RIP Kent; Stained Glass, Complete At Last
Sep. 7th, 2008 05:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grrgoylTery's gone for three whole weeks, which makes for some excellent productivity for me. Lots of little projects I've been dragging out are now done, which is one of my few genuine satisfactions in life.
It isn't that Tery actively prevents me from doing them when she's here...I can't explain it, she just inspires a sort of lethargy. Maybe it's just that at the end of the day there's no feeling of obligation to spend "quality together time." I do miss her cooking though, living on family-size frozen meals, Jose Ole Chimichangas and Freschetta pizzas and the occasional burger on the grill (not nearly as tasty as Tery's).
*~*
Probably the most important order of business: Our neighbor directly under us was found dead on Wednesday in his home. As I worked my regular shift, I gradually became aware of lots of stomping around in the stairwell, then Tracey's dogs going off. I then stepped out to notice my neighbor on the opposite balcony staring down below me intensely.
Then I noticed the casually dressed firemen chatting in hushed tones and an older woman sobbing on the lawn.
My neighbor across the way (Mike) heard mention of heart attack. I was totally shocked. Kent was a big guy, but he didn't smoke and was only in his early 40's.
We didn't know anything about Kent, just the occasional hellos in the parking lot. He was so private he didn't even have a peephole in his door. And so quiet the only way to know if he was home was to look for his car. He was the perfect neighbor, i.e., damn near invisible.
I called Tery with the news. Her first assumption was suicide. "But he just got a new SUV literally like 2 weeks ago," I pointed out. Maybe he was overcome with guilt when he realized how much his purchase was destroying the environment. We know he was Republican; maybe Sarah Palin's nomination pushed him over the edge. Or perhaps he just couldn't take one more night of the ferrets and the Kitten playing "Cage Match" over his head -- I could certainly relate to that.
But we shouldn't joke about the dead. We should instead selfishly worry about what'is to become of his unit and are we going to get new neighbors, perhaps people not nearly as low-profile as Kent.
The question that keeps morbidly running over and over through my mind is, what was I doing while he was dying a few feet below me? Petting my Kitten? Eating breakfast? Masturbating? Watching YouTube? Shopping on eBay? Did he consider asking for my help or was it over in the blink of an eye?
Now our stairwell neighborhood is down to us, Tracey and her mutts, and the people who hate their shih tzu and literally party 'til sunrise. All those fuckers will live (and live HERE) forever. (Except Reggie and his bastard father/brother/whatev Clarence. They've vanished without a trace. Careful what you wish for? I'm kidding of course, I'm ecstatically happy to see them gone. I also prefer to believe their departure is a direct result of us ratting on their illicit fireworks escapade.)
*~*
One of the biggest projects I've been attacking sporadically and with variable enthusiasm for months now is my faux stained glass window upstairs. Click the cut for the illustrated thrilling saga:
Step One: What I've Got to Work With
It's a cool window in the loft. The problem is on most days it's like having the Eye of Ra spearing straight through your skull until the sun mercifully passes overhead. And since our computer lives up there seven months of the year, it's not really an option to start my work day at noonish. The people we bought the place from covered it in a drab blue denim material that we hated, but were too lazy to find a better alternative. Until my creative brilliance, that is.
There are tons of stunning and beautiful designs on the internet to make your own stained glass projects (real and faux). The problem is they all tend to lean towards rectangular, or at least symmetrical, designs that simply wouldn't work in such an unusually shaped window. So I did what I'm used to doing anyway, and came up with my own idea.
Step Two: Adhesive Lead Lines
Seems simple enough, but I'm pretty proud of how symmetrical the long lines turned out, considering they were done completely freehand (turns out a laser level is useless on glass). I cheated and used a measuring tape for the smaller ones, because precision was even more crucial there. Deal with it.
Step Two: Checkered Border
I wasn't sure if I wanted black and clear or black and white. The first challenge was getting black. My local Michael's carried "charcoal black," which is, in fact, gray. Fortunately the paint peels off very easily for redo's, which lessens the intimidation factor considerably for a neophyte like me.
I couldn't find any local stores that carried "black onyx," and the website listed a 1-month wait for availability. I thought I'd try a different brand, which had an enamel-based formula rather than acrylic, but still plenty of black on the shelves.
Ugh, this stuff was awful. After using the gray I had some expectations about working on a vertical glass surface (not terribly fun, but I couldn't exactly take the window down). This paint was much thinner and more watery, dripped straight down the window like cola syrup, and worse, the drip marks didn't disappear after drying. Big no-no #1 in creating the illusion of stained glass is drip marks. Air bubbles I can live with, since hand-blown glass sometimes has them, but drip marks? Never.
So all that had to come down, and the extra bottle I bought went straight back to the store. Obviously I had to get some "black onyx" somehow. So I turned to my favorite place to shop in the world, eBay.
Only a couple of people carried it. I chose the seller that had 100 units for sale rather than the one selling them individually. I ordered three bottles and awaited their delivery.
This is where the problem came in. The auction did promise Priority shipping. So when I got an email about three days later from the seller promising my item would go into the mail in their "standard 7-10 day timeframe," I was less than pleased. What ensued was an increasingly hostile exchange of emails trying to establish what the point was of slapping "Priority shipping" on the auction if you were going to wait a week or longer to get the item in the mail (I believe I waited for the bottles to actually arrive before initiating the angry correspondence).
The seller argued that "2-3 days (Priority Mail) is the transit time," not the time from end of auction to delivery, like I had just joined eBay last week and had to be explained the difference. I maintained that specifying Priority Mail in the auction creates a false expectation of speedy delivery. "It's there in the fine print that no one bothers to read about our actual shipping times," the seller sighed heavily. Okay, a.) clearly I'm not the first person to complain about this, so perhaps it's time to put it somewhere less...hidden, b.) going back to the auction and reading every word on the page, I found no mention anywhere about the 7-10 day window. I DID find the seller's feedback, which was liberally peppered with neutral and sometimes even negative comments about the delayed shipping. Oh, THAT fine print.
I don't know what kind of satisfaction I was hoping for, but long story short, our letters got uglier and uglier, with the seller complaining that they were thinking of quitting eBay altogether because customers were just so rude, as if customers in an actual retail environment are all little angels and never unreasonable or unhappy. I told them not to worry, I wouldn't be buying from them ever again, to which they responded I shouldn't try as I had been added to their blocked buyer list. Yeah, like I said, it got uglier and uglier. Nanny nanny boo boo.
It's important to mention that all this happened not so long after eBay instituted their new feedback policy about eliminating the option for sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers (to encourage buyers to be more honest in their feedback without fear of retaliation from the seller). I guess this seller (thestampinfamily, for future reference) hadn't heard about it or surely they would have tried harder to remain calm, or worked harder on their customer service skills (or at least tried to develop some). I left neutral feedback, which I felt was being generous considering how amazingly quickly our communication deteriorated. I simply said, "Good product, shipping slower than expected, seller doesn't handle complaints well," statements that I felt to be level-headed and fair. They left a follow-up to this, "Shipped quicker than stated. Buyer VERY hostile and arguementative (sic). SELLERS BEWARE." Which made me laugh because, as I said, there were lots of other comments with essentially the same complaint that were ignored. Also the thought that every eBay seller has the time to page back through the transaction history of their sellers to find this warning buried there. Yeah, right. Also also this response just confirmed my original comment about dealing with complaints. Stupid seller.
SO. The window. The black onyx did the trick nicely. I then decided to go for black and white checkered rather than clear, because I was afraid that too much sun would still come in.
That was the easy part. Next was the color that would go in the center.
Step Three: Going Crazy With Color
I was happy to move to this step, mostly because it didn't require standing on a 6-foot tall ladder the entire time. These clever people make what are called leading blanks, essentially plastic sheets where you can apply your liquid lead and color and then peel it off and stick it to the window like a cling. Which is what I spent the next many months doing, a laborious process of laying down the lead, letting it dry 24 hours, filling in with color, letting it dry 24 hours, then peeling and sticking to window. Lengthy and uneventful, so I'll skip to the end.
I'm extremely pleased with the result (this picture doesn't do it justice, taken as it was with a camera phone and put together with my obviously crappy panoramic photography skills). I'm already starting to think about my next project, but I think I'll rest on my laurels a bit first.
I was going to post some movie reviews as well, but frankly I'm beat. Maybe later.
It isn't that Tery actively prevents me from doing them when she's here...I can't explain it, she just inspires a sort of lethargy. Maybe it's just that at the end of the day there's no feeling of obligation to spend "quality together time." I do miss her cooking though, living on family-size frozen meals, Jose Ole Chimichangas and Freschetta pizzas and the occasional burger on the grill (not nearly as tasty as Tery's).
*~*
Probably the most important order of business: Our neighbor directly under us was found dead on Wednesday in his home. As I worked my regular shift, I gradually became aware of lots of stomping around in the stairwell, then Tracey's dogs going off. I then stepped out to notice my neighbor on the opposite balcony staring down below me intensely.
Then I noticed the casually dressed firemen chatting in hushed tones and an older woman sobbing on the lawn.
My neighbor across the way (Mike) heard mention of heart attack. I was totally shocked. Kent was a big guy, but he didn't smoke and was only in his early 40's.
We didn't know anything about Kent, just the occasional hellos in the parking lot. He was so private he didn't even have a peephole in his door. And so quiet the only way to know if he was home was to look for his car. He was the perfect neighbor, i.e., damn near invisible.
I called Tery with the news. Her first assumption was suicide. "But he just got a new SUV literally like 2 weeks ago," I pointed out. Maybe he was overcome with guilt when he realized how much his purchase was destroying the environment. We know he was Republican; maybe Sarah Palin's nomination pushed him over the edge. Or perhaps he just couldn't take one more night of the ferrets and the Kitten playing "Cage Match" over his head -- I could certainly relate to that.
But we shouldn't joke about the dead. We should instead selfishly worry about what'is to become of his unit and are we going to get new neighbors, perhaps people not nearly as low-profile as Kent.
The question that keeps morbidly running over and over through my mind is, what was I doing while he was dying a few feet below me? Petting my Kitten? Eating breakfast? Masturbating? Watching YouTube? Shopping on eBay? Did he consider asking for my help or was it over in the blink of an eye?
Now our stairwell neighborhood is down to us, Tracey and her mutts, and the people who hate their shih tzu and literally party 'til sunrise. All those fuckers will live (and live HERE) forever. (Except Reggie and his bastard father/brother/whatev Clarence. They've vanished without a trace. Careful what you wish for? I'm kidding of course, I'm ecstatically happy to see them gone. I also prefer to believe their departure is a direct result of us ratting on their illicit fireworks escapade.)
*~*
One of the biggest projects I've been attacking sporadically and with variable enthusiasm for months now is my faux stained glass window upstairs. Click the cut for the illustrated thrilling saga:
Step One: What I've Got to Work With
It's a cool window in the loft. The problem is on most days it's like having the Eye of Ra spearing straight through your skull until the sun mercifully passes overhead. And since our computer lives up there seven months of the year, it's not really an option to start my work day at noonish. The people we bought the place from covered it in a drab blue denim material that we hated, but were too lazy to find a better alternative. Until my creative brilliance, that is.
There are tons of stunning and beautiful designs on the internet to make your own stained glass projects (real and faux). The problem is they all tend to lean towards rectangular, or at least symmetrical, designs that simply wouldn't work in such an unusually shaped window. So I did what I'm used to doing anyway, and came up with my own idea.
Step Two: Adhesive Lead Lines
Seems simple enough, but I'm pretty proud of how symmetrical the long lines turned out, considering they were done completely freehand (turns out a laser level is useless on glass). I cheated and used a measuring tape for the smaller ones, because precision was even more crucial there. Deal with it.
Step Two: Checkered Border
I wasn't sure if I wanted black and clear or black and white. The first challenge was getting black. My local Michael's carried "charcoal black," which is, in fact, gray. Fortunately the paint peels off very easily for redo's, which lessens the intimidation factor considerably for a neophyte like me.
I couldn't find any local stores that carried "black onyx," and the website listed a 1-month wait for availability. I thought I'd try a different brand, which had an enamel-based formula rather than acrylic, but still plenty of black on the shelves.
Ugh, this stuff was awful. After using the gray I had some expectations about working on a vertical glass surface (not terribly fun, but I couldn't exactly take the window down). This paint was much thinner and more watery, dripped straight down the window like cola syrup, and worse, the drip marks didn't disappear after drying. Big no-no #1 in creating the illusion of stained glass is drip marks. Air bubbles I can live with, since hand-blown glass sometimes has them, but drip marks? Never.
So all that had to come down, and the extra bottle I bought went straight back to the store. Obviously I had to get some "black onyx" somehow. So I turned to my favorite place to shop in the world, eBay.
Only a couple of people carried it. I chose the seller that had 100 units for sale rather than the one selling them individually. I ordered three bottles and awaited their delivery.
This is where the problem came in. The auction did promise Priority shipping. So when I got an email about three days later from the seller promising my item would go into the mail in their "standard 7-10 day timeframe," I was less than pleased. What ensued was an increasingly hostile exchange of emails trying to establish what the point was of slapping "Priority shipping" on the auction if you were going to wait a week or longer to get the item in the mail (I believe I waited for the bottles to actually arrive before initiating the angry correspondence).
The seller argued that "2-3 days (Priority Mail) is the transit time," not the time from end of auction to delivery, like I had just joined eBay last week and had to be explained the difference. I maintained that specifying Priority Mail in the auction creates a false expectation of speedy delivery. "It's there in the fine print that no one bothers to read about our actual shipping times," the seller sighed heavily. Okay, a.) clearly I'm not the first person to complain about this, so perhaps it's time to put it somewhere less...hidden, b.) going back to the auction and reading every word on the page, I found no mention anywhere about the 7-10 day window. I DID find the seller's feedback, which was liberally peppered with neutral and sometimes even negative comments about the delayed shipping. Oh, THAT fine print.
I don't know what kind of satisfaction I was hoping for, but long story short, our letters got uglier and uglier, with the seller complaining that they were thinking of quitting eBay altogether because customers were just so rude, as if customers in an actual retail environment are all little angels and never unreasonable or unhappy. I told them not to worry, I wouldn't be buying from them ever again, to which they responded I shouldn't try as I had been added to their blocked buyer list. Yeah, like I said, it got uglier and uglier. Nanny nanny boo boo.
It's important to mention that all this happened not so long after eBay instituted their new feedback policy about eliminating the option for sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers (to encourage buyers to be more honest in their feedback without fear of retaliation from the seller). I guess this seller (thestampinfamily, for future reference) hadn't heard about it or surely they would have tried harder to remain calm, or worked harder on their customer service skills (or at least tried to develop some). I left neutral feedback, which I felt was being generous considering how amazingly quickly our communication deteriorated. I simply said, "Good product, shipping slower than expected, seller doesn't handle complaints well," statements that I felt to be level-headed and fair. They left a follow-up to this, "Shipped quicker than stated. Buyer VERY hostile and arguementative (sic). SELLERS BEWARE." Which made me laugh because, as I said, there were lots of other comments with essentially the same complaint that were ignored. Also the thought that every eBay seller has the time to page back through the transaction history of their sellers to find this warning buried there. Yeah, right. Also also this response just confirmed my original comment about dealing with complaints. Stupid seller.
SO. The window. The black onyx did the trick nicely. I then decided to go for black and white checkered rather than clear, because I was afraid that too much sun would still come in.
That was the easy part. Next was the color that would go in the center.
Step Three: Going Crazy With Color
I was happy to move to this step, mostly because it didn't require standing on a 6-foot tall ladder the entire time. These clever people make what are called leading blanks, essentially plastic sheets where you can apply your liquid lead and color and then peel it off and stick it to the window like a cling. Which is what I spent the next many months doing, a laborious process of laying down the lead, letting it dry 24 hours, filling in with color, letting it dry 24 hours, then peeling and sticking to window. Lengthy and uneventful, so I'll skip to the end.
I'm extremely pleased with the result (this picture doesn't do it justice, taken as it was with a camera phone and put together with my obviously crappy panoramic photography skills). I'm already starting to think about my next project, but I think I'll rest on my laurels a bit first.
I was going to post some movie reviews as well, but frankly I'm beat. Maybe later.
