Finished

The folks from Weather Built stopped by today to have us sign off on the project, and give them the final payment. Gotta say, they did solid work, cleaned up their mess, and even remembered to return the saw horses they accidentally packed up with their tools. One small rose bush got trampled, but as it's the one that burned down and grew back from the roots last year, I'm hopefully watering the spot and waiting for another resurrection.

But how does the house look, you ask?


It's gorgeous.

Thanks, CenturyLink

We discovered, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, that our phone line was out. The DSL/internet still worked, but there was no dial tone on the land line. Not a huge problem, as we both have cells, but still, it'd be nice to have the service we're paying for. I went through online chat hell trying to get a service call, finally had one scheduled for the following Friday... which they promptly cancelled on Sunday when I didn't answer their confirmation text fast enough. So back online Monday, finally get the service call rescheduled.

Come Friday, Baylee comes by, confirms we're not getting dial tone to the kitchen jack, eventually determines that two of the conductors in the line are broken (possibly by the siding guys, but not sure), but there are still two good wires in the line, so she switches the signal over, tests it with her pigtail and now there's a dial tone. I plug in my phone, which admittedly, we bought back in 2000, and it doesn't work. She say's i'll need to get a new phone, packs up her tools and rides off into the afternoon sunlight.

I bike down to BiMart, drop $49.99 on a new phone (I wanted cordless with answering machine, like the old one), bring it home, plug it in, and still get no dial tone. In addition, Denise tells me she now doesn't have internet on her tablet.

So this time, I don't bother with chat, I call CenturyLink, wade through the unhelpful choices in their phone menu (Whaddya mean, "Is it phone or internet?" What if it's both?) and finally connect with a human being. He confirms that their test says there's a problem with the internet, thinks it may have to do with the switched conductors, but doesn't know why the phone. He does promise to push us to the head of the cue, which I take with a massive grain of salt, as it took a full week the first time. But he's true to his word, and I get a text scheduling for the next day.

The next day is Market, of course, so I give them Denise's cell number and she stays home. So of course, they text me with updates...

Baylee arrives a little late, but not by much, and with back-up. Her supervisor walks her through what went wrong--apparently, modern phones only use the center two (broken) conductors, she had to wire in an adaptor? Don't know how they fixed the internet, but Denise confirmed all was working by about 3 pm.

Still haven't decided whether to return the phone. The old one is pretty grody, kitchen grease and a broken antenna cover. We'll probably send it off to NextStep.

Fauxto Finish

We traditionally try to schedule an art project for our anniversary (June 1. Happy us!), but this year, we had it a day late, as we had three different things scheduled for Friday, the 2nd: Pest control, pick-up of the leftover siding supplies, and, of course, the phone repair tech. Fortunately, Denise had a project that worked well with interruptions.

She took a class in faux-finish papers down at Newport this spring. It uses painter's paper, a light weight kraft used to cover windows, and layers of acrylic paint wash. You begin by crumpling up the paper artistically, then smooth it out and roll on a thing black wash, using a trim roller. After it's dry, you flip it over, and the black will have seeped through the creases. Successive washes of color build up rich tones that look almost like dyed leather.

It works well with interruptions, as even if you do it in batches, you still need some drying time. I wound up making only five sheets, what with the phone tech and other distractions, but I really like the effect, and look forward to playing with the results.