Meet Tallulah

The short story is that I released the kitten after her recovery then trapped the extremely feral cat we thought was her mother. That cat, who saved the kitten's life and doted on her, turned out to be male and Feline Leukemia Positive. He could not be released back into the "wild", he was not a cat who could be domesticated and the consensus among the veterinarians was to euthanize him. It was one of the worst things I have ever had to do and he is buried out back under his favorite bird hunting spot.

The kitten had to be isolated and tested for Leukemia at three and again at six months. The original plan was that the studio was going to be a cat free zone. Well, I thought, OK, six months. She sat at the front door and watched for her parent cat for weeks.

But here she is as a wild kitten...



... scrawny and flea bitten.



And here she is, a month or so later, helping with art history research.




Fourteen months later, she is as much a part of this studio as I am. She has it made, is content, thriving (Leukemia free) and, I admit it, I am head over heels in love with her.

What can I say? I mean, look at her.



To paraphrase Jean Cocteau, the cat is the soul of the studio made visible.

Tom's Truck

Way back when J. quit and I was momentarily destabilized, I called my friend Tom Kimmel to tell him that I'd take him up on his offer to loan me his truck. He said, and I quote, just keep it as long as you need to. Apparently I needed to keep it for about 3 months. Tom's loan of his truck to me was the single most empowering event throughout this experience. It was amazing how quickly I became adept at tooling around in the pick up. The two most important things were first that someone would be kind enough to extend such trust and generosity in the midst of my chaos and second that I could go do and pick up anything I needed to in the course of the building without waiting for or relying on someone I'd have to hire. I heaved and hoed bricks and lumber and trim and dirt and plants and god know's what else. A great liberation to be able to do it on my own. Thanks again, Tom!

Humor

Norman Cousins said that laughter is the best medicine and of course, he was right.

I have no idea how I managed to pull this book off the library shelf but I did and am glad of it. All about construction scams (and other things) after a south Florida hurricane, filled with dirty deeds and hoodwinked home owners (and other scenarios and characters). I got a good laugh reading this book at the perfect time. Thank you, Carl Hiaassen.

Apparently, I am compelled to tell you that I read it in regular type but the large print was all that was on the shelf yesterday for scanning.

Comfort

One day, I ran into a familiar face at the grocery store and racked my brain to remember through which contractor I knew the person. As it turned out, he ran a club where I'd performed. Yikes! I was a little too immersed in the project for my own good. He did, however, share the experience he and his wife (Jennifer O'Neill) had with contractors when they renovated their home the previous year. "Yeah", he said "They'll take your money, do a bad job and then make you out to be the guilty party for their shoddy work and rant at you if you expect the work to be done right." Or something to that effect.

Only then did it start to dawn on me that I was not alone in my experience. (Always a comforting moment.) Up till that point I was thinking that I must be asking the impossible or impossible to work for or hopeless at supervising workers on my own property.

I had always enjoyed reading Dominique Browning's editorial essays at the beginning of House and Garden issues and finally got around to reading her book Around the House and in the Garden. The timing could not have been better. The following paragraph stood out like a neon sign.

"I have a friend who, even years after its completion, could not talk about building her new house without crying, her experience with the contractor had been so devastating. I stood in my own newly renovated kitchen one day and watched rain drip from the ceiling. The roofer who finally showed up to fix what I thought was a leak pointed out that the doorsill in a room above the kitchen had been installed backward, so naturally rain was flowing into the house. It's been ten years since the renovation, and problems still crop up. Then there was the new furnace, which lasted a mere seven years of its lifetime guarantee (a concept, by the way, that is sheer fiction, lifetime being a self-defining characteristic—if it is broken, its lifetime has ended), installed incorrectly by a plumber who had the nerve to offer a discount on the installation of the next one. So I started all over again with another plumber. Each new contract I sign is an act of faith, and it is signed with a prayer that the work will be done, and done well, that ill will won't haunt the premises." Dominque Browning, Around the House and in the Garden (New York: Scribner, 2002 p.135)

After making my links for this post, I've discovered that the December 2007 issue of House and Garden will be the last. You can read Dominique Browning's final editorial here.

Rome in a day

One day, I opened The New Yorker and found this Bruce Eric Kaplan cartoon. Immediately, I cut it out and unceremoniously taped it to the inside of the studio front door. One day I'll look back on this and laugh, I thought. The cartoon is now taped above the sink in my supply room. I am posting Mr. Kaplan's cartoon without permission. I'm not sure if I need it. You can go hear an NPR interview with him here.

Tenpenny

This is Mr. Tenpenny. I met him and Aubrey on this back porch the day I first stopped to look at my house. Mostly, I visited with Mr. Tenpenny on his front porch. Aubrey would sit him out there in good weather and I'd go over and gab with him while Aubrey scraped around in the garden or cleaned up inside. I can't remember what we'd talk about. With Alzheimer's, you don't really talk about anything, you just sort of talk. Then I'd rush off to get back to whatever job was up that day in building. What's your rush?, he'd ask me. Rush? I have to finish that building!

Mr. Tenpenny grew up in that house — his father built it. At the end of that year, last December, Mr. Tenpenny passed away. I really don't know what I would have done without the two of them next door.

Good Neighbor

I lucked out in the next-door neighbor department. Aubrey was caretaker for old Mr. Tenpenny who was suffering from Alzheimer's. I probably called on him at least once a day. He never said "I can't help you" or "Go away". He always said or did something to help. He saw me cry once and swear a good bit. He laughed a lot. I'm sure that I was an immense source of entertainment.

Regrouping

As best as I can tell, this is the last photo of the studio for a while. Which is too bad because I missed some things I would like to have documented. The project quit being fun for a while and I really had to hustle to figure out what, exactly, still needed to be done and who was going to do it.

The building inspector was nice enough to come out, go through the building, and tell me what still needed to be done and how it should be done. I'd played a little in-the-round gig at a local club the weekend before and remembered Doug, the songwriter next to me mentioning that he was a reluctant carpenter. I found his number, called him up and, though I had to wait for a while, he carved out some time for me. Because of his intermittent availability, he recommended a second fellow as a sub. A publisher who'd been building and contracting for years came over, gave me his two cents and recommended a third songwriter/carpenter/handyman. Between the three of them and myself, we finished the miscellaneous work for the inspector and the subsequent work beyond. I worked hand in hand with each of them and it worked out pretty well for the most part.

I was really fortunate to be able to pick up and proceed without too long a delay. It just took me a while to get the camera back in my hand.

Quitting Time!

J. quit on the morning of his last scheduled day. I did something to piss him off but when I was thinking about this post earlier, I realized that he probably would not have quit had he thought there were additional days of immediate work ahead on this job. He pulled the center support beam securing things before bracing. Pulling it out at that stage wreaked some havoc with the front wall but I didn't find out about the consequences till later and it was nothing terribly serious. While it was a pain for things to be left unfinished and his quitting cost me some time and aggravation, when I look back through my journal for that time, I read that I was ultimately relieved to see him go. Naturally, a big storm blew in that afternoon and my very helpful next door neighbor, Aubrey, and one of his sons helped me seal up the gaping twin window hole before the rain fell.

At this point, I should say that blogs are designed for fresh content of the moment for good reason. I am finding it difficult to look back and honestly recreate the building process for a number of reasons. One reason is that for this particular building project, there was a lot of personality, emotion, stress and distress involved. Maybe that's true for all building projects. Or for a lot of them. Another reason is that I don't feel now the way I felt then and am not particularly enjoying reviewing certain aspects of the experience. Specifically the recounting of what various workers did wrong. I don't care about making a list of grievances. Although, things will go wrong in the building process and that's part of the story of making any building.

Nor do I care to list my own shortcomings in the process. For example, I discovered that "It's crooked" is my middle name. Or was my middle name. I finally realized that it's a crooked world or, as Alfred once said, it's all relative. One of the things that made me such a pain for the various contractors was that I would make them explain to me the results of various decisions I would have to make. I wasn't paying them to teach me, I was paying them to labor but, I mean, I had to understand whether one thing or another was going to risk a wall falling down, a pipe exploding or an electrical fire.

It was difficult for me to keep my head on straight about myself as various men, on my own property, who I would hand money to, would berate me or do some damage or make me wait for hours or days and then somehow reason that the berating, damage and delay was my fault.

What saved my shredding psyche was my next door neighbor, Aubrey, who was always kind, available and helpful, the truly great contractors including the roofer and especially the sheet rocker (who gets my gold star), some essays in Dominique Browning's Around the House and in the Garden and Carl Hiaasen's Stormy Weather. I'll go into detail about those and other helpful people and things in future posts but for now, I'll try to wrap this up. Let's see... my point was....

I guess it's that I thought I needed to tell this story but did not realize how complicated for me the telling would be, nor what a time-sink. I don't like pulling punches but I don't like bad-mouthing people either. I learned a lot and I made mistakes (and repeated some). Some of the mistakes I made were in hiring some of the people I did. But we have a happy ending ahead because I'm writing this on my comfy, messy day bed surrounded by my art books, looking out onto the pretty scenery of my yard from my private little room under the loft. And that's another reason I don't like wading through the icky business of the past. I came through that to get here. And I like it here.

Well, I'm into this story now. I may as well proceed.

The guest

Meanwhile....

Here's the thing, if I see the body of an animal that's been hit by a car in the street, I will stop (if I'm not endangering myself or others) and move the body to the side of the road because I think it's barbaric and obscene to leave the remnants of a living thing to be unceremoniously run over again and again as if it's of absolutely no consequence. So... driving home from an errand, I came upon a squirrel in the middle of a side street. When I stopped to move it, I discovered that it was still alive but stunned and limping. There happened to be two large dogs barking and making tracks for us so I put the squirrel in the back seat, drove it home, put it in one of the cat carriers and called the only wildlife rehabilitator in the region who talked me through the basics. A local vet took a look at the injured limb. Between the three of us, the solution seemed to be to let the squirrel rest up and see what might happen.



















He (she?) stayed in the guest room for about ten days, rested and ate apples, peanut butter, and some sort of rodent protein pellets. We were both a little frightened of each other. It was a challenge to clean the cage but I used thick work gloves. I did not name him or have even a fleeting thought of keeping him. At a certain point, I took him outside to see his reaction. He immediately directed every shred of energy to getting out of the carrier. So, I popped him back into the car, drove to where I'd originally found him and opened the carrier. Something to tell his grandsquirrels about.

Not a pretty sight

Here is command central where I made all the calls, kept all the plans, the files, the calculator, the mounting piles of receipts and god knows what else. Me and all of the kitchen chairs for company. In my little house, I had everything that had been stored in the shed, supplies and furniture that was going to be moved into the new studio, and all of those extra things that came with my recent move that I'd not had time to sort through and discard. The office/guest room was packed to the gills — I kept the door to that room closed. Increasingly, I also had fixtures, appliances and materials for the interior of the studio, taking up increasing amounts of space in the living room. The felines were confined to the bedroom. I mention all of this because in order for me to get from any point A in the house to any other point required considerable dexterity and planning.

Just to get in and out the back door (a frequent occurrence)




























and to plug in and unplug the extension cord for the power tools out back was an ordeal.

Soundtrack

During demolition and foundation work, the yard and trees were filled with Robins, busy with their nests. Once the framing work started, a Mockingbird with the most muscular voice I'd ever heard took up residence right in front of the studio-to-be and serenaded us throughout in no uncertain terms. J's cell phone had a rather obnoxious alarm sound for a ring — like a house burglar alarm. In no time, the mockingbird, to my dismay, had added the alarm to his repertoire. The fun part is that I have since been able to recognize that particular mockingbird whenever he comes to call.

The Stuff

Here's most of the Home Depot delivery. The plywood, OSB, bags of cement, black paper for the roof was delivered without much of a hitch though we did discover where the old septic tank is situated.

We put the pile of siding out of the way for the time being. You can see it stacked to the left of the trusses. The truss delivery truck managed to run over my young Leland Cypress:

Which I propped back up and am happy to say is now quite a bit taller than I am. The 2 x 4s would come in the morning and out of these little piles (more or less) we made quite a nice building. What's missing in these photos are the shingles, windows and doors. Oh, and the sheet rock. Plus, of course, everything inside.

One thing I am utterly proud of is the very little bit of waste we made in the process. Just a pile of dirt and hunks of cement that Willi let drip and harden and bits and pieces of this and that. Except for one heave-ho, most everything fit in the regular trash cans and nothing, that I can remember, was toxic. Ok, well, almost nothing.

Snowstorm

Snow fell like a blessing. Or a painting by Sisley.

Last Day of the Shed

I realize that I am bidding a long farewell to a somewhat nothing of a shed but the charm of what was left of this little building gave me the sense of another time and place and provided me with the inspiration to make a new building in its stead. Adieu!