Lazy days of summer

 

http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/legion/exhibitions/man-ray-lee-miller-partners-surrealism

Home for a little culture at the Legion of Honor Museum. San Francisco has to be the world's most comfortable fur lined rut! It is golden handcuffs and then some.

The lawn in front overlooking the Marin headlands and entry to SF Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge is just to the right

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Miller

http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Legion-s-Man-Ray-Lee-Miller-exhibition-3705408.php

 

Summertime in SF

 

 

 

 Over at the de Young, Gaultier. Aimed at the runway/couture crowd. Us ragamuffins know of him through Madonna.

 

 

The real buzz were the interactive mannequins. Holographic faces were projected from above giving them a very real life like appearance with active facial features. I'm sure it will only be a few years until these are the standard in high end stores.

 

They talked and followed you with their eyes.

I had been hoping for something more along these lines after hearing the pre show buzz.

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickle_Family_Circus

Lorenzo Pisoni, a play about him as a child in the Pickle Family circus. It's a San Francisco thing. Thank you for the tickets, Marilyn and Tim.

 

In a bit of lucky timing I was home for the entire Olympics. What a treat, having missed 2008. I think most of the medal winning female runners all went to the same "valley girl" finishing school that Serena Williams attended, which however, did not prevent her from doing the Crip Walk after winning the US Open. So many beauties from the Caribbean. Jamaica rules. Here they are in case you missed them.

 

In a first, we did not go to the movies. This from a couple that generally went forty or more times per year for the last 25 years! I think they are saving everything until the end of the year.

Did a quick jump up to the Sierra foothills to visit and see the progress on my cousin Craig's very large home he's been building on his own over the years. My original inspiration to a large extent, especially the steel. Talk about a big project. Plus he has to come up from San Diego these days to work on it. Whew. I think I may have finally pulled ahead of him!

 

Lost in the shuffle on the last update, the time I spent making the window and screen frames. During the planning stage I decided early on that I would build my own simple windows so as not to be trapped into their exact placement, what size and the expense. Don't even talk about custom made mahogany windows. As it turns out, a brilliant, lucky move on my part. Three planned windows became french doors and another picture window was changed into an opening window. It is not out of the question that I may not have made those changes if I already had bought and paid for the windows sitting in a container.

While most folks have double hung windows, they go up and down, our design constraints/aesthetics called for french windows or casement as they are called. Easy to construct. Well actually, nothing is easy to construct but easy compared most others!
  

While most casement windows open out, ours were to open in so that you could reach out and close the shutters as in the picture above. Further adding to the design demands, the necessity of screens that would also open to the inside. Among the many reasons windows open out are space limitations on the inside and most shutters are ornamental. Our shutters are a working necessity and must be reached from the inside. I'm not going to be putting up ladders to close my shutters or having to hire someone when I'm 100! ;~)

There are a host of design considerations/hassles associated with inside opening windows I won't bore you with but a major one for me, besides space requirements, was the look of clutter/congestion. I had been so used to the open casement during construction--the lower window to the right above--that when I hung the screens on hinges with the windows next, I did not like the look. Clean, open with no upkeep, became complicated with long range maintenance. All this and knowing the windows would rarely be closed. The house is in the tropics. Even in the heaviest rains, not tropical storms, very little rain comes inside because of our position on the hill, the rain forest, blah, blah.

So what to do? I don't want rain coming in, no matter how little, but I don't want windows taking up space on the inside and they must open to the inside. Driving around San Francisco the bell went off!

There it is. The solution, called by some the "Hollywood Regency" look. Canvas above all the windows. When we go to town or St Thomas, we simply open the screen, reach out and close the shutters. Short of a tropical storm no rain will be coming in. Did I mention it is significantly cheaper, glass is dear, and the upkeep is a lot easier. The canvas will be pressure washed, along with everything else, a couple of times a year. Now if I had only thought of this before I spent a few weeks making the windows and screens. I'll scrap the screens and design new ones using the stainless steel hinges and the simple 1930's latches that we purchased in SF for the windows.

 

Home, East End and Coral Bay

Returned to St John on August 12th. Truck had its standard small flat but started right up. The shack was in perfect condition with the ice cubes in the bowl still holding their shape so I knew the power outages were minor--I can still eat the food!

 

Beaches were still crowded by my standards--but considered empty by east coast folks. Every year the tourist season seems to get a little longer.

 

Full screen....

 

 

Gecko eggs found behind a chest. They all hatched.

Just before I returned

It knocked down one small dead tree. 

 

Jumped on the barge to St Thomas for a food and materials run. The feral cats all showed up along with the chickens. Word gets out pretty quick! Cat food and rice on the list.

A couple of days later I finished the new screens. They look great. However I'm not putting them up until everything else is done. I don't want to get any paint/topping mud splatter on them. After the screens I skim coated the living room ceiling once again and around the crown and base board moldings to even out the plaster. Afterwards I painted the last coat of oil primer on all the interior trim. I have lost count on the number coats. Multiple coats of oil give a good "build". It helps make average carpentry look good.

 

Not my first choice in primers. Lots of VOCs and it doesn't self level because it drys so quick. If you are not spraying, I'm not, you have two choices. Brush marks vs a tight stipple from a "slim jim" roller.

 

Yup, the same roller you would use to paint behind the toilet tank. Truth is, I needed the stipple. It covers all the imperfections in the wood for the most part. Secondly, using this roller I'm able to paint the entire trim in a few hours allowing for multiple coats with the necessary wood putty skim coat where necessary. Everyday you just put on a coat before moving onto something else. For the last coat you do an easy hand sand knocking down some of the stipple. You can never really hide it however. That is the draw back to quick dry primers unless you spray. I know, I know, TMI, TMI.

 

Finally my favorite part with my favorite paint--Satin Impervo! Here's something you don't see in California, Impervo in gallons. I'm making noises like Tim the Tool Man. Put it up with a slim jim and brush it out. Again several coats over a number of days. It does take several days between coats when there is humidity in the air. This is one of the reasons folks use the quick dry paints down here. Myself, I always use oil on interior trim. Besides how it looks, it cleans, it's durable and most importantly it is sandable when the time comes to paint again. Meanwhile the color gets a little richer over time. Latex is for walls! Duh.

 

A quick primer on the founding of the National Park.



If the events described in this short video had not happened Denise and I would not be building here.

The trim turned out better than I expected. You would have to see the original wood to fully understand this comment. Paradise lumber is still out of the 1x8 stock I need to finish the Kitchen and bathroom baseboards. They were out of it when I left to go to SF. "Dem barges takes a long time".

Isaac stayed south. Another near miss.
 

In a bit of bad news AT&T cut me off from my unlimited data 'air card'. From my usual 20-40 gigs a month streaming Hulu and Netflix etc, I'm supposed to throttle back to 5 gigs--NOT POSSIBLE and they know it. I'll have to look into something local. St John has come a long way in the last five years. Even my dentist is on island!

Tomorrow I'll jump back to St Thomas for the baseboard lumber at MSI and more paint. There is a rhythm to it all. It does a person good.