Since the Hell House saga has not yet come to an end, and I keep tossing status comments out there referencing such, I thought it might be a good idea to give y’all an update. Obviously, if you are a first time visitor here you probably have no clue what I am talking about, so to get caught up you will need to tweak the dials on the wayback machine and read the previous entries, Hell House Week 1 and Hell House Week 2…

And now, on with the update…

Holey Walls, Batman!

When last we left our intrepid laborers, Scuba and Swervin’, many things had been done, but many were still left for the doing. Among them was a gargantuan hole in the wall as seen at the end of Hell House Week 2.

After cutting back the drywall to square things up, and installing nailers, I hung a partial sheet of rock to patch the hole, then taped, mudded, and skim coated the wall. Once I finished sanding, the results were perfectly lovely.

The incoming tenants slapped a couple of coats of paint onto the wall and everything was just like new again. I’m sure a pro drywall guy would have accomplished what I did in less than half the time, but hey, it looks good and it’s done.

Then the rains came…

As with any other autumn in the midwest, the fall rainy season was upon us. Truth is, Scuba and I had been looking forward to this because we wanted to see our handiwork in operation – that being the basement stairs and drainage system, including the 20 gallon sump well and piping.

Much to our delight, it worked flawlessly. We couldn’t have planned it better even if we knew what we were doing (LOL). Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture of it in operation, but suffice it to say, the pump move quite a bit of water and the basement is staying dry for a change. We’ve recently discovered a small leak along the West side of the house, but that is due to a separation between the walk and the foundation. We’ve already purchased the materials to repair it and are just waiting for it to be dry enough to affect said repair.

The picture above, while obviously NOT the pump in operation, is of Scuba making some repairs to the gutters. We discovered during the rain that one of the longer runs had separated from the fascia and was sagging, causing the water to pool and overspill. Once Scuba Steve had a talk with it, it straightened up and started draining properly. While on the roof, he also replaced the flashing around the vent pipes since it was shot.

I thought we were done with the concrete?

It seems that where concrete work is concerned, Hell House is the gift that keeps on giving.

Part of the evidence of the gutter problem was the fact that during heavy rains the water would overshoot the sagging gutter as it ran down the valley between the main section of the house and the addition. Over time it had eroded the corner from the back stairs leading from the kitchen to the patio. Other than that the stairs were in great shape, so instead of taking them out entirely, Scuba and I drilled, pinned, formed, and concreted the corner. It’s now pretty as a picture and solid as a rock.

Building the “Great Wall”…

One of the projects we wanted to accomplish was putting in some walls in the basement. Nothing fancy, just yet… Primarily, we wanted to create a lockable storage area where I could house some of the tools and materials we were using on the repairs. We also wanted to enclose the Furnace and Water Heater in a “Mechanical Room” so that they weren’t sticking out like a sore thumb if we eventually decide to re-finish the basement. As it happens, Scuba had a slew of metal studs in his personal warehouse – what we like to call “The Happy Shed” – so we were in business. All we needed was the track and something to attach to the studs once they were in place. A quick trip to the hardware store and we were ready to roll.

The Great Wall takes shape…

Since the this really qualifies as not quite finished where basements are concerned, we elected to go with a wall covering that would be sturdy and accomplish what we had set out to do, but not necessarily be “pretty” – kind of like drywall that hasn’t been painted or wallpapered just yet. So, we used ply. This allowed us to put up walls and provides us with a base should we eventually want to finish with paneling or tongue and groove stock of some sort.

From this angle you can see the doorway to the storage area along with the door already in place.

Here we have a different angle, taken from the far end of the basement. On the left is the doorway to the storage area.

On the right you can see the doorway to the mechanical room. We are going to put some storage shelves in there and hang a door as well. In order to keep costs down we have been using recycled materials from the house itself, as well as many gems donated by Scuba from the “Happy Shed”…

Gotta love the Happy Shed… I’m just sayin’…

In the foreground you can seem my pool table. There is a rich history behind this 3 piece slate table – in short, I purchased it for the paltry sum of $500 back when I was 19 years old. A former High School teacher had retired and was moving to Hawaii. He had purchased the table new and had played all of 10 games on it. Not wanting to pay the price to move it overseas, he decided to sell it and I stumbled upon the deal. My father and I moved it, set it up, and played many a game on it. Unfortunately, when I moved out I had no place to put it, so I left it there for the time being. That’s been way more than 20 years now, of course. Long story short, much damage was done to the table over the years, so Scuba and I, along with some help from the new tenants, moved it, repaired it, and recovered the deck and rails with new felt.

Not only is it pretty again, it plays great…

A closeup shot of the mechanical room. Out of sight, but with plenty of room to affect repairs and even store some things…

And finally, not wanting to waste space, Scuba and I took advantage of the area behind the Mechanical Room and installed a small closet on the left – door and shelves forthcoming – as well as a small platform on the right where we flush mounted a bar fridge my father had stored at the house. The perfect place to keep a few cold ones for “Beer Thirty”… Especially since my knees are having trouble with stairs these days…

Okay, that’s it for now. More updates on Hell House when we create more havoc over there… As I said, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, and there will be plenty more work, that’s a given…

More to come…

Murv

I think that will probably depend on how well I follow instructions from here on out. The dance thing, I mean.

You see, messages come in all forms and from many sources. In fact, depending on your belief system, you may even be convinced that you receive messages from beyond the veil between the worlds. And, sometimes those messages come along with a set of instructions that need following.

I suppose at this point you are wondering what messages from the great beyond have to do with the picture of Evil Kat’s shapely gams over here on the right. Well, to be honest, both everything and nothing. You see I’m not actually going to go on about being contacted by the dead. I am, however, going to go on about messages. In particular a message I received just the other day, and it just so happens that it has quite a bit to do with E Kay’s shoes.

In particular, her Mary Janes.

(BTW, I’d have put the whole picture up there, however if you have seen the revamped cover of Perfect Trust, for which this was one of many shots taken to create the final collage, you know things were far less pretty above the waist… Not gory or anything… You’ll just have to read the book if you don’t understand what I’m getting at… But, yeah, E K was one of the models… How cool is that?)

And, back to our regularly scheduled blog…

So, E K has several pairs of Mary Jane styled pumps. Dress up, work, leather, patent leather,  canvas, heels, flats, wedges, brown, black, and so on…

You get the idea.

I couldn’t begin to tell you about the fashion statement surrounding these, primarily because I have absolutely no fashion sense at all. I will pair stripes and plaids in a heartbeat, so I am definitely NOT the go-to guy where this sort of stuff is concerned. However, as shoes go these seem to work for the Evil One, and I am perfectly willing to admit that I think she looks pretty damn good in them. This latter fact may have something to do with one of those childhood memories, that being the little blonde-haired girl next door when I was growing up. We were all of about 7 and I was crushing on her pretty hard. Being the style of the 60’s she always wore frilly dresses and patent leather Mary Janes. They say you never forget your first love. Well, I wouldn’t call this playmate from my childhood a “love,” so I guess that old saying applies to crushes too.

So, there you go. Nothing sick or twisted, just Id, ego, and superego colliding to stir fond puppy love memories in my heart whenever I see the evil redhead in her Mary Janes.

Okay, enough with psychoanalyzing the Murv…

Now, the thing about E Kay’s shoes is that while most of them reside in her evil shoe closet, there are a few pairs that occupy strategic locations around the house – i.e. wherever she happened to take them off. Of course, her evilness is still more conscientious about her shoe placement than the O-spring. If you go stumbling through the dark in the middle of the night around our house, while traversing the living room you will trip over every pair of shoes the child owns. E K, however, does place hers pretty much out of the way. One such “out of the way” location where her feet become un-shod – and the aforementioned shods remain – is the general vicinity of her desk in our shared office.

And yes, Virginia (No, not you Doc… No, not the state either… I mean the metaphorical and collective Virginia) this is from whence I received a message. I just didn’t know it at the time. See below…

If you look closely at the left shoe you will notice a piece of paper lounged out on the insole as if it belongs there…

You see, the other day I rolled back from my desk on a mission to put something in the cabinets on the other side of the room. Since our office is relatively small our desks are against opposite walls. When I stood up to make the 4 steps to the cabinets I had to step around the shoes. When I looked down I noticed this bit of paper occupying the insole.

I didn’t really think much of it at first. Her shoes were sitting next to the paper recycling bin and since she is a shredding maniac I figured that in a frenzy of potential paper-mâché production the previous evening a scrap had escaped her evil clutches in a daring attempt at freedom. Unfortunately for the scrap, however, it plummeted into her shoe where it was overcome by odoriferous fumes and expired before it could get away.

Do NOT tell her I said that…

I continued about my task, tucking some papers into a cabinet, then returned to my desk. once again stepping around the pair of Mary Janes. This time, however, I noticed that there appeared to be writing upon the bit of paper. Again, I didn’t really think much of it until several seconds had passed and I was seated back at my desk. Some manner of subliminal trigger clicked, clanked, or whatever it is they do and I stopped everything I was doing. The image of the paper with the writing on it flashed through my gourd and I screwed up my face in thought as I wondered, “Did that really say what I think it said?”

Now I was curious. So, what else could I do? I rolled back, turned around in my chair, then leaned over to look at the scrap in the shoe (all while holding my nose, of course…) And, much to my surprise, it did in fact say what I thought it said.

“Leave Treat”

I’d heard “trick or treat” before, but never “leave treat,” although it definitely sounded like a pretty clear instruction to me. For a minute I started wondering if she was trying to get in touch with her Dutch roots and thought it was Christmas or something. But I came to my senses and remembered she is primarily Welsh and Irish, not Dutch.

Then for another brief moment I considered stuffing a banana into the shoe just to see what would happen when her evilness came home. However, since I wasn’t sure if that would spark some sort of Freudian dilemma or not, and I didn’t have any Vodka or Scotch miniatures on hand, I elected to simply laugh and snap a picture or two, because it was obvious to me at that juncture that this would be blog material.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that maybe I should have put some individually wrapped Dove chocolates in there or something.

Why?

Well, what you can’t see here is the knobby tread this pair of shoes has on the sole. The reason that is important is that I am now sporting a mirror image of it all over my face. All I know is that E K was doing a lot of unintelligible screaming while she was dancing on my head, but I did manage to catch a little snippet about her shoes being empty when she arrived home and when was I going to learn to follow instructions?

More to come…

Murv