Tuesday, October 19, 2010

One Step at a Time...

This past Friday I drove out and met with James, my steel fabricator.  The meeting was short and sweet; he looked at the shop drawing edits and proclaimed that he "got it."  I gave him the Ipe samples, and the color sample of my gutters to match.

He is going to have new shop drawings made; he wasn't sure of the timing. He told me to poke him by email on Wednesday (tomorrow) if I hadn't received the detailed drawing for the footings. They will tell me where to put the footings, and how deep he thinks they should go. He said I'll need to "get moving" on the footings. That's encouraging, time-wise.

He is having trouble finding a powder coat paint place that has an oven large enough for the assembled pieces. He said he may end up painting it in his shop. He said if he does it in-house, not to worry, the paint will still last longer than I will be around to care about it. He said actually him painting it in-house is better, because if they nick it at all during installation he can match and patch the paint. If its powder coated they cannot touch up any nicks.

Paint color: If he does powder coat, there will be a set batch of colors that I can choose from. If he paints it in-house he can match my gutter color exactly.  He'll keep looking and let me know the results.

He also said if I want any holes drilled that he needs to know where before he assembles. That will require a little thought.  For hooks, I can come out to his shop after assembly before painting and point out where I want hooks added. Sweet!  It will be really fun to point out where I'd like hooks for garden clogs, garden tools, maybe hanging plants... 

I am SO EXCITED.

Spidey!

Halloween has long been one of my favorite holidays -- I don't take the origins too seriously -- and it's a fun excuse to be silly and dress up.  My neighborhood, specifically my street, really gets into decorating for all the Fall holidays.  My friends just laugh and tell me that I moved into the perfect neighborhood for all my geeky craftiness.  And they are right!

Accordingly, Halloween decor has sprung up on my street.  I had Red and his daughters and the good doctor over Friday night a few weeks ago for dinner, decor and s'mores over the firepit.  It was really fun!  And despite the protestations of "I've never done this before" and "I'm not very creative, you'll have to tell me what to do" the result was smashing.  Smashing!  Here are some photos:




And then, my next door neighbor spied a new type of web in a nearby neighborhood that she said we MUST SEE.  We piled in her car and off we went.  It was spectacular.  I was nominated to hop out of the car and scamper up to touch it, to see what it was made of.  (Basic clothesline rope.)  The old mantra, "Oh, we could MAKE that!" returned.  We went straight to Home Depot to procure supplies.  We had also stopped at Walgreens of all places, and bought the huge furry spiders.  By dark, two gigantic webs had been spun.  Then this past weekend, Red helped me spin mine:


Isn't it great??  (Note the third spider above the porch in the photo above...)  The best part is, we can use these webs again next year.  I'll try to remember to take photos of the neighboring webs tonight and post them.  I was going to try to connect my web to my next door neighbor's web, but I couldn't quite wrap my brain around how to do it.  Maybe next year.

A man and his son walked down the street while Red and I were making my web and the little boy shouted, "Dad!  This street is freaky!"  Priceless.