On the Shelf

Trying to improve the storage available in our tiny kitchen, I finally finished this shelf by staining it and installing it today.

It came together almost exactly as I imagined it would, with just two flaws easily visible: The grain of the closest bracket is vertical, while the others are horizontal, and there's a gap in the shelf under the third bracket that's wider than the one between Letterman's front teeth.

But it looks pretty good otherwise, and holds all our pitchers and a few other odds and ends. I have to admit I'm well chuffed with the results.

Lazy Sunday

"What are you going to do today?"

Hmmm. Curl up on the bed and nap sounds like a good answer. Curl up on the sofa with a book sounds almost as good.

Lap Cat

Boo doesn't eat bananas, but she just loves to snap at the peels when they do that dangly thing right in front of her.

This is her favorite spot, first thing in the morning.

Don't Ask Me How, I Just Live Here

Same back yard, one week later and fifty-five degrees warmer. There's no way to describe it other than just plain batshit crazy.

And I can't take advantage of the warmer temps by, say, going for a little walk around the neighborhood to finally get out of the house and stretch my legs for a bit, because it's raining! I suppose I could take a bumbershoot along, but then we're back to batshit crazy again. The weather can go ahead and act crazy if it wants to, but darned if I'm going to be a part of it.

"Do you ever feel any regrets about moving back to Wisconsin?" my Mom asked me the other night, and I told her "no," because that was the only self-respecting thing to say, but ...

Find The Brass Monkey

It's a state law that when the temperature plunges below zero, and if you have a blog, you have to post a photo of the thermometer and prattle on for a bit about how cold it is.

Man, is it cold! It is so cold in Wisconsin, all the brass monkeys go south for the winter.

I have to admit, I never got the brass monkey comparison. I always assumed it was code for something we weren't supposed to say in mixed company, but nobody ever told me the dirty version, so I've never been sure what "colder than a brass monkey" means.

In my neck of the woods, the more popular expression was, "Colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra." Brass seems to be a baseline for measuring cold temperatures, I supposed from way back when there used to be more brass door knobs and handles you had to grab hold of to get in out of the cold. Good thing they came up with the saying back then; with all the brushed aluminum and stainless steel out there now, "witch's tit in a brushed aluminum bra" just wouldn't trip off the tongue as satisfyingly.

When it's this cold, every trip from the house, no matter how short, becomes a major expedition you have to provision for. Is there a shovel and a bag of kitty litter in the trunk of the car to attempt a dig-out? Do you have at least a quarter tank of gas to run the engine in case you have to call for help? Are you wearing the requisite half-dozen layers of clothes? I wouldn't even walk to the end of the driveway for the morning paper on a morning like this, and in fact, I didn't. I figured I could read it on-line from the comfort of my easy chair where I can stay wrapped up in quilts. That's how cold it is.

I Love This Backpack!

Tim's kitty getting some love from his backpack.

Hang 'Em High

Today's Home Improvement Project #1: Give My Darling B a place to keep her stemware.

The china hutch is full, there's no room in the cupboards for them, and there's no room for shelves anywhere.

The solution? Find a place to hang them. I've seen these stemware tracks on the underside of shelfwork in wine bars. The only trick was to find a place to hang them, but B suggested the underside of the counter end, which worked out fine.

Then I ran to the store to buy some wooden cleats and some pine lath, cut it to length and tapped it into place with some finishing nails. The most rewarding home improvement projects are the ones that are easiest, yet still produce impressive results. I'm going to get a kiss for this one, I can feel it.

What Would Chief Al Say?

I'm this close to having hair long enough to pull back in a ponytail. I asked My Darling B to show me how to tie it back, but she went further than that: she combed it and tied it with an elastic band from a tin of them she had in her store of hair-care stuff. Considering that she told me years ago she'd leave me if I ever grew a ponytail, I'm gratified she not only accepted my latest phase of middle-age denial, she also took part in helping style it.

Even though it's still pretty short, I wore it back this way when we went to the market, and blended in pretty effectively with the rest of the organic-food crowd.

I may have to wait another four to eight weeks before I have a ponytail that's more like the founding father look I'm shooting for and less a middle-aged man trying to look like a kid again, although in my defense I've never had hair this long before in my life, so I don't think I'm in denial if I'm trying it for the first time.

Adventures in Plumbing

Success! It took all day to get the water running again and, more importantly, to get the waste water to go where it was supposed to go, but I finally had everything hooked up in time to hand the kitchen over to My Darling B, who planned on a pizza for dinner tonight.

Look at the size of that thing! It looked nice and big in the store, but once I got it installed it looked even BIGGER! I could probably climb in there and take a bath! And I needed one, after taking apart the drain pipes and playing in the muck.

Adventures in Plumbing

Time for Adventures in Plumbing, where I take apart some vital piece of our house's waterworks, then try to figure out how to put it back together again.

Today, I tore out the kitchen sink. It was made of stainless steel, divided down the middle, and the faucet began to make an annoying knocking sound about two weeks ago that has gotten worse with each passing day.

The sink also had a garbage disposal attached to it, just to make the operation more interesting.

I planned to replace it with an enameled cast iron sink that was divided into a large and a small bowl, but when I went to the store to buy it, I found that it was made in China. Whoops. My Darling B would never have allowed me to bring that through the door, so I quickly re-evaluated the choices.

Everything was made in China except for a selection of divided stainless steel sinks much like the one I was trying to get rid of, and a number of acrylic sinks. I wasn't crazy about them at first, but found one in stock that had a single, huge bowl we'd be able to wash even our largest frying pans and platters in, and went with that.

Even though I got what I thought was an early start, I ended up working on this project until dinner time. It should go without saying that I've never removed a kitchen sink before, nor installed one.

Found! A Better TP Dispenser!

The O-Folk once lived in Japan many, many moons ago, and fell in love with their gadgets, the best of which, and one that we could afford to bring back with us, was this toilet paper dispenser. When the roll runs out, all you have to do is lift up on the empty core and two little swing arms let it pop right off. Then you push a new roll up through the spring arms, and they snap into the core. Presto! Chango! Even the O-Folk can handle that.

We liked these so much, we bought two, but the most frustrating thing about moving is that the things you're most looking forward to as you unpack are stashed away in the last box you open. These dispensers were in a box that's been shoved way to the back of a shelf all these years. I didn't find them again until tonight and was so pleased by the discovery that I installed it straight away.

The simplest things are the ones we treasure, right?

Give Me A Call

The paint job on the Western Electric 202 turned out pretty good after all.

I bought a spray can of clear coat that put a beautiful finish on it, not glossy but semi-gloss. It looks just right on a telephone body.

The next problem is the handset. The one that came with the phone is a transplant. The 202 is an elegant-looking phone, but it needs a genuine E1 handset with a "spit cup" mouth piece or it just doesn't have the same character. I'm scoping out sales on e-bay for the real thing and have found several in the past two weeks, but they're expensive. I may have to make due with the transplant for a while.

It's so heavily pitted that it'll take quite a bit of sanding and buffing before it comes close to matching the finish on the body.

The cord's pretty nasty, but I'll order a cloth-covered cord new from House of Telephones on payday. That ought to give me enough time to polish a good-looking shine on the handset.

Wait For Dial Tone

The cradle presents its own set of problems, not the least of which is the need to zap it from a dozen different directions to get an evenly-applied coat.

This is the second trip the cradle has made to the paint booth. The first application was very uneven, so after sanding out the roughest spots I tried again this afternoon. I'm less than pleased with the result. You can easily see the globby paint inside the cradle arms.

I've started doing a little research on the interwebs after noting that the handset that came with this phone was a transplant. It's not even a Western Electric handset. From what I can tell, the 202 should have an E1 handset, which has a knobby look and a mouthpiece with a "spit cup." I found a few on e-bay, but none at the bargain prices my skinflint sensibilities will let me bid on.

After cleaning my Western Electric 302 this afternoon, I strongly suspect the dial of my 202 is a transplant, too. It's got a plastic number card under the finger wheel; the 302's dial had a porcelain face. What are the odds that Western Electric would have used plastic in the earlier version of their desk phones, and porcelain in later versions? Smells fishy to me.

Wait For Dial Tone

... and this is about forty-five minutes after spraying one coat as light as I could get it using a can of Krylon. It's probably my most successful attempt so far. There are some scratches evident in the paint, but I'm thinking of overspraying with a clear fixative and polishing it a bit to see how that looks.

Wait For Dial Tone

It usually looks pretty good while the paint is still wet ...

Wait For Dial Tone

Here's another reason I don't want to rush into painting anything. This is the D1 base of a Western Electric 202, and I've been trying for almost two weeks to apply a smooth coat of glossy black paint to it, but the damned paint keeps krinkling up like this around the shoulders. The last coat I gave it got me so cheesed off I set it aside for three days before I came back to it this afternoon with a patch of 100 grit paper, sanded off three or four layers, smoothed it over with some 220 grit and put it in the paint booth to give it another zap.

Wait For Dial Tone

The reassembled dial after cleaning. The face is badly scratched and the paint is worn from inside most of the fingerholes, but I didn't want to repaint it today, if I ever do. I don't necessarily want it to look pristine. The scratches aren't especially good-looking, but the worn finger holes give the dial a comforting feeling of constant use. I'll have to give a good, long think to whether or not I'll repaint it.

Wait For Dial Tone

With the finger wheel removed, the dial cleans up easily. It looks and feels like porcelain. That part number would probably tell me exactly what it was made of and when, if I knew where to look. A quick googling doesn't clear up the question, though.

Most people who restore phones take the whole thing apart before they even start cleaning, but all I wanted to do today was clean the dust and grease off the parts so that, after making a call, I wouldn't have the same uneasy feeling I get when I give my nose a quick wipe without the benefit a handkerchief. Not that I would ever do such a revolting thing. Ever. Forget I said that.

Wait For Dial Tone

The first working dial telephone I bought from an e-bay auction was this Western Electric Model 302, and I liked it so much that I wired a 4-prong outlet in the living room so I could plug it in and use it right away.

I had to give the handset a good, long scrubbing in warm, soapy water before My Darling B would even consider using it, though. She'll put up with a lot of weirdness from me, but her love has its limits.

I swore I'd get around to cleaning and refurbishing the rest of the phone at a later date, to be determined by the availability of time and funds and, little by little, I've managed to keep up an erratic schedule of restoring it to something close to its former glory. I replaced the cords a week or two ago, and today I took it to the basement to take apart and clean the dial which, you can see here, is still covered in nearly sixty years of grunginess.

A Cookie You Can Believe In

Seen at the farmer's market this weekend: The Obama Cookie. Way cool. McCain doesn't have a cookie. This may be a game-changer.

When My Darling B handed over the cash to pay for it, the guy standing in line behind her said, "He's going to give you change you can believe in."

ba-dum-bum! tssss ...