Article about our kitchen in Austin Home Magazine

This article from the Spring 2012 issue of Austin Home Magazine was instigated by the Architect.
They sent Jess and I a long questionnaire to fill out and now it's fun to point out a magazine on the news stand and say, "My house is in that!"
So far, I've only seen it in the print edition.



If you click the image, it'll zoom-in.

RIP, doodle!

RIP, doodle!

From:	Jessica
To:	Ken; Mellie; Mom; Rebekah

---

In honor of doodle, who died today.

she was the runt of the litter but grew sassy and chatty with me over the months we knew her. she acquired some mysterious illness over the last week that we couldn't discern, and despite various attempts to guess at the cause and treat, she didn't recover.

i'm so glad she's not suffering anymore, and extremely grateful that animals don't worry and dwell the way that we humans do! she was a good little chicken and we thank her for the many eggs she provided us during her short life!

fyi, circus has been sick too but seems to have rebounded.

A head stone in place seems permanent indeed.

Here's the headstone I made for Maria Cynthia Quiroz. It's the only headstone I've ever made, and what an honor it was! I'm wondering how it supposed to be phrased... Did I make it for Maria, whom I never met, or did I make it for her sister Delia who asked me to do it? Either way, I felt like I knew Maria a bit by the time I was finished. I carved it during the 2010 stone carving event at the Vineyards at Florence. This is a great event and I feel fortunate to have been a part of it for the last 2 years, being among so many professional carvers makes for an invigorating weekend.
Life carried on, and the family only recently got it placed at Maria's grave site.The inspiration was simple enough, Delia told me that, at her funeral a whole bunch of butterflies appeared. In trying to come up with a design, Delia and I thought it would be nice to try and capture their appearance as a tribute I was happy that she asked me and I hope her family appreciates my amateur attempt to honor their mother, sister and daughter.

More cartoons turning real

We finally have real steel stairs off the back porch. This is one of the items I told Mike, the contractor, "I'm going to build them myself." 2+ years later... they're done.
I drew them in sketchup, mocked them up with scrap wood, decided that the top step was going to be too narrow and making it bigger would bring the bottom step too far out in the yard, pondered, pondered and pondered. Then, Matt helped me out by suggesting that I split the difference in the angles rather than worrying about them being all parallel. I decided to focus on having a nice corner alignment and to let them look like fanned out cards.

I'm going to call them The Charlie Memorial Staircase - designed to be easy on old hips.

From:

To:

Guadalupe toobing and camping

Just back from toobing yesterday followed by camping last night. I went with James and Justin, and it was a great reunion. One of the first fun things we did as a group was to go toobing... way back in 1992. Whoa!
Other than when we were cooking, eating dinner and sleeping, we were pretty much frogs hanging out in the swimming hole next to our camp site. To see our habitat, check out the pic below.

We rented our toobs and camped at the Guadalupe Canoe livery, here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=29.857729,-98.410678&sll=29.857729,-98.410678&sspn=0.005564,0.010675&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=16
As you can see from the point on the map. We had a secluded spot at the end of their road. This satellite picture under-sells just how nice both the camping and river are at this location.

Glenwood Springs, CO

We're back from our trip to Glenwood Springs, CO.
We stayed here for the weekend: http://www.hotspringspool.com/

Here are a couple of pics of the scenic drive and a, group participation, post-dinner Haiku for now.

Cat Poop in Flower Beds

Here's a sample discussion from my neighborhood forum... A neighbor asked "Anyone know how to stop cats from crapping in my flower beds? I have flies galore because of the cat poop. Maybe i wouldn't care so much if my flower beds weren't so close to my front door." Many suggestions were offered. Some suggested red pepper, others, offered citrus oil or peels... I like these latest ones.

Neighbor A:
I've also heard dried coyote urine works (available at some nurseries, believe it or not).

B replies:
or you could ask Rick Perry to shoot one and harvest the urine.

Me (feeling to need to try and spark something):
I really want to make a joke about "who collects all this urine?" but then I Googled... There are lots of impassioned articles that speak of the animal's living conditions, here's the least emotional blurb I found.

"Generally speaking, fox urine is a byproduct of fur farming. By purchasing genuine fox urine, one is helping make fur farming more profitable (in the same way purchasing leather gives money to the beef industry).
While there haven't been too many animal-rights exposes into the animal urine market, it would only make sense that a sizable portion would come from fur farms. Fur farms are one of the few places that large numbers of carnivores are confined to the type of small cages that would make large-scale urine collection possible. Since fur ranching isn't exactly a booming industry, it would also make sense that fur farmers would want to branch out into other industries as much as possible. It would be quite difficult, if not impossible, to reliably harvest urine at zoos or in the wild."

B responds:
Now I am a little embarrassed by my flippant attempt at humor


C adds:
I'm not embarrassed in the least that I bought fox urine to try and eradicate the family of raccoons tearing up my attic space, nesting in my insulation, tearing up my ductwork and wreaking havoc above the bedroom ceilings at all hours of the night. It's not safe, it's costly and it's a health hazard with all the crap they leave behind.

At the expense of some fox somewhere, I am trying to remove raccoons using live traps and "gentle" eradication methods on the "end user" of the fox urine, however it is collected, as opposed to tazering them, shooting them in the ear with a pellet gun, etc., etc.

I was not fond of frontier cowboys skinning buffalo just for their hides at the expense of taking away many Indian tribes main food and tool source, nor am I the kind of guy who would throw blood on some gal wearing mink or a fox collared jacket.
I know cattle suffer deplorable conditions at the slaughter house, but I still eat steak.
I shoot and kill deer, but I've never paid to have any antlers mounted; instead, I pay to have the meat professionally processed and I eat the venison. I don't shoot anything for sport. I catch, clean and eat fish.

At the same time, I detest cruelty to dogs or cats. I believe there's a hierarchy and I'm glad I'm close to the top of the food chain. That doesn't give me the right to add to the suffering in the world but I'm not going to become a vegan or vegetarian as a result. Nor am I going to take such a soft approach to raccoon eradication from my home that no suffering on earth occurs as a result of my decision (unless this racoon family wants to help me pay my exorbitant taxes).

Partially tongue in cheek, partially dead -on.
Cheers,
xxxx


Me again (My rabble-rousing worked! Yippee!):
Apparently, if you'd just kill and eat the raccoons, you could fulfill your thirst for the hunt, meanwhile sparing the suffering of:
Foxes
Cattle
Deer
Fish?
And, if you saved their pelts, you may spare a few minks

Stop being so "gentle" with those pesky and dirty raccoons in your attic.



There was so much more to JerkStore him on, but short and sweet is best.

Camping by canoe

I've often used the phrase "I'll paddle my own canoe." when discussing how I'll get "there". This past weekend I went with 5 friends on a two-day trip along 35 miles of the Colorado river of Texas, and I'm glad I paddled with the gang. Our float was not on THE Colorado, mind you, that one doesn't touch Texas, the one I'm speaking of is very familiar to Austinites because it meanders through downtown.
The trip's genesis occurred at the Crown one evening when James said, "I want to..." and I responded that I wanted to go on a canoe trip. Bang! Everyone that was there, was in.

While we originally planned to start just below the last dam in town, a little research proved useful, and we settled on a two day float which is recommended on the LCRA's website:
http://www.lcra.org/community/ecodev/crt/two_day_float.html
Their site is loaded with useful information to help you prep for the trip. Their river conditions showed a flow rate of between 900 and 1200 cfm. I called the office and was told that that equaled about about 2 mph, and up to 4 if you're actively paddling. (I have no idea why they don't provide the conversion to mph on their website, which would be very handy.)

We spent Friday evening camping in Buescher State Park in Smithville, TX. Saturday morning we dropped the Canoes amongst the carnies who were hosting the Jamboree Smithville carnival at the Vernon L Richards River Bend Park. We then drove three cars south to La Grange and left two of them at the public boat ramp. We returned to the carnies and set adrift.

The float was 100% authentic, Texas river. Silty water gently flowing through seemingly remote areas surrounded by either bluffs or pristine ranch land. We paddled into the Colorado's notorious head wind for 5 hours on Saturday, and we stopped on a small grass-covered island to camp. The Island was declared Jamesland, as he's quick to the punch.The LCRA suggests camping at Plum Park, but we decided to take advantage of the "bird in the hand" very cool little island we had happened upon. Tall grass was macheted short, tents were set up, and steaks, veggies and potatoes were grilled in an impressive campfire. Over night coyotes called in the distance, while, nearer by, barred owls called from the trees, raccoons wrestled and played in the shallows, while fish jumped and splashed in the water that was oh-so-close to my tent. I even saw a shooting star.

Sunday was a day spent, psychologically, somewhere between enjoying part 2 of the journey, and "get me the hell home". We paddled, thankfully, with no head wind for 6 hours. Along the way, shorter canoe and camping trips were mapped out amongst the new islands we saw, and we were all thankful that we'd skipped trying to find and camp at Plum Park.

Here's a map of our trip.

And here's a slide show:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54608357@N00/sets/72157623842795382/

Stoners

I spent last weekend carving with friends at a vineyard. (Read that line again. Cool, huh?) Most of the carvers there are pros, I am not. There were a bunch of spectators and it my amateur skill became apparent whenever someone would walk over, smile politely, and move along. Here are a couple of pics.


Looks like "grrrrr" feels like "oommmmm"


That's my friend Matt, who got me into carving, in the red hat.
And, Bob, mentor to most of the folks there, is in the straw top hat.

Are you on FB? Here's a link to all the pics.
.

Ice cream

We've been hard at work studying how to make ice cream with our new Cuisinart ice cream maker.
We made our first batch Jan 31st, and it was a good time that ended with excitement for the future flavors. But first, we wanted to see if we could get the important basics down, so we made vanilla. It was Sunday pizza night as well (we've been making our own dough and creating some yummy pies.) Here, you'll get to see how the whole meal came out:


Pretty good, huh?

Here's the Cuisinart in action:

This machine has a compressor that chills the pot to freeze the ice cream. I can't say it's a ton different than the rock-salt on ice models, it's just easier and better looking to store out on the counter top in the kitchen, and, possibly, it gives you a bit more control.

Batch #2
We got a bit more adventurous this past weekend, and we made a fave flavor... coffee. The cool part here was steeping the whole coffee beans in warmed cream to extract the roasted flavor. I wish we got a picture of the floating coffee beans. And, when all was done, it got rave reviews at the Super Bowl party. A delicious raosted coffee flavor. Those are coffee grinds you see mixed in. I didn't get to sleep till almost 2am after eating this much. Vrrrroooommmm!

Fall

In lieu of snow we had freezing temperatures which made the leaves fall like snow this morning. It was pretty amazing to see, given the lack of any wind.

Rain chain detail

Rain chain detail

Front walk task has a "checked" next to

Front walk task has a "checked" next to it

Jet race at dusk!

Jet race at dusk!

Stepping towards completion

First the pun. I've been making stepping stones for the front walk. Here are 6 in progress. The bottom ones are poured concrete, and the top shows the leaves I'm casting in them. Sorta of fossils / kind of a time lapse photo set of the 2009 Fall season.

Here's one up close

Jess is industrious! Here's a picture of her picture wall project. She probably tried 100 arrangements on the table as she designed it.

Here's some throw pillows she made that we throw. They're on the new couch.

Sorry I'm not tons chatty today. I asked this squirrel from out back to do the talking for me. She was in the pecan tree that's donating the leaves for the stepping stones. However, she couldn't talk because her mouth was full...

Breakfast is served!

Breakfast is served!

Rain! Rain! Rain!

Rain! Rain! Rain!

Cold front

Cold It's only in the 90's and it feels great out! Hopefully we're done with the 100's.

Front Both these pics are from a lazy Sunday (perhaps sundae later...?) hanging out on the front porch while the dogs lounge in the grass. I'm sitting on the front step thoroughly enjoying myself as I type you this note. I can't express how happy I am to have Charlie, and to watch him enjoying his day. He's had a very rough last few days and we were pretty sure his time had come to an end. His recent rebound is nothing short of miraculous. It's like dog spelled backwards.

See the new paint and stenciling on the glider that my sweet is sitting on? That's project wrapped up today. Also, J.C., our architect, came by to take pics today. He wanted them for portfolio and may send out some proposals to get it published.

Concrete and now wood

The rest of the counter tops have been installed a couple of weeks now. They're made from 1 x 6 planks of oak that I glued edge to edge. The face has a 45° cut (miter?) and there's a 1.5" edge piece to give them mass.

Here's a pic of the bulk of them so you can see them rounding the corner and surrounding the stove.



Here's a close-up so you can see the concrete adjacent to the wood and, if you click on the pic, you'll see the wood's details.

One more chore - done

I installed the concrete countertop today. I learned a lot in this process, so if you want to do your own read on and don't be afraid to just ask.
Click the pic to enlarge the details.
The cost was about $250, or $15 per square foot. Compare that to granite!


Useful sites and some notes:
Cheng Design. The book and DVD were indispensable
Although I now think that lots of the admix stuff (for strength) is selling to your fear of failing rather than helping tons
This online instructables article
Diamond polish pads Also, get a couple of hand pads and maybe an extra 50 grit if you're going to do lots of grinding to expose inlays or aggregates.
If you've done a ton of searching, but found no leads... McCoy's sells rapid set water reducer in small packet quantities, I just wanna share this because it took a while to find any leads for small batches. However, I didn't use any.
For my mix, I used Quikrete 5000 and 1/3 the suggested Cheng Pro-Fomula for a project my size (3 cubic feet). A 1 cubic foot mix kit came with the book, so I threw it in. It gave me the grey color. I'm pretty sure the color would have been nearly black had I purchased more. I think their pigments are top-notch. If you do buy them, then you gain the reducer and fibers as a bonus.
I used a gas powered, rented, mixer. I should have rented a vibrator. Check this posting for details on my sander-turned vibrator. Next time I'd pour each half separately, so I'd net out twice the time for vibrating and scribing per piece.

The counter is installed on Ikea cabinets. It's 400 lbs. I replaced the Ikea cabinet feet with pedestals made from 2x4's. I sistered the interior cabinet walls with 3/4" plywood. And I used the cross braces provided by Ikea across any spans. There's a sub floor of 3/4 plywood under the concrete to distribute the weight, and at the end near the fridge, I left a small overhang. This is because there was no room inside the cabinet (with the drawers) to sister in any extra wall strength. If I ever want to bolster that wall, I can use the lip of plywood and wedge in a sister outer wall. Otherwise, after freaking out about the weight a few times, I decided to not freak out any longer.

Thanks to all my helpers. They were great for both brawn and moral support.