Asbestos – yet again

Where the closet once stood there was a vent at the back. This vent fed the dining room with heated air.
Apparently there is some sort of asbestos tape or covering associated with this vent.

Vent at bottom of closet back

And so, just as I was getting used to not working on the house or moving, it will be back into the white suit – perhaps as early as tomorrow.

Black Bag over Asbestos

This is the hall of many doors. There were 7 (Kitchen, bathroom, study, Rey’s room, basement, dining room, closet). Now there are fewer, 2 down, 1 more to go, but when some that are down are just hanging around it gets down right confusing.

In other – non-demolition related news – there is new wood in place.

Kitchen extension floor

Father’s Day Favorites

Harry

Bob

Carl

Look Closely

In case you have not been following this (almost, sort of) daily record, I am trying to stop by the house every day and see what has transpired.

What a difference a day can make.

Reverse View – clearer today

Notice the missing studs. And the vertical boards are gone too.

From the kitchen – east

Closet wall gone. The area seems large now.

Moving to the outside. The Strongties have gone vertical.

StrongTies up

Side view of the Strongties.

Walls in transition

I tell myself to slow down and really look at what is in front of my face.

Notice the area under the floor. Most of this was outside of the basement, and under the kitchen nook. I think this was at least part of an addition to the original house. I was looking at the brick work. Then I looked more closely. I now think they put on the addition in 1947.

Fancy Header

This has the date – and a notice for Contract Bridge lessons.
I remember playing with my parents Contract Bridge game. I wonder if it is still around anywhere.

The royals are in the news. (Carl notes that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip have been married just a bit longer than his parents, who celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary today.)

Honeymoon plans

News from Flint, where they are considering eliminating gear shifts.

Apparently trying to make the car drive like a tank.

Traffic Court ideas.

An Arthur Murray advertisement – noting that in 1947 they had been around for 33 years. (Almost 100 years old now)

Ship Movements (I don’t think these are reported in the daily paper anymore)
[Look closely below the fold - I think it is a house for sale for $8,850!)

A Snookums comic

Every now and then today's cartoon artists will complain about the shrinking amount of space they are given for their art. I get it now. This Prince Valiant comic has a full page.

Finally pulling myself away from the news.

Appliances amoung the Calla Lilies

Demo continues

The kitchen structure continues to diminish.
I have been trying to get by every day, just to look.

Tuesday’s effort – not much to see

Same old perspective, but too dark – late and phone battery dying

Wednesday – found some new structural elements

Strongtie – so our wall will be strong

And noticed some of the old house was missing.

Light of Day reveals a new back porch. Or old breakfast nook repurposed

Thursday – Normal vantage point view.

New transom window over the door?

Reverse of the normal vantage point

Reverse of same old perspective – with light

With this set-up do you look out the window? Or just through the wall.

Outdoor Indoor Window

Cool discovery of an old Cold Pantry.

Old Cold Pantry discovered

The holes in the floor were drilled into the basement area. Cool air comes up in the summer, and goes out through the vents in the wall. I have seen several houses with these square areas in the neighborhood. Never saw them on our house because they had been covered up by at least one layer of siding.

Cold Pantry drilled holes to the basement, and lower vent

I am starting to think that our kitchen, and house, originally ended at the archway.

 

USA 2 – Panama 0

Big event of the day was the US Men’s National Soccer team playing a World Cup qualifying match against Panama.
There was a Mariner’s game going on across the street at approximately the same time.
Attendance at the Soccer Match = 40,000+.
Attendance at the Mariners Game = 10,266.

Both home teams won.
Both home teams had a shut-out.
Both games ended within 30 minutes of each other.
Lots of happy people in the streets.

The gathering crowd

View from the opposite side of the pitch

New fashion statement

Scarves Up – USA Style
(See two posts ago for Sounder’s Style)

TIFO (see two posts ago) from our seats

TIFO from Ashlan’s Seats (Baseball stadium in the background)

Decisions

Made a few decisions yesterday.
36-inch window instead of a 42-inch window.
Remove a small wall – at least until we see how it feels without. (This could save, if is stays gone, or add – if we put it back in later.)
Chatted about a detail on the ceiling area soffit above the stove area (really the entire stretch along the dining room/kitchen connection).

The door that would be a wall, except maybe not now.

Backside of the bathtub (see the sloped line near the bottom left)

Upstairs revealed. (Back floor of Ashlan’s closet crawl space)

Glimpse (lower right) to the outdoors. [This wall is leaving.]

Knob and Tube, neatly arranged in the ceiling

Need to get more decisions put together at work now.
Focus, focus.

Also need to figure out whether I am carpooling today. If not, I have a 10-minute walk to get to the car.

Scarves Up

We went to a double header yesterday – Mariners/Sounders.
With dinner at a very upscale restaurant in betwteen.
The upscale restaurant was in exchange for the very stinky restaurant we started in.
Of course, the girls were appropriately dressed. Carl was in his Sounders shirt – acceptable, and I was in a tie die top with shorts. And hair that never had been combed that day, or styled for like 10 years.

Betweeen the nathional anthems and the start of the game they frequently will stage a tifo in the end zone seats.
This was yesterday’s offering.

Sounder’s Tifo

This is what they were trying to emulate really looks like.

Crowd version of Scarves Up

A good game against one of our close rivals, the Vancouver Whitecaps.
Sounders scored a goal, which was almost immediately matched by the Whitecaps.
Then the Whitecaps scored again. It took a while, but finally the Sounders evened the score, and then took the lead.
The Whitecaps looked very fast, but maybe they got tired toward the end.
The Sounders looked a bit out of sync with each other. This may have been due in part to having 3 players gone to play with their national teams for World Cup qualifiers, and the usually smattering of injuries.

(Mariners played and lost to the Yankees. Enough said.)

In other news, I did a little work at the house today, wrangling garbage.
Staging garbage is more like it. Putting what I could into our four “garbage” cans that we had for garbage and yard waste, before cans were provided by the city. And there is an old diaper pail with some tall pieces that will not fit into said cans. And a box or two and car seat and car seat bottom that just won’t fit either. I am trying to size up whether we can get it all into the car (on their sides of course) for one dump run ($30/load) – or if I will end up putting the cans out at the curb as extra trash ($10/can) and take the rest as one run ($30/load).

Yes I am starting to focus in on the little things that cost money and add up in the long run.

And in the long run, I may be getting some more exercise.
We decided that paying for a parking space that you can not reasonably easily fit your car into did not make any sense.
So there will be a $100/month savings. But of course, no place to park.
But we can park at the house, and walk the 10 blocks.

WHAT A ROYAL PAIN IN THE A**** THIS IS TURNING OUT TO BE.
It has not really rained on us yet. Perhaps I can stage some umbrellas at the house for those special days.

1 week in

After focusing on building a wall in the backyard, generally, this has been a week of taking down walls.
Today from the dining room you can see through to the kitchen.

To show progress of one day – essentially the same shot.

The side of the doorway that has not been touched yet – sort of a before look

The side of the doorway has now been touched

And the rest of the pictures.

Through the back of the closet

Archway deconstruction

kitchen ceiling

Old wiring evidence

Tomorrow I have planned to do a bit of garbage patrol. This will mean shuffling around in the basement, trying to make a big pile into some little piles. And answer some questions about window sizes. – Exciting life.

A few house pictures

Work, game, park at the house & take a few pictures, walk to home.
Work had meetings and some progress, but not as much as there should have been. The game was lost, but there were some interesting folks sitting next to us and Carl had a good time chatting. Got a spot on the street at the house. We had to pick up the mail, and I just wanted to peek at the progress. (They really are peeks) I also had a picture from the contractor earlier in the day. It was darn dark in the house, so the only light is from the flash.

Contractor’s picture to help determine what, if any, structural enhancements are needed here – and how the exhaust fan from above the stove can be installed

The side of the doorway that has not been touched yet – sort of a before look

Through the doorway into the kitchen

The dining-kitchen wall that will be disappearing (from the dining room side) This is lath, and you can see the back of the refrigerator through the wall

I figure posting pictures here will provide me with a way to follow what is going on.

26 Skidoo

One of my favorites from the Mother’s Day visit.

We skyped with Rey a few days ago.
The beard was still in evidence, but the sling was a no-show.
Apparently he has permission to be slingless when he is not around others that might make him move it in ways it is not ready to move. He did demonstrate his current range of motion. It was progress -  but still there is more range to re-attain.

He is now old enough to have lower car insurance rates and also be kicked off of my health insurance (as secondary).

As to the title, I was trying to think of something clever. Carl came up with 26 Skidoo.
I wanted to check it out, and was quickly corrected that “23 Skidoo” is the proper term.
And that Skidoo is not necessarily a complimentary term.
[And perhaps 25 Skidoo would have been more appropriate.]

23 Skidoo may have been coined  as follows, (From Wikipedia)

Perhaps the most widely known story of the origin of the expression concerns the area around the triangular-shaped Flatiron Building at Madison Square in New York City. The building is located on 23rd Street at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and, due to the shape of the building, winds swirl around it. During the early 1900s, groups of men would allegedly gather to watch women walking by have their skirts blown up, revealing legs, which were seldom seen publicly at that time. Local constables, when sometimes telling such groups of men to leave the area, were said to be “giving them the 23 Skidoo”.^[4]

It is at a triangular site where Broadway and Fifth Avenue—the two most important streets of New York—meet at Madison Square, and because of the juxtaposition of the streets and the park across the street, there was a wind-tunnel effect here. In the early twentieth century, men would hang out on the corner here on Twenty-third Street and watch the wind blowing women’s dresses up so that they could catch a little bit of ankle. This entered into popular culture and there are hundreds of postcards and illustrations of women with their dresses blowing up in front of the Flatiron Building. And it supposedly is where the slang expression “23 skidoo” comes from because the police would come and give the voyeurs the 23 skidoo to tell them to get out of the area.^[5]

And so we end, with a little more knowledge than we started.
And I think that would make Rey happy.

Happy Birthday Rey