everything looks like a nail

Poor Stella. I’m sure she is thinking if this is going to continue, one of us needs to adjust our meds.

You know it’s been a tough week when Sunday morning comes and your finally washing the wok you used on Wednesday night. (Don’t judge, you’ve been there.) While I’m not happy about my progress, at least there has been progress. Turns out the motivation level of a room you hardly use is not as strong as the one that has the only shower.

Last week started with “No, you can’t have a Sawzall.” I suppose Ben is right, giving me a Sawzall is like giving an arsonist a book of matches. And gasoline. He would live with the constant fear of coming home from work and finding another hole in the house. So I decided to at least deal with the one we already had. When last we left our intrepid remodelers, the entry wall was gone, but not the supporting framework. Well, it’s done and ready for rock. I hired Graham, the awesome carpenter, to come in and install the header and hook up the power to the light in the entry. When he bravely crawled through the upstairs closet and into the crawl space I told him that if he found anything living or dead in there, I didn’t want to know. Upon exiting, he said nothing. So each hour that Graham worked, I worked. Every cent I made went to him, plus another $5 bucks an hour. While laying out a newsletter and building a website for a client, I ruminated on the fact that Graham made more money an hour then I did. But at the end of the day (after realizing what an elitist bitch I was) I decided why shouldn’t he make more than me? He did an awesome job. During this process I’ve been able to hire a lot of independent artisans They are grunts just like me out here working on our own. I’m happy about that. So, in addition to Graham, I met with floor sanding guy (great ideas but $300 per room – sigh – four rooms) and with a fireplace installer that closed his 3 businesses so he could be back doing what he liked doing (working with customers) instead of dealing with employees. I think this $550 I’m going to spend. Ben is uncomfortable with me and a Sawzall, I’m not too hot on the idea of him and gas lines.

The other accomplishment was the removal of the other two arches. Sorry to those who voted to keep them, but look at the difference. It is in my opinion quite remarkable. I still need to take the sides down to the studs, but not bad for a days work. But there is a lot of finishing work. And another artisan to come in and mud and tape. The budget, the budget!!!

Here is this projects knucklehead moment.

In all my visions of this fireplace, the one thing I didn’t consider was the actually physical layout of the unit. I had blissfully thought, 20″ deep, fireplace bottom, electronics middle, tv top. Easy. Not so fast Skippy. The exhaust pipe has to go up 12″ and then out. No room for electronics. Also, even though I scraped the ceiling I didn’t think about how the new fireplace wall was going to meet it. So these are my choices.

Figure 1 (images not to scale LOL) Wall doesn’t go to ceiling. Shelfs go on the side of unit or in a small cabinet above the tv to hold the direct tv, blu ray and xbox.

Also – Stone or glass tile? Stone or tile to ceiling or just half way with a 2″ mantel. I don’t want a big mantel, we just lose more space. And a single color tile not multi. Simplify. Simplify.

Figure 2 – Put in built ins? I worry about the built in because I had planned to do a chair on the left. Which may still work even with shelving. But I don’t think that shelving on just the right makes sense. It’s got to be both sides or nothing.

At some point in this process I stopped counting the arguments. Probably because it would be like counting the number of stupid things Sarah Palin says, it takes a lot of time and effort and isn’t going change anything. She is going to be stupid and we are going to disagree. So to warn you in advance we are already “discussing” how high off the floor the fireplace should be. I say 2″ at most, Ben thinks 4″. Round two will stone or tile and we should end with full or half wall. I just don’t know why he has to always have an opinion contrary (read: wrong) to mine. I need an assistant who agrees with everything I say, AND works for free. Is that so wrong?? I told Ben maybe he should start his own blog so he can bitch about how crazy I am. That would be a very long blog indeed.