fifi’s grafitti

I’m inspired by how many people can do a project every day. I hadn’t planned on doing a card-a-day project yet, but since the heat has me mostly hibernating indoors, and since the smell of the paint on the outside of the house deters me from painting on the inside, I’ve started doing a few […]

The smell of freshly ground and brewing beans may sound like an invitation as it winds its way up your nostrils. It’s not. Burt’s Bad Bird is watching you, just past the wooden gate topped by barbed wire. He is fierce. He is wise. He was Dead-Eye Dick in a former life. So keep on […]

I’ve been doing a lot of interior painting the last few months. Two rooms may not sound like a lot, but when you have raw drywall on ten-foot-high walls and on the ceiling, and unprimed doors and moldings it takes a lot more work than just slapping some white paint over an existing coat of […]

We’re getting insulated! The carpenters pulled off an upper row of clapboards around the house and today the cellulose will be blown in to fill the walls and put something between us and the outer air at last. The insulators have donned their hazmat suits, hardhats, and face masks and are prepping their machinery as […]

Here’s my latest use for those plastic bags my mom keeps getting at WalMart. I used two bags for each blade of the ceiling fan, attached with clothes pins to protect them while I’m painting. Painting’s a messy job. This is my mom’s bedroom. It’s a lot more work than rooms I’ve done in the […]

I don’t much like living in a construction zone. I hear the carpenters’ trucks pull up to the curb outside my bedroom window about 7:45 a.m. and I know it’s no use to try to catch a few more minutes of sleep. Within just a few minutes the two brothers in the white pickup are […]

I don’t think I’ve ever posted a photo of my old house. But here it is. I must have been crazy to buy it. It’s an odd little house that’s been in disrepair for many years. The left side is part of the original porch built about 1890. The middle is a newer enclosed porch […]

The bathroom project has reach a new stage: I need to pull out all the layers of old flooring so a new floor can be laid. In some ways demolition is one of my favorite parts of home improvement because it’s an archeological dig. You never know what you’ll find. The scary part in this […]