worked as a candy striper in hospital wards. I had yet to feel any significant pain. When I arrived home I was greeted by some California cousins up for a visit. Around 3 AM I awoke to some of the most horrendous pain I’ve ever experienced. The mind does funny things.

I was laid up for three weeks receiving workmans comp all the while. I felt so good after two weeks that I hoped on a plane and visited my best friend Craig in Missouri. He and I ended up at Table Rock lake in the Ozarks and there was a moment that I was guilty of waterskiing on my bum leg, all expenses paid.



But I digress.

My Ticket.

I had to drill the large holes in the back of my hand-made doors in order to use these European concealed hinges. Without a drill press, which any small shop would have, I had to do it by hand. The smallest slip would make the door unhangable, or worse, the bit would puncture the front of the door and destroy it. So to be extremely safe, I devised this precision depth gauge, pictured below, which I have every intention of patenting. It should make me millions, over the long haul, don’t you think?

New Jersey Rocks (Granite and Marble)

Tis the week before Thanksgiving and all through the house tis a goddamn mess! ‘Scuse the French.

We have entered that middle period in the renovation where the optimism and raw energy of beginning the project has eroded, and the doubt, drudgery, and daily brushes with ones limits are the order of the day. Reminds me of week three in rehearsals.

The kitchen has become less of the focus as the work has moved to other areas. Currently I am hanging the last of the sheet rock in the livingroom. Drudgery.

Leigh and I went to the Zanadu of granite and marble places in search of a countertop. I have been concerned that the price of granite would drive us away, and I have kept the name of the folks that supplied us with the marble for the bathroom close at hand, thinking I would get a deal on the granite. But these Brooklyn folks never had much of a selection.

Check this out!



And the price? Well, when I got the first estimate I gulped. Not hard, but it wasn’t just a swallow, ok? Then I said, “Hey guys. What if I bring you templates, so you don’t have to send out someone to measure the place, and what if I pick up the slabs so you don’t have to send a couple of mooks to install? All of a sudden the guy gave a knowing look, punched a button and out came a completely different sheet. Everything was miraculously forty percent less and what was barely doable was nice and comfortable thank you very much. We brought home four samples.



I’m taking votes. We’ll tally the results and the winner will be announced. There is nothing I would like better than to have the selection of our kitchen countertop decided by a popular vote. The results will be tallied following the methods used in the ninth district of Florida in 2000 or state-wide in Ohio in 2004, so fear not.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima maxima culpa.

My blogging has been substandard this past week and a half and I am so, sO SO SORRY! I’ll post a few pictures tomorrow to update you. Basically the days have been devoted to painting the officette, installing the cabinets in the officette (which proved more time consuming and prickly than expected) and polyurethaning the drawers I received in the mail.

The real issue was an audition that I had last Monday for a production of I Am My Own Wife at a small regional theatre. I went to the audition, was called back and was told, through channels, that I was well liked. But, alas, not selected. That sent me into a three-day tail-spin that wrapped the latter part of last week in the emotional equivalent of a wet blanket.

An actor must realize that so much of the casting process is completely beyond his or her control and as you get a little bruised, so you also grow the necessary calluses. But every once and a while you forget that part and just feel really damn sorry for yourself.

A successful audition for Utah Shakespeare Festival yesterday lifted my spirits. I’ve auditioned for them before but they have such specific openings to fill that you have to keep bugging them in the hopes that this year they will have lost the guy who did all the roles you would do to Hollywoood and it’s your turn!

The kicker was that mid-day today, convinced that my commercial agent would never call me up again, I decided to call her. I had convinced myself that some casting director had contacted my agent and outed me as the worst submission her office has ever seen. The phone rang and my agent answered (it’s not a very big office). Before I could get my question out (about the fact that I should have gotten paid for a little demo I did for BMW a couple of weeks ago) my agent said, “Oh, Dennis, hi. How old do you play?” “I guess mid forties?” was my off-guard response. “So, I’ve got a four-thirty for you today”. I grabbed my pen and began to write on a scrap of wood laying across the table saw. “It’s for Comcast. No Dialogue. They’re going to strap a target on your chest and hit you with something. It won’t be something heavy, so don’t worry, you won’t get hurt. But if you get it, when they shoot, they’ll put you in a harness and jerk you backwards so it looks like you got hit with something big, OK? Four-thirty, Beth Melskey Casting, Comcast. Bye.”

And a warm glow surrounded me. I felt like an actor again.

The Quickest of Updates

The cabinets doors are on.



The drawers arrived in the mail



And we are color testing in the officette (don’t be alarmed!)

Pat Brogan Is To Blame.

We once again find ourselves at a bit of a lull. As the kitchen nears completion (left to do: countertop, tile backsplash, wine cork backsplash, glue down cork flooring, baseboards, paint, new appliances), we must shift our attention to the officette.

Before I launch into that portion of theproject, allow me to place the blame for my split personality (carpenter/thespian) squarely on the shoulders of a ne’er-do-well high school classmate.

You see, it was Pat that first came up to me in the hall at a time when next semester's classes were being discussed. Students had some latitude with the selection of electives, and there was always a spirited discussion as to which class would tax one the least. Pat had long black hair and a peach fuzz mustache. He leaned against the radiator, reeking of cigarette. “What are you taking for seventh period?” “Don’t know” I replied. “Check out Eyman’s class. It’s called Tech Theatre.” I guess my expression was quizzical because he quickly added, “Look, all you have to do is build the sets for the musicals and plays and stuff. The rest of the time we play ping-pong!” What could be better? An easy last period class that allows a little recreation to boot. Pat and I had already built things--bigger things than sets. He had some contractor friend that we would occasionally work for. It was on one of those jobs--a dance studio on Mercer Island--that I dropped a hammer on Brogan’s head.

We were framing in twelve-foot walls. I was up on a ladder nailing through the top plate into some last remaining studs, and Brogan was crouched down by where the bottom of the stud met the foot plate, toe-nailing it into place from there. My hammer came down cock-eyed on a sixteen-penny nylon-coated framing nail and twisted out of my hand. There were many trajectories the hammer could have followed while obeying gravity that did not involve Brogan’s head, but neither of us were that lucky. After the 22-ounce tool bounced off Pat’s noggin, he sort of grunted, rubbed the spot and picked up the nail that he had let drop, as if to start working again. Even from the top of the ladder, twelve feet up, I could see his black hair start to mat. With the help of a couple of other guys we guided Pat to the middle of the plywood floor and laid him down on some black plastic tarp. It is amazing how red the blood is from a head wound and how arresting it looks pooling on black plastic. I felt pretty bad. Not as bad as he did I’m sure, but bad nonetheless. He recovered nicely, with no visible scar (because of his thick hair), but I always felt I owed him one, so when he suggested I take Tech Theatre, I did. And so began, in seventh period of my junior year at Newport High, my slow introduction to an animal called theatre. I arrived with a blood stained hammer, and I’ve been banging around ever since.

Tools Of The Trade

When I was eighteen years old and about to leave home for college, my mother gave me several care packages. The contents of these packages consisted mostly of supplies that a young man might be expected not to have amassed during his growing years. I have forgotten all but this.



It is a travel iron that has been with me since. I can say with absolute certainty that it has never, ever touched the cuff nor collar of any shirt of mine. It has however remained in my possession and now counts itself as one of my oldest tools. It’s home is the big rolling tool-box that goes to the more involved work sites, and its job is to melt the glue on edge tape. It performs marvelously and has done so since that day, many decades ago, when I opened its case, realized what it was and said, “thanks, mom”.

It’s a damn cover-up!

Hey, wait a minute. What the sam-hell is that over there in the corner.



Why, it’s an iron, a pair of scissors, and a couple of rolls of hot-melt cherry veneered edge tape! Well I’ll be a son of a basket weaver.



They mean to cover up them white cabinets and make ‘em look fancy! Lookee there how that sly fox scribed a smelly ole’ piece of poplar to fill in that there gap between the cabinet and the wall.



And then look at this! He done glued on some cherry lickety-split, acting all high’n mighty whiles he was a-doin’ it!



Whoa, now hold on. Great gobs of goose grease, that there is a side panel, and now I can see, as plain as the nose on my face that as soon as that ole’ coot gets them nice cherry doors on…well there ain’t gonna be no Ikea left to I-see-a.





Is that the light box ceiling? With left over crown molding shipped from Seattle? Now just a cotton-pickin’ minute! I’ve had just about enough outa you feller. You’re just showin’ off!



Yep.

Clarification

This posting has confused a few of my loyal readers. Well, its confused at least two loyal readers, so a conservative calculation indicates that nearly twenty percent of my readership are currently confused. The pictures in the post titled, "Blame This" are not of our kitchen. Rather, they are pictures of a kitchen I was hired to install. Everybody repeat after me, “Not my kitchen”.