Yesterday we lost our dear lissi. She was 14 years old, not as tough as she let on, and sicker than we new. She was my cat since college. She was the boys’ first pet.
She moved 6 times. She had 14 roommates (11 human, 4 cat). She was bit by a dog and endured several horrible surgeries. She was hit by a car and had to have her tongue sewn back together. She was boarded in under a house for two days. She saw a baby being born. She had her picture in the paper.
She sat in the laps of many friends, relatives, girlfriends. She charmed them all, and if you were really nice, she would roll over on her back for the ultimate belly rub. Her purr was the best sound in the world. When Christiane and I married, she was part of the package.
When I said, “Gimme kiss”, she would.
We miss her terribly.
lissi
March 1992 - July 2006

Super big thanks and a fresh basket of good karma to my farther-in-law who spent the best 10 hours of his Sunday helping me put up the rest of the kitchen cabinets.
The cabinet guy had hung the glass cabinets about .75 inches lower than the other wall cabinets, and he had put the base cabinet underneath about a half inch higher. The result was about 12 inches of clearance. Not enough for a coffeemaker.
Ron knows about coffee, so he helped me remove, adjust, and re-hang all of those cabinets. He found replacement material for the back of the glass door cabinets so we wouldn’t have an ugly hole where outlet had moved, and he replaced a missing hanger using a chunk of metal ripped from a mini-blind bracket. It probably would have been fine without that hanger, but I would have cringed every time someone opened the door.

The dumpster is gone. We were so excited when it arrived.
When they took it away last week, I almost didn’t notice.

Flipping is so common in our neighborhood that people regularly pester our contractor and subs about when our house will go on the market. Our 6yo says we should put a Not For Sale sign in the yard.
The house across the street from our rental is a flip. In the past 6 months they bought it, added 400 sqft, and put it back on the market asking double what they paid.
The house was pretty junky to start with and now it looks great from the curb. But when you are flipping a house, it’s all about the square footage. Anything else is just a free gift to strangers.
One thing that stands out to me is the roof. They didn’t cut the asphalt shingles in the valleys of the roof, they just lapped the pieces over as they fell. It makes me wonder, how many other jobs have they left for the next owners to finish? These flippers I don’t know, but the next owners, they’re my neighbors.

When I tried to drop by the open house last week, they had already locked the doors and gone home. I assumed it had sold. Not so, I guess.

The issue of the day is railing for the upstairs deck. Since the deck is built and they are ready to put up the railing like, yesterday, this is a heckuva time to tell us the railing we speced out in January won’t work.
The issue is horizontalness. We want cables running horizontally. There is a rumor that the city won’t allow this because a kid could use it as a ladder. I haven’t seen a railing in the world that our kids couldn’t climb. That’s why we only have access to the deck from the master bedroom. Besides, another house in our neighborhood (you know who you are) has horizontal railings on an upstairs deck.
We’ll see how this turns out.

Well, the cabinet guy postponed and postponed, then he worked a half day on Saturday and decided he had had enough. Ikea 2, me and cabinet guy zero.
Two thirds of the kids were out of town so I watched a 15 min Ikea video on-line and headed over to the house to take a swing at it.
I took down all but three of the cabinets the cabinet guy had installed. I measured, adjusted, cut, and put them back in according to the last shred of instructions I had left.

So much better. I feel better having done it myself, and I know they are in there right.

I learned the terms for the interior window trim last week. The board at the bottom of the window is a stool (not a “sill” that is a exterior term) and the trim underneath that is the apron.
There are some small differences in the new window trim. The stool is less chunky and sticks out less on the sides, which is not great but fine. You can’t see it in the photo but the stool sticks out about an inch further into the room than the old trim. That is great. And the carpenter added this beautiful detail to the ends of the apron. Not easy to see, but the trim makes a right angle into the wall at the end (called a return). It’s really fine and shows off the cut in the wood.

Your weekly update, new and improved with a cute baby in every post! We are in the final stretch. The time left before we move in can be measured in weeks not months. And I can almost count what’s left to do on my fingers (ok … and toes) (ok … might need my wife’s fingers and toes too).
This week was:
Trim

We had new trim custom cut to match the original trim in the house. This is deeply satisfying. The old trim had a cut that I have not seen in any other house. Not even other houses in Crestview. It perfectly captures the style of the house. Teetering between the first and last halves of the mid 20th century. The outside edge has an s-curve to it and the inside has a straight notch. It’s like one part Glenn Miller, one part Dave Brubeck. It’s a nod to modern with a foot in the past, circa 1951.

Tile
We had a big, ugly mix-up over the wall tile for the bathrooms. We had spec’ed mud cap and the contractor had translated that to bullnose. This is the piece that goes at the top of the tile on the wall and is a transition from the tile to the drywall.

A mud cap brings the tile about a half-inch away from the wall. This is how shower surrounds were done from most of the 20th century, but is not as common now.

Bullnose is a fake mud cap that sticks flat on the wall.
This would have been an easy change except for the plumbing for the shower, which has a half-inch tolerance for the depth of the wall.
This is really about the most important detail in the design of the bathroom. We spec’ed out $45 wall mount sinks knowing that with the mud cap wall tile, it would look just like a 1950’s bathroom. But with regular bull nose, it looks more like the men’s room at a Chevron. It kills me that we have all of this custom work done and the one thing that’s available off the shelf is not going in.
I have not made my peace with this and still have an image in my head of me taking a crowbar to the whole mess at some later date.
Doors
We spec’ed some super nice doors at Lowe’s. Ace had the same thing custom made for less. They look great and were installed today (Saturday!). I put my hand on one to close it, and it felt like home.

Baby Baby Baby