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🏡 First annual report

A small effort to try to remember/document everything I’ve done to the house in my first year there, which began May 11 2022. In no particular order.

First tree

I don’t care about Christmas at all but I like to decorate a tree, let it sit all winter to charge it up, and then chop all the limbs off in the spring to make a staff. So many of my artifacts have been shattered, lost, or flown away in the last three years, including my collection of staves from President Street... when I was at Judy’s, her garden guy threw them all away, presumably thinking they were yard trash, and really that's how things have been, all my swords shattered, all my chalices sprang leaks, all my rings fell into deep wells, all my tabards were devoured by moths... for the last year I’ve been out here rebuilding from almost zero.

Anyway I put up a tree on the patio in December, it was a nice night, super smoky fire, nice vibe of friends stopping by to decorate and have drinks. I cut the limbs off in... late April? It’s drying out by the side of the house now. First tree.

Big free speakers / First weird party

Right after I moved in I was sleeping in what’s now the studio... the vibe in the first days was "waiting for Becca to come home," it taking a while for it to feel real that it was mine... not changing anything, just sort of stalking around the house, sniffing around. The first thing I did was get big free speakers from craigslist, put eye hooks into them and suspend them from the walls, and try to host a house party. Weird party, you can’t hang a heavy ornament on a tiny sapling... but nice feeling still in retrospect, beloved family and future-important characters both present...

At 4am I was walking back from Bryan's, where I'd left my keys or something, and heard something grinding down 38th street, and sort of shuffled and dove behind my own fence, from which I watched as a pickup truck screamed past, dragging what seemed like a safe or a boulder by chains, throwing sparks off the street, the back of the truck dripping with Warriors- or Mad Max- or Final Fight-style weird gang punks... Did I dream this last night? The city is burning, is burning for real...

Ice chopping / making ice

The house faces north across 38th street and gets no real sunlight and has no real drainage. This meant the sidewalk ice got to be as much as a foot thick by this February. Eventually I got an ice chopper from Ace Nicolette, and worked it between meetings until my hands were extremely calloused, then shoveled the water accumulated in the lagoon out to the street. Brutal and dumb but relaxing, real Jervyn's Clasp-feeling energy. Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time making large spherical ice cubes for GR... the period of chopping ice and making ice cubes.

In year two I need to improve property drainage across the board, get a better outlet to the street early next winter, make sure things drain out from my yard, be zealous about shoveling down to the ground, make sure I don’t leave anything out that I’m not prepared to see frozen down until the following spring.

GR buildout

Guest Room effectively took over the reality of the house from December thru April and was the product of numerous small and medium-sized projects: tearing out the library shelf that’d been at the bottom of the stairs, taking down the shelves where the bar is, building a new shelf for glasses and bottles, painting the walls in GR, painting the floors on both sides of the curtains, later painting the walls and first pass at the trim in the big cat relaxation annex, making window covers and mounts from dowels and washi paper, building new suspended plant shelves from Bauer Bros windows, getting cafe tables from same and scraping the gum off from beneath them with a razor blade, getting chairs from somebody in the suburbs, getting curtains from somebody else in the suburbs, doing glassware missions, candle missions, cocktail napkin missions. Then also, Bryan building and installing the bar, and later, getting my first new palm in years, turning a red light up into it.

In GR one night I said to Louie something like, I’m better at wielding the house than living in it, and this had the weight for me of "accidental big realization." It was through this that I freed myself completely from any need or remaining felt desire to have the house have any recognizable "normal rooms," especially "dining room," and from there was able to get rid of the red table that'd been hanging around. Now when we eat dinner we eat at the GR tables, or move things around freely, setting up and breaking down for whoever is over, whatever the format is. There's more to do to make this more comfortable but I feel that it's headed in the right direction.

Also in the relaxation annex is the chair Bry built and upholstered for me when I moved in, and a discarded high-backed chair also from Billy’s house. After I painted the walls dark green (black), I hung up my Dracula, IJ, and Robin Hood paintings to get the space charged up. Not sure how much more built in I want to make things in there, or what’s next, other than installing more (probably smaller) speakers. Dancing in this room in 2021 was critical to my buying the house, & even tho I’m not hosting a dance that often, retaining the option to do that remains important, so I can’t fill it up too much.

Mirror arc

Right after I moved in the only thing I could think of was "cover the house in mirrors," so Bry suggested I find free ones on cl and we go get them. Well one of us found an 8’x4’ mirror somewhere, and he and I really carefully and nervously drove it back to my house, rigging it deeply into my car so it wouldn’t smash on a bounce... of course once we somehow got it to my place successfully I was like "haha now what" and ended up really fucking it up by learning to use a glass cutter on it... still have half of it at the top of my stairs, but no idea what to do with it. Would like to mount this guy in the next year but truly don’t know where or how, feels sorta likely it’ll end up in the basement or in the yard.

This was my level zero homeowner action, funny early lesson in thinking I knew what I wanted, but not yet understanding that everything has to start with the house... like, starting from any miscellaneous plan and trying to retrofit that to the space just doesn't work, all plans have to start from what the house suggests or allows, and then try to draw that out to the maximum possible degree.

Anyway I mean, I do love a million mirrors... Bela suggested I put mirror tiles on the ceiling, not out of the question/not-not being considered still... probably there’s more I can be doing with mylar too.

Basement

I had to pay a guy to plumb a basement drain the right way for city code reasons, and I used sliced pool noodles to pad the edges of low ducts and support beams after hitting my head on each of them from every possible direction.

Not much else in the basement this year... it became a defacto trash zone/storage area, tho this is more because so much stuff was happening above ground than because the basement doesn’t have other uses. In many ways it's the most untouched space with the most to offer. For a while I tried having a computer desk down there, and at one point had a cathartic grief-processing "finally" cry at it while watching The Young Pope, of all things, thinking about my mom's dad dying in 2021.

Studio

In the months after moving in I was focused on finishing up my 1026 show, which meant using the relaxation annex as my studio, not really working on anything else in the house. This setup was terrible for painting and living but was kind of a dreamy time anyway of really feeling the empty house. Alanah and I started some collab paintings that we’re still slowly working on at this time, and I was serving Bryan early iterations of my martini, still taking like 30 minutes to make it.

The studio eventually got set up in "the weird room off the kitchen," where I was sleeping at the beginning, and which still doubles as the guest bedroom. Had to pull out a tall shelf behind the door, shelves ringing the room at hanging height, and take the door off... also had to mount my lights.

Didn't get much painting done in year one at all but I have to allow that I had to spend time rebuilding a nice base first. Very excited to get back to my actual work in year two.

Lighting

So far I've found lighting to be the most interesting/high-value but hardest problem of the house. I have a cute lamp, Bry & Jula got me a disco ball for my 39th, I put a blue bulb in my hanging Becca charms lamp, a red light in my palm lamp, a really evil black light in the ceiling over GR that I never use, a red flood on the floor in GR, the sprayfoam floor lamp Becca made me upstairs, the lighting enclosure I built for the studio, and many black candles... the setup's overall grade right now, I’d say, is about a C-. I need it to get a lot deeper but I’m having a hard time figuring out what I need... definitely not any of the infinite bad/dumb lamps available seemingly everywhere online. Probably just need to build a bunch of custom lighting in year 2, unfortunately it is what it is.

Couch arc / My dumb little desk

Man you really are so fucked in Minnesota if you don’t have a normal couch to sit on to read and watch movies in the winter... it took me until the middle of the spring to get one finally, thanks to Sabina for sending it over. "It's really uncomfortable," she said, but, all it took was putting some pool noodles under the back cushions, to fix their angle a little, and now I think it's nice. Excited to see how much easier this alone makes next winter.

When the relaxation annex joined GR I used scrap wood from the various shelves I pulled out to make a little black table, sort of also to use as a desk, but also just because I had room for it & people needed to put drinks someplace. It’s not high quality at all but it looks good in the space and was a very quick build. Same logic applies with computer desks as with dining room table... emphasis in my house so far has been on modular use, there’s really no room for a permanent desk anywhere other than the basement, which I’m tempted to turn part of into a truly demonic little office. Almost definitely need a second couch for that, or to replace current couch upstairs. Possibly all of this in year two.

Kitchen tasks

Kitchen is a great room from day one, not a lot happened there, just painted one wall black and another wall lavender. Replaced a buddha hand light switch cover with a plain one, and refitted a weird electrical outlet that was hanging outside of the wall back into the wall. Also tore out a huge corner shelf cabinet that didn’t have clear use. Probably need to do more with cooking ergonomics in there but not totally sure what yet. Also looking into getting a dishwasher but not sure if there's room.

Outside

After the psycho hail storm last year contractors eventually came and put a new roof and new siding on via the insurance company. This was the most visible expression of the house’s transition, I think; it's now a cute red color, when it was white before.

At one point right after moving in I was using a push mower to mow the patchy grass in my little yard and got immediately super depressed ("how/why am I 38 and mowing a lawn in Minnesota wtf happened") but this feeling passed pretty quickly, now I love working on the yard. I have a french drain project going that’s mainly just for the pure fun of digging a trench, idk that it’s going to really do anything at all, or even that it’s necessary, but my building inspector suggested it when I bought the house so whatever I’m doing it for the relaxing exertion.

I had to learn the hard/dumb way that the leaves don’t just decay into nothing if you don’t get rid of them, and am pretty sure that my un-raked beds and yard made my winter ice situation a lot worse. I bagged all of that up as soon as it was nice enough, am determined to prepare better on that front next winter.

Was pleased to see the bushes in front are some kind of low cherry bushes ("Nanking cherries" - Becca)... very moving to see them blossom for the first time.

My plants

I’m into plants now. I grew tomatoes last year, but planted them very late from free starts I got at Ace Nicolette some time after the 4th of July, having failed to think about it earlier. Jeremy also sent me some pepper starts in the mail... one plant I kept overwinter, and had a ludicrous time fighting whiteflies off of. I got a really nice cactus when I moved in, and after my 1026 show, brought all my succulents back from Judy’s, most of which had ancestors or even lives themselves at President Street... feels great to have them back in the fold. Light at my house is really bad and there’s not a lot of viable space for plants but I’m excited to keep going, and to see what I can do outside this summer with an earlier start.

Nook

Nook lived in the house sometimes. :) Great to have had it visited and blessed by the god.

Remainders/upcoming

Longer term returning ideas

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