Progress, Big and Small

Progress continues on, some big… the previously mentioned new stairs… and some small. Here’s three of the smaller things.

First up, I’ve spent so much time either working on or planning the bigger projects that simply decorating the new place hasn’t been on the top of the agenda. Darling daughter Kristin assisted with that this week.

Kristin, an art and theatre design major at the University of Iowa, came home a week ago, bringing her artwork home with her. It didn’t take a genius, or a doting father in this particular case, to see an opportunity when it walks in the front door.

We went through her work and three of the pieces now decorate the walls of the main room. It’s amazing how artwork can make a room seem more complete.

We went through her work and three of the pieces now decorate the walls of the main room. It’s amazing how artwork can make a room seem more complete.

I like the one with the fish the best, particularly because I like the yellows and reds. And, if you stand on your head and look at that picture you'll see the fish isn't necessarily a fish.

She likes the one above that best because of the transparencies of the objects. We both like the cityscape. She's talking about stealing that from me, doing some extra work to it, and entering in the Iowa State Fair competition.

Second, not nearly on the same artistic scale but something that needed to be done was painting the white wicker hamper in the master bath. A hangover from the old house, it simply didn’t match the modern design in this place, nor the bathroom colors.

A couple of cans of spray paint solved that problem I didn’t want a solid brown so I first sprayed black randomly around the hamper and then followed it with the dark brown. The combination of blacks and browns, with just a little bit of the original white still there, gives the hamper much more texture.

Last, but not least, I added railing to the smaller portion of my office loft. The bedroom wall divides the front wall of the loft, neither side of which has railing.

For the smaller portion, on the outside of the bedroom facing the other railing in the house, I wanted something similar in design.

The bids I received from contractors for the roughly six feet section were somewhere between $500 and $1,000 due the custom metal work involved. That seemed a little excessive to me.

My solution was to take the top and bottom channels used for good old fashioned wrought iron railing, substituting the rails with the cables used on the other railing. I flipped the top railing upside down and attached the wood across the top.

The channels were a special order so they were more expensive but, all told, I spent roughly $100. People who have seen it couldn’t tell the difference from the other railing until I pointed it out to them, so I think, in this case, it was money well saved.

Chalk one up for CPR

Darling daughter (DD for short) and I had some fun yesterday for a good cause. We spent about an hour and a half out in front of Modern Woodmen Stadium doing chalk drawings of dead bodies.

I know that’s a bit of an eyebrow raiser when you first read it but there really was some logic to it.

This year marks our 13th annual CPR Saturday and to change things up a bit it’s been moved to June 6 (it had always been in February in past years), beginning at 5 p.m. , immediately prior to a Quad City River Bandits baseball game. We’re actually going to have the participants and instructors out on the baseball field and the training video will be shown on the stadium’s big screen, it should be a lot of fun.

Which brings me back to yesterday. To draw publicity to the event we decided to do chalk drawings out on the sidewalk as people were coming to yesterday’s game. In addition, we had a table inside the stadium where people could register for CPR Saturday.

And in case you’re wondering how dead body chalk drawings fit into all of this, the American Heart Association’s poster promoting CPR training features such a drawing with the slogan, “This life was saved by a friend who knew CPR.”

DD and I had a good time doing the drawings and drew a lot of attention which is what we were after. Two dozen people registered during the game and two television stations (KWQC and KLJB) stopped by and did reports for us.

People can still register for the event. The training is free and takes less than a half hour. We do ask people to register in advance so that we make sure to have enough instructors and mannequins available for everyone.

Our goal is to top 100 so we really need everyone to participate… and who knows who’s life you might save.

For information and to register contact Dawn Hamilton at Eastern Iowa Community College, 563-336-3452.

Finally.... stairs

Finally, at long last, I have stairs. It’s been a long and winding road, and in a way it still is.

To start at the beginning, when I purchased my new home last July I noticed this great loft space above the master bedroom. It’s the space immediately above, and the size of, the master bath and small walk-in closet.

The flooring, though not of a great quality, was finished and the phone, television and electrical outlets were already in place.

There was no doubt in my mind that the space would become my office. I moved my computer and desk in and built shelving for my books (detailed in an earlier post).

There’s only one problem; there was no way to get there. For the last 10½ months I’ve had a 10-foot tall stepladder sitting in my bedroom so that I could access the space. Obviously not the most desirable of means.

No longer. As of Monday I now have my own stairway to heaven.

Essentially, I was able to add a room without actually building onto the house. The cost of building the stairs and the railing I still need to add will cost me a little less than $3,000.

If that sounds like a lot of money, take into consideration that the first estimate I received was for well over, and I mean well over, $10,000.

I spent countless hours measuring and dreaming up ideas for where to put this staircase. With some minor changes, the final piece is very much what I had imagined.

The wall along which it runs is actually curved and the stairs follow that curve. The builder made the support beams for the stairs from four pieces of plywood, glued and nailed together and curved with the wall. The support beams for the landing go into the closet and attached to the studs inside the opposite wall.

The contractor originally planned to close in the areas beneath both the landing and the ceiling in the closet but I decided to leave them open. I think it gives it more of an open feeling, especially in the closet where it would have lowered the ceiling considerably.

One challenge in the closet was that the electrical box for the original ceiling light fell right in line with one of the new beams. I solved that one by buying a track light; the railing for which is thin enough to fit just between the support beams and ceiling. The picture here is from below, looking up at the closet ceiling on the left and the underneath side of the landing on the right.

I will probably put a simple hand rail up the wall but I will not put railing on the outside of the stairs. My primary goal with the stairs has been to keep them as open as possible so as not to make the bedroom feel too closed in.

As it is, there is more than enough room for my queen sized bed and there will be enough room for a king size if I choose to go that route when I purchase a new mattress.

As for the railing along the loft, I have an idea that I’m excited about. But, as with many of my ideas, we’ll have to wait to see if it will actually work. My daughter comes home from college this weekend and I’ll be enlisting her help, so stay tuned.