The One Where Brie and I Disagree About Decorative Panels

Happy Pride to those who riot. Wanted to take an appropriately themed moment to focus on an organization doing good work in Texas. TENT (Transgender Education Network of Texas)

The Texas Governor and the state Attorney General are actively targeting families with trans children, investigating parents that assist their children in receiving necessary medical healthcare, and are now attempting to force PFLAG (US's largest org that supports the LGBTQ+ community) to turn over information and documents about its support of families in Texas seeking gender-affirming medical care for their transgender youth. Here's the Lambda Legal article on that last item.

TENT works to better the lives of the Texas trans community through education programs, community outreach, and collective action. 

In their own words: Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT) is the largest statewide, BIPOC trans-led, trans-focused policy, education, and advocacy organization in the state of Texas.

We work to accomplish gender-diverse equality through education and networking in both public and private forums. Through our efforts, we strive to halt discrimination through social, legislative, and corporate education.

If you have a dollar or two extra this month (or any month) consider throwing some their way. I just ordered this fetching Trans Texas shirt from their Merch tab.

In a less dire celebration of Pride month, here's a reminder that of the time, 7 years ago, that drag queen, Britney Spears impersonator, and generally well-intentioned dunder-head Derrick Barry almost nailed her explanation of the Stonewall Riot. Almost.

God bless. 

***

Wild last 6 weeks. Let's try to cover everything, but do it one piece at a time. 

In what was a personal highlight, our dear friends Grace and Isaiah got married on May 4th in a private family-only ceremony in a public rose garden. Brie and I were fortunate enough to be asked perform the ceremony, Brie serving as Teller to my Penn, and the Spring rain abated just long enough for a lovely, well-lit affair. Afterwards everyone headed to the couple's local wine bar where the rest of our circle of friends met us and there was much carousing. I beat this dead horse often, but we're surrounded by an amazing group of people. Special shout out to our friend Anthony who watched Walt all day/night, while we partied, and while he watched the original Star Wars trilogy for the first time. 

And what about Walt? He's gotten exceedingly greedy about laying in the lawn to absorb every last iota of sun, but it could be worse, he could be on drugs or vote libertarian. He's started wanting to play again and has the zoomies more and more frequently. 

We're inching ever closer to Brie's ideal scenario of us fostering senior dogs as a way to socialize him and also scratch her itch for a lap dog that doesn't come with aggressive baggage.

Originally not sure of The Room, Walt really warmed to it once I showed him he could use the chairs to creep on the rest of the street through the double hung windows.

***

Speak of the room:

The last time I showed any process pictures of The Room was January; my most recent post instead focusing on the furnishings we had brought in. Since you all religiously read and reread these posts, I know, that you know, that I know, that you know that the last technical thing I discussed was Brie installing a toe kick for the wall cabinetry to sit on. Well we did that and some more. 

The work was guided by a series of calendar dictated mile markers: Brie's parents were visiting during the second week of May and had expressed interest in helping us work on the house, my dear friend/stage manager Madalyn and her partner April were visiting on the 3rd week of May and also wanted to work, and we were hosting a big memorial day party on the last weekend in May that demanded certain things be done in the house.

For the party we needed (1) the room to be operable for games/crafting/movies so we needed to address all of the cabinetry and paint tasks, but that meant we needed (2) to sand and prime all of the wood to put in up on the wall, which meant (3) either waste our lives walking everything through the house or just cutting the gordian knot and finally opening up the backyard side of the breezeway. So that's the path we chose one afternoon in early May. 

Reminder that upon move-in the breezeway looked like this. That door led to a "greenhouse" room that was both wired for electricity but also had a plank floor exposed to the dirt below. The glass was all cracked and water fogged. Just an insane choice.

The positive discovery was that it was physically constructed with more logic than The Room had been, which made deconstruction shockingly easy. It also hammered home just how much this was an exterior space allowed to fester next to the "interior" space of the breezeway for decades. It stank of must and dirt.

There was tangible concern between us vis-a-vis the glass. The cracks were noteworthy, but we also had zero insight into how the glass had been installed and with what products. The second pleasant surprise, that also served as a real mind fuck, was that for the panes of glass they had gone to the store and purchased sliding glass doors and just slotted in the doors and put silicone and wood framing around it. 

I would not characterize this as a viable construction method for walls or windows. It did inspire me to re-examine the giant door shaped window in the bonus room extension they had built a few years ago. 

Lo and behold, I discovered they used two sliding glass doors in place of a picture window. This seems the likely reason for some of the draft and bee intrusion into this room. GREAT.

Much of the remaining take down was all about avoiding damage to the house siding and not having the roof give us a sudden concussion.

Here is the door leading from breezeway to greenhouse. You'll note the handle didn't fit so they just carved out a runway for it. As god intended. Walt was clearly helping and next to him is our knee scooter for the next time one of us ruins our ankle(s) by just walking around this M.C. Escher property.

We finished removing the rest of the framing and got down to the original structure. We left the fill frame at the top of the opening as there's some electrical work passing through there. We tentatively have Caesar's electrical guy coming in later this Summer. Among other tasks, we'll trace back these cables and free them from this frame. 

We moved the vestigial black metal pergola to the wooded part of the yard. We'll swap out the burnt out bulbs and run an extension cord to it from the shed. Kinda an updated version of the lamppost from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

This clearing of the deck after opening the breezeway allowed us to bring out the Bestas and Billies (IKEA names) so we could remove their flimsy cardboard backs and angle cut the sides to match the 8 degree ceiling slope in The Room. Side note: most of the markings for this stage of the project were done using my Advanced Dungeon and Dragons pencil that I got in the Complete Priest's case back in 1994. This product from TSR (then owner of D&D) was a series of plastic briefcases each themed around an AD&D 2nd Edition character class. I ran clerics so got the priest case. Each one came with the softbound "Complete Guide to (blank)" rule supplement, dice, a pencil, character sheets customized to the applicable class, and a series of stickers using TSR owned AD&D art. Everything from that kit has fallen by the wayside over the last 20 years. Glad the pencil ended up earning its keep.

We replaced the flimsy backing boards with custom cut 3/4 inch plywood. Brie used her router to form rabbet prongs so the new backs could slide into the pre-existing grooves. 

All the above work was accomplished between the wedding and the parental arrival. Brent and Carol Ann were instrumental in getting all of the billies, bestas, shelves, and plywood backs sanded and primed over just two days. Walt was also present. 

After all that and a delicious meal at a local Mexican restaurant that goes by the name Mexico Restaurant, Brie's parents headed out and she got down to leveling the toe-kick, cutting new tops for the upper cabinets, and piecing together the massive faux built-in. (TBH, it took us a couple of days). The tops of the cabinets were always going to be uneven due to the uneven nature of the concrete underflooring and 60 year old ceiling joists; we'll use a piece of facing trim across the top to give a clean, even finish.

***

(The next bit jumps ahead to post-memorial day painting work)

One of the major design goals of The Room was to embrace color and to embrace clashes of color, potentially even with neon. Since cabinets tend to have much of their finishes/colors obscured by the media they hold, they present a great way to bring in bold colors without overwhelming a space. With the upper cabinets  somewhat recessed compared to the base unit, I suggested a tonal approach with the uppers slightly lighter. We settled on some saturated deep reds (the bases are Benjamin Moore Raisin Torte). Unfortunately when the uppers dried we found that the colors didn't look different enough and that color washing the whole cabinet left the unit feeling heavy and not properly integrated into the space. So we went back out this past weekend and grabbed some purple which is proving a much better choice. Brie also ordered some neon yellow and orange chalk paint which we'll use on a project you'll see in a future update.  

(back to the 3rd week of May)

***

Madalyn and April were a joy share the house with for a week. We love them and wish them well as they look to escape from Boston (learning the hard way that Boston sucks after spending their post college year there). They helped us put up a new flag backet (not shown here b/c a wind storm took it down the week after they left thanks to the shitty screws that came with it) and also built us this privacy fence using scrap cedar from our other fence for the A/C unit, because it turns out that you could see the A/C unit from the street with the new hole we had put in the house. 

BUT NOW IT'S FASHION

In prep for party hosting I bought the LG C3 65" tv for The Room. Has HDR, displays 4k, has Dolby vision. Fun! We also got this amazing glossy coffee table and Brandon and Lindsay donated this crazy large poof for movie seating. 

Walt finally understands the purpose of The Room.

Worth noting that also since my last post Brie installed all new wall storage in her workshop and we loaded all the extra cedar wood  onto the wood storage center she installed.

With The Room humming, the breezeway partially open, and an electrician visit on the horizon, Brie put me under pressure to open up the street-facing side of the breezeway. I was firm that we could not do that without a gate solution for Walt's safety. I was equally insistent that the 5 foot wide opening between the two buildings made the structure looked unplanned (which is was, the previous owner was the schmuck who turned the carport into a room). I suggested that we steal an element from the homes of Joseph Eichler (we're huge fans of the Eichler designs) and how he used panels as a visual entryway into this homes. Long/short as part of the 'bring-the-outside-inside' approach of mid-century design philosophy, he designed homes that had a faux front entrance (sometimes open, sometimes with a gate/door) and glass/wood panels that hid a front-of-house courtyard, around which were multiple entrances to the home (similar to our breezeway leading to (1) the main house (2) the room and (3) the backyard).

Brie is very fashionable, trendy, and clever so she said yes immediately (also so she could hold my feet to the fire about tearing down the last breezeway door). Our current disagreement is whether the panel will go on the tall main house side of the breezeway or the shorter Room side. My preference is a taller panel that blocks direct view to the main entrance. Her preference is a shorter panel that blocks view into the breezeway picture window of The Room; she is oddly scared about someone looking in at us playing boardgames.

Anyway, here are some mock-ups.

We do agree that we want a metal gate with a mid-century patterning and the panel must match the tone of the facade and gate (if not just be an extension of the gate). We've considered having the whole thing be a single decorative metal unit.

***

I lost the plot for this post's structure somewhere along the way, but what's important is that with the help of Madalyn, April and Brie's parents, we churned through a ton of projects and the house was able to host multiple sets of visitors and host an all day party for 15, while constantly being in a state of change. I referred to it as a stress test to our friends and there are definitely upgrades still to be made. We don't have the drinks fridge set up yet (waiting on final electrical work), the flag bracket is going to get some industrial strength screws from Brie, we're bringing more comfortable seating into the room, have to finish the painting...OH, I forgot! We also ordered some wallpaper for the far corner of The Room next to the built ins. I'll leave you with that and urge everyone to stay out of the heat.

All the best,

S.