A quick update before I post the Big Photo Update about the first weekend's work on the studio.

1. I broke myself a bit Saturday before last. E and I went down to Ape Cave (which was AWESOME), and I was doing alright with the severely uneven ground (the stuff that looks like rutted mud is solid rock) and boulder-scrambling until, towards the end, I was doing a bit of the latter and landed too fast on the former, and ow. Not sure what happened, but I hurt something in the metatarsal area of my bad foot, and since we still had something like a half-mile of cave to go, I walked that -- and then the 1.5 miles back to the trailhead -- by putting weight on my heel and not pushing off with my right foot at all.

Then the car got a flat in Kalama, so it took us 3.5 hours to get home, by which time I couldn't walk. By the next morning I was able to hobble around with a walking stick, and I stayed home Monday and iced/elevated and got rides into work all week and imposed on the lovely Zair to help me run errands, and basically babied myself so that I could work this weekend.

(Oh, and in the cave I was paying so much attention to where I put my feet that I bonked my head on the wall/ceiling three times. As my housemate is so fond of saying, I am not a graceful ninja.)

2. The drama around my brother has lessened since he got back on meds. All the other issues are still there, naturally, but the crazy mood swings are gone, and it's possible to be in the same room with him and not want to run away screaming. He came over Sunday before last and visited while I was laid up, until I asked him to leave so I could nap. He was reasonable, for him, which means he still complained about living at home and told me how he was planning to move (to Everett, of all places) without showing any real idea of how he could do that. I did call him out (kindly and patiently, go me!) on the fact that he tried (pathetically badly) to distract me/change the topic whenever I said anything the least bit 'grown up' (like "You know, it's great if you want to move somewhere, but you need to have a plan to pay for it, be it a job or applying for SSI" and "It's going to be much harder to find odd-job income if you move to a place where you don't know anyone").

So: Same old, same old, but a bit less crisis-feeling than it was last week.

A quick update before I post the Big Photo Update about the first weekend's work on the studio.

1. I broke myself a bit Saturday before last. E and I went down to Ape Cave (which was AWESOME), and I was doing alright with the severely uneven ground (the stuff that looks like rutted mud is solid rock) and boulder-scrambling until, towards the end, I was doing a bit of the latter and landed too fast on the former, and ow. Not sure what happened, but I hurt something in the metatarsal area of my bad foot, and since we still had something like a half-mile of cave to go, I walked that -- and then the 1.5 miles back to the trailhead -- by putting weight on my heel and not pushing off with my right foot at all.

Then the car got a flat in Kalama, so it took us 3.5 hours to get home, by which time I couldn't walk. By the next morning I was able to hobble around with a walking stick, and I stayed home Monday and iced/elevated and got rides into work all week and imposed on the lovely zair99 to help me run errands, and basically babied myself so that I could work this weekend.

(Oh, and in the cave I was paying so much attention to where I put my feet that I bonked my head on the wall/ceiling three times. As my housemate is so fond of saying, I am not a graceful ninja.)

2. The drama around my brother has lessened since he got back on meds. All the other issues are still there, naturally, but the crazy mood swings are gone, and it's possible to be in the same room with him and not want to run away screaming. He came over Sunday before last and visited while I was laid up, until I asked him to leave so I could nap. He was reasonable, for him, which means he still complained about living at home and told me how he was planning to move (to Everett, of all places) without showing any real idea of how he could do that. I did call him out (kindly and patiently, go me!) on the fact that he tried (pathetically badly) to distract me/change the topic whenever I said anything the least bit 'grown up' (like "You know, it's great if you want to move somewhere, but you need to have a plan to pay for it, be it a job or applying for SSI" and "It's going to be much harder to find odd-job income if you move to a place where you don't know anyone"). He didn't stop, exactly, but he didn't blow up in my face, either.

So: Same old, same old, but a bit less crisis-feeling than it was last week.

Studio project: Weekend One!

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws.

OMG, GUYS, IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING!!!

Thursday Dad's friend dropped off four 80lb bags of quikrete he had left over, and dad's little cement mixer. (Yeah, my dad owns a cement mixer. He bought it on Craigslist when he was doing his giant patio project, and now he loans it out to people).



Saturday Dad came over with a car full of tools, and we went to Home Depot to buy more tools. Dad made me set my Bucket-O-Tools on the cart because "I know it's your project and you're buying, but people are glaring at me because I'm making a girl with a limp carry all the heavy stuff." Poor dad. :P It was The Lawn Mower Incident all over again. (I injured my foot last week, so I have a much more pronounced limp than normal).

(I got a little bit alarmed when Dad paused by the mini compressors -- I was NOT prepared to buy one; I don't even own any tools that USE one. Dad pointed out that there was no way in hell he was lugging his giant compressor over to my house; I pointed out I could borrow a little one from the next door neighbor. Dad pointed out that if I did, he wouldn't have an excuse to buy a mini compressor. I should've remembered that Dad sees any given project as an 'excuse to buy more tools he wants anyway.' The man owns a little cement mixer, for crying out loud.)
 
$130 later (with no mini compressor, yet) we got back home.

First we took down the garage door, which is the older single-solid-panel type, then the trim pieces around the  the opening and a teeny bit of the siding, so we had something to attach concrete forms to (the forms were sitting on either the garage slab or the driveway, so we couldn't just pound in stakes). My house has a weird double sill plate, which worked to our advantage here -- we planned the pour to be taller than the rest of the foundation, going up to the top of the first sill plate, so we could screw the 2x6 form pieces right to the lower sill plate on either side. Then I got to learn about hammer drills and epoxy and rebar, and dad finally taught me how to use my circular saw. YAY!

(I cut the blocks we used to temporarily stick the garage door back on. Always good to practice on something where the final product doesn't matter).


My garage door iz pastede on yay.

On Sunday we tied the rebar and poured the concrete. E showed up with coffee and treats, and (again unexpectedly) stayed for the whole day.

The concrete part went perfectly.


Yum, creamy.

The cleaning of the concrete equipment, however, required hose with a decent amount of water pressure, which was enough water pressure to totally blow through the already leaking valve on the hosebib, and when I went to turn the water off it didn't. At all.

After excavating to find the damn water main (a LOT of dirt had gotten in its little house somehow), and realizing there was no way in hell we'd get it unstuck with just a wrench I called dad back and begged him for the specialty tool. He brought that and still had to use a metal bit off the garage door as a four foot long cheater, and he was throwing his whole weight into it.

His muscly job done, dad left E and I with a shopping list and we set out on our unexpected plumbing adventure. As long as we had the water off, we might as well replace both leaky exterior faucets, right? Which meant dissecting the one in back, which stuck 30" out of the ground and was swaddled in insulation. I call it the Stupid Faucet, because it IS. Observe:



That is my 7" back patio. That is a shin-bruiser-ankle-breaker-knee-slicer faucet coming straight up out of the middle of the 7" patio. If they'd run the pipe three more feet it would've come up right next to the post. If they'd run it four less feet it would have come out of the wall like a normal faucet. BUT NO. IT'S IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PATIO. That's an 'after' photo, too -- the original Stupid Faucet(tm) had a 'freeze proof' faucet, which only makes sense if installed horizontally inside a wall. The Stupid Faucet was actually more likely to freeze, because it trapped water at such an angle that none of it drained out. Or it would, if it hadn't been constantly leaking. Oh, and the handle snapped off two years ago, so I've been operating it with pliers.

I'll cut the long story about hunting through various hardware stores for pipe fittings short. Suffice it to say we fixed the front faucet. The Stupid Faucet is still dribbling, but much more slowly.

We also took every opportunity for off-color plumbing jokes along the way. I mean, when E put the 8" pipe in his pocket... resisting that opening would have taken a saint, I tell you. And the pipe was called an 8 inch nipple. And the hosebib is a silcock. And, well, plumbing. You know how it is.

Anyhow, got the water back on, none of the ancient galvanized broke, and I joyfully announced to my poor renters that they were free to flush in peace. E and I took an ill-considered but well-deserved nap. Dad called to make sure we hadn't flooded anything.

All was well with the world.

There are actually more stories in here somewhere, about silly things Erik and Dad said and how, between us, my brother and I managed to sort of lock dad and I in the garage, and why my housemate threatened to take away my power tools, but this'll do for now. We planned on getting the foundation across the garage opening poured this weekend, and we DID! That's remodeling success. :D
 

Studio project: Weekend One!

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws.

OMG, GUYS, IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING!!!

Thursday Dad's friend dropped off four 80lb bags of quikrete he had left over, and dad's little cement mixer. (Yeah, my dad owns a cement mixer. He bought it on Craigslist when he was doing his giant patio project, and now he loans it out to people).



Saturday Dad came over with a car full of tools, and we went to Home Depot to buy more tools. Dad made me set my Bucket-O-Tools on the cart because "I know it's your project and you're buying, but people are glaring at me because I'm making a girl with a limp carry all the heavy stuff." Poor dad. :P It was The Lawn Mower Incident all over again. (I injured my foot last week, so I have a much more pronounced limp than normal).

(I got a little bit alarmed when Dad paused by the mini compressors -- I was NOT prepared to buy one; I don't even own any tools that USE one. Dad pointed out that there was no way in hell he was lugging his giant compressor over to my house; I pointed out I could borrow a little one from the next door neighbor. Dad pointed out that if I did, he wouldn't have an excuse to buy a mini compressor. I should've remembered that Dad sees any given project as an 'excuse to buy more tools he wants anyway.' The man owns a little cement mixer, for crying out loud.)
 
$130 later (with no mini compressor, yet) we got back home.

First we took down the garage door, which is the older single-solid-panel type, then the trim pieces around the  the opening and a teeny bit of the siding, so we had something to attach concrete forms to (the forms were sitting on either the garage slab or the driveway, so we couldn't just pound in stakes). My house has a weird double sill plate, which worked to our advantage here -- we planned the pour to be taller than the rest of the foundation, going up to the top of the first sill plate, so we could screw the 2x6 form pieces right to the lower sill plate on either side. Then I got to learn about hammer drills and epoxy and rebar, and dad finally taught me how to use my circular saw. YAY!

(I cut the blocks we used to temporarily stick the garage door back on. Always good to practice on something where the final product doesn't matter).


My garage door iz pastede on yay.

On Sunday we tied the rebar and poured the concrete. E showed up with coffee and treats, and (again unexpectedly) stayed for the whole day.

The concrete part went perfectly.


Yum, creamy.

The cleaning of the concrete equipment, however, required hose with a decent amount of water pressure, which was enough water pressure to totally blow through the already leaking valve on the hosebib, and when I went to turn the water off it didn't. At all.

After excavating to find the damn water main (a LOT of dirt had gotten in its little house somehow), and realizing there was no way in hell we'd get it unstuck with just a wrench I called dad back and begged him for the specialty tool. He brought that and still had to use a metal bit off the garage door as a four foot long cheater, and he was throwing his whole weight into it.

His muscly job done, dad left E and I with a shopping list and we set out on our unexpected plumbing adventure. As long as we had the water off, we might as well replace both leaky exterior faucets, right? Which meant dissecting the one in back, which stuck 30" out of the ground and was swaddled in insulation. I call it the Stupid Faucet, because it IS. Observe:



That is my 7" back patio. That is a shin-bruiser-ankle-breaker-knee-slicer faucet coming straight up out of the middle of the 7" patio. If they'd run the pipe three more feet it would've come up right next to the post. If they'd run it four less feet it would have come out of the wall like a normal faucet. BUT NO. IT'S IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PATIO. That's an 'after' photo, too -- the original Stupid Faucet(tm) had a 'freeze proof' faucet, which only makes sense if installed horizontally inside a wall. The Stupid Faucet was actually more likely to freeze, because it trapped water at such an angle that none of it drained out. Or it would, if it hadn't been constantly leaking. Oh, and the handle snapped off two years ago, so I've been operating it with pliers.

I'll cut the long story about hunting through various hardware stores for pipe fittings short. Suffice it to say we fixed the front faucet. The Stupid Faucet is still dribbling, but much more slowly.

We also took every opportunity for off-color plumbing jokes along the way. I mean, when E put the 8" pipe in his pocket... resisting that opening would have taken a saint, I tell you. And the pipe was called an 8 inch nipple. And the hosebib is a silcock. And, well, plumbing. You know how it is.

Anyhow, got the water back on, none of the ancient galvanized broke, and I joyfully announced to my poor renters that they were free to flush in peace. E and I took an ill-considered but well-deserved nap. Dad called to make sure we hadn't flooded anything.

All was well with the world.

There are actually more stories in here somewhere, about silly things Erik and Dad said and how, between us, my brother and I managed to sort of lock dad and I in the garage, and why my housemate threatened to take away my power tools, but this'll do for now. We planned on getting the foundation across the garage opening poured this weekend, and we DID! That's remodeling success. :D
 

The psychological end of the weekend [warning, sibling issues]

[This bit is f'locked for family stuff, and would have just derailed the 'project pictures yay!' post. Make sure you read the happy-pictures-progress-yay post too, or you'll get the idea that I'm dismal and grumpy. :P]

Saturday I did a LOT of standing/walking for my injured foot, which made me tend to irritable already -- and then my brother showed up to 'help.' (actually, dad told him he had to come so he wouldn't be in mom's hair -- we were all having dinner there later, and we didn't want a pissed-off mom).  Problem being, we weren't doing anything that required three people -- it sometimes didn't require two -- and I need this to be my job; part of the goal is coming away confident that I can do all this shit.* Giving him jobs meant I wasn't doing them.

I had a job I'd already offered to pay him for -- taking nails out of the old fence boards -- but he wouldn't stick with that for more than ten minutes at a stretch because it wasn't where dad and I were working and it wasn't part of the cool project. Despite the fact that I was willing to pay him for one, and not the other. E showed up out of the blue to help, too, which may have made it worse -- we didn't need three people, let alone four, and having E with us emphasized the all-the-cool-kids-are-in-the-garage problem my brother was having.

Dad's gotten used to managing him, though, and so we found jobs nearer us every so often to try to keep him engaged. He helped move the door back; he took his turn with the hammer drill. The hammer drill thing points up some of the painful contrast between us; he wanted to do the job -- apparently he likes hammer drills and has used them before -- and he still took multiple breaks on one hole, complained about his arms, and had to be corrected on some element of tool misuse (I don't know what -- I try to avoid being an audience for uncomfortable lectures). I can be in serious pain and keep trucking without much complaint (I make 'uuuaaargh' noises, but that's more a better-out-than-in thing). My brother can't stick with a job for ten minutes without saying he's exhausted and needs a break. One of his avoidance-techniques is to randomly stop working to call people -- any people. Then he offers to pass the phone around and interrupt everyone else's work, too. This time he called my uncle, and then I got to hear how apparently we'd been working my brother to death, and he'd really put in a hard day. Dude showed up three hours after we got started**, took breaks every half hour or more, and did less while he was working. And I was actually in pain from an actual injury the whole time.

I don't actually expect other people to work through real pain, but it's really hard for me to hold back the 'suck it up, dude' when he seems to be stopped by  the most minor discomfort. It's not a competition; it's not okay to compare the two of us. I have it way easier than him, and I know it. But we're talking manual labor, and he could shine if he just had an ounce of stick-with-it. Instead he's not just not-working, he's constantly derailing everyone else.

(I admit I have some old issues in this area, too -- when I was fourteen my fifteen-year-old incredibly irresponsible male cousin came up to help on my family's remodel and was always given 'real' remodeling tasks. When I asked what I could do to help, dad usually said 'make lunch'. In retrospect I realize that it was probably at least in part that I'd been on crutches and doing major medical stuff less than a year before and he was used to being careful of me, and I was small, with very little upper body strength. But it stung, and the omg-sexism bitterness really hung on.)

Other weird things: At one point my brother asked "When did you get a sawsall?" which was bizarre and awkward, because he'd been there when I received it as a christmas gift in 2011, and when I'd playfully called them 'big girl toys' he'd said "No, they're big boy toys and I should have gotten them," with absolute bile in his voice. :| (I took him to task for being a sexist pig -- I couldn't even bring myself to touch gift etiquette -- and never told my parents about it, 'cause they would've flipped).

The job I offered to pay him for still isn't done, and the once-neatly-piled boards are a total mess now, but... I didn't expect much more than that. I'm disappointed that he tried to lie and tell me the job was done -- holy shit, dude, the pile of boards is only 40' away and it's my house, and I can tell you didn't finish the job! -- but I'm not really surprised by that, either.

I think dad's right that he has a Thing about being sent away to work elsewhere. All the things I've had him do for me have been like that, and they've all been disasters. I'll have to remember that in future, but it's a bit counter-intuitive -- usually if I'm going to hire someone it's because they either have more expertise than me, or because I have other shit to do and don't want to hang around and do that job. My brother can only do the later type of job, but he needs someone working alongside him in order to work at all.

*sigh*

This seems pretty heavy, but really, it went about as well as could be; I didn't snap at my brother; I enjoy working with my dad and E; and E really, really gets that I need to do stuff myself, so he doesn't even jump in unless he knows it's something I've already done and am comfortable with, despite a lot more experience in some things (concrete and plumbing, mostly). Dad was really good about it, too -- he swings back and forth between being a great teacher and 'darn it, it's quicker if I just do it myself', but we've been really clear with each other about how this needs to be mine, and he respects that.

And we got everything done this weekend we'd planned on, which counts as major remodeling success!


*Except lift 80lb bags of concrete. I really, really can't.

**He was working for someone in the morning, but it wasn't us making him do it.