Renovation Page 2

I’m sure you aren’t as interested in my home improvements as I am, but it is sucking up most of my time. Since I’m neither working on the book nor thinking up great topics for the other blogs, I thought I would share.

After many weeks of crossing and dotting, the City of Atlanta graciously granted us a permit for the repairs we have planned. Why we even need a permit to replace siding and put up new gutters is beyond me. I thought I was a master wordsmith back in my marketing days, but the linguistic maneuvers required to get basic repairs approved is a real art. Contractors actually hire expediters – people who are experienced at running the maze – to help them get building permits in less than a month.

Today the workers started ripping the old vinyl siding off the house. The good news is that we found R11 insulation behind the foam board. That means we have a credit coming from the contractor. We didn’t think there was any insulation in the walls, and were planning to install R13 before adding a plywood sheath, moister barrier, and Hardie Plank siding.

What’s the bad news? If we thought the squirrels had access to the attic space before, they sure do now. Apparently the only thing between the great outdoors and the inside of our attic space was an inch and a half of foam board and some vinyl siding with about half the nails and none of the caulk that should have been there.

And, we are going to have a chance to spend the credit from the insulation on rebuilding spots like this. The contractor originally planned to demo the old siding and put up the new as he went along focusing on completing one side of the house before moving on to the next. Now he has decided he had better demo all of the siding quickly to see what other surprises are in store.

My next challenge is to get a survey of the property. We already have a survey, done ten years ago when we bought the house. However, our expediter tells us that the Bureau of Buildings won’t issue the permit to rebuild our deck and patio without seeing a survey that includes topographical markings.

So I’m headed back to the phones. Maybe I’ll work on the book tomorrow.

Cool Tool

Lately I’ve been looking for a way to host hardcopy documents online. Several or my articles about native plants and gardening have been published in magazines, and I wanted to give the public access to the good information available there – with the publisher’s permission of course.

My first thought was that I would just reformat the word document I had submitted to the publisher, and make a new post on the blog. However, after a couple of posts, I decided that the effort was way too time consuming, and the end result was a sad facsimile of the actual glossy magazine spread. At least for the time being, professional layout in a magazine trumps what can be done by amateurs (me) with free tools on the internet.

Next, I decided to scan the actual magazine into a multiple page .pdf file and upload it. The scanning takes just a few minutes, but finding a way to upload the file to my blog was a bit more challenging. I decided I would need to find another location to host these documents, and provide a link from the blog to the host site.

Enter Scribd. A startup from Silicon Valley, Scribd aspires to be a massive library of online documents published by individuals and organizations. Already over a quarter million people are using of this cool tool. Unlike other document sharing tools like Google Docs or the upcoming Microsoft Office Live Workspace, Scribd is not focused on collaboration so much as information distribution.

I have already uploaded several and I can either provide a link to the document Native in the City - Georgia Gardening Nov 2005

or embed code here that will display the document. Like this…

Documents can be available for download or not, public or private (viewed only by those you invite) and may be designated as common domain, creative commons license (requires attribution and may have other restrictions such as no commercial reuse), or protected by traditional copyright.

Four ways writers can use this tool

1. Create an online portfolio for agents and publishers to review
2. Share a draft with your illustrator, copy editor, readers, etc.
3. Keep an offsite archive of published documents and works-in-progress in case the house burns down or floods.
4. Provide your mother with an easy way to show all of her friends how successful you are
   
   

Why We Write in Coffee Shops

I don’t even drink coffee. Well, perhaps I drink the occasional decaf latte, but that doesn’t count. Without lots of milk and sugar, I don’t even like the taste. However, I am seriously thinking about moving my “office” up the street and around the corner to our neighborhood WiFi hotspot with hot beverages and peach muffins. In other words, this place. “Why”, you ask. Let me tell you.

This week was supposed to be the great restart of work on the book. After close to two months of holiday excuses, I was ready to devote a minimum of six hours a day to writing. But then I had to do some laundry, and the house was a mess, and the dog needed walking, the contractor needed calling, and then this… the basement needed demolition.

We live in a seventy something year old house with issues. We love the location since we can walk to shops, restaurants and even a movie theater. And mostly we love the house. It has character. However, it also has a leaky basement, and we need the space. So, the contractor is coming tomorrow to look at the foundation, and we have learned from experience that they aren’t satisfied with seeing the problem from the outside. They need to see it from the inside.

Unfortunately many moons ago a previous owner did a poor handyman’s job of “finishing” the basement. In an effort to make it a bit less gloomy, without spending any real money, we then painted the dark paneling and buffed it up a bit. Finally, mother nature had her way with us and dumped about four feet of water down there.

So, like I said, the contractor is coming tomorrow and he needs to see the problem from the inside. Well aright then. Guess we have another excuse not to write and the need for a trip to the hardware store for one of these.

After donning the respirator, eye protection and my spiffy never used before work apron, I picked up a pry bar and had at it. I’m sorry to say I didn’t burn many calories. The cheap paneling came away from the walls like dried out french toast (or maybe melba toast).

And what did I find? Fortunately, there wasn’t any slime involved, just lots of nasty matted insulation. And what’s this? Is that daylight I see? Yes, those spots that looked like small cracks from the outside are actually gaps in the brick large enough for well fattened squirrels to climb through. Kind of makes me want to nail boards over the cellar door before we go to bed tonight.

But the good news is that it only took a couple of hours. Now I can spend the afternoon writing. And what’s the other good news? The contractor is coming tomorrow and I have another excuse.