Window world

I know. I've been busy.

Anyway, I promised a conclusion to the story of our latest home improvement project. It was really kind of anticlimactic, which is one reason I haven't been more motivated to write about it. I was sure that our adventure replacing the 40 year old windows was going to lead* to a hilarious post, including Monte Python-like shots of huge chunks of glass embedded in one of us, and arterial blood spurting all over the patio. Or at least some disgusting animal carcasses that we would find in the wall when we pulled out the old, rotten frames.

Alas, the whole thing went like clockwork. At least maybe if we're talking about an old wooden clock that has been left outside for a long time.

For those just joining us, our house was designed and built forty years ago by an engineering professor at the university where I work. She had very definite ideas about what she wanted. Most everything in the house is nonstandard, and much of it was built onsite. Our living room -- dining room combination** is paneled in native cypress, and features three large picture windows with cypress frames. Unfortunately, the water splashing on the patio had rotted the outsides of the frames, like so:

They didn't look quite this bad until we pulled off the paint and trim. 

Funny story. A few years ago, when we first noticed this problem because of gaps under the windows that lizards were crawling through, I temporarily filled the holes with Super Foam, the duck tape of the twenty-first century.  This was going to last the few weeks it took to make new frames. It was lovely, and Biscuit was thrilled with the look.

No, the tape is not left over from hurricane season.  We were 

at least attempting not to kill ourselves removing this glass.

Enter a couple of job changes, a hurricane, and the absolute impossibility of buying clear cypress lumber that is ten inches wide and two inches thick, and we lived with the foam longer than I care to admit. And since some of these boards cost more than the glass we put in the windows, I was being very careful.

Also, I removed the inside trim from the frames when this whole thing started, so that I could get exact dimensions and see exactly how the boxes were constructed. The trim laid on the floor of the dining room for the duration of the project, just to add to the overall trashy effect.

Cats love home improvement. 

But all good things must end, and eventually even I was able to finish the window frames. Biscuit applied the paint (outside), stain and polyurethane (inside), since she has just the right amount of OCD for wood finishing. All we had to do was wait for the hottest weekend of the summer, and we were ready to go.

The work itself went surprisingly smoothly, and there was only one brief episode of loud cursing and minor bleeding. Once we escalated to the 2 lb. hammer, and after a few minutes of planing, things slid more or less smoothly into place.***

For some reason, it never occurred to me to take pictures of the frames before installing them. 

Combination of wine and obliviousness, I think. 

We lived with plywood in the frames for a couple weeks, until we were able to get the glass people out.

You have no idea how happy I am to finally have this done.

Just in time for the annual hummingbird migration. So now all we have to do is paint the rest of the house. And I can get back to finishing the bathroom remodel I was working on when this whole window thing started. Seriously, it's been going on for a long time.

P.S. In other news, I spent a week at a super-nerd computer graphics conference in Los Angeles. I learned how to create a virtual water droplet that is up to 40% more watery than the current state of the art, as well as many, many other things equally as interesting. I considered writing about it, but couldn't think of a single person who reads this that would not want to poke their eyes out after one paragraph. It's already happening, isn't it?

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* I found out while reviewing academic papers this past weekend that an increasing number of people have stopped using "led" as the past tense of "lead," and just treat it like "read." WTF, people!? Is us just give up on word forms and spelling completedly?

** I said it was the sixties, right?

*** That's what she said. ****

**** With the impending departure of Steve Carell from The Office, I'm afraid I'm going to have to retire twss, as well. The wife is devastated.

Home improvement

I haven't really felt bloggy much lately. For one thing, I'm writing pretty seriously for work at the moment, and it takes most of my mental focus. That is, when I'm not drinking wine and watching movies. There's also a fairly traumatic family thing going on these days. I started to write about that, but I don't think I will.

About the only creative thing I've managed to do lately is to make up a word during a most awesome movie we watched the other night. The word is "eurotard." Yeah, I was pretty proud of it, myself.* If I had any patience I would wait for a suitable situation to use it, instead of just tossing it out there like a sweaty black turtleneck. But I don't. So I did.

Things might be looking up, though. This weekend, the wife and I are planning to replace some really large, really old windows in the house. I'm thinking we may get some pictures of serious destruction, and maybe even have a story of a trip to the emergency room. Or two.

Happy Independence Day!

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* I know I'm not the first person to think of it. I can google like everyone else. Better than some. But I'm pretty sure I haven't heard it before, so I'm keeping it. Also, I think it's brilliant that there is a line of dance clothing with that name.

Wocka Wocka

It has been called to my attention on several occasions recently that I am, in fact, a nerd. Or a geek, there is some dispute on the exact nature of my condition, but I am definitely some flavor of poindexter. This was confirmed today for the eleventy-millionth time when a student pointed me to this:

and I determined that it was possibly the coolest thing I have ever seen. That's right, it's a Pac-Man game built from Roombas. And the laptop he is running it on looks just like my oldest one, which needs to be repurposed, anyway. This could get ugly, though I suspect the cats would enjoy it immensely.

The part that will make some of you jealous, and the rest of you* sigh with pity at the way I like to spend my ever-diminishing spare time and disposable income? Part of my research is ways to make computing physical, so I could potentially kinda-sorta say this is work-related.

It's probably going to take me a while to gather the materials and clear time in my schedule. If I am in your house in the next few months and you own a Roomba, you might want to check for it after I leave. I'm just saying. In the meantime, Ida brought us unexpected clear weather for the next few days, so I guess I had better drag out the telescope again. This nerd business is an around the clock occupation

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* I'm pretty sure The Wife is a member of that second group.

You know what would be cool?

This is a parable of home improvement and software development, and applies pretty much equally to both. If you're not a fan of either activity, or at least have never been on a project that spun wildly out of control until you felt sure you would die before it was finished, you might want to skip this one.

I grew up in a family of builders and construction people, and I have always enjoyed working with my hands. I have several small cuts and splinters right now to prove it. Most of my adult work life has revolved in one way or another around building software, and I've got scars from that, too. I've said for years that "you know what would be cool?" are the six most dangerous words that can be uttered when creating software. I have also said that I should take my own advice about eleventy-million times, but that doesn't seem to have any effect, either.

About six or seven months after Hurricane Gustav* reminded me why we refer to nature as a mother, we had completed repairs on everything except our yard, which I don't even want to talk about, and my little storage shed. For a number of reasons, I had decided to keep the new shed much simpler than the last one. It was going to be easy, cheap and take almost no time. I had the floor and foundation from the old shed. Six foot walls and a two foot roof height would let me do it all with a minimum of materials and cutting. Two productive weekends should have it ready to paint.

Just one thing -- it would be nice to have a little overhang because of how damp it is down here. Of course, the easiest way to do that would be to knock together a few simple roof trusses, which means the inside height will be restricted a little by the cross members. And while I could live with six foot clearance inside, I'm a little taller than that and get really tired of hitting my head. And you know that two foot roof pitch looks a little shallow for that height of wall, so let's make it 30 degrees and add another half a foot. It will be easier to cut that way. I can build a little gable vent to cover the space above the eight foot paneling. Oh, and I will need to notch the side paneling for the rafters. And I guess I need lookouts, so I will need to notch all the panels. Anyway, I think you see where this is going.

By initially changing one little thing from the simple, functional -- if not cool-- design that I started with, I have created a cascade of add-ons and extra work. All of the extra cutting, as well as the unknowns that come with designing on the fly, have caused me to do quite a bit more trim work than I had planned on. Oh, and the extra complexity cost me another piece of siding because of the unfamiliar territory of notching for the rafters.

So now we're two days from the first anniversary of the storm that started all of this, and I'm probably two work days from finishing the shed. Granted, it will be somewhat nicer than what I had originally planned, but it will mostly only look nicer, since the core construction is still what was planned when I was doing this on the cheap. And while I think we can all agree that it is better to look good than to feel good, I've always believed that being good trumps both.

So in addition to the building taking all sorts of extra time and costing nearly twice as much to build as planned, we have had to look at the pile of crap in the carport that would normally be in the shed for a year now. And the (much more enjoyable) project that I was working on when the storm hit has been delayed even longer.

If you've ever worked on a project that seemed like it would never end, and just got more and more complicated as time went on, or if you have ever waited for something to be delivered until you despaired of it ever being completed, the chances are very good that the same thing happened that has happened to my shed. One tiny thing makes a thousand other tiny things happen, and the finish line begins to get farther away instead of closer. So the next time you think of something that would make the thing you're working on cooler, keep it to yourself.
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* You bastard!