The House Remodel Begins

Wine Labels

Yes, given time, everything eventually gets done. The house was all packed away. We found a Realtor® & a contractor. I shoved all of my stuff away as well. Packed what I needed into a duffel bag and have come to San Francisco a for a month or so while the house gets remodeled before sale. While there is nothing wrong with the house, it needs updating. I really didn't want to take the chance of a builder coming in and scraping the lot & putting in a McMansion. That wouldn't be good for the neighborhood. It's a Nice Neighborhood. We grew up there and wanted to keep the feeling of it. So the Realtor, Alex Lehr, came in & said, "You've got to take out this closet. you want to open that wall up,and then...." Five minutes later he had a battle plan. Ble Chip Stamps

A year and a half ago Alex handled the house next door. His people came in cleared it out and modernized it and sold it in a couple of months. It came out so well and my neighbors son, Peter who handled the whole thing had nothing but good things to say about the experience. So for me it was a no-brainer. That's how Alex runs his business. Come in, clean it up, stage it & sell it. And he has done it enough times that he has the template of what buyers are wanting in his head. Spray Paint on the Walls

And this plan involved changing a lot of things. There was a fair amount of demolition to do. In November I had done as much as I could with the tools I hadn't packed away... the bedroom closets were all being removed & rebuilt. The master dressing room needed to be stripped. I had completed the removal of all of this and there was a big pile of lumber in the garage. They were going to replace all of the doors so I pulled them out as well. Demolition Begins

It was odd coming in a few days before the professionals were going to arrive to do their demolition and seeing marks spray-painted on the walls. It's the house I grew up in... Geepers, I never could have gotten away with that. These contractors... they have all of the fun! I had been trying to be so careful when I was tearing stuff out... Don't mark the walls and all that... When it comes down to it.... if you're removing the wall, don't worry about the wall.

The cabinets were the first things to come out. My pop made those. Hmmm, interesting feeling that... but it was good to see the tile countertop go.On the floor under the counters were blue chip stamps that had floated underneath in the 60s or even earlier. Behind the cabinets were wine labels my mother had pasted onto the walls in the 1970's. My mother was a creative & inventive decorator & problem solver, a trait she, no doubt, learned from her own mother Hilda. Oh, the stories to be told of Hilda! Painting Over a Crack

The soil in that part of California is an adobe clay. It expands & shrinks every years as the rains come and go. As a result, all of the homes there develop cracks over the years as the houses flex. One of my mom's solutions can be seen in the 4th picture. the upper left had corner of that doorway has a crack in it so my mother disguised it by pasting wine labels over it. There were a few other doorways similar to that around the house. The hallway was papered in covers taken from The New Yorker magazine. One side of the hall had been papered in the 1960s so the covers dated from the mid 1950s to about 1967 or so... the other side had been papered to match in the 80s so the covers were much newer. Anyhow, by 2003 a pretty visible crack had developed right down the middle of one of the kitchen walls. Quite clearly, the obvious solution was to draw attention to it by painting a vine over it. And it worked quite well. When I pointed out the crack to the realtor & contractor They had to run their fingers over it to realize there actually was one. Onions in a Cigar Box

And so the house remodel has actually begun. While it is true that I was hoping this would have started in August or September or October.... It is good to have movement of some kind, any kind. besides, I get to stay in San Francisco for a month or so. And, of all things, I have finally purchased a smart phone... you know those little flat things that you carry around in your pocket and take pictures with?

Music
    Gerluz
        The Day We Met
        Porphero's Watch Chain
        Les Langueurs Tendres
        more...
    Gort Braggern
        Prickly Pear
        Solar Wind
        Singularity
        more...
    Sonic Landscapes
        Volcanic Sounds of the Yellowstone Caldera
        Low Tide at Soberanes Point,
        Nightbirds on the Noyo River
        more...
    Nouveau Guinea Ensemble
        Idyll
        The Tiny Jalopy
        The Bunnies Parade
        more...
Photography
      Beckwourth Complex Fire
      One Last Snow
      Let's Try a Little Winter
      more...
Travel
      Bits of VA
      Wiggling the Adirondacks
      Washington
      more...
Misc
      Mister Frank
      The Ice Follies
      House Remodel (series)
          The Remodel Begins
          Tear 'em Up
          Putting Things Back
          more..
      And Then Aug & Sep
      more...

Recent Posts
Gravity Wave
Feb 18, 2016
San Francisco is a great walking town. I took a lot of long walks at pretty much any time of day or night, this piece came about through these walks.
Tear 'em Up - Remodel One Month In
Jan 26, 2016
We are Just over 5 weeks into this thing. There was a shocking lack of activity between Xmas and New Years, then again, everybody deserves some time off during the holidays. I just need to chill out a little.
What are you going to do in San Francisco anyhow?
Dec 28, 2015
I like San Francisco. I always have. For my first job I was a driver for a water lab. Every morning I had to drive from Redwood City to Marin (through San Francisco, of course). I had all morning to do the drive plus my lunch hour. I would often spend my lunch hour picking a new route through the city. Way too much fun to be paid for, but i took the money anyway. Now I had the opportunity to spend all day every day in the city.
  The House Remodel Begins
Playland
Oct 22, 2015
This one is actually part of a larger suite that I call Parlor Passages. It is intended to recall the frenetic energy energy of a children's playground. It is quite short, just over a minute a bit of brightness to be inserted in a longer ensemble.
And Then There was August & September
Oct 21, 2015
The blue jay is acting a bit self-conscious. Pin feathers coming in make him look quite awkward and so he compensates by acting with more bravado and investigating things more fiercely. If I leave the back door open he will hop right up to the threshold and survey the inside of the house
The Optimistic Nihilist
Sep 15, 2015
You know how it is.... you have one of those weeks. You slog to work on a cold and dismal Monday; The office bully pins you down and steals your lunch money...
What Happened to July?
Aug 18, 2015
One of the nice things about July is that the ginger plant blooms. This is probably the last year I get to see this one do it. It's growing by the front door & some of the stalks reach 8-feet in height. This year there are about 16 stalks.
Recent Pictures
Jun 19, 2015
May & June get lumped together. Lots of packing. 56 years of house to deal with. Getting my replacements at Gryphon up and running.
Some Recent Pictures
May 19, 2015
April was an interesting month. Packing things up. A few shots testing a new Canon 100-400mm lens. Of course when packing things can get messy... I knocked over a pile of empty film reels. It looked so nice I just had to take a picture.
Starlight
Dec 22, 2014
The gentle tones of an evening breeze leads into a lively 6/4 waltz.
Savanoia
Nov 03, 2014
Savanoia... It's not a word, just a noise you can make with your mouth.... I was noodling around and ended up with a sorta swell opening and then became distracted with other things, leaving the intro collecting dust on the virtual shelf.
Parallax
Oct 15, 2014
Though I thought of this originally as a piano piece, The Nouveau Guinea Wind Ensemble kinda takes over and turns this into a lively piano-ensemble piece... Just can't keep those birds out of anything...
Plays Antonin Dvorak
Dec 20, 2012
I like Antonin Dvorak, he's OK in my book. His Serenade for Strings OP 22. is one of my faves.
Les Baricades Misterieuses
Nov 09, 2012
Also known as the spelling Les Barricades Mysterieuses. This is a harpsichord piece from 1717 by the French composer François Couperin. I arranged it for 8 wind instruments. I used the spelling from the original music for this release.
Transcendental Blues
Oct 29, 2012
B.B. King probably wouldn't consider this a blues song. There are more than three chords. Somehow it makes me think of some bizarre Eastern European dive bar.
Plays Scott Joplin
Oct 26, 2012
I guess I was a weird kid. While other adolescents were listening to Pop music of the late-60s and early-70s, I was captivated by Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, Spike Jones, the Korn Kobblers and anything on a 78 that I could scrabble from the neighbors.
Indian Summer
Sep 07, 2012
It was late September 2005. I was walking through Monticello, Idaho. Small town, warm evening. Almost no traffic sound. I could hear kids playing a few blocks away... dogs barking on the other side of town.It really sounded great, so I recorded it. A number of years later....
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Demolition
Remodel
Paint
Crack Repair

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