Starting this up again...

Well, there have been many, well justified, smacks about the head and ears to start this up again. Most notably from my dearest friend Penny, and so it is my intention to keep up fairly regular postings... really it is!

Just back from the NCECA conference, (National Clay Educators get together every year), in Philadelphia... I arrived there with a bit of a snorffle and by the time I got home I was full-on coughing, sneezing sick. Who cares? I didn't want to miss anything and so I just filled up on all of the great herbs and vitamins that I could, stayed away from recreational beverages and ate as 'raw' as possible.

The Conference was emmense! There were over 90 galleries outside of the conference that had shows 'officially' and just about everything in the city had something 'clayish' going on unofficially. For those of us in the business, it was a marathon including speakers that had to be heard, symposia that had to be attended, panels to participate in, and then shows to look at... I am pretty sure that I logged about 35 miles of walking in the 4 full days that I was there...

Aside from phenomenally 'geeky' conversations about reduction and quartz crystal formations and rotatations, I did manage to negotiate the construction of another kiln that I've needed for about three years... It will be built in Georgia and they will do all of the groovy special wiring so that I don't have too! (That is a big Hooray! in my world right now)

The other treat for me was running into to people that I've known for years and meeting people that I've only corresponded with online... I was actually approached by a fellow ceramicist who I've only known through FaceBook- She teaches at a University in San Palo, Brazil!!- thank goodness she was paying attention to the little photos next to each posting...

I'm not going back through my notes right now, but I'm pretty sure that I looked at somewhere around 40 shows... I will not bore you with the details but I thought I'd share some of the interesting things that people were doing:

and so much more that Blogspot does not want me to show you... It will just have to be more later! (did I mention I was sick?) Signing off, blessings abound!

Like a Ghost with a machine...

We have 14,000 square feet of surface to paint in this building…

That’s the math!

It’s a couple of weeks worth of painting work with a team and rollers and brushes so… we bought an airless sprayer with the hopes that it would make things go faster…

Well “faster”... what does that mean, really? Victoria and Xan spent a full day masking off the floor upstairs so that no paint would end up on the wood…

Then I assembled the sprayer (how come nothing from the hardware store ever arrives in one piece?) and read through the instructions that assured me that I would get gangrene and have parts of my body amputated if I made even the slightest error. Apparently the spray has enough pressure to cut through cloth and flesh if it’s pointed at wrong moment at the human body! We decided to use it anyway…

First thing first, I went through the house and dusted all of the walls and ceilings with a dry mop so that any of the drywall dust that was left from the sanding would not be under the new paint job!

To use this machine you actually have to strain all of the paint that you use- yuck!

And then you have to use the death gun!

Low and behold, after about 7 hours of spraying, cleaning, and straining, and spraying, and cleaning (the machine parts need to be very clean all of the time) we went from this:

To this:

I know it’s just the primer (a pale gray that allows the final coat to have greater hue density) but, ZOUNDS!, this spraying thing has something to it!

On the other hand, after the machine is completely disassembled and completely cleaned, oiled and put to bed, the operator ends up looking like this!

Like a Ghost! (good thing I wore a respirator mask!)

Up, up and Away…

Duwayne was kind enough to lend us his snorkel-lift- a wondorous machine that unfolds itself to send an operator to great heights without benefit of a classic ladder.

It took a moment or two to figure out how to drive it in and out of all of the obstacles that are on the ground and how to actually get the extension part to unfold so that you ended up where you thought you wanted to be, but after a few experiments, I was off!

When the siding and the windows went up, we did not caulk the seams… so now we had to do it before it gets too cold and wet (winter)…

Here we go… up and up and over and Bingo!

Caulking is so much fun!

Snowing in the house!

This post is a quickie... I prepped the site for this part but then just got out of the way!

We decided to 'over insulate' this old lady of a house... with three layers of brick on the ground floor and two layers of brick on the second floor, this house was pretty well insulated by regional standards but...

I'm thinking:

• the cost of energy is not going down...
• My ability to make more money every year may not be going up...
• It is waste-feul to heat and cool that much space thoughtlessly...

so we added an entire 2 by 4 wall around the entire exterior of the building so that we could add another R-17 to the building...

We spend alot of time looking at the different options : fiberglass batts; foam of various kinds; and blown insulation of various kinds and ended up choosing a totally green option...

We are using a cellulose blown in insulation made entirely of recycled material (old news papers... who says there's no good news?) They blow it out of this giant truck
and they run out big hoses that look like giant vacuum cleaner hoses... now this is neat... while one guy is shooting the material against the wall, the other guy is sucking up the stuff that falls down and it gets instantly recycled!

Trent is putting it in here...
and his brother in law is sucking it up here...


It was very much like a rich New England snow at midnight-- everywhere bits were flying, and the silence was deep and comforting...
at the end, because everything is hosed up during the installation, there is very little waste and the material has packed itself around all of the plumbing and the electrical... it looks like this just before we hang the sheetrock...
Suddenly the house has become quiet. It has become softer. It is changing from the construction zone into the home we are visualizing... ooh!

Inviting the World Properly...

When we found our lovely home it had a fairly new Lowes-issue glass door that replaced the original... the first step was to remove that door and all of the jim-crackery that was pushed in around it to make it stick-
until we had a perfectly empty place to start! The problem with this particular project is that you have to be able to begin and end the project in one day- otherwise there's a huge hole in the front of the building... not so good!

One of our neighbors, (Pat Blue), had in her yard sale a 120 year-old door that she had acquired with and eye toward installing it in her house... that never happen so now it gets to live the next phase of it's life attached to our house!

It's resting here, for a moment, before I trim it up to fit in the new opening... Because we added a whole new layer to the inside of the house for all of that wonderful insulation and electricity, we have to create a pocket that now reaches from the outside of the brick face to the inside of the new wall.

I decided to do this with layers of A/C exterior grade plywood as soon I as figured out that even though the walls that I put in the interior of the house were plumb, the brick walls on the exterior of the house were not! By using the plywood I could cut a trapezoid that gave the appearance that both sides were level and true!
This also allowed me to attach the wood to the fairly random places that were allowed for in the brick and the nice and secure places in the new framing.

Next it's all about the chisel! I suppose that there is some new fangled thing that makes a bunch of noise and dust that zips out the insets for hinges and the door hardware but... we did it 'old school' with a mallet and chisel.

This takes a while and has to be done, tested, done again, tested... Kind of like adding salt to the soup! You can always do a little more but you can't take it away once you've done it! So... no stopping for lunch today!

After re-milling the door to match the new opening (the door was previously in a space that was not square and so I had to trim bits off of the sides, top and bottom to make it square again), and with a little help keeping the door vertical, I get to attach the door to the new opening:

If everything is as it should be then the door will 'hang' (without moving) in any position open and will swing smoothly to close with a 'snick' when it reaches the jam...
a little primer, a doorknob, a little molding and some doodads that came off of an antique wardrobe that someone trashed...
and it looks like it was that way from the very beginning! Later, if we can, I'll replace the door mechanisms with some of the antique stuff that I've been collecting... we'll certainly paint the door something fun!

Welcome y'all!

Another one bites the dust? the dirt? whatever...

In order to make the changes that we want inside, we need to move some of the bearing walls inside the house around... not far, but far enough to warrant putting more support under the house directly under the place where the walls will carry the weight of the roof and the floors above...

In order to do that we have to feed the 'skinny guy' to the house:
Corey is ready... Hair is covered, Mask in place, knee pads on...
Going...
going...
and then there was a slurping noise and a loud burp and that was the last we ever heard from Corey...

Well, not exactly...
Here he is, sliding around under the house, looking for the blue wires that we drilled down through the new framing so he would know exactly where the holes had to be dug for the concrete pads that had to be poured.

Either that or he's looking for a cool, dark place to take a nice nap...
Special thanks to all the skinny guys who can, and did, fit under the house for this project! We'd make you a cookie but then you'd gain weight and then who would we send under the house?

A Social Occasion to share...

Victoria and I had the amazing good fortune of meeting and spending time with Laura and Bianca when we were here in Paducah during our first trip... Laura is a real estate agent that showed us a bucket load of properties in two days with all of the crawling around under houses and into attics that I do; Bianca is her assistant who magically produced the full disclosure forms for almost all the properties...
Victoria, the the manner that she has of asking people the most intimate and direct questions and have them answer her, asked about their personal relationship and, as the conversation took it's inevitable turn toward whats-it-like-here-in-Paducah, we found out that they were going to be married in June!

Somehow, (Somehow! Victoria's charm is how!), we were included on the guest list and received an invitation to this wedding... We made a traditional gift of bread, baked with shaved dark chocolate and toasted pecans inside, so that they could begin their new life in the 'breaking of bread' and nourishing each other...

Xan wrapped our gift of 'the conversation' goblets stunningly taping to the top a great fortune that we'd found at the end of a dinner with Gretchen...

The wedding started with a gathering on the upstairs plaza of the new Arts Center... this little town did an amazing thing with this building! We were under a tent but looking east over the Ohio river and Illinois about a mile away... beautiful sky, slanting light...

The ceremony was opened with a sage smoke purification and some drumming, followed by a chant to gather the energy of the assembled (that's us) and bring it forward to create a space of honor and sanctity for the wedding party...

Please remember that we are telling a story that occurs in Western Kentucky!

The wedding itself was simple and joyous with the families of both espoused in from distant places... here are some photos of the reception...

Gretchen and Xan

The room, done in an asian theme, with this chandelier that was made by sewing thread through the centers of white rose petals!!!
Along with all of the other things that Laura and Bianca did, they grew these flowers and made this hanging themselves...

the cake... the couple...