That’s the only word Rich and I can come up with to describe life since you and I last spoke.
How are things?
Blurg.
I just looked through the pictures from the last week and a half and looked at everything that’s gone on - and it’s like more stuff that previously got accomplished in my life in a year. Sorry I haven’t written - but it’s been busy. Not like ‘oooo it’s so nice to be stimulated busy’. More like “I’m about to go crazier than a production of Three Sisters starring Anne Heche, Betty Buckley and Vanessa Redgrave”. And that people is some big-time crazy.
I have no idea how we got the house done. Seriously. By all actual laws of the space time continuum there is no way it makes any sense. There was actually only one point in the entire process where Rich and I started screaming at each other at 2:00 am in the middle of Peckerwood like we were doing “Virginia Woolf” which honestly - considering the pressure - was not all that bad.
The real problem was the word ‘yes’. “Yes’ caused some seriously deep doodoo and late nights. The Pack Leader has a very hard time with the opposite of the word yes. Just like Ado Annnie - he cain’t say no. And with good reason, I admit. The things he said yes to are important. They brought in a little bit of money (not heaps….but everything helps) - got people in the building… generated buzz. And WHEN he said yes to them, we hadn’t added eight zillion extra shows and thought we had plenty of time to get everything ready - so it wasn’t so much of a concern. What IS now a concern was having enough hours - or even seconds - in the day to get everything done. And the events take time. Prep time… serving time…speech time..cleanup time. Time time time…arhgghghhgaaaaaa.
Blurg.
Since I last blogged we’ve had like four major events at the theatre. FOUR. Which really isn’t an insane amount if all you have to do is have events. But if you’re trying to, y’know BUILD A HOUSE, it’s a juggling act  Things started getting so tight, for the first time we started taking the stuff in shifts. I’ll explain in a minute.
So - Peckerwood. I now adore this house. It’s cute and homey and it makes me feel good everytime I walk into and the actors have a happy nest and they really appreciate everything we’ve done for them to make it clean and pleasant to live in. Last week however. I did not love Peckerwood. I actually probably preferred Auschwitz as a time-share option. This house just did NOT want to CO-OPERATE. This house was like a person on Extreme Makeover who had to be strapped down, sedated and whacked over the head with a frying pan before they could get their face lift. Normally I worry the Pack Leader is overly optimistic about how much we can accomplish. In reality we probably get things done about twenty five percent to fifty percent slower than he hopes. Because these buildings are old - and they don’t do what you want them too, and they surprise you. THIS building didn’t only surprise us… it took glee in screwing with us. Every three seconds it seemed like something that should take an hour turned into a day long question mark. It was not funny. Like ‘Ishtar’ not funny.
I actually worked my butt off. And I never say that. But I was hustling booty. Because Rich was so tangled in things that only he could do (like plumbing and electrical stuff) then kept going wrong and wronger (just because it’s an old evil house holding a grudge) there was stuff on his list that just wasn’t going to happen if I didn’t do it. And hence, the Jo Jo was forced to use a whole lot more power-toolage than normally falls into his purvue. Of course, as you feel the pressure of time, and you feel the lack of sleep it also gets harder not to make mistakes. I got really peeved at myself when I cut the only piece of kitchen paneling we had PERFECTLY but completely in reverse of what it was supposed to be - which meant having to go BACK to Fort Wayne. In fact - the lack of available time even meant that I had to get over my fear of solo long distance driving and for the first time I went to Fort Wayne BY MYSELF. Without the GPS I would be in Alaska by now…but I did ok. I just have to stop gripping the steering wheel so tight when I’m on divided highways that the blood in my arms stops circulating. And yes, at one point I did turn the wrong way onto a divided highway and realize that I was the only one going a certain direction of three lanes of traffic. See the GPS tells you if you’re gong the right direction… it doesn’t tell you’re going the right direction in the right LANE. Luckily I managed to get the Pack Leader on the phone during the emergency. His advice was spectacular:
“you need to be going the other direction”.
Big help.
Around this time we had what might actually be classified as our first failure. It’s not really a failure. It’s just not a success. Part of this, again, is simply due to being overly tired and overly pressed for time. The kitchen ceilnig at Peckerwood did not work according to plan. The ceiling looked like this:
You will now note, that since Katie’s mom has ALREADY let her get on the plane, I am now posting picture of the house that shows how gross it really was. I mean, I wasn’t WITHHOLDING visual information - I was just…um… carefully filtering the photographic information disseminated. Anyway. The ceiling in there was a pain in the keester. Those rafters would be a beeeeyatch to pull down, but they also weren’t really sturdy enough to hold up drywall. So we had this idea. Not a bad idea, at that. Plain panelling. The same stuff as we used to make the wipe off board in our kitchen. It’s light weight. It’s a smooth surface. It’s paintable. So we figured we could screw it to the rafters then mud the seams and paint.
Not so much.
Ok - it WOULD have worked. I think. But the Pack Leader was running on fumes… and he wasn’t at his best. And he did it while I wasn’t at the house for an intervention. What he didn’t do was cut the panelling so that every edge fell against one of those ceiling joists. If this was drywall it wouldn’t have mattered quite as much (it would have been the wrong way to do it and Bob would have called us morons…but it wouldn’t be the end of the world). Because drywall is pretty rigid. Hence the word ‘wall’ in its name. Panelling is not rigid. It’s floppy. Quite floppy in fact. In the world of wall coverings, panelling needs viagra. And because its floppy - if you don’t have something to screw it’s edges to, and it’s hanging at the side where you can’t screw it to anything….it droops. And that’s what happened. Our ceiling was a little droopy.
I still mudded the seams…which because the panelling has more give, didn’t go that well either (it cracked in a lot of places). It wasn’t great. I was bummed. Rich was bummed. But our options were limited. We didn’t have time to rip the rafters down and go up to the actual ceiling where we MIGHT be able to attach drywall. And if we took down all the panelling and tried the same thing again - but cutting it to align - then it still might be droopy. So, for the first time we had to let something go. We didn’t know whether trying to texture it would make it worse… or whether the added moisture would be a disaster. So we decided to let it be. It would get sprayed along with everything else - and it would be new, and clean, and safe. And that was a big improvement from what it was before. When the actors are gone in August and we start in on the second floor of the house, we’ll take that ceiling down and do it again. But for now… if we’d gotten sucked into the black hole of fixing it, they would have a nice ceiling and the rest of the house would still be a wreck. it was the right decision - and I don’t think the ceiling is keeping them up at nights. Xbox is.
Moving right along… I got the last big drywall project dealt with. The hallway had a giant hole in it… so the best solution was to drywall the whole hall up to the arch leading to the porch.
We had to decide at this point whether we were going to put the door into that wall immediately - or if that could wait. Because we only needed two bedrooms this summer, we decide that we didn’t need to build the wall plug and door frame right now… so I only needed to drywall half way down the hallway run.
I learned a tricky lesson with this stuff. I thought that using 10 foot drywall would make this a whole lot quicker, since the ceiling was nine feet - and it would mean I wouldn’t have to jigsaw puzzle two pieces together to make the height. And it would mean fewer seams to tape and mud. Now this was true. And it was faster. BUT the trade off is that my T square is four feet long. With 8 foot drywall I can do half from one side, flip the T square to the next edge and meet up the lines at the center. With a ten foot run it’s not easy to cut a perfectly straight line because I can’t but my T square against the edge and use it for leverage. At some point I’m trying to hold the metal ruler in the center of the drywall with my knees and cutting at the same time. And it’s tough to keep everything from shifting around. Grrr. It’s tough to be the Jo Jo.
Around this time we had the Siots. No, that is not a disease related to Shingles. Siots is the ‘pet name’ for the Psi Iota Xi Sorority. And I know we’ve discussed this before - but I’ll recap. Apparently in the Midwest, sororities are not only in college. In Hoosier-land there are a gaggle of sororities for adult women… and I don’t think wet t shirt contests or keggers enter into the equation. Much. They’re a social group that get together and raise money for charities and make cheese balls. The cheese balls are a very large part of the equation. if you think the girl scouts have the cookie racquet sewn up… they don’t even hold a candle to the Siots and the cheeseball monopoly. In fact I think it’s against the law to buy Velveeta and cream cheese in the same shopping cart within the Indiana state line if you are NOT a Siot. Actually they make the cheeseballs in such gigantic batches - like forty dozen at a time - and the recipe is kept secret (so I understand) because no one works on more than one stage of the process at a time. it’s like a terrorist cell for cheese - you only know YOU’RE part of the equation so that no other sorority can torture you for the recipe secret.
Anyway. The Siots were coming to us. Actually they were coming twice. One night we had the active Siots. And two days later we had the retired Siots. (I think when they retire they use that ray gun in Men In Black and erase any memory of cheese ball preparation). Their even happened to coincide with the point where we had to…HAD to… get the house primed. If we didn’t get the house primed, we couldn’t the walls textured. Then we couldn’t get it painted. Then we couldn’t carpet. Then they arrived and we were screwed. The day of the Siots was the day that if priming didn’t happen we were just not gonna make it in time. Janice had arrived the night before, and we spent the morning taping and masking everything… with the help of some Eckert elves that dropped by.
Please note in this picture that Gretchen has apparently been overcome by her fathers genetic makeup and is unable to be photographed without evaporating.
While the place was getting masked I finished up facing the new little living room closet which Rich had reduced down. It houses the water heater and
As we were taping and masking with eighty feet of big lots plastic we hit another snag. The living room cieilng. Most of this house has this bizarre plaster paper over all the walls. It’s like this stuff that used to put on houses like giant pieces of masking tape to make sure it didn’t fall apart. Well, it covered flaws at least. Rather than replaster a wall with damage or whatever they would use this stuff and it’s kind of like thick plain white wallpaper. Anyway. On the cieling this stuff was peeling. And we couldn’t prime the cieling if it was peeling. So I started scraping. But like everything in our life - once you stick your finger in the damn. ..the crack just gets bigger. The peel revealed about three layers of wallpaper beneath. The last layer, a lovely forest green, seemed pretty darn well stuck to the cieling - so as long as we scraped down to that I figured we’d be ok. Gretchen got in on the act and helped out bigtime.
Gretchen was peeved at me for taking a picture of her ‘pits’. I thought that we should just have her stay there for the next eight weeks so every time the actors came home they could be distracted by her arm pits and wouldn’t notice their house was a construction zone Anyway - we peeled down to the green. Then it was time to spray the place top to bottom with primer.
Or at least that was the idea.
If the sprayer worked. Which it didn’t. No air pressure coming through the hose. Lots of pressure on EVERYBODY else EXCEPT the hose. Blurg. This was not good. Like I said - no hose - no prime. No prime, no paint…etc etc etc. It seemed like something must be gunked up inside the sprayer which was truly upsetting to contemplate because the thing is not a cheap piece of equipment AND we’d been super careful to make sure the thing was always cleaned out carefully after use. And of course there’s only so much we could tinker with it at the house because we didn’t have any running water yet. So Rich dragged the thing back to the theatre and started trying to troubleshoot it - running water through it with the hose… burning insense…doing a rain dance. Nothing. Finally we took off a ITSY BITSY little filter piece that looked like it might be clogged….dunked it in the bucket of water…reattached it. And voila. It worked. This was a big big big relief - because although you can spray an entire house with primer in about half an hour…it would have taken us all night with rollers. So, with our time line still ticking away it meant Rich had no choice but to go back to the house and spray while it was still daylight and Janice and I would handle the Siots initiation thingy. Before departing he made me promise NOT to sing the song I had prepared:
“Siots…we’ve got siots…. we’ve high apple pie in the sky-ots”.
I thought it was dandy.
Ok - well I’m STARTING to catch up.
Jo Jo.
OMG sooooo tired. I was just zooming along fine about forty five minutes ago and then sleepy time hit me like a ton of bricks.
I’m gonna make this pretty darn short - but wanted to keep you abreast of progress over at Peckerwood (T.H.F.K.A.S.B.)
We spent yesterday running errands and getting supplies in Fort Wayne. We hit the Home Depot blowout again - but the place is pretty much stripped to the bone - no big bargain surprises. In the process of our various stops also at Lowes and Minards, though we bought a bunch of panelling and other stuff so that we could keep moving ahead. We also had to pick up supplies for the graduation event we’re having on Sunday in the lobby. Rose (from the Visitor’s Center) is having her daughter’s graduation party in the Lobby. So we hit Sams Club and a bunch of other places to get the supplies we’ll need to keep 75 people fed and watered. It’s like a cake-a-palooza, this event. I’ve gotta get like sixty three cakes ready for them by Sunday.
I swear by the time we get drywall loaded ON to the truck at the lumber supply store, then we get it OFF the truck and INTO the house…I’m already ready to call it a day. The ten foot stuff particularly is very heavy. We’re using the ten foot stuff right now (vs. the 8 foot sheets) because it means less cutting and piecing together. You SHOULD run the stuff horizontally (opposite the direction of the studs) if you are being a really good little builder - but Bob says it really ain’t that big of a deal - and sometimes it’s a whole lot quicker to just be able to prop it against the floor and screw it in.
Rich worked mostly in the kitchen today and I was busy like a beaver so I didn’t get a lot of pics. He was building the utility closet which houses the water heater in the kitchen. He got the studs up and the panelling in a couple hours - and it’s going to work quite nicely, I think. He thinks by the end of tomorrow we’ll be able to call the kitchen ‘ready to paint’. Of course, that all depends upon the ceiling going up as planned… so stay tuned. It’ll be the first time we try out Larry’s home-made drywall lift. So it’s bound to be worth some laughs. Our incompetence, I mean - not Larry’s contraption.
I had a ‘grrrr’ moment today. There is a piece of music I need for the WWII show called “We’ll have a hot time in the town of berlin when the yanks go marching in”. Nice tune. Anyway - the sheet music was NOT easy to find - and LUCKILY it existed in this anthology called “I’ll be Seeing you - 50 songs of World War II”. Sounds good right. Well it is. In fact - if I’d found that book a few months ago I would have saved myself a lot of photocopying in NY and some serious online detective work. Not EVERYTHING is in there - but a lot of it is. So anyway - I had ordered this book a few days ago second-hand on Amazon because when i checked the listing it had “Hot time in the old town blah blah” in the song list. It arrives today. IT’S NOT THERE. I double check like ten times on the contents list cconvinced I’m missing it… Cuz I KNOW it was listed online. I go back online…look up the book. And I realize that there is a second edition with the EXACT same title and cover. Except now it’s called….and i’m not making this up “I’ll Be Seeing You - Fifty ONE songs of World War Two”. Seriously… the ONE song I need…not in the edition I bought. ARghgggh. Anyway - it’s a lovely book with a great introduction/forward thing that will be very handy - and I like having these songs in a book form anyhoo. So I found the stupid song on ebay and ordered it. It’s amazing how much vintage sheet music you can find on there… Almost every time I’ve gotten stuck, I’ve tracked down an out of print song on ebay and gotten the original 40’s sheet music (that looks SOO cool) for only a couple dollars. So.
My first task over at Peckerwood was to subfloor the bathroom. it’s a really small room which should be a dawdle to do…except the shower stall is already…well IN-stalled. And its this corner unit thing with bizarre angles. AND the walls aren’t square. AND the floor isn’t square or perfectly level. Sooo it was quite the challenge. It actually took two attempts which REALLY peeved me… The first time i wasn’t really too far off, but the floor didn’t run snug enough along the shower stall edge - and floor leveller probably isn’t a good thing to use as filler there because of the moisture. So I did it again. It was just impossible to do it from measurements alone - so I grabbed a cardboard box and made one of my little cardboard angle template thingies (like I used to do the triangle ceiling things in our kitchen). Success.
CUTTING CORNERS
Ta da. On to the next thing. Pack Leader said I could start sheet rocking the hallway. The tricky thing is that there wasn’t anywhere to really lay down the sheet rock flat on the floor… and when you’re cutting ten foot long lines it’s a whole lot easier to put your metal ruler on the floor, hold it with one hand and brace the other end with your knee and cut. Gravity does not make cutting drywall a simple task. And we had it all stacked up in a little hallway cuz there wasn’t really anywhere else to go. So - it was frustrating - but I managed. At the same time Rich managed to fall off of a ladder - but he’s ok. Of course, he could be legally dead and he would still say he’s OK but I’m scouting him out for a limp when he doesn’t realize I’m looking - and I think he survived pretty unscathed.
So by the end of the evening I managed to get the hallway all faced with sheetrock - which actually in itself was pretty good for a JoJo’s day’s work. The drywall isn’t all screwed in yet… I’ll do that next. But I got all of it cut, pieced and up in the air and attached. Poor Rich had to stop what he was doing every ten minutes to help me lug the stuff around and screw it in. But at least the place is now starting to look like an actual house. Rather than a crack den. Ok it still looks like a crack den. And before you TELL ME - there’s one little piece up at the top that needs trimmed before it gets screwed down cuz it’s bowed out a bit and not laying flat against the studs. Again - the floor is slanty so it’s a challenge.
HALL-IN’ ASS.
And, please note, that on the wall to the right of me… that wall has FOUR outlet holes. See - if you have one outlet hole and you misjudge where it is by a little, you can fudge it by shoving the drywall left and right and throwing some extra joint compound around. If there are LIKE FOURRRR outlet holes to make, things get a whole lot more dangerous. I’m getting better at it. I’ve discovered a short cut which helps a whole lot - once I’ve measured the x and y coordinates for where the hole has to be, I get one of the blue electrical boxy things that you have to cut around. I grab one that hasn’t been attached yet and then trace around it on the drywall and use that to make sure my hole is big enough. The sucky thing is that you have to make sure your hole is BIG enough that the box slides through inside your hole (or it will crack your drywall) AND you have to make sure it’s SMALL enough still that the outlet cover masks the hole. This is easy for a perfessional. It is not easy for a me.
I was thinking maybe the actors would like to sleep under the stars…y’know? I’m sure they’re all outdoorsy.
The Mayor, his lovely wife and Chief Operations honcho Ruth brought some folks from Indianapolis over to see the Lobby this morning. Ruth, who had been at the economic event a few days ago was SO relieved to see the sconce was straight again. See… people NOTICE these things. I’m not crazy. Ok, I AM crazy - but they notice anyway.
Dillon has requested that I be job reference for him for an application to work somewhere in Fort Wayne. It’s called Boudoir Noir and apparently deals in the more alluring aspects of the clothing and toy businesses. I’m not sure I’m infinitely qualified to know whether one has what it takes to make it in that particular line of work. But I shall do my best. He’s a great person and I’m sure he can blow with the best of them… sex dolls I mean… blow up sex dolls. yeesh. It’s actually not a bad job for an aspiring actor… you’ll get to observe some pretty nifty human behavior.
xo
jojo.
Ok - see this is where I WISH I could post a link for you to the now infamous clip of Leslie Uggams singing “june is busting out all over’ at an event in Washington and forgetting every single lyric on national television. But tragically Ms. Uggams must have REALLY good lawyers because that clip has now disappeared from the internet  Sorry.
Well - we just got through with the EVENING Kiwanis. Who were actually a younger general demographic than the daytime demographic (I guess the older people like to be in bed by the time the evening Kiwanis start to par-tay). This was actually quite a bit easier because we weren’t serving food at our place. They wanted tenderloins, and we have now decided that in general tenderloins are just easier to do over at Nick’s. So they ate at Jean Anne’s and then perambulated over to our place for cake and Ye Olde Reliable Speech. We did tenderloins over here for a luncheon the other day for an Economic conference thingy whoo-zit. The whole event was a little more harried than we’d like, because at the exact time everyone was supposed to be arriving we were told we needed another table for six. And we didn’t have a another tablecloth pressed. So all the tables (which were set for five) had to be super-quickly turned into tables of six, and all the place settings rearranged. AND Jean Anne had to make extra food at the last minute as well for them - so she was later getting over to us for set up. It all went fine - but it was just less polished than we like to project as an image. And because we squished people in so tight at the last minute the table arrangements (which now had people sitting closer to other tables) were too tight for us to smoothly weave in and out to serve. AND a few of the added chairs ended up too close to the walls. So at one point somebody accidentally must have nudged one of the sconces on the mirrors when they were moving from behind the table. And the people sitting right by the sconce BOTH were addressing the group. So for fifteen minutes i’m standing over in the corner chewing my fist off because everyone is staring at the people addressing the crowd who are standing RIGHT NEXT to my crooked sconce. It was killing me.
I’m sure you will be very happy to know that the sconce has been returned to it’s rightful perpendicularity.
Anyway learned another lesson at the Economic conference.
No blackberry pie.
The Pork Queen gave them blackberry pie because it’s the favorite of the gentleman who organized the event. The gentleman who organized the event however wasn’t the poor dude who had to deal with blackberry stains on linen tablecloths That was the packleader. Thanks to some handiwork with Shout Action Gel the stains came out - but I think Rich has told Jean Anne “in general, no more purple food” Which makes me happy because we’re serving beets over my dead body. And we’ve got four more events BEFORE the actors even arrive - so that could be a whole lot of Shout.
The Kiwanis thing actually went great this evening. It’s so much easier when we’re not serving over here as well - although each time we do it, it’s good practice for the Supper Club. The Kiwanians asked some great questions, and the parents of the gentleman who owned the theatre about five years ago was also there - and they were incredibly supportive and enthusiastic. We also sold some tickets, which is always a big plus. When we started the speech Rich was a little winded - he had to run over to Nick’s because we ran out of chairs again! BUT…
I’m THRILLED to report that we finally found the final chairs we needed. The Pack Leaders many hours on ebay have paid off, and we found another matching bunch of them (PLUS tables) in Ohio. So we know have more than enough for the Supper Club. So before July there’s gonna be some more powerwashnig and uphoustering in our future.
Speaking of tickets - here’s the loony update. We originally had 900 tickets to sell. We have now sold over 1,100 tickets. Eight added performances - if you count the two private events we’re doing. There are only tickets available AT ALL for four dates. Now, this SHOULD make us stinking rich. Sadly, no. See, the tickets only went up to their full price two days ago. By which point we were already practically sold out. And we NEVER EVER EVER expected people to buy this many tickets a MONTH before we even open. Plus we NEVER EVER EVER thought people would buy SEASON tickets - because we figured they would want to see if the shows were crap first And THEN they’d buy season tickets. At which point we’d be well past the early-bird discount stage. So although we thought the tickets were going to be $35 - we’ve sold over seventy five percent of our tickets at $26. So it took a lot longer for us to reach breakeven. So. Lesson learned. But, it’s an AWESOME problem to have when you’re selling to tickets faster than you want to. See we just started selling them too early (beause we wanted them available for that Expo). Next time we’ll do the same kind of thing - but it’ll be a shorter period of time. Actually the other thing we’ve learned is that you should have a limit of one discount per transaction. Those senior citizens can be pretty crafty - and we’ve had a few occasions where it’s been like:
“Well, my bridge club and I want 300 season tickets. So that’s the 10% season discount. And the 10% group rate. And the early bird special. Which means YOU owe US $67.42.”
So. If ya ain’t got tickets and ya want them. Click on that little banner at the top of the site and them NOWWWWW. Because there’s like none left. And we’ve reached the point that if we add any more shows we’re going to have to clone the actors AND use hand puppets.
I’m reallllllllly excited that we’ve hired one of our favorite people to serve at the Supper Club. Natasha (the girl who ordered the Louis Vuitton cake) is gonna work with us…she’s GORGEOUS, and smart and sophisticated and PERFECT. Very psyched. We still need to find a wicked awesome bartender.
Ok - so let’s get to the progress report. Peckerwood. How’s it going you ask? It is now well on it’s way to being a Shit Box Lite. Things are taking shape. It still looks like a bomb shelter - but it’s starting to look like a HOMEY bomb shelter!
Now that the final electrical crap was run under the kitchen floor the Pack Leader was able to a) stop acting like a gopher; and b) screw down that kitchen floor once and for all. I don’t think he was sorry to not have to scramble down there any longer. Seriously ick.
RICH IS HAPPY TO NO LONGER BE AUDITIONING FOR ‘THE MOLE’.
Once that floor was down, I learned we had to lay down a sub floor. So the first floor, I guess was sub-sub floor. It’s apparently not GOOD ENOUGH to lay the linoleum on top. Soooo we needed a floor on the floor. Rich was originally gonna do this while I hung sheet rock in the Hallway with Dylon (our acting-lesson slave-labor/he-man) but Dylon was under the weather. So Rich said thought I should take a stab at it. Which if you knew my proficiency with power tools is a good description of how I saw things. Actually - Rich said I did a bang-up job. It took like four hours - but he said that I was way faster at it than he would have been. I’m pretty good at measuring and cutting weird pieces to fit. And luckily even though the floor is still a little slanty (hysterically the highest point is the center of the room and it slopes down both sides from there!) the walls are actually pretty square. So it wasn’t THAT bad of a job… If you look at the top right of the picture you can see the UNDER floor peeking out beneath the SUB floor. Of course ’sub’ means ‘under’… so I dunno WHAT to freakin’ call these things.
JO JO IS: FLOORER THE EXPLORER
And voila… All by my own-some.
The only thing that sucks about putting down the floor stuff is the SCREWS. You’re suppoed to put a screw like every eight inches and you just lose your mind after while. I also should have gone back to theatre and picked up a pair of knee pads - cuz that’s what really blows.
BTW you’ll notice in a lot of these pictures there’s a weird shadow at the bottom of the picture. That’s because to document all the renovation stuff I’m using the wide angle lens. And the lens is so wide that when I use the camera’s flash, the lens casts a shadow. I need to get a proper flash attachment at some point - so it doesn’t always look like we’re renovating during a partial eclipse!
While I was working in the kitchen Rich was pulling all the new cable for the television and internet…
Jean Anne is donating the TV which used to be up at Nick’s (she bought a new flat screen) - and it has one of those fun wall hangy-up things - so we’re going to mount it up there. Rich also got busy building the new little half-wall ledgy thing to which we needed to mount the lower kitchen cabinets (so that wiring could be run behind them).
RICH’S FAVORITE BURGER JOINT - STUDRUCKERS
WALL DONE, SIR
I don’t know if I said this before - well the whole original downstairs kitchen was NOT PRETTY - so that got gutted. The kitchen upstairs was in pretty good shape, but it was kind of too large for what we needed AND a couple of those cabinets were damanged. So the Jo Jo had the bright idea (I know, shocked much?) of using THOSE cabinets downstairs since we would not need as many down there (and thus there were enough of them that were in good shape.) Of course THEN the Eckerts reconfigured everything and there isn’t going to BE an upstairs kitchen. But - that’s how it all developed. So anyway - the cabinets going downstairs used to be upstairs… AND…
We were pretty darn psyched that by the end of the work day yesterday we were able to actually get some of them installed. We haven’t attached the base ones yet, but we got a full run of the top ones in place.
Normally we’d paint first - but we have to get done what we can WHEN we can - and this was a better use of our scheduled time. We’ll put up cut panelling on each side of the cabinets and then be ready to texture paint pretty darn soon in there. And the bedrooms are all sheetrocked and mudded now (except for one little corner I couldn’t get too because there’s so much stuff stacked up in the way) which means we can do the stucco in there and the ceilings too very soon. We also made the decision that when we shop for linoleum that we are going to try and buy some more of that awesome no-glue stuff we got for the ladies room - because that will save us a half a day on our knees troweling and glueing in at least one room.
Another fun job I managed to take care of was prepping the rafters in the kitchen. We couldn’t face the ceiling in there until the eight zillion staples which held up the old nasty panelling were allllll yanked out by hand. It took like two hours - and I’m sure I pried out about 140 staples. But now I star up at those ugly bare rafters with pride and satisfaction
We were SUPPOSED to finish the Ladies Room today, but we had a couple water-related snafoos. Things just ended up more finicky than the pack leader expected - so it’ll be another day or two. The wonderful news is that one of the ladies from the Kiwanis tonight asked if she could take a look in and see the bathroom’s progress. I said sure. FIRST she said it looked so much better than before (apparently there used to be black toilets in there which skeeved people out quite a bit). But ALSO she noticed IMMEDIATELY that we had removed that step and brought the whole floor up to the lobby level. She said that her mother had been at the theatre once and fallen down that step and hurt herself. I said “That’s GREAT!”. Then quickly clarified that I was excited not that her mother had taken a spill…but I was so glad Rich had decided to take the time to fix the floor in there. Go pack leader.
I haven’t had a good Po picture up here in a while - so I’ll give you two for the price of one. She literally spends about eight hours a day just laying there watching us walk in and out of the apartment every so often. It’s like we’re a spectator sport.
But she’s also pretty good at processing ticket sales:
The actors are now mostly reading the blog now and watching their house slowly come to life.
Remember guys, in our job advertisement it said
“newly renovated housing”.
We just didn’t say HOW new :)
xo
jojo.
It’s been a busy couple of days. We’ve gotten on a pretty steady work schedule and we’re getting quite a lot accomplished. Of course we have to be on a pretty steady work schedule because otherwise the actors are going to be sleeping in our apartment and we’ll be bunking down on the linoleum over at Nicks! In fact I’m betting pretty soon some of you blog fans are going to start side bets as to whether or not Peckerwood (the Residence Formerly Known As Shit Box) is gonna be ready in time.
Well darn you IT WILL. (shhh…can someone put me down for fifty bucks against? Don’t tell rich.)
BTW Winston has officially voted in favor of “Peckerwood” as the house name. And, being a blog superdelegate, he’s clinched the nomination.
Anyway - So you saw in the last blog that Rich and I managed to get the new front bedroom framed. When I say ‘I’, I mean that loosely But - as soon as Bob and Janice arrived (for a whirlwind 24-hour Memorial Day blitz) we got to work sheet rocking. The original plan, actually had been to work in the Ladies’ Room installing the bathroom stall doors - but after spending forty five minutes looking for some necessary hardware which had ‘gone walkabout’ (as they say in most Crocodile Dundee films) we gave up on that. Didn’t have time to waste - so we jumped right over to Peckerwood.
Janice and I were on drywall duty. I don’t know why I hate drywall - i just do. In reality, it’s not gooey, it’s not gross, and it’s not THAT hard. It’s just finicky and I’m not as good at it as I SHOULD be - so it’s frustrating. I think the thing I hate about it the most is carrying the crap. It just weighs a ton. Almost like it’s a sheet of, um, rock. It also is deceptively dust-creating. After a few hours cutting that stuff, when I sit down in the car this cloud of dust poofs up from my butt like pigpen. But - I’m certainly getting a lot faster than when we started work on our kitchen, so we did pretty well.
TAKE ME OUT TO THE WALL GAME.
And, by the end of the day we had almost the whole room covered. We got all of it up except the lower areas that needed to be pieced in - and I was starting to get really tired (lugging it around can wear you out) and started making mistakes and accidentally cracking pieces. So best to call it a night.
Rich and Bob had planned on starting the major work in the downstairs Peckerwood bathroom. And, indeed, they started to work on that. But as soon as they took out the toilet they realized that there wasn’t actually a floor UNDER IT. That bathroom had been carpeted in its past life and I guess it had just gotten damp over and over again and the area right under the floor was completely rotted out. The only thing holding it up was a couple of old layers of linoleum. And, since on of our actors could easily be a quarterback - I think things could have gone quite badly the first time nature called.
OUT OUT DAMN ROT
So - rather than getting any of the stuff done that they had anticipated - instead they ended up wasting their time making sure the actors didn’t fall to their death. I mean, really… priorities people. They did a super job though - and whenever they fall behind because of a snafoo, it always makes Janice and my progress look way better
The next morning before they had to take off and get Bob the airport (Janice was driving back to Ohio), they went back to the ORIGINAL plan for the weekend - the bathroom stalls. Rich had made a quick run to the hardware store and replaced the mysteriously disappearing bolts. They needed three people to balance and work on these things (at least for the first set to go back in) - so I headed back to Peckerwood on my own to finish up those final pieces in the new bedroom. Actually being on my own was kinda useful, cuz while I was working for a couple of hours I managed to listen to all the War songs on the ol’ ipod and finally narrow down and make some final selections. And after a few hours of slicing and screwing (which sounds rather unpleasant doesn’t it?), the whole room was ‘walled’.
Katie, one of the actors who’s coming (and reads the blog regularly) just had to call her mother to say “well at least they are WALLS now”.
By the time I got back to the house, the Najuch’s had finally conquered the evil that is these stall doors. Apparently they are a bitch. And I mean ‘if Star Jones had mated with Sigourney Weaver’s Alien and had a child with behavioural issues’ kind of bitch. Rich says it’s one of the top ten worst jobs since we’ve been here. And let me remind you that on that list is Rich sucking rancid flooding roof water through 50 feet of hose in a midnight monsoon. So I guess it’s pretty sucky. From what I understand it’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle, except it doesn’t come with the picture on the box. And no, we didn’t take one before we dismantled them. They thought they’d be able to base the re-assembly on the way the ones in the men’s room look…but NOPE. They ain’t the same. How d’ya like them crapples? It took them an hour an a half to get the first section installed - but after that it only took forty five for the next set. It sucked. And those stall doors are metal. And very heavy. And very unwieldy. Did I mention heavy?
IN STALL-ATION
AND NOW WE HAVE THE ‘LARRY CRAIG’ PHOTO CAPTION CONTEST:
And then POOF the Najuch’s were off. Rich and I had to run to Fort Wayne for the rest of the afternoon to run errands. He wanted to check in on the Home Depot clearance since things had dropped in price again (remember one of our Home Depots is shutting down?) - but they CHANGED THEIR HOURS and closed an hour early which blew chunks. We also hit Staples cuz we decided that with all the copying we needed to do for the Supper Club sheet music - we probably might as well spend the money on a small copier. I actually love the one we picked up. I wish the feeder could hold an entire script at a time - but that’s just way to big of a job for any of those small copiers. It can feed like ten pages at a time though - and it’s really pretty fast. And, since I’ve spent the past two days copying two full reams of paper worth of copies - it’s definitely gonna pay for itself.
We grabbed dinner at Olive Garden which was notable simply because both of our favorite waiters were working the same shift, and it caused this ridiculous ‘Cheers’ moment. One of them is named Joel - so he always remember us and my name…. so I go “Hey Joel” and he says “Hey Joel” and we turn the corner and then the other waiter, a drama student at IPFW is there and we go “Hey Jon”… It was kinda crazy. I love the fact that we now go to Olive Garden and waiters sit down at the table with us. Actually we haven’t been there in a pretty long time - so it was good to get my breadstick fix.
While we were working over at Peckerwood on Sunday, Bob and Rich made a start at whacking out a little vestibule thingy we don’t need anymore that will open up the other bedroom area. They got most of the sheet rock and stuff off…
And yesterday Rich managed to whack those 2×4’s out in no time flat.
Which meant, tragically, the beginning of the demise of the rainbow room. Yup - I’m a disgrace to my people. I think it’s kind of a bummer to repaint this room which has some kind of terrifying “Trading Spaces” insane niftyness. But. Most grown ups don’t want to sleep in a room that looks like set of a children’s touring show. So. Goodbye rainbow. One of the walls in this room was in bad shape - so it needed refaced. It took a couple of hours, and a trip to pick up 10 foot dry wall (which is HEAVIER than 8 foot drywall ), but we got the sheetrock installed without any real hiccups. It’s just finicky cutting around windows and stuff.
RESERVATION AT THE RAINBOW DOOM
We already made the decision that we’re not going to get sucked into the eternal mudding/sanding joint-compound insanity for the house. We’re going to cover all the screws, tape the drywall seams and mud those - but then use the light stucco treatment over all the walls. It will save days of joint compounding (remember when David, Rich and Adam and I spent hours and hours doing it?)… and frankly it’s still not an art we’ve mastered. We can make the walls look really great with the custom - and we don’t have the time to futz with the normal mudding to fight our learning curve. Today I got most of the first bedroom screws and seams covered. Even doing it just enough to prep for the stucco, it still takes a LONG time.
Poor Pack Leader basically spent the day as a groundhog. Peckerwood doesn’t have a basement. Beneath the floor of the house is basically two feet of space and then…100 year old dirt. This still causes me to freak - but I’m told it’s perfectly normal. I always thought houses, like, SAT on something. Like rocks, or gravel or concrete or something. Not dirt. Hence foundation. I didn’t realize a foundation could just be dirt. If that is the case why do they call it a foudation? Why don’t they just call it dirt? Anyway - Rich spent several hours today under the floorboards in the dirt. Jobs like this Rich does not even enquire as to my potential enthusiasm for below-ground participation. But I was a pretty useful gopher to his groundhog - fetching, carrying and throwing him whatever he needed (the odd radisih for lunch, for instance). Actually we had lunch at Subway today at Rich was quite devastated to learn the ROUND subway sandwhich has officially been phased out. It’s been repalaced with a four-inch sandwich. Which, he says, doesn’t taste as good as the round sandwich. That, plus the fact that the Simpsons is no longer running in syndication on tv has him convinced that there is a conspiracy.
While he was in his subterranean lair, (writing contrapuntal operas stolen from Puccinni I suppose) he managed to get a bunch of the new electrical wire run and fed into the joists for the new bedroom. He’s so impressive working with all of this stuff - he has conversations with them at the hardware store about heating ducts that make my eyes cross. Duct work was giving him quite the challenge today… There are these heat vent floor things which need to be installed and it’s just a lot o work and it’s frustrating because they’ll be here for the summer, when they don’t need a heat vent BUT by then we’ll have put the floor down and it won’t be possible to easily get back down there and attend to it in the fall. But, actually he thinks he managed to pick up some time on the other end by taking care of some things that would have been more complicated later on. I have no idea what that means - but hooray. HIs finest moment was having me drag in a ten foot piece of removed molding and then he had me place a screw into the board like a fishing hook. So he could use this plank across the chasm of the evil dirt - to rtry and nab hold of the wire snake which we’d fed through across the other side of the room. And he actualy managed to stantch it - i mean it was liike playiing on ef those stuipd supermarket claw games with the stuffed animals that are ALLL rigged - but this time he caught it. I was quite surprisd. And expeceted to receive a very large stuffed orangutantg. But no such luck.
Rich has literally spent about three hours a day dealing with ticket sales for the Supper Club. It’s pretty Looney Tunes. The phone usually starts ringing at around eight thirty am and doesn’t give up until about ten thrity at night. Seriously. it’s a great problem to have - but it’s a lot of phone tag. The real problem is that our online ticketing software is great for individual ticket sales. But we’ve had 70% of people buy season tickets. And you can’t choose your season ticket dates with this software OR your food choices. So Rich spends about sixty hours a week making phone calls about chicken pot pie He’s trying to find a better software package. A dude spent an hour on the phone with him yesterday only to tell him that their product didn’t do the thing Rich asked if it DID do in the first minute of the conversation. Yeesh.
Like I said, I’ve been spending a lot of time narrowing down music. It was particularly tough for the War show. It has to be this fine balance of stuff people already know - and interesting stuff you think they’ll like. And, there just isn’t room for everything. A lot of the British music has more resonance for me because of where I grew up - so it was really tough for me to cut that stuff out… but let’s face it - “Theyr’e always be an England” may be a great tune, but Hoosiers ain’t gonna care It’s also an interesting adjustment because a New York audience really likes being introduced to ‘forgotten gems’ - whereas here I think people will have more of a response to what they already know. So - I’ve peppered in some nifty gems - but most of the stuff is pretty familiar. For the war music I did litmus test when I was in Bermuda - my Dad and Peter (who’s like my grandfather and served in WWII) sat on the couch and I went through all the titles one by one. If they started in singing as soon as I said the first three words of the title… it was a pretty good sign. They hysterical thing is, for some reason, they both had fogotten the same sections of lyrics. So it kind of went:
“We’ll meet again… don’t know how…don’t know when…but we’ll la la la LOVELY DAYYYYYY… LA LA DUM DUM.”
Anyway - I’ve just finished all the copying of cds and photocopying - so we’re about to mail these gigantic packets of stuff out to the actors. Whoo hoo.
We got a nifty plug in a really sexy regional magazine called ‘Great Lakes’. In their ‘best of the best’ issue we were listed as the ‘best use of an old theatre’. I suppose that’s like being the ‘best of the best’ “people named Jemima who live in Roanoke and have waffles on Tuesday” - it ain’t a huge category. But heck - I’M PROUD.
Jo Jo.
Practically pic-less. Sorry.
Speeches speeches speeches. My goodnes. Kids, we can’t find time to lift a hammer because we’re talking so much! It’s marvellous to be popular - but the Pack Leader is starting to wig out that we’re so popular we can’t get anything DONE. Eek. At the moment we’ve decided we’re gonna have to put a moratorium on any more major events until the actors arrival - cuz we’s got a get ready for them. And build a bar. And finish a ladies room. And and and and…
So no sooner after prom recovery than it was time to open our doors again to another nifty group of folks. This, ladies and gentleman, I hope will go down as one our most madcap, looney, wackadoodle events for a long time. Cuz if it gets any more harried than this, I’m gonna have to hide
See a while ago we were asked to speak to a small group of the Huntington Historical society. About, oh say, twenty people. They were going to have tenderloins to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Nicks, and we would tell them all about the theater. Twenty peeps. No problem. In our sleep. Yah…not so much. So somehow that event got tagged on with the Kiwanis. Wait, you say (since you pay so much attention in anticipation of the soon-to-arrive blog quiz) you already HAD the Kiwanis. No, my little hamster… we had the DAYTIME Kiwanis. This is the NIGHT TIME Kiwanis. Ok… so that probably took us to like forty. Still totally do-able.
Well, then somehow, the gentleman who organized this whole thing did an interview in the paper and invited the general populous to attend. Come one come all. Give us your poor, your tired, your hungry for tenderloins. And suddenly it turned into a zillion people. So many in fact that we didn’t have enough seats. By a LONG shot. So many that Rich had to get on the phone with the evening Kiwanis and ask them if we could have them ANOTHER night. They said yes. Which left us with seventy five. Yup. Seventy five. We have fifty seats. arghghghghgghgh.
So - here was the plan. The throngs would start off at Nicks. They would all have tenderloins. Munch munch. Yummy yummy. Then HALF of them would migrate over to the theatre to have cake. The other half would stay at Nicks and Jean Anne would give them her fun talk about the history of Nick’s while we gave our talk to our group. THEN when we were both done…we’d switch. And group two would hear us, and group one would hear Jean Anne. Sounds good right?
Not. OMG. I believe the technical term was Fustercluck. Even though we weren’t making any money doing this event, Rich thought we’d be able to take ticket orders for a few minutes between groups. Well - here’s what happened. First group came over. Cake… yummy yummy, munch munch. They sit and we start our speech. Now our speech is like twenty minutes probably (it was a slightly trimmed version, mixed up a little from the previous incarnations). Well - apparently Jean Anne’s speech was a lot shorter than ours…and Jean Anne wasn’t able to keep them AT NICKS. So - in the middle of our first group… people start coming in from the second group. Margaret (who LUCKILY happened to be around) zoomed over to the door trying to keep it quiet, and keep them out. This was not easy - you know those movies where the here has a flaming torch and he’s trying to ward off the hoard of zombies. Well - these folks weren’t zombies - but they wanted CAKE. And they wanted to sit DOWN. So we’re trying to give our speech - about 3/4 through it, while we become patently aware that there is a mounting crowd of forty people outside trying to get inside. Rich started talking faster than speedy gonzales on amphetamines. It started getting truly hysterical. Then some of the elderly people just had to come in to sit (one guy apparently pulled down the flap on the back of our truck and took a load off) - that Madge had to let some in. So these people enter in the MIDDLE of the speech, which we have to turn around and give to them AGAIN in ten minutes!
By the time we were done the people had been there so long, we had no time to hardly take questions - never mind trying to take ticket orders - we had to practically throw them out of the building to get the next group in, as we’re flinging cake around for the next group since there was no set up time in between. And like less than 120 seconds after we FINISHED the speech we had to start the whole thing over again. I said to the people who had come in half way “Feel free to sing along”. It was ridiculous - I felt Abraham Lincoln in the Hall of Presidents at Disneyland just looping over and over for eternity.
AND NOW PRESIDENT CARTER WILL TELL YOU ABOUT THE SUPPER CLUB
Luckily everyone was in very good spirits - and even the first group who got evicted so quickly really enjoyed it and were very receptive. The seoncd group, with which we had more time, were really fabulous and asked some of the most interesting questions we’ve ever had. By the time the last of them had left I thought I was gonna keel over - it was just the weirdest event ever. And we’ll never ever let ourselves get in that pickle again… but if we did we’ll have to come up with a way to LOCK those people in Nick’s kitchen with rottweilers at the door until it’s time to swap
Ok - public speaking number one down.
Then the next day… The Pack Leader and I were being honored by a group called Huntington Alert. They’re kind of like architectural Black Panthers They’re this group that is dedicated to the preservation of Huntington…um…stuff. And this was their annual award ceremony. And they incredibly generously had decided to bestow upon us a ‘Preservation in Progress” award. We’ve heard that a number of years ago a previous owners had gotten a Preservation award BEFORE they actually started doing any renovation…and nothing really got renovated. So we think that they wanted to protect themselves, HENCE the ‘in progress” part of our award I think it’s kinda cute. Anyway - so a number of local citizens were being honored for restoring houses or gussying up their storefront facades etc. So - the event was at the YMCA (you saw pictures of it, remember? We’re hoping they might give it to us when they move to their new buidlling???)… and it was a small but extremely passionate group of preservation peeps. This was going to be only a mini speech (at these awards ceremonies you never know when the band will start playing and they’ll cut to commercial, right?). So we decided that Rich would do the talking. But then he got up there and people were like “Joel why aren’t you talking”… So Rich did the intro blurb and then we went up and answered questions. Mayor Updike was there and he took great pride in telling everyone that he carries Supper Club fliers in his coat pocket and managed to pitch the theatre when he was at an event in Peru (the birth place of Cole Porter). So lets all give out some hefty Mayor snaps.
I will also point out that at the end of this event they had some pretty spectacular munchies. There were these platters of cookies and lemon squares and stuff from the La Fontaine country club - and they were SOOOO good. At the chit chat afterwards we had a fun talk with a couple who flip houses for a living. And they got an award too. Which I thought kinda unusual - but heck, why not. I mean just cuz you’re preserving something doesn’t mean you can’t make a buck, right?
So - that was event TWO.
THEN… yesterday was the Huntington Senior Expo. And we were supposed to talk for like twenty minutes. And I had NO idea what to expect. The last time we were at an expo in Huntington the stage was right in the middle of the food court - so we weren’t sure how chaotic the environment was going to be. We decided that I was going to go solo on this one… we figured they’d only have one microphone - so we didn’t think it was safe to plan on working as a pair. So the speech got trimmed down to twelve pages - with some new stuff geared to the senior audience… The stage was, thankfully, NOT in the middle of the food court - but set up in a very deep thrust so you had people on three sides of you. At first I was a little panicked cuz there wasn’t a podium. Or a music stand. Or anything I could put the script on… and I was really concerned that doing this on my own (particularly in a weird kind of noisy environment where I felt I might rapidly start tanking and losing everyone’s interest) that my hands would start to shake holding the script and I wanted something sturdy to HOLD ON TO. Rich was actually really nice and was like “ok this is ridiculous and you’re insane - but if you want I’ll go try and find you a music stand from the music department). And, whenever Rich and I do the speech together I grab a sip of water whenever he’s talking - cuz my mouth dries out - but there wasn’t really anywhere to put water. Rich said ‘just hold it’ But you can’t hold a script and TURN PAGES while you’re holding water. This is the madness of being jo jo. But I said i would suck it up. I was actually so distracted that in the process of having a conversation with the blind gentleman running the sound, I reached out to shake his hand without realizing he couldn’t see me. Smooth.
So - even feeling super awkward just standing there feeling rather naked without a podium or anything - Rich said I did really well. The audience, despite all the ambient noise, were very attentive - they laughed and listened and people stayed through the whole thing. I had no idea how I’d done - but Rich said I was great, and he handed out flyers and spoke with people the whole time. We actually brought seven 8×10 photographs of the theatre to pass around and show people what the lobby looks like. Get this. We only got three back. Seriously. The old folks stole our pictures… just like that couple in dirty dancing - ya gotta watch those old timers, their crafty Right after us was a tap-dancing group called the Alley Cats that were completely hysterical and fabulous. The youngest member is sixty and i think the eldest said she was eighty nine. They did hey big spender. Seriously i wish i had pictures. This is one I found online - but their outfits the other day were much more in the black spandex, sequined and feathered vein. Imagine Barbara Bush playing Catwoman.
So - as you can see - we’ve been pretty busy working off our little vocal chords. It’s been fantastic - but we gotta get caught up in the renovation world big time. Bob and Janice are coming this weekend, so no doubt we’ll get a lot done over the next few days.
I haven’t had a chance to mention that all of the actors are officially contracted for the summer. I’m soooo excited about how incredible they all are. They have all sent us some music clips of them singing - stay tuned, the pack leader is editing them to upload them for a BLOG PREVIEW!!!
I just managed to send them the song run down for Hooray for Hollywood… it’s SO depressing having to cut songs you love. Obviously there’s just too much to choose from - so we’ll just have to hope things go terribly well and we’ll be forced, in great Hollywood tradition to do sequel. But it’ll be like Godfather Two - not like Speed 2. Good. The song I was the most bummed about cutting was “Atcheson Topeka and the Santa Fe”, largely because it meant we’d be able to get Dan and Winston here for the summer! Rich thought it would not be as effective in a cabaret setting. Well poop on him.
So - the bit above I wrote last night - and now I’m actually writing in the present tense - for like the first time on a blog in months. Whoo hoo - caught up kids! It feels pretty darn good. Rich was early to rise as usual and made an early start over at the Shit Box…which since people are now living there in about a month (and since it’s undergoing it’s ‘exteme homo makeover’ I feel deserves a new name. And I have a potential candidate for the new name. I think we should name it after the Southern Plantation Mame is taken to to meet Beau’s family (when they sing Mame). The name of the plantation is - this is entirely true - Peckerwood. I love it. Winston will approve. Janice will probably not.
Anyway, a few hours later I joined him and we spent the day working at Peckerwood. Hee hee. We started framing in the new bedroom, which actually went remarkably smoothly. I couldn’t figure out WHY - and then Rich pointed out to me that our kitchen has all those angled walls - and this was just a plain old box. Lemme tell ya - box a lot easier. So - 2×4s started going up. I also got the first glimpse at the new front door which you can see in this picture. The exterior needs a little new siding around the doors perimeter - but otherwise it looks really good. See - Rich didn’t explain to me that the door was on the return corner - not RIGHT NEXT to the other front door. So when I actually saw this I felt a whole lot better.
And also - considering that they - y’know made a hole in the HOUSE - take a look at how relatively little damage there is around the door. If I’d tried to make a hole in the house - it probably would have come out a little more expansive…
This weekend I put in a major vote that Rich and Bob work on the bathroom and get the toilets running. Because right now Peckerwood has no working bathroom. And the jo jo has a small bladder. Luckily, for like the first time ever, we managed to coordinate our need to pee - so we didn’t waste too much time heading back to the theatre for relief.
Madge and Larry dropped by for a quick visit. She’s been dealing with her huge annual garage sale that she has at the house which incorporates items from practically every Eckert household (ie. the population of China). She was not a happy camper because the Herald Press managed to NOT PRINT her classified add. Normally, she says the place is swarming with people, and it was only dribs and drabs. Anyway - turns out her neighbor was also having a garage sale. It’s the family that owns Z Place, a local pizza joint, and Margaret said that they were selling some actual full size Arcade Games (like real arcade ones). Rich has a thing for arcade games. When we went to Disneyworld he could have been perfectly happy spending the entire costly vacation holed up in their big arcade complex - forget about seeing Goofy. So - I’m just WAITING. And Rich says what does she want for them? And Margaret says 100 bucks. And I see the eyes START to light up. And then he says ‘which games’. And Margaret says “Donkey Kong”.
Well now we’re screwed. And this, is my favorite part. Rich says “wouldn’t that be nice to have in the house for the actors”. Yes. The actors. Yah, and every time he was running to the hardware store and gone for six hours mysteriously, it would be FOR THE ACTORS. So i tell him we can go look at it. And we do. Tragically, Margaret misunderstood and they wanted $450 for them. Rich looked a little like someone had just told him the Tooth Fairy didn’t exist the same day his puppy died. Poor Wittle Pack Leader. Sorry actors - no donkey kong.
Then it was right back to the house to keep plugging away. And - as you can see - we got the whole room framed within a couple more hours.
LOOKS LIKE WE CAN OPEN OUR OWN ACTOR ZOO.
And, before the light started fading - we even started to get some drywall up. We would have kept working, but we didn’t have the T square so we could only install full size sheets. We don’t have the laser line over there either - and it’s a whole lot easier to get the screws to hit the studs when we’ve got that. Rich definitely is getting speedy at the drywall though. LIke I said, you’re supposed to put the first piece up at the top, and work your way down. So we’ve now got this piece of 2×4 wide enough to bridge two studs, with a screw at each side that he just screws into the 2×4 about four feet and a half inch from the top. Sits the dry wall on it, and maneauvers it in place. It’s a LOT easier than trying to balance that stuff.
On our way out, one of our neighbors stopped Rich for a quick chat. He mentioned to Rich that he was tired of owning a house and wanted to move out and find a rental. Then he said “The Lord had told him” to talk to Rich about buying his house. A few minutes later I asked Rich if the Lord has also told him we only paid $8,900 for the house next door to his?
Well - Bob and Janice arrive in the morning. And maybe by the afternoon we’ll have the privilege to pee.
xo
jojo.
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