Previous - 87. Absalom + Contracts
Painting
First the plumbers, while removing the old water heater and then bringing in the new one, banged up the paint on the walls of our entry, and then the seismic retrofitters spent two months hauling a huge amount of stuff in and out. The entry went from pristine to worn. It had always been my intention to touch up the paint after all the contractors were finished. Unfortunately, scheduling the painters to come in and prime and paint the wall that was shear walled, is proving difficult. I got tired of waiting and started doing what I could.I like painting in general, and touch-up painting is my favorite because it requires little prep. You just clean the surfaces in need and then slap on some paint. After a couple hours work you have what looks like a newly painted space. At least that's idea.
Two days ago I started my touch-up and it went well. All the really obvious damage has been hidden and the entry looks much better. However, the iron work has always been difficult, and the front wall of the building is more worn than I had thought.
After the painters finished work in the entry five years ago, I spend two evenings touching up all the places on the iron grill and gate that they missed because you can only really see them when it's dark outside and the light is on inside. This phenomenon bit me in the ass, too. So yesterday I waited until the evening to touch up the inside of the iron work and to give some areas a second coat.
This morning I put a second coat on the area of the front wall where the bricks had been knocked out of place and then re-set. That's when I noticed that that entire section of wall really needs to be re-painted, as soon as I can move the plants out of the way.
If I had the proper equipment for working at the top of a 15 foot wall above stairs, I would just go ahead and paint everything myself. If I can't get the painters here by February....
Souvenir
Today I'm working at the Starbucks at Van Ness and California (cable cars stop right outside the window). This space is also a Wells Fargo bank -- this is one of the last survivors of a scheme they came up with decades ago to have a variety of retail business share what had previously been larger banks. All the other services are gone now, but the cafe is still here, though with odd hours.But that's not the souvenir part. This building has two entrances, one on California and one on Van Ness. They both feature the same terrazzo floors I remember from the main library at ASU back in the early 1970s. The doors used to be the same as well, but I just noticed as I came in that they've replaced them. Bad for nostalgia, but the new doors are a superior design when it comes to making it clear if you need to push or pull -- something that drives me nuts.
I would guess this building was built in the late 1960s -- say within three years of 1968. I'll see if I can confirm this. Rats! It was built in 1917 so the entries were part of a remodeling project that will be harder to find a date for.
Absalom & snowballs
Like a snowball rolling down a hill and gradually growing bigger -- and more interesting -- both the story and the telling of the story in Absalom, Absalom! keeps growing. It still seems to me to be a perverse way to tell a story, but it is interesting.I'm still not that interested in any of the characters, particularly, but as a history of the American South it is fascinating. My mother's people were from Paducah, Kentucky, as close to the free North as you could get while remaining in the slave South. It can't have been an accident that they remained on that side of the Ohio river.
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