Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Life of the World-Famous Painter

10/5/9
I needed to use my workbench this morning for wrapping an ebay package. Over the past few weeks, I had been accumulating the empty paint cans from the various projects. The city requires that the empty cans be dried out before they can be collected. There were nine cans emptied. I knew that i'd been doing a lot of painting lately, but didn't realilze exactly how much. Not boring, though - just look at the variety! There was primer, interior and exterior, oil paint that "matured" while i wasn't looking, exterior stain for the back railings, red enamel for the back stairs, deck paint for the basement of the rental, exterior "poop brown" for "enhancing" the grafitti on the brown building.
Now, USPS will be able to find us again. "Bring packages to the back of the building, top of red stairs". Yay! they're RED again!

the gray wall behind the lamp is one coat of Zinsser primer and two coats of S-W ProMar 200 semi-gloss. The new commercial tenant put up a wall around the stairway, and didn't need the iron railing, so suddenly I have 150 lbs of iron railing to store. Mrs. didn't have any suggestions, so I propped the sucker up and put it right in the front of her stage. I believe it enhances the performance space. I believe this very strongly. Because I don't have another place to keep it.

And there are still the raccoons. Hope I can get a good photo of them before I make their lives miserable by locking them out of my (their?) basement. I am in the process of methodically clearing out an undeveloped space full of soggy scrap lumber and other smelly stuff. Trying to stay under the city's "special pickup" radar on this project, so I just do a little each week. It's a dank and dark space, and somewhere within there are at least two raccoons living and stinking. Soon, the last of the lumber will be removed, and there will be nothing down there but raccoons. I've seen them entering through the hole in the stairway wall. They're bigger than Syd the cat, and I've heard they can be quite vicious if they perceive themselves to be cornered. I saw them up close the other day. They were just coming in from forage. Porky little things with fluffy-looking sleek coats and fluffy striped tails. Completely typical raccoon-looking with the dark band over their eyes. I can't stop up the vent hole until i'm sure there's nobody inside - it's the only way in.

And that's the news from the Janitor's Log for this week!

Thanks for listening and contributing. For up-to-the-minute thoughts, come on over to twitter.com I'm @dimbulb52

2 comments:

Lydia Fiedler said...

I LOVVVVVVVVVVVVE the red stairs!! That is beautiful! I would feel all queenly bopping up those every day.

I give my firm seal of approval to the railing around the stage as well. It's perfectly suited to a performance space. And it looks heavy.

I Love these remodeling posts. On the edge of my seat for the coon pics too!

Leslie Hanna said...

"spam or other obscenities". I am sorry, but I just had to do that.

Blogger swallowed the comment I tried to leave this morning, just about the time the wind took out my DSL. Let me see if I remember what I wrote.

I love your Communist Flag-looking stairs. I love the railing (have you just created another mainteneace project?)

I, too, and leaving a can of paint out to dry so it can be properly discarded and not get me banned for life from the recyle station.

I think you should take any of that wet wood that might be salvagable to build the varmints a house out back so they will stop living in your basement. Maybe you could heat it for them. Or not.

That is all.

Word Verification: faterkyd. He is a faterkyd than you are.