Playing Around With Furniture Restoration

20. March 2022 · Comments Off on Playing Around With Furniture Restoration · Categories: Domestic

My daughter will insist that I have been watching too many restoration videos on Toob of Yew, but honestly, it’s fascinating to me, watching rusty and ruined bits of this or that being brought back to life. I also have developed a serious case of power tool envy, after seeing what could be done with a sandblasting unit, when it comes to destroying rust. Wee Jamie watches these with me – I hope that the concept of repair and reuse sticks with him, also the fun of using power tools.

Anyway, there is in my kitchen a rolling kitchen island; a solid piece constructed of oil-finished rock maple with a butcher-block top. I bought it through the Williams-Sonoma catalogue sometime around 1986, mostly because my kitchen in Spain was dinky, and there was no place to put the microwave oven, having fallen for that bit of cooking technology when on leave visiting my parents, who had a lovely large one. It’s in my mind that it came at least partially assembled; and it must have been a bit pricy because Williams-Sonoma. For about a decade I dedicated my yearly income tax return towards solid pieces of furniture, and that unit might have been the pick of that year. Anyway, it was a sturdy piece, with double doors on each long side, a small drawer just below the butcherblock top and movable narrow shelves on the short sides. I kept spices on the narrow side shelves, and an array of French porcelain cooking dishes inside, and the rolling island followed us from Spain to Utah and then finally to Texas, where my kitchen is still small and woefully short of counter space.

Alas, although the rock maple parts of the cart have endured rather nicely, certain of the panels which were of thin maple veneer over composition – have not aged at all well. For a good few years we had a cat who was addicted to peeing on things, and for totally ruining household items, noting quite beats the power and stench of male cat urine. So it came to pass that we were both tired of looking at the ruined finish, not to mention the way that the bottom shelves and side panels were warping out of shape … and yesterday in a fit of exasperation and ambition, I emptied out the contents into boxes, and disassembled the cart.

“I was bored,” I said to my daughter when she got home with Wee Jamie, “And I thought I’d take the furniture apart.” (It will be at least three weeks before Roman the Neighborhood Handy Guy can come and re-do the back fence, and I was all afire to get SOMETHING done!)

For all of today, we used the palm sander by turns, sanding off all the stains on the various pieces, and using every bit of Liquid Wrench and WD-40 on hand to pry out wheels, which had rusted practically solid due to regular applications of cat pee. A trip to Lowe’s for some small birchwood plywood panels, some passes with the circular saw, and … only exhaustion plus an uncomfortable tingling in the hands kept us from doing any more work on it today.

Tomorrow, I’ll finish putting it back together, paint the base white and finish the butcherblock top with linseed oil – did I mention that I have a new paint sprayer? New rollers and a set of metal knobs are to be delivered tomorrow. When I eventually redo the kitchen, it will be all be in white-painted cabinets, but for now, the revamped cart will do.

Pictures to follow. The “Before” pics were too ghastly to unleash on an unwary public.

The Sins of Microsoft

05. March 2022 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

The sins of Microsoft are many – but since their Office suite is practically universal, one almost has to use it, especially if one is not technically adept in matters of a programming nature. I do understand that there are means of working around, involving Linux and some open-source word processing packages, but frankly, it’s all too much for a practicing writer and small publisher to process and still get useful work done, for myself and for clients.

I am, as a matter of fact, completely happy with and sufficiently skilled with Word, with Excel and Publisher themselves, although I wish that they hadn’t gone with the new hotness and ongoing income stream of the subscription model – that is, pay yearly or monthly for the privilege of using the programs. (Yeah, when I started with all this, you bought the package straight up, on a DVD/CD which you installed and used – forever, or as long as the computer lived, or until they came up with a physical upgrade.). I’ve been working with the various versions and so-called upgrades for at least three decades, with Photoshop for at least that long, and Adobe Acrobat Pro for half that long.  Not a genius with either of the last two packages, but well enough to get by. What has lately frosted my cookies is the utter dogs’ breakfast of Microsoft’s consumer account system, and their customer service when things to do with the subscription go sideways.

To be brutally frank, it sucks sweaty pustulent donkey balls. It’s calculated, apparently, to avoid having to deal with a customer’s problem or complaint, much less actually do anything to fix the problem.

To recapitulate – early last month, I had to switch to a new computer, since the one I was currently using was beginning to glitch and had not enough memory to run several essential programs in the manner to which I would have liked them to run. Switching over all the saved documents which were on a detachable hard drive – no problem. Porting over all the bookmarks and settings – piece of cake. Going to my subscription accounts for Adobe Acrobat, and Photoshop, and re-installing those services on the new computer, no problem at all. But signing into my Microsoft account and trying to get the Office suite installed … headache on top of headache. I absolutely had to have those tools on my computer, being halfway through two different projects. My first intimation that Microsoft’s customer services sucks donkey balls – I went around and around on my account, but always came back to – having to pay for the subscription service again. (WHY? Adobe.com was perfectly transparent, and the services that I had already paid for were readily installed.) Bit the bullet and paid for the subscription anew.

Straight, so far? On Friday, Microsoft charged me for the yearly subscription, even though I had just two weeks previously – paid for a new subscription, because I couldn’t install the previously existing subscription package on the new computer. I signed into my account and tried to file a complaint, and request for a refund … and this time I went around and around for more than an hour. They are insidious in their customer service, you see. I twice tried calling the help telephone numbers I eventually found … and got a recorded message which sent me a link which referred me to another Microsoft website page … which circled back to where I had been before. I couldn’t cancel the transaction, couldn’t even change it to a monthly billing, they didn’t even recognize or accept my phone number (what? Although they could send an automated text message to that number.) Eventually, I found a page where I could file my complaint and describe my problem in a hundred characters or less. How very generous of them. No other option for filing a complaint or notifying them of a problem, which seems pretty measly, considering how large a company it is, and presumably stuffed full of technologically knowledgeable employees.

I did get an automated email answer – but one which asked that I type my reply above a line above … which couldn’t be done. Yes, Microsoft customer service sucks donkey balls. Even Amazon has better customer service; yes, they do low-key the contact email and number to call, but with a little persistence, you can eventually speak to a real human being. AT&T, my own bank, our local utility company – all do a much better job. Frankly, I’m convinced that Microsoft doesn’t really want customer interaction of any kind. They just want your money; customer satisfaction isn’t anywhere in the same room, or the building. Monopolies can operate like that, for a while, anyway.

Me, I hope for a refund, eventually, or just for communication with a human being in customer service – or for the SMOD to land on Redmond, Washington State. At this point, I figure the odds are equally split.

Visions of History on the Big and Small Screens

07. February 2022 · Comments Off on Visions of History on the Big and Small Screens · Categories: Domestic, Old West, Random Book and Media Musings

I am tempted to start watching the series 1883 – and likely will, as soon as it appears in one of our regular streaming services, but I am wondering, just reading about it – how far into the episodes I can get before walking away.

I mean, we barely lasted one episode into Texas Rising; a hideous and heartbreaking waste of time and video, being shot mostly in the wild mountains of Durango, Mexico, which bore no resemblance at all to the topography of Texas.* And no, the chapel of the Alamo does not have a crypt. They did get two things right, although the rest of the series was a cringe-fest, according to viewers who had stomachs stronger than mine. Texas did fight a war for independence from the Centralist dictatorship of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, and there was a battle at the Alamo in San Antonio, and another at San Jacinto, barely six months later. Otherwise, Texas Rising was heartbreaking for Texas history fans, because it could have been a totally enthralling account of the war for independence and the fight for independent statehood – elements and incidents which were so dramatic and improbable that hardly anything needed to be made up out of whole cloth.

That series and countless others fell into a common fault of movies and television series when ‘doing’ a Western – that is, a story set on the American frontier in the 19th century – wherever that frontier happened to be in any given decade from the 1820s on to the end of that century. The common failing is to run it all together in one murky blur, as if technologies large and small remained constant, as did fashions, the political and geographical landscape, relations with various Indian tribes. As I wrote in this essay, several years ago, “there were very specific and distinct places, as different as they could be and still be on the same continent. 1880’s Tombstone is as different from Gold Rush-era Sacramento, which is different again from Abilene in the cattle-boom years, nothing like Salt Lake City when the Mormons first settled there – and which is different again from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s small-town De Smet in the Dakota Territory – or any other place that I could name, between the Pacific Ocean and the Mississippi-Missouri.”

Setting the series to start in 1883 is curious enough – it’s just rather late in the history of the frontier to generate a long-trail wagon-train journey, and from Texas to Montana, too. The western market in beef cattle was about to go bust by the middle of that decade, and the northern ranges ravaged by two especially harsh winters in a row. The various Indian wars along the frontier were done and dusted, all but the last uprising of the Lakota Sioux, inspired by the Ghost Dance movement. The transcontinental railroad had been completed long since. By the mid-1880s just about every major city in the United States and Canada was connected by a network of shining steel rails, obliviating the necessity of a long and dangerous journey by wagon-train across all-but-empty lands in most of the trans-Mississippi west. A cast interview that I did read mentioned that the producers and directors were going all out for authenticity. Well, we’ll see, eventually. I recollect reading an article in Smithsonian, of all places – which lauded all the ways in which the producers of The Patriot were going all out in historical fidelity, but once I watched that movie, I realized that the authenticity was all in small details, such as props, costumes and weaponry … just not the whopping big plot elements, personalities and key incidents. I’m afraid that I will find the series 1888 to be another helping of the same old stuff.

*Wierdly enough – the movie The Highwaymen got the topography exactly right. Yes – the wide lonely vistas, the two-lane paved roads with the line of spindly power poles along-side and the bare fields of new corn or cotton, or whatever spreading out on either side, the tiny roadside gas stations … were exactly right. The small towns, and transient camps, the little tourist cabin enclaves … also exactly right, as to time and place. I have pictures of my own, taken on various road trips which can affirm this.  I don’t know how much that the production company for The Highwaymen spent to do location shooting – can’t have been more than Texas Rising – but one big production got it right, and the other fell spectacularly flat when it came to the ‘look’ of places.

Lifestyles of the Gilded Age Rich

20. January 2022 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic

I see from a couple of stories in the Daily Mail and on various blogs that I follow, stories and comment regarding Julian Fellows’ new series, The Gilded Age. It has finally come to fruition, after I noted it almost a decade ago, and predicted … well, not very much hope for the project. Well, good luck to the guy – he was about the consistently most amusing of all the reoccurring characters on the series Monarch of the Glen.

I might actually watch The Gilded Age, always remembering the massive thud made by the Beacon Hill series made in the mid-1970s, when another TV producer sought to duplicate the enormous success of Upstairs, Downstairs with something of the same privileged-family upstairs and hardworking staff below stairs, and same era in an American setting. It didn’t fly back then; didn’t even last a season. I guess with the success of Downton Abbey, Mr. Fellows is certain that his luck has changed and for the better.

Alas, the problem in translating English upper-class to American upper-class remains; it’s not ever an exact translation. Julian Fellows may have better luck in spotting his pseudo-aristocratic follies in New York, when Mrs. Astor and Ward McAllister held social sway over the fabled 400. But the fortunes and foibles of the very, very rich in 1880s America were otherwise widely spread, across the entire continent and in too many specific industries. New York high society might be the closest equivalent to English society of the same era, where the ton gathered in London, and around the fabled ‘Season’ of society events, festivals, customs, and social practices. Otherwise, the American richer class were too widely dispersed, with their own ‘seasons’ events and practices, differing favored schools for the education of their young, churches for the binding in marriage of their scions, and neighborhoods for the construction of their monumental mansions. There was no single one cynosure for ‘society’ as Americans knew it, save for a limited slice of it in New York, once upon a day. Every notable region and city had their nobs and nobility – some of them, like the widow of inventor and industrialist Samuel Colt (who might have been the single wealthiest woman in America from mid-19th century on) didn’t even bother to play the New York high society game at all.  Drawing them all together into one narrative for the purpose of dramatic story-telling … glad it’s not my job, and I do wish Mr. Fellows the best of luck in his endeavors in this regard. I have occasionally amused myself by mentally putting together a series which would draw in all the various strands of wealth during the gilded age … maybe something set in a posh resort hotel, like the one on Mackinac Island, or at Saratoga Springs or a health spa like the Kellogg establishment.

Real Life Marches On…

09. January 2022 · 1 comment · Categories: Domestic

Real life ought to march on through the garage a little more often … my daughter and I set Wee Jamie in the middle of his playmat on the big double bed in my bedroom Saturday morning and went to tackle the garage … Hey, why does a nice single woman of advanced years like you need a double bed?! Hey, I want my half IN THE MIDDLE!! So there! Between Small Doggie wanting to be at one quadrant under the covers on cold nights, and Isabelle the Not-Tightly-Wrapped-Siamese wanting another quadrant for herself, I am lucky to be able to claim the middle sector.

Anyway, the garage needs a good turn-out and reorganization of the contents, what with all the … umm… stuff in it. There’s a boxed high chair, a play table for Wee Jamie, and a little work desk with chair when he ages into the needs for it, a couple of other items for him when he is slightly older, some stuff that he has grown out of which needs to be trucked to a friend of ours with an incipient grandchild who will need it, a few things saved against the eventual kitchen reno, another bunch of construction materials which need to be safely organized and stashed away, a whole lotta tools also in crying need of an organization … hey, we had almost a dozen foam and fiber disposable paint brushes, knocking around the inner recesses of the garage! Really, the garage had descended all unknowing into the state where it was just simpler to buy another one, rather than go on an expedition searching for it.

Three unopened tubes of various construction calk. Well, now that is safely sorted into a new wheeled tool-box, with simply everything inside it…

My daughter did a run to Goodwill yesterday, another one today. And consigned a couple of things to the trash can or the curb, for whoever wants them. We went right back to it this morning, ruefully conceding that this will be a project which will consume most of the next week, perhaps the next weekend as well, as we have only got as far as the corner with the workbench, a quarter of one wall and the niche where the freezer and the hot water heater are. But at least now the corner with the tool bench is organized, and all the chargers for various battery-operated tools are set up and charging, and the tools themselves hung neatly in a row on the wall. A large part of the problem is that there is a lot of furniture set aside for my daughter’s future independent establishment, several boxed items meant in the near future for Wee Jamie – like the little toddler-sized desk and chair – and some like the porcelain farmhouse sink intended for my eventual kitchen reno. There are also lengths of baseboard, beadboard, architectural trim and a box of vinyl flooring to be used in the near future on other renovation projects. All must be re-staged in a more space-saving mode, so that I can get my car back into the garage, once it is ransomed from the paint and body shop, which had it to work on over the holidays, after the misadventure with the hood coming loose and smashing into the windshield and roof two months ago.

And I used to think that it was a good thing I wasn’t moving every year, or three years or so. The drastic thinning of possessions which must happen with families who have lived in the same house for a hundred years or more doesn’t really bear thinking about.

« Older articles
Newer articles »