• Tag Archives remodeling

  • “In general there’s a lot of sameness in the songs and videos today. It all runs in to one mishmash” ~ Christine McVie

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    Since it’s obviously been a while, there’s quite a few things I guess I can cover.

    Click for article @ Dallas Observer
    Photo Credit: Alison V. Smith ~ Click photo for article @ Dallas Observer

    * Fairly recently, I was shocked to see that someone I had met had passed away. Frankie 45, lead singer/guitarist of Spector 45 passed away on New Year’s Eve/Day. I had met him at Club Dada, when Unknown Hinson had swung through. Or at least I think that’s when I met him….

    He was tending bar, jumped from behind the bar to play a set, then jumped back behind the bar. I asked him how he liked his Electromatic 5120 – he said that he loved it. I was tremendously impressed that he did that – returning to tending bar covered in sweat after frantically jumping, singing, and soloing all over the stage.

    One of the things that struck me about his passing was my reflection about how I’ve never really accomplished what I wanted to do in a musical setting. Here was this kid MAKING it HAPPEN. Seems that all my musical heroes had the drive to get it done – it’s what they pursued. While Frankie wasn’t a hero of mine per se, I gave the guy a lot of credit for getting out there and doing what he obviously loved. I now wish I had that kind of drive at his age. Until he passed I didn’t realize what a fixture he was in Deep Ellum.  Extremely nice guy, and a loss to the Dallas music scene.

    That being said, I look back at the wasted years of much of my youth and wonder what I could have done with myself had I pushed myself.  Did my upbringing contribute to my lack of focus? I’m sure it did, but quantitatively, how much – and how little?  My limiting thought process holds me back, as I’m sure it did back then too.

    * We’ve been working on a bunch of different rooms in the house, but because we’ve spread the work around, there’s no one “complete” room ready for photography.  My house is definitely becoming a very swank pad (thanks babe!). My daughter, who is typically the one who has seen the worst then the “big reveal”, has also been tremendously impressed. Of course, she’s also semi-patiently waiting for me to finish reworking her bathroom – which is taking some time while I strip some more tile out.

    * I’ve been doing a ton of work on another portion of my blog, “So you wanna be in a band?” – in which I’ve reworked a lot of graphics and images and cleaned up formatting at least twice over. I contacted J Yuenger (the writer of the material) and he kindly linked his blog to mine – his original plan was to scan the magazines in after retrieving them from storage. I personally know how much of a pain that is, so I’m glad this ended up being helpful to him. I added some scans of Tattoo Magazines that made an impression on me around that time too.

    * The Wanda Jackson/Jack White album is pretty cool. I dig it.

    * Lastly, I had a hernia check by my General Practicioner when I was eight or so. I then some twenty years later stood behind him in the Montrose Disco Kroger in Houston, trying to figure out where I knew him from. It’s a little disconcerting when you realize that the dude you’re standing behind had his hands on your scrote at some point in your life.


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  • “You’d have thought we threatened to release the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.” Herb Kelleher

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    How did you spend X-mas week? I bet you didn’t decide to host guests on the preceeding Monday of Christmas Day and remodel your entire dining room like we did!

    Long in the works, we started several weeks ago by procuring a console in the hopes that it could be used as a side console table where liquor could be stored – or at least hide the cat litter boxes in it. Scored off of Craigslist for $20, it only took some transit gasoline and some manpower to get it to the house. Deciding that we would host pushed the remodel process a lot more quickly than we had originally planned.

    Console:

    Before:


    We lightly sanded it, and spray primed it – finishing with a flat black paint.

    Table/Chairs:

    We also had my original dining room table and chairs from my childhood home. This remarkably modern dining room set is somewhere around forty years old. Surprising how timeless they ended up looking. Unfortunately, the natural dark wood finish did look a little dated – or at least did not fit into our overall plan. Originally buried (and unused) under tons of household detritus, we cleaned it off and prepped it for paint. Sanded both table and chairs, spray primered and finished with a flat black.

    Before:

    Flooring:

    Beyond the actual furniture, the dining room floor itself was a disaster.  When the house was purchased, the crappy carpet was pulled and it was discovered there was nothing but concrete floor.  For the remainder of the years that I’ve owned it *6* the floor has been nothing but unappealing and unwelcoming concrete. At this point in the remodel project, we had already extended the paint into the dining room.

    Before:

    Stymied for last minute, easy flooring options, one of Rochelle’s co-workers suggested vinyl flooring.  Easy enough for the novice to pull off in several hours, we rolled the dice. It came out great! Each piece of vinyl was 6″ x 36″ and attached to itself – like a giant carpet of vinyl (when done anyway).  Looks like wood, durable, easy to install.

    After:

    David sucks at painting, so Rochelle handled most of the paintwork involved in the dining room furniture and the console.

    Console after:

    Table and chairs after:

    Casual observers will note the trippy seat cushion pattern – which is actually the original upholstery for these chairs!  The chairs had been recovered twice, but we found the original trippy blue/green/yellow worked great with the black furniture and the mood we were trying to create.

    Chair detail:

    After that, all that was left was decoration.

    The final product:

    It came out excellent – especially since this project was more or less put into motion on a Monday evening, and finished on the following Saturday morning.


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