Treading water in a clawfoot tub

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The single highlight of this week was the return of the prodigal tub. With any luck, it will assume its permanent place in this house, likely the last place I will do a house make-over since I now consider this house and locale quite temporary. Back in the 70s when house restorations became popular, someone wrote "There is really only one house restoration in all of us." Some five or six house projects later plus those done for a living, I am finally running out of heart and steam.

I had looked and looked for a four foot long cast iron tub for ten years before finding this one. The four footer is ideal to serve as a period shower base in a small bathroom. There were ample supplies of the five foot long tubs but not the more coveted four and six foot lengths, at least none that hadn't been buried vertically and converted into a yard shrine housing a Madonna years ago. I once knew a fellow who had photographed each kitschy tub shrine he found in New England and he had contrived a hilarious although sacrilegious title for each one in his collection.

This one was remarkably well preserved when I found it; usually abrasive cleaners and unchecked faucet dips ruined the porcelain over time. I had found this one at a remote rural old hippie yard sale. It even had the hard-to-find brass drain plumbing on it and, for $75, the guy even helped me load it into my tiny pickup. This was not a find that I could stash away in the barn/work shop by myself so, after giving me 'the look', Terry helped me unload it. I spent considerable time slowly rasping away with a metal file during the following weeks to wear down many casting glitches on the tub and legs. The big moment of satisfaction was when I was able to apply primer to all the parts to stop further rusting.
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Long story but a couple of acquaintances showed up this week with the tub and I cannot tell you how excited I was to see it again! Yes, like the Katlady, I have a passion for iron castings, truly, literally a heavy burden if you ever have to move. The return of the tub brought nothing more than later having to pry out a chunk of white porcelain from my forearm after a warning of a leg falling off went unheeded. No back miseries ... delightful!

I am kicking myself for not taking pictures of the incredible DC motor driven lift platform that Brian had placed in his standard pick-up rear receiver for the event. He even had me stand on it for a demonstration and gave me a lift up and down. After having a 130 pound can of turkey feed drop off my tailgate, effectively taking the skin off my lower shin and ankle upon landing, I was all ears about this incredible device. He said that it was rated for lifting up to 500 pounds to tailgate level and that it was able to heft a refrigerator with no problem at all. Better still, he had found it on sale from Harbor Freight for $199. Of course, we had to discuss all the mods and tweaks to cater to specific needs. As of that visit, the Harbor Freight catalogs will definitely find their way back to the toilet tank library.
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Catching up on old news, here is Wayne demonstrating the right stance for catching chickens, ducks and pigeons. It's not as easy or pleasant as you might imagine.
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And here is Gayle tackling a reluctant turkey. They were ALL reluctant in reality. Her grimace reflects the joy of being whipped in the eyes by sturdy feathers. Not being involved, of course, I found the whole process hilarious. Then Gayle let out a whoop of despair when one turkey hen escaped. When I said "Oh my, now how are you going to catch and cage her?" she replied "Uhm, actually that's one of the ones you own now" as we stood there and watched this hen take off like a road runner to parts unknown. When I suggested that the turkey-obsessed Brou be let loose to tire her out, Gayle noted that the wings on these birds had not been clipped and that we might be staring up at a turkey high in the treetops if he startled her. Really, what was I thinking in adopting inedible old turkeys in the first place?

After an hour of sprinting after a turkey adept at ducking and dodging, we herded her back towards the trailer and Wayne was able to corner the bugger and toss her back into the pen.
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Here is Wayne stuffing the first of the highly resistant turkeys into the cage on their trailer. You have to give W&G an 'A' for tenacity and eventually all their flying stock was captured and loaded up.
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You met Hannah already, now here is the rest of my turkey homies. This is Romeo (hey, I did NOT name these birds, okay?) . He is the Tom (male) of the pair of NM natives. This time Gayle reiterated their species name loudly and clearly as if addressing the profoundly deaf and daft - it was fitting and much appreciated. "THEY ... ARE ... RIO GRANDES!" And so this time, the info stuck.
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Here is a close-up of Romeo's plummage. A photo simply cannot do justice to the effect of the bright New Mexico sun reflecting off his feathers when he struts his stuff. I rather like that boy since he never fails to answer my "Booga-booga-booga!" when I walk out to the pen. And if the sun is out, it's likely that he will puff himself out as shown above and drum me an almost ELF ranged "shtooommmpphhhh!". A turkey hunter would know and love that sound well. He's a pretty cocky, cool bird.
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And here is the third bird. Again, don't blame me for the names ... meet Rita! She is the Rio Grande hen of the pair. She is the one who had us playing turkey round up when she escaped and the only one who ducks into the coop when I arrive with food. Rita definitely has a stubborn, defiant mind of her own.

According to W&G, I now need to find some good nesting straw and they will start laying eggs. While I really enjoyed the duck and chicken eggs that W&G shared with me before the bird exodus, I am tempted to raise enough native turkey hatchlings to release them out at the ranch some day. It's either that or (as I discussed with Harmonica Joe) raise and train turkeys as bird of prey substitutes just to utterly annoy elitist falconers. After being the only volunteer to ride in the back of a station wagon with the hooded falcon in Utah once, I became thoroughly enchanted with falconry. Being the frugal and pragmatic sort though, I think I might be able to replicate the same hunting function with a vaguely domesticated turkey, thus avoiding all that long apprenticeship and pricy licencsing ... whaddya think? I know, I know; they look more like a buzzard than a hawk but they sure can kick butt when motivated ... just ask Gayle. And it appeals to my growing eccentricity to ride the ranch someday on a Percheron, in a suit of armor with a faithful turkey of prey perched upon my gauntlet. If you are going to offend or annoy everyone eventually anyway, you might as well do it with an outrageous flare.
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The puppy update: Panda is definitely a deca-mom. You may not be able to account for all of them from this photo but there are ten little pups all piled on here. Panda has been doing an excellant job of taking care of them. That's a good thing since W&G have silently dropped below the radar since I sent them an e-mail announcing their arrival. That e-mail also contained a compilation of your many congrats and well wishes on Wayne's surgery and I am sure that they were very appreciated.
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And I discovered today that Panda is a shameless photo ham. Upon hearing her name, she presented me with new poses for every camera click until the batteries wore down.
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And to wrap up this photo tour, here is a snap of the wall that I stare at a lot when trying to write a new post. The student lamp, the wall clock and the pheasant all contain pleasant memories. The pheasant, in particular, has its own very special place in the memories that Terry and I shared. We called him Phred and no one can dampen or take the joy of that particular memory from me ... thank God, truly.
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The Problem with Panda

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The majority of W&G's livestock and creatures have now been moved over to their new place. What remains are eight barn cats and . . . Panda.

Panda was a young dog that a friend had brought them from his very remote ranch, a pup born to a stock dog who took her patrol job seriously and generally had very little exposure to humans. It was rumored that there was some strong Great Pyrenees in Panda's genes - a most beneficial and admired breed of hound for livestock stewardship. What W&G weren't told was that they instinctively have a much wider territory range than W&G's five acres. Out at the ranch, it was not unusual to see the anti-neighbor's great hulking woolly white Pyrenees a mile or more away from their ranch house so I was not surprised in the least.
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And, to their frustration, that she would be incredibly aloof. To my frustration as well. When I arrived, no one could get closer than four feet from her before she would bolt like you were wielding a butcher knife with deadly intent like a scene from Psycho.

It was agreed upon that Panda move to their new place ... IF they ever caught her. They continued to bring her dog food for a while but after a stunningly ill-conceived attempt to place her food in a large cage and rope-snag the door closed behind her, she never entered the cage again and eventually they stopped bringing her any food at all. Being a fairly recognizable sap, of course, I began to take up the slack while fervently maintaining the "That's not my dog, monsieur" position, especially for a hound with obvious magnetic pole repulsion syndrome.

Age and eccentricity allow me to converse with any critter I darned well please and, frankly, they are generally much more polite listeners than humans. And so Panda got an earful at each feeding about how I was far too pragmatic to feed anything 'just because', that there would have to be some other reason to keep an aloof stock dog around on a property that no longer had stock. Maybe she understood her new state of unemployment because she eventually started to edge a little closer in towards me and I tested the waters occasionally with a hand while talking gently and casually to her. She finally realized that I would not abuse this newly forming trust by grabbing at her.
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Then came the breakthrough one day when she came in close enough that I was able to reach out and scratch her benignly as she wolfed down the food I brought her. All in patient baby steps over the course of many weeks but now she will come over for scratchies even when I don't have food for her. W&G showed up at feeding time one day and Gayle let out a loud "I don't believe it! Wayne, take a look at Panda!" as Panda ate, unconcerned that I was scratching her ears. Gayle's next shout was "So ... you have a new dog now?" N-n-n-ope. I usually avoid inheriting stress from other folks' bad decisions whenever possible. I certainly do not keep un-neutered pets around since I don't like loitering around high traffic areas with a box that reads "Free puppies" or 'Free kittens."

Now Panda even knows to make one full circle while I put her food down. It was a family tradition which Brou, Daisy and even Beautiful Dave the Cat and Ming abide by. It gives me a chance to put down food without a bowl being knocked out of my hand and they all politely oblige. What is most curious is that the two dogs have interpreted this ritual as a form of saying 'please' and will spin around wildly to confirm when they want something badly. I'm easy, that works, too.
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I let Brou and Daisy out as usual this morning but, rather than bark with the usual exuberance, Brou ran to the far end of the yard nearest the open shed with Terry's skid steer in it and stood fully upright against the fence with his head adorably cocking from one side to the other, listening intently to some new and totally baffling noise. Since the eight barn cats were also oddly absent, I went out to investigate.
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So here is octo-mom this morning with at least eight new puppies. I really don't hold it against her ... she has the expected intelligence and instincts of a dog, of course.
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Wayne's final surgery occurred last Thursday. The operation was a smashing success considering all the unknown possibilities before going in. They are comfortable that they got all the bladder cancer and Wayne will not have to live with any external bladder replacements. Yessuh!!! Better still, they announced that he would not have to alter his diet and intake permanently either so I can stuff them with whatever I darned well please when they show up.

Now ... how do I break it to them that Panda celebrated by making them doggy grandparents eight times, possibly plus? Ahhh, oui ... mais you forget ... that is NOT my dog, monsieur!
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Better times and make-overs from the past

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The days have turned into weeks and now months as I sit here waiting for any labor help with good references to catch up on their backlogs. It's hard to believe that there is a severe recession upon us but perhaps those people with a good work ethic, skill and pride in their work will never run out of work, no matter what.

Terry and I had accomplished some wonderful make-overs together in the past and although he would say "You are the mechanic, the visionary, the carpenter - I am just the brawn so hand me that wrecking bar and tell me when to stop", he had developed so many skills and a laudable finesse over the years we were together. He was truly a man who could have mastered anything he set his mind to, an impossible act to follow when I look for hired help now. It doesn't help that the few times when we contracted out a task, we often ended up doing it over again ourselves after paying shamelessly high amounts for very shoddy work.

So we'll look back at brighter times; I will take you for a tour of our last project in the home we sold to move to NM. It's a warm and quiet Sunday here and I'm in the mood to wander back into very satisfying memories.

Below is the dining room of the old place as it was when we first moved in. It was a lifeless room done in the long-faded pop culture flavors of the 70s. Neither of us spent much time in there, just threw in some antiques to get them out of the unheated barn really.
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The four soul-less Anderson windows had always bothered me. I was inclined to more interesting fenestration, especially in a 100 year old house as this one was. With this modern arrangement, all I saw was four lash-less glaring eyeballs staring back at me. And while pricey barn board may still have its comfortable place, I prefer it where it belongs ... outside, on an old barn.

Oddly enough though, it was that plastic-bumpered metal spiral staircase on the left of this photo that initiated a make-over after an unsettling incident which could have claimed my life except for the help of strong unseen hands. Then, after hearing stories from the original owner about greasing the heads of small children who had become lodged in the iron balusters, it seemed a good idea to eliminate this ugly hazard once and for all.
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Since we both had a great fondness for Medieval, Gothic and Renaissance styles, we decided that our last room make-over would be a fun and whimsical exercise ... but done on a shoestring budget as usual. Oddly enough, as soon as we decided to do it, suitable furniture, lighting and accessories started to show up at yard sales and on serious retail clearance so I was already having a blast before it had even begun.
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Above: Here is the same room view as the first but after we finished the project.

The project started with Terry carefully removing the fake box beams from the ceiling and the barn board from the walls. Then he cut and hung drywall over the exposed stud walls and I taped and mudded the seams. I chose a Ralph Lauren crackle finish in claret over gold, broken up by rectangular panels of solid gold metallic latex paint. There are much better quality metallic latex paints available now but I was stuck with Lauren's product at the time. It had so little pigment for coverage that I had to resort to scanning a sample of that gold and have them mix up a flat, solid color to use as a base first. That saved many, many applications of the thin and expensive metallic paint later.

Once the entirety of walls had been coated in the opaque base and then with the metallic gold, I marked off sections to be left as gold panels and applied the crackle-effect medium to the rest. Drying time and thickness on the crackle base coat was critical before applying the top coat of claret paint - OMG, I had never been so pressed and stressed with a paint job in my life - the one armed paper-hanger was blessed by comparison!

We decided to go with a textured wallpaper on the ceiling. As someone with that experience under his belt once said "Hanging wallpaper on a ceiling is the ultimate test of team work and ANY relationship!" As with many challenges, amazingly, we survived it in our own odd way and went on to paint it in a flat grocery bag beige but Terry came into his own with the final touches. With his six and a half feet of height, he was able to apply metallic gold to the raised highlights with a hard roller without the aid of any ladder or milk crate. The same task would have taken me three times as long by having to move around height aids, interrupted by frequent trips to the chiropractor for stirring up old whiplash injuries.

It's a shame that these textured wall coverings have all but disappeared now. They were the poor man's substitutes for the traditional Anaglypta and Lincrusta papers from eighty to one hundred years ago. These modern papers were also so much easier to work with since any traditional embossed papers could easily flatten out and stretch if you were not quick in setting them in place once they were wet. This new style was ingeniously made by applying a layer of thermally expanding foam on a flat sheet and very, very hard to mess up while applying. And all you needed was patience, imagination and a hard roller to create some incredible color effects. You could even paint the wall rolls and borders as they lay on a table before hanging them. I truly lament their decline.

Next, we installed full thickness solid oak flooring. Rather than hammer slam it in with nails as is the standard, we carefully pre-drilled each piece and used small-headed Roberts (square drive) screws to secure each piece to the floor. There wouldn't be any loosening and squeaking in OUR wood floors! I finished off the floor with a light golden oak oil stain and let it dry and harden a long time before the final urethane finish.
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Then I started on the wood work. I was determined to break up the look of the old windows into something that looked more like two smaller windows side by side. I made grills (faux muntin bars) for each glass panel and devised a larger frame separating the halves of each window. I band-sawed out Gothic ornaments for the corners of each and a friend sawed out opaque cathedral glass for each quatrefoil cut-out. All the woodwork would be made with off-the-rack pine lumber to keep the price down. I had picked up a set of molding cutters for my table saw at a yard sale (dirt cheap!) and that supplied the incised cuts to take the lumber beyond the mundane.
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Later on, I added material window coverings for more softness and privacy. Walmart's reasonably priced crushed velvet stock at Christmas supplied the swags and I bought an airy gold metallic material to sew up into sheers.
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And, finally, the lethal spiral staircase was tamed! The now solid surrounding walls were nearly a foot taller (to preclude any absent-minded perching of posteriors) and the corners were cut-off to regain some floor space at this upper level. These solid walls were also a great place to hang more theme decor to ponder as you descended into 'the well'.

As I noted previously, between the oddities I had already amassed and was able to rework along with the items which showed up at yard sales, auctions and retail sales as we went, we were able to redo and furnish this room on the relative cheap. There really is something to be said for your own determination, patience and faith in your own abilities; if you don't count the labor of our own hands, we had less than $1,200 in the make-over of this room, from the materials in the room itself to all the fun furnishings and trappings.

Well, I guess the whole point of this tour was really to explain why I am so plagued by angst with the prospect of hiring outside labor to help me now. Oh, if only I had the strength and stamina I had thirty years ago, I would do it all by myself rather than tempt the unknown for disappointments.
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