We survive yard furniture assembly

It’s great to have newly landscaped, drought-resistant front and back yards. It’s fantastic that our new drip system works properly. But please oh please, save me from yard furniture assembly!

This past weekend, Deb and I spent almost five hours piecing together two glider chairs and a small attached table. I knew there’d be hundreds of parts, some of them teeny-tiny, by the size of the box the item came packaged in. But even after decades of miserably building furniture and bicycles and shelving from Japanese instructions with poor diagrams, we began this project, as always, optimistic that this time, everything would snap together without a hitch. Well, as I said before, it took five goddamn hours, and none of them particularly strengthened our marriage. But now we have a nice, comfortable “Glider Tete-a-Tete” tucked into a cozy, shaded corner of our back yard — a wonderful spot for book-reading, beer-guzzling, and ceegar-smoking.

Then, this morning, a delivery truck pulled up to drop off our new backyard dining set — one round table with a glass top and four swivel rockers, all disassembled. After pulling all the pieces out of two massive boxes, Deb and I looked at each other and shook our heads simultaneously. Not today.

We displease a neighbor

Deb and I spotted our neighbor Linda studying our front yard on Saturday.

“You guys have been busy,” she said. She didn’t look overly pleased.

“Yeah, and you should see the back yard,” I said. “It’s even nicer.”

Five weeks ago, we began a systematic demolition and reconstruction of our yards, front and back. We tore out trees, bushes, and hedges, then mulched them up with a wood-chipper. Then we replaced everything with plant life indigenous to the area — drought-resistant, low-maintenance stuff. We added a creek bed in the front yard that will siphon the rainwater from our gutters to the new trees we’ve planted. We created natural pathways through both yards. We placed flagstone in a few areas to create quiet spots for reading, meditation, wine drinking, and (for me) cigar smoking.

I’m sure Linda has no problem with any of that.

I suspect what’s suppressing her enthusiasm for our yards, particularly our front yard, is what’s missing.

What’s missing is lawn. You know, the stuff that every California homeowner is expected to have, the lush expanses of thick green carpet that provide a playground for giggling children and bouncing dogs.

We’ve got none of that now. Oh, we did have lawns, until five weeks ago. But our lawns were seldom green. Instead, they sported gopher holes, brown patches where our dog Cheyenne peed, and badass little mites that darted around your bare ankles during summer.

And we were forever watering the goddamn lawns. “Give them at least 45 minutes of water, every other day,” a friend once advised me. “That’ll keep ’em nice and green.” So I did that, diligently. But dead patches still cropped up, and the water bill skyrocketed. “These lawns need to be properly aerated,” my friend told me then. “If you’ve got some old golf shoes, ones with metal cleats, put those on and walk all over the lawns. They’ll love you for it. And you might want to buy some lawn fertilizer, too.” Screw all that. After ten years — ten friggin’ years — I was done.

So our new yard construction has, from the get-go, been built around a “no lawns” rule. In another week or so, our yards won’t look anything like any other in our neighborhood. While Ed, and Tom, and Jerry, and, yes, Linda either mow their own grass or pay someone to mow it for them, Deb and I will sit meditatively on one of our patios, nursing glasses of merlot.

So what if we don’t fit in with the rest of the neighbors?

Home renovations, part two

Last year, Debbie and I endured six full months — right up until Christmas Day — of remodeling the interior of our house: new floors, built-ins, countertops, doors, the works. Today, a much smaller “phase two” began: replacement of a 22-year-old wood shake roof with fire-resistant asphalt shingles. After six straight hours of scraping and banging while the guys take off the old roof, I notice right now…quiet. Maybe they’re done for the day.

I’m told that today’s noise is nothing compared with what I can expect over the rest of the week, when they start stapling down the new shingles. Thankfully, the job should be done by Friday, maybe even Thursday.

Phase three commences later this month: landscaping the front and back yards. Oh goody.

"Don't sweat the small stuff"

Sure, I know that’s good advice. But when you’re thisfuknclose to the end of a six-month house remodel — and family is scheduled to spend the Christmas holiday at your place this year — it’s hard advice to follow. Mainly cuz there seems to be so much “small stuff” remaining to get done — one more toilet to install, one more sink to mount, a master bedroom to reassemble, two new electric outlets to put in, one closet door to hang. Little stuff, really, when I look at all that’s been accomplished since last June. But yeah, I’m on edge. I just wanna be done with this. I wanna be able to finally come home again and just sit, open a beer and a book, and remain still for awhile.

Maybe by the end of next week.

"So you enjoy reading, do you?"

Five months ago, I had so many books stuffed into our living room alone — in bookcases, in drawers, and stacked on the floor — that I was able to donate 18 boxes worth to the local library and still store another 26 boxes in the portable storage unit now sitting in front of the house. Well, our new living room is pretty much “done.” So I spent last night shelving the books from those 26 boxes into our new built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Holy crap! I’ve still got more than 40 empty shelves of varying sizes I can fill! An enormous amount of space! Now, there are still some books to be weeded out in the bedroom and guest rooms, but those rooms, once “redone” in the next few weeks, will all feature a few new built-in bookcases as well. This is liberating! I may no longer need to stack books along the walls and in the garage!

When the proper time comes, I’ll post a few pictures here of my new, more organized, multi-room book collection. I'm so happy.

Facing the last mile

There’s light at the end of our home-remodeling tunnel, now almost four months long. I’m not sure exactly how far away that light is, but I can see it. Though my cynical friend Steve asks, “Are you sure that light isn’t just an oncoming train?” Well…

Here’s the deal: the whole freakin’ house is involved. Built-in cabinets and bookcases. All new floors. All new paint. At this very moment, the first, biggest phase nears completion. That means that we now have our kitchen back, and our living room (to a degree), and our dining area, and our front entry. Baseboards still need to be attached, glass must be installed in china cabinet doors (when it arrives), paint touch-ups will be pursued shortly.

Watching all this come together is pretty exciting. This house, which we've owned for nine years, will finally be fully crafted to fit our lifestyle, not that of past owners. But for the time being, Deb and I (plus 82-pound hound Cheyenne) are moving our living and sleeping quarters from the bedrooms and into the “new” end of the house so that work on those rooms can begin. The bedrooms are a smaller job than Phase One, thank gawd, mainly floors and paint. But it still means continued disruption, unplugging and plugging, rotating furniture, emptying and refilling boxes, pushing and shoving.

Our general contractor told us originally that the whole remodel would take, oh, maybe three months. Which I knew was bullshit. Current estimates say we should be pretty well finished by Christmas. Fingers are crossed.

So if you don’t hear from me occasionally, you know where I am.

A distinctly 21st century problem

The second season of Heroes, one of my favorite things on TV, begins tonight. This event really snuck up on me. In fact, I didn’t realize how close it was until last week, and then it dawned on me that watching these first few episodes of the show may be very difficult here at Casa Conger. For one thing, Deb and I have a standing out-of-the-house commitment every Monday night, so Heroes is one of those series that we must record for later viewing. Second, we are right in the middle of a house remodel, and at this very moment, we’re in that stage where digital cable, new TV, DVR, etc. are all in transition, being shut off, shuffled, and then turned on again. From one minute to the next, for the coming month, we won’t know whether we have TV access in this house at all. Tonight, we’re covered. But through October? I suppose we must rely on the kindness of friends.

What the hell did we do before we could record our television programs? Alas, I can't remember back that far.

I really hate clowns

Our home is going through a semi-major remodel. By “semi-major,” I mean that we’re not tearing down or “popping out” walls or adding rooms, but every room in the house is being touched in one way or another, a couple getting full overhauls. The whole job, we’re told, will take 3-4 months. We’re just a month into the process. And we’re trying to live here somewhat comfortably (with one oversized dog) while all the remodeling is going on. Crazy times.

So here’s what’s been happening: Debbie and I are frantically working ahead of the contractors, cleaning out rooms, packing stuff up for sale or charity, and shuffling furniture about. And we’ve come across some interesting items that I didn’t even know I had.

Yesterday afternoon, Deb opened a box and found two paintings of clowns that hung on my bedroom wall, oh, 45 years ago, when I was a widdle kid.

Clowns scare the shit outta me. Always have. A dear friend of mine unthinkingly hired a clown named Kerplunk for my 40th birthday a few years back. It took them an hour to tear me off the wall, drunk as I was.

I wish I could reproduce those paintings here, but the damn things don’t fit on my scanner. So I’ve done the next best thing — found a couple of freakin’ clown paintings online that I feel are approximately as hideous and terrifying as the clowns we discovered in that box yesterday.

Stop laughing, you sadistic bastards. This isn’t funny.