Return of the Shut-eye!

I, Jason, write this post today in a state of profound lethargy. My motivation level for anything having to do with sawdust or adhesives or electrically powered cutting tools is near zero. I should have finished the last two pieces of walnut trim for the kitchen desk yesterday.

We moved into the bedroom today! Right exactly on schedule, and with no insulation sticking out from around the windows (can this be a Benner project?). This feels like a major coup on my usual tendency to miss my time estimates by anywhere from fifty to three hundred percent. Two factors have made this possible: 1) Janelle, and 2) Evenings.

Completion of the bedroom project and the simultaneous completion of Mom and Dad's kitchen cabinets in the scattered pieces of time available was a logistical rat's nest, sense of which I had little hope of making alone. But the biological maternal clock was ticking...Janelle had strong incentive to get involved. As I have always suspected would be true, her strengths were an excellent counterweight to my weaknesses and the project had a sensible order to it that my projects have sometimes been shy on.

Also, I worked a lot.

This past Sunday I attended the weekly worship at our church again for the first time since probably Christmas, or thereabouts. I was amused at myself for how great it felt to me to see all those wonderful people again. I have been increasingly starved for non-useful human contact.

Similarly, sleep. Frequently in the past few weeks I've been working right up until bedtime or a tad later, and often up the next morning in time to get a good jump on the work day. Now, with the pressing need for my work abated, every horizontal surface is looking like the kind of place I want to spend time.

There was a tremendous satisfaction in seeing the brand new closet full of our same old clothes. They fit beautifully. Swelling under the lethargy is a steady little euphoria.

Though my feelings for the day were mostly victorious and mellow, I must confess to some sadness that seemed to arise when we were setting up the baby stuff in our bedroom. I can only assume it was one of the various manifestations of my grief over the loss of Nora. Making peace with starting this all over again, here in the same place and using many of the same objects and systems, is deeply meaningful in both endearing and confusing ways. I can only guess at the thoughts and feelings that will arise when holding our new one in a few short weeks.

But today's story is today's story, and mostly today it's about celebrating a success. And so, for the interested, I will enumerate a few "greatest hits" (little stories, etc.) from the bedroom project:

1) The bedroom design was the first time I have applied some of the design attitude and skills I absorbed during my Permaculture design course to a significant home project. Specifically, I spent more time drawing and mapping, with careful attention to detail, coupled with a willingness to try out a variety of ideas on paper, rather than just coming up with an idea or two, becoming attached, and making a plan. I was even careful to push myself to try out some of the wacky or far-out ideas, just to limber up my thinking and see where they might lead. Also, I tried to give credence to my intuition, being gentle and calm with my misgivings and musings so that I could hear their voices coming through.

Most importantly, I did not rush that stage of the process. One day, after having collected some ideas on a few hand sketches and scrawled lists, I spent an afternoon alone in somebody's office in Janelle's workplace and came up with a total of about eight (Plans A through H) carefully drawn and complete options for the floor plan of the room, from which we could later choose. As it turned out, we chose "Plan B." Having so many viable, worked-out options from which to choose allowed us to feel confident that we were doing the right thing, and that we weren't ignoring a design solution that could make for a superior construction process or flow of living in the space.

Until we have lived in the room for a while, I won't know for sure. But I think we nailed it.

2) I can't say as I loved every minute of this project. Specifically, I had to level the floor. Floating cork floor is a real problem solver for a bedroom on a concrete slab, but the slab does have to be flat, which ours was not. Furthermore, the previous floor covering was a cheap carpeting that is of a type installed with glue. Lots of glue. Also, just to spite me, the floor had been painted at some point in history. This renders the warranty useless on most of the floor leveling products available.

In a way, though, that was freeing, because I knew I couldn't possibly follow the manufacturer's recommendations without rendering the project too laborious to be borne while retaining sanity.

So, here's what I did: I figured, hey, it's going to be finished with a floating floor, not stuck down with anything, so why does the leveler need to stick to the concrete so wonderfully? For good measure I grabbed a broken chunk of concrete block and scored the painted, glue-gooed surface, peeling up whatever would come easily until it was clear I was making little more progress. Then I assessed the variability of the elevation of the concrete surface (up to nearly an inch difference in the room, with the highest spot being not six feet away from the lowest...TERRIBLE concrete job, probably executed around the time I was turning three). We then used that assessment/estimate to buy Lowe's out of their supply of Quickcrete's Fast-setting Underlayment, which is, far and away, the best material I've used for concrete leveling under a cork floor (it stuck to the paint and glue just fine). However, even the twenty bags we bought from them weren't enough...I had to finish the job with leftover tile mortar and even a little brick mortar. I would not have taken such a risk with someone else's house, and I don't recommend the idea. But...it worked!

If I ever find a need to level a floor like that again, I'll know much better what to do. And if I don't...I'll be just fine with that!

3) Framing came next, then wiring. I hadn't expected to need to do any plumbing. However, when the time came to hang drywall, Janelle's Mom was sweeping the room for me and wondered if I had noticed the puddle.

I had not.

I couldn't imagine what could be causing a leak. Upon careful inspection, I still couldn't imagine what could be causing it. It seemed to me that I could see all of the fittings, and in copper pipe I think of it as very rare for a slow leak to spontaneously develop; generally it either leaks right away or never leaks. But I could think of no other remedy than to cut away the section in which the leak was and to re-do that section, which at that time contained only one elbow joint. I planned to do the repair the next day while everyone else was basking in the non-utilitarian social exposure at church. My "last" investigative effort of the evening was to jostle the pipe a tad.

That's when it started hissing at me, which bumped the repair up on the priority list. Most notably, it bumped the need for sleep back a bit on the list. I assembled my tools and materials, finding that I had just enough couplings, elbows, etc. to mess up the soldering one time and still re-do it, which was what I considered my minimal requirement for proceeding. So I plugged in the Sawzall and started playing plumber.

I cut the pipe on both sides of the elbow, but when I tried to pull it out from the hole where it passed through a double stud, it simply wouldn't come. At first I assumed it was just wedged in there tightly, but when it occurred to me that they could never have gotten it in there if it were so tight, the light dawned.

Nail.

Yes, my friends, there was a nail in the pipe. I am still amazed when I think about it, because the nail tip that neatly pierced that copper pipe wall was driven at the time of the drywalling of our bathroom, which may well have been over a decade ago (this is a house of murky timelines). All this time it has been sitting there filling its own hole sufficiently to prevent the escape of water at 120 pounds per square inch. It was only the jarring effects of my driving electrical cable staples nearby that dislodged it enough to weep a little puddle just before I covered it over with drywall. How glad I am that it leaked just exactly when it did!

I wonder if there could be any other nails in any other pipes around here? There may be, and maybe I'll never know about them.

There is a moral to this story: when installing pipes and wires in stud walls, please do allow the standard distance between stud edge and wire or pipe hole, which I believe is a minimum of one inch, with 1 1/4 inches being preferable. Many standard materials, including drywall nails, are engineered according to this assumption. The pipe in question here was run through the stud with about 1/2 inch of clearance or so.

4) We are still pretty big on BioShield products. The greenish paint used in our bedroom is a clay-based paint from that company, and is the same product we used on Kali's bedroom in our house on Wolfe Street. Once again, applying a natural material was a special joy. All the usual pet peeves--odor, disposal, participation in systems we dislike--are simply gone, and it's a peaceful feeling. It's almost eerie to be working in a minimally ventilated room with wet paint all over the walls and to be smelling...nothing. Actually, I take that back. For some reason this time the paint came with a barely detectable aroma of frying dough. Odd, but harmless except for a developing craving for some Dunkin Donuts, which are certainly not harmless.

We are also making copious use of Bioshield's most versatile wood finish, "Hard Oil #9." Our Great Room floor and trim are finished with this product, and we decided to use it again on Mom and Dad's kitchen cabinets, and also on the built-in shelving and trim in the bedroom. My thinking was that I did not want to tell A. M. Yoder and Company, the green builder doing Mom and Dad's place, how to do their job, but that for my part I wanted to use the finishes I knew and loved. To match the cabinet finish, they started out with hardware store Minwax Tung Oil Finish. Trouble is, the solvents in that product are no different than what's in standard polyurethane, and the trim guy went home after the first day of finishing and spent the evening feeling nauseous. The next morning he tried again, but developed a headache right away. He called me to talk over what to do, and I told him to feel free to try out the Bioshield oil. He did. All the in-law quarters' woodwork is now looking fabulous, finished with Hard Oil #9, and the trim guy seems to be feeling great.

Well, that's all for now. I do hope that everyone who found themselves wanting to skim as they read this list of storylets indulged the impulse without remorse.

I shall now endeavor to become re-acquainted with my friends, and to take the time to prepare my spirit for the entry of a brand new character into my life.