many stories to tell.

Hey, people. Apologies for the lack of updates. I wish I could say it's because we're all too busy counting stacks of money or hanging out in the solid gold jacuzzi, but this is false.

I've just been enjoying summer, working hard, and diffusing the odd occasional (figurative) bomb.

Boom

Well, when I last wrote in any kind of a serious way, it was about the ceiling leaking again. It started happening while we were watching 4th of July fireworks, and it got worse overnight. An investigative team was sent upstairs and we quickly determined that the neighbor's troublesome water heater was acting up again. Last time, it was spewing water. But on this occasion, the water heater was sporting an obvious bulge on the side.

"Is that bad?"

Um, yeah. A bulging water heater could blow at any moment, rocketing through the ceiling and destroying everything in its path. We filed out of the building into the alley and called the landlord to tell him that the building was about to explode. (Insert Three Stooges sound effects.)

The landlord came over with a whole crew the next day. The problem was taken care of and the day ended with a 20-person cookout on the roof. It was a lovely evening of good food, a cooing baby learning to walk while everyone cheered, dogs chasing each other playfully, good conversation, and the heartwarming if not nerdy feeling that maybe Renard has become a cultural experiment, too. A girl on the third floor pointed out that in the years before we moved here, no one knew anything of other tenants aside from petty arguments over parking spaces and misbehaving pets. But this summer has seen a few all-building cookouts and we've been getting along fine. I was realizing that the building is becoming better, not just structurally.

It was a fuzzy feeling that didn't last long.

Blackout drunks in love

We have (had?) a young couple in the building. Apparently their romance has officially run its course, and one person decided that the best way to end a relationship is to eschew honesty and take the easier option - making up a bunch of colorful fairy tales about a romance that never happened, involving someone who lives at Renard. Since their hours of sobriety are few and far between, this lie became absolute truth to both of these kids, and the resulting fallout was not pretty.

No amount of talking and cool-out time resolved anything, so one person partially moved out. I snapped into protective mom-like ninja mode, stormed upstairs, and made it very clear to the other person that for messing with our family, their time in this building is up, and that it's time to move. We'll see what happens.

But wait! It gets better.

Adjoining storefront haunted by bad vibes

When the ladies of the cake shop in our adjoining storefront announced they were moving to D.C., we all had some mixed feelings. They were good neighbors who were blissfully quiet and stayed to themselves, something we (foolishly) didn't value at the time. But at the same time, possibilities opened to us. We toyed with the idea of renting it out and starting a cafe, knocking down the wall and expanding our space, moving business there and keeping Renard Proper as our quiet living quarters, or turning the whole thing into a design/printing shop and charging membership to neighborhood artists.

The space sat vacant for about a month when I walked into a situation that I figured would temporarily benefit a lot of people. The landlord needed the space filled in any way possible, and some friends of mine were looking for a space to host the sleeping area for a moped rally one weekend in July. They were expecting 150 people at the rally, but 60 were out-of-towners who needed a big space to pitch tents and sleep after rides. I was assured there would be no noise and no partying. The landlord was desperate to fill it, and they worked out a pretty great deal - $300 for four days.

The moped kids held up their end of the bargain - they were quiet, clean, respectful, and fun. I was glad to help and thought the weekend was a success... until Michelle and Jeremiah noticed that one of their mannequins was missing from the basement. We ended up finding it in the space next door with all its fingers broken off. Annoying, but not a complete tragedy - I guess we were all just disappointed that while we've fully expected to be broken into at least once in this space, the safety of our house was first broken by people I indirectly know, who were only there because I was helping them.

Moral: never help anyone ever.

And there was no breathing room after that. The moped kids left abruptly a day before they were expected to leave, and word circulated that "the new tenant" booted them out so she could paint the space. And then we lived through many tense days of this new tenant interacting with us only to force Brad into helping with the plumbing in her basement or to complain about the state of the courtyard. Specifically, she hates our recycling system. She thinks it's going to attract rats. She doesn't like the table on the porch. Granted, it's an ugly table that is slowly caving in on itself, but it's where we drink our coffee in the morning, play cards with neighbors (before their relationship imploded), entertain guests... so for a while, things were kind of ugly. It didn't help that her "apology" was little more than marching into my house and announcing "Everyone hates me when they first meet me." Ugh.

Weeks have passed and we've mostly gotten through the growing pains. I think we've made it abundantly clear that we've worked too hard on our space to be pushed around.

Love rules

But it's not all bad news, especially for Michelle and Jeremiah.

There was an incident at the July Critical Mass ride. Perhaps you read about it in the paper. If not, let the photos speak for themselves. I dare you not to get misty-eyed:

They continued the bike ride and then came back to a big engagement party at Renard that raged until dawn.

New neighbor

Our neighbors in the building next door had a baby! She was due June 23, and we enjoyed a day or two of the nervous father-to-be shouting updates off the roof. It was a home birth, and I believe it was something like 39 hours of labor. Yikes. And the baby wasn't born until July 11.

A few of us went over to their place about a week later. We hung out with the baby, drank some tea, ate frozen peaches, and talked about life. It was the perfect summer day.

Little things

The garden is going really well. We're a little worried because it's been such an unusually chilly summer and it's not looking like our vegetables will grow fully. I'm still excited because I'm working out plans to turn the little patio area behind the gallery reception desk into a green house. More on that soon.

Beach wrestling is now recognized at the official sport of Renard.

We're developing plans for the basement bathroom (at long last), but the upstairs bathroom is still incomplete. It's a little annoying and I fear that houseblindness has settled in. At least I make it a habit of buying slate every time I hit Home Depot. Piece by piece, it's all coming together. So the kitchen is very close to being finished.

I promise to stop slacking on updates.

this and that

Brad cutting tile for the bathroom

Row#1 is down and ready for cabinet installation

Laying the slate

Creative ways to contain bisbehaving wildlife, number 738

Grilling

Just before the rest of the cabinets went up

kitchen counter

Tribute to the Beast

This is the Beast, a hole in the kitchen floor that goes straight to the basement. We're eventually patching it from beneath so we can finish laying down the hardibacker and start tiling.  But can you believe this thing?

Disasters and discoveries

I had to check the date of my last entry twice. I feel like I just wrote yesterday but I guess it's been a week already. I don't even know where to begin with the updates. I guess I'll start with the bathroom.

We're all geeked on Hardibacker. Have you seen this stuff? We heard about it when we were just about tapped for ideas on the floor which is, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, a patchwork of cracked cement, linoleum, cracked tile with more tile showing underneath, paint-stained and rotting wood, duct-taped planks (?!) and holes that lead straight through to the basement. At first we thought plywood would do the trick, but research led us to more questions and frustration. Plywood apparently does nothing for unlevel surfaces and is not guaranteed to settle evenly. Hardibacker is risky, tough to cut (heavy) and a bit expensive, but we've heard from multiple sources that it's going to save our necks. 
http://www.onlinetips.org/hardibacker-tile-installation

Installation went pretty well.

We had to take out the toilet to cut the last piece. Tossed the old wax ring once it was determined to be older than all of us combined - gross. After the toilet was taken out and parked in the hallway, we tore out some of the rotting nastiness of the back wall. We found old wood slats for plaster and a ton of mold. It was a disheartening find to say the least. Every day we demo, we find even more unpleasant surprises. We've decided to put up drywall in place of the old wall. We wanted to put up some more Hardibacker and just tile the whole bathroom for the purposes of easy cleaning, except hardibacker isn't really a weight-bearing material. So the idea was scrapped. 

We let the hardibacker set overnight. The next day, Sunday, was all about tiling.

We had a couple minor incidents of tile slippage, but not much else to speak of. And many of the final tiles were put down in the dark. We shut off a circuit due to some shady wiring we keep finding more of. We wanted to grout today, but couldn't because it rained. This may seem like a funny statement, but if you write it with heavy heart over the fact that the search for aforementioned shady wiring left a slight open strip in the ceiling that made way for a roof leak to spill freely onto your new tiling job, it's not quite so amusing.  

Supposedly, the back roof was replaced a few years ago for an astronomical amount of money. So we shouldn't have rain pooling and leaking into the house, but we do. And to top it all off, our search for the source of the leak was hampered slightly by a metric ton of proof that the upstairs resident has decided to let her dogs use the roof as a bathroom... again. Even after promising to stop. We need to work on the gutters and hopefully get a downspout aimed at an open field next to the building. And we need a five-inch cap to cover an old heating vent. That should take care of it... we hope.

Monday was spent waiting for the gas man to come check our meter and do a little inspection. He informed us that our water heater is spewing water everywhere and is costing us money. We were aware of this and just sort of blinked in response. The phrase "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind. Water heater on the fritz? Cool. Maybe we'll get to it after we know the bathroom ceiling won't collapse and Jeremiah's done pulling out all the 60-year-old wiring that threatens to, y'know, burn us all to death in our sleep. 

The internet guy came on Monday afternoon too. Not to borrow from "Money Pit" again, but the look on the poor installation guy's face was priceless when he walked into Renard. There was a sink and toilet in the hallway, tools and hardware scattered through the work area, tile debris and dust on every square inch of the living room, a crazed chihuahua running laps around the kitchen, and junk everywhere. I was barefoot, drinking coffee and watching "Maury," now mostly oblivious to our quaint little disaster area. I half expected him to make a crack about bomb testing. But he quietly went about his work and left. The internet still doesn't work. Our account has been open for two weeks and we've had nothing resembling a connection. AT&T has bungled this operation from day one. They've fought us on every step of the way, be it through delays, outright lies, lack of communication, general ineptitude, you name it. We've spent many hours on the phone with AT&T and only tonight discovered that (surprise) it's a wiring problem on our end.

Brad has finally been able to start work on his room. This is going to be the bachelor pad to end all bachelor pads, people. He moved a drafting table and a swanky-looking fish tank setup down there before anything else and has said he's going with plexiglass walls, so I'm pretty excited to see how it'll turn out. With few space constraints, he's breaking ground on a big expanse of the basement. They started building today. But first they had to power wash everything and start painting over years of bad graffiti. 

 

The studio saga is ongoing. Jeremiah has determined that the studio floor is just shy of a two-inch thick slab of cement, and then dirt. This explains the mold and perpectual wetness. We aim to lay cement this week. 1200 pounds of it. The landlord is going to brick up some of the walls and then we can get cracking. But first, he'll have to pull out all the dirt someone cleverly used as insulation. This move was almost as creative as the cardboard crammed in the ceiling that Brad found when he was priming the basement walls.

Jeremiah found a bag of rat poison in the basement. It was unopened and the receipt placed the purchase to way back in 2000, but at least we know there is some here. We'll have to figure out a way to clean up any more that's probably in the house.

And it would seem that the one problem that's been plaguing us since the day we found the space has finally been solved - the arrangement of the kitchen. The major appliances are in place and three of our four cabinets were bought today and over the weekend. We found an arrangement that fits. We're drawing up plans for an island (that Brad's kickass dad is going to help us with). By the end of this week we aim to stain the cabinets, find a sink, lay down hardibacker and tile, hook up wiring and outlets to the appliances, and maybe even build a wall between the kitchen and living room. 

It never ends. But at least now it's happening quickly.

The good, the bad, and the... vermin.

To say we've been busy would be putting it mildly. It's been one of the busiest weeks to date and we've had more than one snag, but we're working through it.  Just to give an idea of how things have been going:

Good: We found three essential kitchen appliances for cheap on Craigslist. They're relatively new and in fantastic shape.

Bad: As soon as they were in the space, we realized for the first time that they're cream-colored and will not match anything we own.

Good: Appliance paint is always an option.

Bad: We can't fully agree on colors yet. And even if we could, the large expanse of exposed brick in the kitchen has severely limited our color options.

Good: We worked out some ways to run power trials to figure out where our leaks are, what uses the most energy and if anyone else is using our grid without paying. (The first floor was abandoned for a number of months and while we do trust our neighbors, we can't rule out the possibility that this has happened.)

Bad: As soon as we patted ourselves on the back for coming up with solutions, we called the electric company and were informed that based on past bills for the space, a $1100 security deposit will be required. This estimate is incorrect for multiple reasons - the space used to be twice as big, was zoned commercially at the time, and was a late-night gym that sucked up tons of power. We asked to be transferred to another operator. After 25 minutes of pacing,  foot-stomping, hand-wringing and more than a few swear words, we have bypassed this requirement.

Good: Bedroom #1 is painted and the ambitious lofted bed/closet was built over the weekend. It's a sight to behold - it's going to be the kind of bedroom worthy of being splashed across Apartment Therapy and design magazines. Well done, roomies!

Bad: We've been told we're crazy if we consider laying down Bedroom #1's cement floor before summer, and we really need it done now. It doesn't help that it's been 40 degrees for something like thirteen consecutive days.

Good: After finally coming up with a kitchen layout that works, moving all work-related things to the gallery, and honing in on a final date for a completed bathroom, Renard is finally starting to resemble a home instead of the cold and dirty semi-abandoned space it once was.

Bad: While we were all out for Easter, a little mouse wandered into the workspace in the furnace room and quietly gave up the ghost. Not only do we not want vermin (obviously), the point was raised that mice don't typically come right out into the open to croak. It makes me believe he ate something that didn't agree with him. I'm hoping it was sweeping compound or something. If we have rat poison anywhere on the premises, we're in trouble. We have three cats and a dog moving in and once rat poison has been put out even in one location, the little buggers disperse it everywhere and you'll never find it all. We'll keep our eyes open for more bitty corpses.

Good: The print work is taking off, our independent art endeavors are paying well, and most of us are due some pretty good tax returns.

Bad: Nothing. Ba-ZING!

adulthood is...

... discovering that shower stall walls were built in your unfinished bathroom overnight, and finding yourself  immediately overcome with a giddiness that rivals Christmas morning.

...and then turning the corner into the hallway and realizing in your zeal to be finished with priming and painting, you packed in all the supplies without priming a huge area. You know, the gigantic one that's been casting its neon purple and aqua disco glow all over the place since day one. Nice.

The sewage pits have been filled and cemented, so it looks like Brad has the green light to start his bedroom.

Meeting with the plumbers today, and picking up a fridge later.

I've saved the best news for last: we may not have a working sink for the next few days, but as of yesterday, we have hot water.

Progress, regress, progress: 3 steps forward, 1 step back

We first looked at the space around Valentine's Day.  Less than a month and a half later, progress is finally starting to show (pics to come).

Both bedrooms were primed fully, one bedroom has been painted with bedroom #1 getting its first coat of paint last night.  Bedroom #2 has had some IKEA TUNDRA laminate flooring installed (about 90% complete).  With paint and a floor, it actually looks liveable and serene.

The bathroom plumbers brought a shower pan in (48" unit), and started to move the pedestal sink over.  We're hoping for a working sink and shower by week's end, which leaves us the gritty work of laying down tile to complete it.  We were hoping for a slightly larger shower unit, but every plumber we talked to said avoid the 60" models for fear of cracking them.  Weird how decent plumbers will actually say no to more money if they know things won't work well.

The basement looks great -- all the walls and studs were removed, most of the sewage concerns have been handled by the same plumbers, and powerwashing of the walls continues slowly to remove decades of grime, mold, mildew, and who knows what else.  We found a few minor basement floor water spots where water is coming up from underground.  We're planning on patches these moisture areas ASAP so we can start working out of the space come May 1st.

The plumbers have run the kitchen faucet lines awaiting my purchase of a sink and faucet.  That'll be the last "first step" stage completion for a almost-liveable work-live space: bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen.  We're still unsure what we're doing with the kitchen space (cabinets and appliances aren't cheap), but once we have the bedrooms and bathrooms done, we'll knock the kitchen out in a matter of a week or so.

Now that we're working during the day, the south-facing bedroom sunlight is amazing.  With bedrooms big enough to handle a bed, a couch and work desks for all, we're excited to utilize the space for all our needs: business, lounging and entertainment.  Our hope is to have a grand opening party for friends and family around the second week of June.

Today I'm battling with Comcast to get Internet service installed, but we keep running into problems.  They're saying it's a commercial space (about 3 times as expensive to run Internet to), we're saying it's a live space.  More details to come in a week after their business department reliquishes the space to their residential department.

The printshop business acquired its first two customers last week, and we're hoping to get our first orders this week.  Much excitement there.

still working away

Today looks like the last day of priming. We've given up on regular sweeping and have called in the help of sweeping compound for what seems like endless drywall dust and chipped bricks. I'm going to get cracking on the year + of dried-up, caked-on dust and dirt on all of the heating ducts because it's been driving me nuts since day one.

We hope to have the place habitable in two weeks or so. After priming is painting. After painting, we pour the cement and lay down some laminate flooring. Then the shower goes in, then we wrangle with the kitchen that still won't put itself together. New problem: where do we put the range hood? One of those things we just haven't thought of until now.

No one said it, but we were all thinking it: the seven-foot sheet of plywood that covers up what was once the giant hole in the hallway floor is not stable. I thought I was the only one holding my breath every time I walked over it and swearing I'd never walk over it again. But it's been in place for a couple of weeks, and the creaks and sways are not mere settling. We have to get someone on that this week too before (gulp) moving day.

Good news about the basement: we think we'll be able to put in a second bathroom for Brad to save him walking the length of the entire place (and a flight of stairs) to come upstairs.

Bad news about the basement: because it's early and I'm running on six gallons of coffee and some especially greasy hash browns, I don't have the stomach to detail what it is exactly that Jeremiah found in the basement plumbing-wise. Hint: certain things are not meant to be flushed. Especially repeatedly, for years on end. Hint two: I'm no plumber, but sewage pipes are supposed to lead to sewers, right? 

And I guess our dream rooftop garden will be delayed while we seal the roof and find a way to convince one of the tenants that the roof above our bedrooms, while conveniently located, is not an appropriate place for her to let her dogs relieve themselves.  

Our spirits aren't dampened, though. It'll just make for incredible stories months from now when the joint is so amazing that no one will even believe the state in which we found it.