Upstairs project: day 6 or 385

Lot of downtime today. I wanted to get another poly coat on by mid afternoon.
Had to take RAV in for recall check (took forever) and go to Lowe's again. Stopped by Chuck's to look at furniture, bought some, then left. My living room will look much nicer soon!

Upstairs projects: day 5 or 384

The Catzmat Unit suffered its first forced entry this morning. Grig, AKA Orangecat, awoke me with hunger-induced scuffling outside my bedroom.

I have decided to abandon the coffee and tea trials. This project needs to get moving!

I sanded for nine hours today. The one small "break" I took was to shop-vac the bathroom. While I was removing some rubble from the wall, I realized I could now see Quai on the front porch. I finally found out what was on the other side of that termite damage Jeff ripped out a few years ago!

I've found that if your hands hurt from excessive vibration damage, the pain will stop just as soon as your hands go numb from vibration damage. I made it to the last three stairs before I ran out of rough sandpaper, so I FINALLY started to poly. I put one coat on and settled down to watch the extended version of The Two Towers.

Hallway project: Day 4 or 383

The coffee and tea idea needed much more time for research than I have. I've tried multiple mixtures, layers and even added some blue food coloring to try to match the "greyness" of the darker wood. Nothing has worked to my total satisfaction.

I went to see Transformers 3 today with Heather. Much like part 2, if you want to see giant robots beat the crap out of each other, this is your movie. If you're looking for a cohesive story and good acting, go see the new X-Men.

The felines have Unionized. Last night I slept feverishly to meowed chants of "Let us upstairs, the bedrooms are missing our feline hairs!" Orangecat is outright refusing to follow OSHA regulations. Atelis is not speaking to the press as of yet and miss Quai is simply watching...waiting.

The lack of accomplishment soon started to have its own distinct smell, so I moved on to the bathroom while waiting for stairs to dry. The linoleum-like sheet paneling peeled off the wall with welcomed ease. The baseboards were nearly as easy, the only problem was the one that LOOKED like it ended in the corner by the closet, but actually ran BEHIND the closet. I decided to inspect the heater wires in the closet floor before I used the reciprocating saw. I found a 1960's orange, yellow and white toilet seat cover and a few pieces of blue fabric lying on the bundle of heater wiring! Must have fallen off a shelf sometime in the past 40 years. I'm very glad it didn't burn the house down while I owned it.

Behind the fake tiles lies the standard cement board. It has a few cracks and breaks (some from the old baseboard removal), but nothing that should hinder the installation of new wainscoting.

Hallway project: day 3 or 382, depending, part 1

Things I learned this weekend:
•my stairs are oak, unlike my floors.
•the ancient stair runner left a faint stain (adhesive?)
•said stain is very noticeable.
•don't blog on your smartphone whilst cooking and drinking red wine while also waiting for stain to dry.

I'm on vacation, so of course I'm working on My Old House. The cast-iron tub has been in the hall for just over a year now. It's time to try to finish the bathroom project, no matter how much the cats enjoy playing in the tub.

My mom and stepdad are coming up this weekend to help with stuff, so I wanted to try to get the stairs sanded and coated with polyurethane before they got here. I had also hoped to at least get the upstairs bath wainscoting partially up before their arrival. Neither of these wishes has come to pass as of yet.

I should probably tell you I am, in general, against staining wood, especially oak. Purchasing stain to make one wood look like another seems backwards somehow, at least for flooring. I AM in favor of staining to try to cover up cosmetic flaws caused by some crazy 60's adhesive

I started sanding the stairs "early" Saturday, early meaning "after I slept in late, ate breakfast, watched some Venture Bros. Season 4, then went to the post office, then ate lunch. The first thing I did was install the Catszmat Unit (TM). Last year sawdust invaded every room upstairs, even though I had closed all the doors and had a (crappy) fan blowing stuff out the window AND had a shop-vac on the whole time. The Catzszmat Unit is cleverly designed to keep cats OUT and sawdust IN. Stupid cats.

I had impulse bought a new DeWalt disc sander on Friday hoping it would do a better job than the Black and Decker hand sander I used last year. Meh. It certainly is easier on the hands, but it is about equal in usefulness. It WAS helpful to be able to load both sanders and not have to stop as often. The borrowed industrial fan in the window was also a GIANT help.

I soon noticed that the darker, unvarnished runner section of the stairs was not sanding off as I had hoped. I then scrubbed the stairs late Saturday with a 50/50 baking soda/peroxide (in about 1.5/2 gallons of water?). This brought up a TON of filth, but the center wood was still noticeably darker than the sides.

It was then I remembered a friend telling me she sometimes mopped her wood floors with tea. She also has a multi-cat house and rather than sand and varnish pet damage every year, she stained the floor scratches with tannins.
Sunday I did some Google research and found several articles on staining fabric and wood with tea and/or coffee.

I sanded again, then varnished a few spots to test the color before I went to Lowe's and a pic-a-nic, hoping the Catszmat Unit would again hold fast in my absence. It did.
Monday I saw what lie ahead. The discoloration was definitely still showing through the poly. I brewed around 12 cups of some fancy coffee from Slight Indulgence that Heather Thurbon left in my freezer over a year ago. Heather, we all thank you for your contribution$ to $cience!
I am not a coffee drinker, but I'm guessing that if you completely fill the filter it's strong coffee. I grabbed an old brush and quickly coated the sides of the stairs with coffee stain. Then I waited for an hour. I highly recommended the game "Robo Defense" as a way to pass the time. Upon inspection, the stairs HAD darkened in color, just not enough. The second trial included mixing actual coffee grounds into the stain, boiling it, then applying. The third trial had two Lipton tea bags thrown into the mix. This version was a much better match. Several of the stairs looked pretty good after I "buff" sanded some of the spots where the stain had pooled.
Needless to say, waiting at least an hour between each trial lead to more Robo Defense and ice cream than actual progress today. I plan to poly the best-looking stair tonight before bed. Tomorrow I shall try what my carpenter friend Willie suggested: poly, then a thin coat of stain, then more poly. He said it may help obscure some of the gradient changes.

Like an old pair of shoes

I'm worn out. April is sooo difficult here. Everyone is trying to graduate, which means many last minute recital bookings and "oops, I forgot to order equipment, please save my show". Late nights are the norm around here anyway, but c'mon.
To make things worse, I'm once again taking vacation to work shows in my office. Miss WV isn't coming to our fair city this year, so I've got to make the money now while it's available.
I'm excited that the recital I'm working Saturday has been cancelled; there will be no driving to town for a 4
50-minute show THIS week!

Age and Age Theory

So the checkout person thought I was 26 when she carded me.

Am I not?

Does one cease to be 26 when one turns 27? Numerically, you must have 26 before you can have 27-or 39 for that matter.

My habit of working as much as possible is wearing thin this week. I am at work even as I write this. I am very tired, most likely because I worked all day and night Saturday and Sunday.

What does "act your age" mean? I think the students in the CAC keep me young. I work with a lot of them outside of classes. More than a few of them don't believe me when I tell then my age; some have said I don't "act" like I am 38. I guess that is a good thing.

Although I've made myself a promise that I would treat myself better this school year, I sometimes think I have forgotten how to have fun. I've gone to a couple of great concerts in the past month or so. I get to hang with friends every other week, which is always a blast, but I usually have no idea what to do by myself.

I've come to realize in my old age (haha) that I am not a great multitasker in many ways. Want to read a book? I have to do it every night or I will forget about it. Want to sand and varnish that small kitchen table? Better do it all in one weekend, or it will sit forgotten and unfinished in the garage (I found it again last night whilst doing laundry). Want to draw my next tattoo? I have to work on it every day-otherwise I will just carry around the sketchbook for no reason or cover it up with mail. Want to write that story you've been working on for a year or so? You have to REMEMBER that you have a story to write at a time other than during a symphony while you are blogging...
Concentrate, Bryan-San. Focus power.

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy...

I want to preface this by stating that I am very happy and very lucky to have a job in these economic times. I know some people out there who don't like to hear others complain about work, but I firmly believe it is an American right to bitch about your job, especially pay cuts.

We had a 9am meeting yesterday to chat about the rest of the semester and our work schedules. It was no surprise to us that the subject of overtime, or more specifically-how the various departments of our college were going to pay for our overtime-came up.

The simple answer is that they are just NOT going to do it! Due to budget crunches and (in my opinion) completely shitty time management within other departments, they have no money left to pay us. Since the college cannot cancel academic events, it falls upon US to deal with the situation.

It should be interesting to see what happens. I have heard talk about forcing us to take comp time. This would not be a problem for a "normal" 8-hour job, but we are here ALL THE TIME. I believe current HR policy is that you must use comp time within 30 days. What happens if you work every day? Another University policy is that they must pay you for comp time that you cannot take. What happens when the money runs out and you cannot take it??? I will NOT work for FREE. We predict another problem in the near future as well: time abuse, for lack of a better term. Say they make me take Monday off because I worked over 7.5 hours over the weekend. I come in Tuesday at 8:15am as normal to find out I am needed to cover a show that night. My rewards for that week would include:

1) working a 10-15 hour day and having to come back early the next day
2) not getting paid OT for said hours beyond my scheduled time
3) not being eligible for OT for the next week as well, policy dictates that you can't get compensational time or OT until you go over 40 hours for the week-if I am forced to take days off, I will never accumulate enough hours to get paid more

Whee!

Even if we do get to accumulate time past the end of the month, when will we be able to use it? All three of us can't take the whole summer off, as cool as that would be.

Everyone here has heard the rumors that they are going to institute a new University-wide check-in policy by the end of the year. We all may soon have to slide our ID cards to prove we are here. I heard this was a massive backfire at a local hospital years ago; they thought everyone was cheating on their time when in actuality everyone was donating their own time because they cared. With everyone clocked in for every minute they worked, payroll costs soared the following year instead of going down!

I remember many, many wasted hours last year. After a performance is over, the performers are supposed to LEAVE the stage and go to the lobby so we can lock up. Instead, they stay on stage, invite their friends and parents up (which is against building policy) and mill around until they have nothing left to chat about. They don't think about the OT money they are wasting when this is going on. I remember a concert downstairs after which they held a reception for about two hours after the event. The guests used the orchestra chairs as seats, so I couldn't strike the equipment until they all left. If they would have had it 30 feet away (in the lobby) I could have been out and on my way home within 30 minutes. I have NO PROBLEM getting paid to hang out, but you aren't allowed to bitch when you get the bill for your own folly (my rule)!

The end result of this fiasco in the near future is:

-Any major house plans are on hold for the year. I will most likely only further insulate the kitchen with materials I have left from last year.
-That crate of spiders I was going to buy and breed in Steve's root cellar will have to wait.
-My tax return will most likely get spent somewhere I hadn't planned.
-The felines will not be happy that their hydroponic catnip farm on the back of my property is now only a dream.

I just hope this is a temporary solution. I can survive on my base salary, but OT makes the world go 'round. Morale is already crappy around work; I don't want to imagine what will happen when heads start butting (and they will).