And The Baby Jesus Wept...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Okay, no apologies for the lack of posting. I told you in the last post but one that we had bought a house, and that, coupled with some Big News coming on the Audio Damage front in a short while, is currently demanding about 138% of my waking moments.
So the main reasons for this particular post are two-fold. First, I would like to get that neckbeard in the YouTube video screengrab below the fold, because I’m tired of seeing it. (Mission accomplished.) And second, I need to vent.
My wife has often told me, in our nearly 19 years of marriage, that if something’s worth doing it is worth doing right. That has never been more apparent to me than now. While my discovery isn’t specifically (or, well, even generally) music-related, the same precepts apply, as it turns out. I have occasionally taken on remix and production projects. It isn’t something I terribly enjoy, and usually the benefactors of my tender ministrations don’t enjoy it either. The reason for this is that if something is done half-assed or stupidly, I have a knack for letting the person that did it know. Come to find out, people don’t really like being called stupid. Go figure.
But this house… it was built in 1967, and was “builder-grade” (which is Real-Estate language for “the bare minimum”) for its time. In the 46 years between when it was built and when I acquired it, it had two owners. In that time, both owners did various upgrades and repairs. And in EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE that the opportunity presented itself, they took the path of least resistance. This has built up in four and a half decades to a rather ludicrous collection of half-assed bailing-wire-and-band-aids fixes and upgrades. The most egregious example is the $3000 worth of new granite countertops laid over the original particle board kitchen cabinetry. Today I discovered a pre-hung door frame that was held in place solely by the trim. (I was removing the trim prior to painting the room, and the door and frame literally fell out of the wall.) It goes on and on.
I fully expected this, and was aware of most of the problem “fixes” prior to purchasing the house. We got it for an excellent price, and it is in a good neighborhood; our fixes prior to moving in (which mostly consist of undoing the previous owners’ errors and making all the doorknobs match) will increase its value by several tens of thousands of dollars, lubricated almost entirely by sweat. In short, I got what I paid for and will make a lot of money off this house; we wanted a mid-century modern Atomic Ranch that we could bring back to a modernized version of its original state, and build a ton of equity in the process, and for that particular want, we couldn’t have done better.
However, let this be a lesson: if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. This house is like the difference between using a pre-made drum loop someone ginned up (no offense, Wade and Huggy; much love!!!), and taking the time to custom record and synthesize your drum sounds, with which you make a well-produced and nicely grooving rhythm part. Sure, the loop will work. But 46 years down the road, don’t you wish somebody knew you took the time to do it right?
38 comments
congrats on the house.. sounds like it has good bones... and more importantly ou obviously have a plan.
the thing about construction work and demolition is.. it makes all the sense in the world to order pizza.
looking forward to the big AD news :)
I'm actually all fast-fooded out at this point. Really looking forward to the first meal my wife cooks in our new house.
Anyhow, we've just got to the top of the coaster; the whole uphill part was demo. (Ripping up floors, tearing out walls, etc.) Tomorrow, the downhill part starts with the first coat of primer. Then paint. Then 1200 square feet of porcelain tile. Then baseboards. Then door trim. Then LED recessed lighting throughout.
Then we move.
Then I get like a month of rest.
Then a new back porch.
Then the master bathroom.
Then the master bedroom.
Then a new kitchen.
Then the guest room.
Then I build my studio building in the backyard.
So, look for me again some time c. 2016.
My house is exactly the same but 100 years older. You can probably imagine the scale of the bodges and shortcuts that we are unpicking. I feel your pain.
I'm with boobs.
One of the drawbacks of living in the US is the quality of construction. Go to Sicily and people live in 500 year old houses. They fix stuff when they have to, but you won't ever see wallboard hung the wrong way up, or open a wall to find they cheated on stud spacing.
Everyone from Europe I've ever shown the finer points of United States construction standards laughs themselves sick.
Well, custom homes are custom homes, and they're usually pretty good. Tract homes are tract homes, and those builders spent a lot of time cutting corners and paying off inspectors.
This is, needless to say, a tract home. I was surprised to learn, upon skinning a couple walls, that the interior walls are built with 2x3 studs. But it's a block house. Not like it's gonna fall down or anything.
-CR
When it comes to homes, most people don't even know what "doing it right is" anymore, and they don't really understand the cost value. They just want the problem "solved". Or out of sight.
Previous owners of my house did all kinds of somewhat appalling things. I rectified some when I moved in, but lacked the time and cash to fix all of them. Now that all our stuff is in here, some of these items are just not going to get fixed.
Hell, I need new carpeting or flooring downstairs, but the thought of moving everything out so I can rip the old stuff up is just...*sigh*. Maybe next year?
The impassioned rants that I occasionally go into here about reverb theory? This is NOTHING compared to my current passion/anger about houses and the care/lack of care given to them. I'll keep it short:
We lived in a dumpy rental for the last 7 years. What Chris says about "the path of least resistance" applies to the house we were in, with the main difference being that "cheap upgrades" usually meant "no upgrades." The kitchen had the same avocado green linoleum since 1968 or so, the wood floors have needed a refinish for who knows how long, the ceiling in the master bedroom looks like a giantess had her period on it, the "wallpaper" in the master bedroom was pale green Naugahyde, and I found 40+ yo green shag carpet in the heating ducts when we had them professionally cleaned. The upgrades that were installed were always the cheapest available.
The house itself was modestly sized. However, I've seen similar houses in the neighborhood, that are really nice on the inside, due to the care given by their owners over the years. As tenants, we put as many improvements into the house as was reasonable (new paint, replaced the bare lightbulbs on the ceiling with decent lamps, stuff like that), but it is impossible to overcome several decades of neglect without ripping stuff up and staring over.
Why didn't we move? We were saving for a better house to buy. Plus, moving with kids is brutal. And the economy went to hell while we lived there, so we were stuck for a few years.
A few weeks ago, we bought a house built in 1929. The bones of the house are much nicer than the rental we lived in. In Seattle, most of the homes that are older will be built with timber that is much higher quality than what you can get nowadays. More importantly, all of the remodeling decisions were made with care. The basement was refinished in a nice way, the kitchen has good cabinets and tile, the trim paint is gorgeous, stuff like that. The house has been beautifully maintained, with the original glasswork and mahogany trim still in place.
I wonder if the difference is that the first house has been a rental since 1984, while the new house has been owner occupied its entire existence. It seems easier to neglect a place when you don't live there.
@chaircrusher: My guess is the 500 yo homes in Europe are evidence of "survival of the fittest," which is really a tautology that means "survival of those that survived." Undoubtedly there were cheaper homes made over the centuries, but they collapsed a long time ago. For that matter, there were probably homes that were made with care of the finest materials, but were unable to survive the wars of the last 500 years. For a home to survive that long takes a combination of good materials and building, consistent maintenance, and luck.
Chris.... bought my 1963 Vegas atomic ranch a year and half ago, and ran into MUCH of the same stupidity (my own version of the mantra I came to adopt is "any job worth doing is worth doing wrong"). Lucky for you I've documented the whole mess so far... read and learn!
https://mitchellsigman.squarespace.com/midcenturymalaise/
Elle and her parents primed the two main rooms today (just got back from that; had to be there all day to wait for the gas company anyhow) and, pursuant to Sean's comments, having lived in rentals for the last... well, hell, most of my life, actually, it is _astounding_ the difference a well-applied coat of high-quality paint makes. I was almost moved to tears, truth be told. I took off all the baseboards and trim, the which had been painted over at least a dozen times, to the point where there wasn't a clearly defined difference in plane between the baseboards and the wall itself.
After filling every hole in the wall, removing the wiring and wall boxes for 45 years of questionable decisions involving various forms of telephony, cable TV, and satellite TV, patching all those holes, and fully dressing the walls and ceiling before painting, now that it has its first coat of three, this shit looks brand new. I can't wait to see how it looks once the tile is in and the trim and baseboards are back on.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
Tomorrow's adventure involves removing the shit lighting, filling and patching the holes thereof, and putting 3" recessed cans throughout for LED floods. I'm spending a lot of money on the lighting in this house, but since I have the opportunity to have it the way I want, I'm taking it. (I was, for most of my adult life, a lighting professional, so this is a particular point of honor for me. This house will be well-lit even if nothing else goes right.)
-CR
@mitchell: Oh, holy fuck.
We decided not to blog this adventure. But yeah, same/same, for the most part.
-CR
No doubt, nearly every first time homeowner's reality check. I seriously think that if everyone learned proper home maintenance as part of their mandatory education, people would not be able to get away with that. Or at least makes for fine points of negotiating. I think a lot of people get into buying a house thinking some magical fairy is going to come sprinkle repairs on the house for them, and once they figure out that isn't true, it comes down to hiring someone to do it (and supervising them to make sure its done right...!) or doing it yourself or with friends...who's quality control standards definitely slip as the beer goes on and the person in charge of the money dictates....
Luckily (or not, depending on your point of view) for me, my grandfather, father, and stepfather, as well as 3 uncles, were or are contractors, all of whom are perfectly capable of designing and building a beautiful custom house that could grace the pages of Architectural Digest (and in a couple cases with my father and one of my uncles, have done that very thing) starting with live trees and a copper mine. While I didn't go in to the family business, it was my summer job starting from a very (like 6 yrs old) young age.
So, in reading Mitchell's blog, I'm actually in a much different place. While I'm not very experienced with finish work (which I equate to anything involving 16 gauge or smaller nails or, gods forbid, paint) up to that point I'm actually fairly skilled. Not like "do it for a day job" skilled like my family members, but I have the basic knowledge, and a vast pool of family experience to draw upon for questions and help.
The point of this being that I knew what I was getting in to before we signed for the house. However, what's amazing me is the shit I'm finding that was physically impossible to discover prior to purchase. My experience is 100% new construction; I've never done a rehab before. Some of this shit is flat-out amazing to me.
-CR
I feel your funk, CR, I feel your funk, been there done that...
@seancostello ". . . Undoubtedly there were cheaper homes made over the centuries, but they collapsed a long time ago." Not nearly as much as you seem to think. Balloon frame construction is unheard of in Europe. It doesn't exist. At all. Yes, houses that have been hit by bombs do get destroyed, as do homes that are judged unsightly, but, by and large, things tend to get built once every few hundred years on a particular site. I live in Berlin, and despite the remodeling that was done between 1940 and 1945, the great majority of structures here are most assuredly pre-1940 and a large minority of the structures were built before 1900.
As to construction in the US; one of my personal pet peeves when I lived in the US was the now prevalence of so-called gang-nail rafter plates. These things are obviously faster to install on pre-fabricated roof trusses than actual nails. They are also so remarkably short-lived in structure fires that many fire departments will not attempt to enter modern single-family dwellings that are partially involved for fear that the roof will collapse. Which it will. Rather more quickly than you might think.
All that said, things were much better back then, I walked to school, and get off the lawn.
Cheers,
Alan Tomlinson
@Alan: Are they still using timber framing in Europe for new construction?
I've been tripping out about the difference between old lumber and the new stuff. The steps in our "new" (to us) house are made of fir, and the wood grain is super tight. I guess they grew trees different back in 1929 - or rather, the trees grew themselves differently than the farmed trees of today. My wife's uncle is installing a bannister extension, and is using fir that he salvaged from some old bookshelves that were being torn down at the University of Washington. VERY different grain from the Home Depot bannister wood.
@seancostello I've never seen timber framing in new construction here except for roofs.
With respect to virgin growth softwoods, yep, that stuff is of an entirely different quality.
Cheers,
Alan Tomlinson
>No doubt, nearly every first time homeowner's reality check.
Yes, indeed. It's often "Well surely they wouldn't have...oh shit."
The people that owned my house over did everything in a half assed manner because they didn't know what they were doing. Simple shelves were put up with multiple giant 4 inch screws that were nearly impossible to get out. Those shelves weren't going anywhere, their tshirts were perfectly safe.
Keep reminding yourself; the bones are what matters. All the surface shit can be replaced. That's why it's cheap. I'm trying to buy a home in AZ right now and I was looking for fucked up surface shit. I don't want to tear up perfectly good stuff and replace it with what I want. It's a waste and I don't want to pay for it. And I'm lazy and would never do it if it was passable.
@bongo_x: Exactly the same thing here. The first house we bid on was that, basically. It was fine. Nothing offensive about it at all. And we were talking like "someday, we could think about this or that.."
(Ironically, the owner turned down our bid, which was a bit above fair for the house. Then once he started seeing the other bids come in, he called our agent back and asked if we were still interested. We were a week away from closing on our current house when this happened.)
The second house we bid on was too far in the other direction. Really cool curb appeal. (It was that mid-century-modern "Tunisian" style you see around here occasionally, with a courtyard and what-not.) However, inside it had 1800 square feet of Saltillo tile, the most hideous floor covering ever devised by man, and fucking impossible to remove. We were willing to deal with it, although in retrospect I know better now. So we lowballed the price, bidding what the house was worth. Their agent actually laughed at our agent when he got the bid. That house had been on the market for 135 days at the time. It's at 170 now.
The third one was just right. We bid just shy of their asking price, which was fair. Just enough to pay for what we wanted to do. They saw the logic of that and accepted our bid. It was ugly inside, but all the stuff that was ugly was stuff we'd want to change anyhow. Not too much work. (Although, as I said, in retrospect I might now consider a lot of ugly tile a deal-breaker.)
-CR
Funny, I've always loved Saltillo tile.
I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING I HATED ABOUT YOU!!!
Seriously, no, that's not allowed here. Next stop: saying FL Studio ain't that bad.
-CR
I've moved through three houses and two apartments in the last fifteen years. I have yet to be in one where things were done right. The house I'm in right now has great bones. Most of the load bearing parts are steel i-beams most likely produced right here in Pittsburgh long before the collapse of the industry. Unfortunately everything else on top of those beams was the shoddiest construction possible. When we moved in, we had an electrician redo the most egregious things and that part of the house is flowing like a well regulated EPS grid should be. Everything else, I'm trying to hold together with newer bailing twine and duct tape than was here before me. Poverty limits some of the things that I can do. Pulling up carpet and paint, and a bit of landscaping are about all that I can really pull off at the moment.
I've been a homeowner for a long time, and I think that it's the way to go in most places. Average rent for a comparable place in PGH were two to three times what a decent mortgage would be even before the economy tanked in '08. Now there are even better deals if you are willing to live in an area of town that they aren't actively gentrifying. But it's also tough to know that everything rides on your shoulders.
We are strongly considering moving back to the first house that we lived in when we moved from OKC. But this time we want to take the move slow and do the sweat work that we have never had the time to do in a move. I want to live in at least one place that is set up the way that I want it to be and is conducive to our lifestyle. That house is a hundred year old Victorian with good bones as well. If we take our time we can do it right and with the little money that we have. It just won't be done anytime soon. I'll be right there with you in 2016, Chris!
-William
Welcome to the time/money sink of homeownership! I have a continual backlog of repairs/upgrades that I'm working on when I have free time (which I don't think I've had for the past few years at all). Our next major project will be gutting the kitchen. New flooring, new cabinets and counter-tops, the works. It will be beautiful when it's done and closer to our vision of what we want our home to be but damn if I'm not looking forward to it.
>I want to live in at least one place that is set up the way that I want it to be and is conducive to our lifestyle.
So sad to read, chasing the dream. It's easy to see when someone else is an addict, but hard to see in yourself.
Saltillo tile; I like it. But this is the next step of home ownership; all the things you've done to fix up the house, the things that you love and have poured money and sweat into, someone will hate will make it harder to sell your house. So then you start thinking of every improvement in terms of balancing what you really want vs the generic crap that helps houses sell and whether you're just going to have to redo it when the time comes.
God, did I just walk into a fuckin' Home Depot or what? Nothing I hate more than "home renovation"... except talkin' about "home renovation". About as exciting as watching paint dry (hey... that's pretty good! :D ). I can't believe how much of America... and apparently people in general... get into this shit. It's almost like golf or religion or something. I guess it's innately normal to be so concerned and obsessed over one's abode... to most animals. And once again... I'm the "loner" in the room and must not be "normal". So, before you tell me as much... I'll get out now. Just thought I'd throw that out there for all you home renovating enthusiasts. ;D
At the risk of being teased like some pre-pubescent teen with bad acne, and I'm not intending to hijack this thread, I wonder Chris if you'd be up for discussing the DAWs we choose sometime in the future. I know most here are probably Abelton, Reason, Logic, or Pro Tools, and sometimes I wonder if I should be converted.
I am afraid I am "one of those" FL Studio users, mostly because it is what I was exposed to first and what I was brought up on, so to speak. Don't worry, I'm not interested in a fanboy discussion in the slightest, but some actually pros/cons comparisons. I actually hate how FL handles midi (try recording the midi output of something like Axon, for example, without some virtual midi port like Loop Midi... Grr).
But like I said, not trying to hijack. Just a post idea for the future.
More on topic: super congrats on the new house. Obviously you are a man who is willing and able to get his hands a bit dirty. I wish. Here in my oil-soaked Albertan neck of the woods it is just not cost effective for a young couple to buy an older home. Pre-fab homes have as much character as a soggy taco, but are often the only affordable option. And yes, every possible corner seems to be cut.
@wgparham: I'm tripping out about the steel I-beams. It makes sense to use those in construction, but I've never seen them used in the tree-laden PNW. Then again, I'm more of a "dweller" and less a "builder" when it comes to houses. I want to build a shed for my office in the yard of the new house, but a 10x12 shed is obviously a different beast than a full-on house.
@un.ku: Conversations like that rapidly turn in to a religious war. I personally could give a shit. Whatever works. My current leanings are Studio One 2 for "real" music, and Live for electro-shit, but I'll use whatever's handy. I won't, however, use FL Studio ever. I'm sure it's fine for some people, but fuck if I know who those people are. They're only one step away from putting a new search bar in your browser on install at this point.
@wgparham: The EPS grid in this house, well, let's just say that I spend a lot of time in the Jeffries tubes.
@seancostello: I strongly recommend either 8 x 12 or 12 x 16 for your "shed." You'll rapidly see why.
-CR
Fair enough, Chris. I'm not the religious type, but consider the matter dropped.
My first house (partially built 1913) had parts of the electrical done by an aircraft mechanic. This was the original owners son - who grew up, lived and retired in that house. It was his life, his pride and his heritage - and I was proud to honor his request to continue to fly the flag out front, and tend his pianese flowers.
Built like a tank... no joke - it had 3 1/2" of solid flooring (2 layers of shiplap,, osb, hardwood, more hardwood). Sawing for new heating vents was eye opening and a pita. Had raw 2x4 studs... so actually 2" x 4" - hard as frak.
"Best" find was an old wind-up alarm clock in the corner of the pantry. With live wires soldered to the arms of the clock (dont reach for the pickles without looking - yeesh!) These contacted at 4am to 'turn on' the lights and block heater for the shed and car in the back.
Still... it worked and provided for generations, with what they had.
seancostello: "Are they still using timber framing in Europe for new construction?"
In Europe? Really?
I live in finland where the quality of building houses was very good until late 50's/early 60's. Most stuff done after that is not so good including stuff done in 2013, but compared what they have done in UK everything is top notch :D Sure there is really old buildings still standing, those are cold, wet, noisy etc. It is not uncommon to see carpet flooring on bathroom :D
But yes, there is still some new timber framing construction in Finland. It's probably getting more common these days. Quality of timber is not the same anymore tough.
I recently bought timber framed house built in 1924 and it is still in exellent shape except the additions and "renovations" done in later years. Most work we have is to undo the stuff previous owners have done.
@Vaihe: Well, yeah, UK construction seems to be 'slight' nowadays, wooden frames with a layer of brick work, lucky if the walls don't wobble if you slam a door...
But my contribution to the renovation pissing contest: electrical outlets held in by a strip of silicon sealer (or whatever that white, rubbery crap is). The other sockets they'd managed to secure with 4" screws into the lathes but not this one. Even better when it came away from the wall to reveal bare wires, not even a hint of electrical tape to at least pretend they'd made some effort...
I agree that each job is worth doing right. Sometimes worth it to hire out, but not often. At our house (we're on number 4 and I needed to rebuild a lot on each one), we just think, "well, I can hire the work out and complain about it, or I can do it myself and complain about it. And doing it myself is way cheaper..." Thanks for your insights! -Steve Case http://www.casetunes.com/
The cool thing about this whole process is how much leeway people give you in the "complain about it" category. In actual fact, when I say something wasn't that bad, without complaining about it, the person I'm saying it to rarely believes me. "I've done that, and it totally sucks. Let it out, bro!"
-CR
Hey. I represent that remark!
:-)
I use loops all the time in my music. I could make them myself. Really I could. I have the ability, I have the will, I have the talent. I just don't have the time. And I like 'fun'. Yup, 'fun'...
There is something deeply kinky to me about having at hand the left browser of my Ableton window pane ready to serve up requisite loops. I paid for them god damn it, and I am going to get my money's worth. No law enforcement needed here. No sir. All above board.
Who's gonna know? Shit, even I don't know half the time. I have a massive library of my own loops. They are better than most the crud I come across. I like it when that happens.
But yeah, for a lot of people it would be a 'bad' idea. I have taste, so for me it is not. And then again I manipulate the hell out of the loops anyway, so they are pretty much unrecognisable to me, let alone anyone else. But sometimes I like to drop an Amen, or a, you know... And yes, you can hear it is an Amen, that is the whole point. But I drop an Amen like you never heard an Amen before, and I added something to the canon. And that is good enough for me.
Because NO ONE ever hears my music. I am a musical genius. Aided by the tools of those like Audio Damage, and others. It's ok.
I just don't need someone, anyone, in fact, preaching to me, that because I used a stock loop from my Ableton Library Pack, I am somehow less than others.
Judge me on my music.
This reminds me of 'The Appeal' by Kipling:
If I have given you delight
By aught that I have done
Let me lie quiet in that night
Which shall be yours anon.
And for the little little span
The dead are borne in mind
Seek not to questions other than
The books I leave behind
For books, read 'loops'.
Btw, it was quite difficult to get a good 'translation' of that on the 'web'.
About the first half a dozen google results returned pages that read: "IT I have given.."..
They obviously have read from the same page and copied as such.
There in lies a warning. But I'm not sure what it is.
I trust the good reader to use discretion, which was the point of my whole post in the first place.
Yours, anon, a dirty free loading (but paid up) loop user.
:-)
Stadard Beat Company + replicant + filterstation + rough rider ( 1 aux Eos, 1 aux ronin ) = something I feel fine calling my own.
I don't have a drummer, dj or studio musician friends to help me flesh out ideas with cool shit . I do have access to some of the best minds in sampling and recording. Sometimes I'll a chop and screw it; sometimes a Goldbaby drum break cranking out of Geist w/ minimal editing, DSP is all it takes to sell the bridge.
I know. I'm always engaging in this discussion every time it comes up around here. But it is often part of my process so it's interesting to me. Sure, I listen to RT-60 and marvel at the nuance of the beats and know it was built step by step, then marvel more. But I also hear some ninja tune deep cut and know that if I can get phrase samples to transcend their original context that is an art in its own way.
So, yeah, to echo the dude above, in 10 years it won't matter if I built myself or I had a pro carpenter come in and construct the framework and supply the materials. As long as its a quality end result and something that I'm proud of, it's all good.
Anyway, good luck and god speed w/ the domicile.
Any progress reports on the remodeling?
I've had to spend more energy cleaning up the old rental than focusing on our new house. I did go to Hardwick's Hardware the other day (the best & scariest hardware store in Seattle - scary because of how dead people would be if an earthquake happened while browsing the aisles) and got a tool designed to pry open painted windows. I'm not sure why someone would paint windows shut, but the tool made fast work of opening a few windows that were painted shut in the new house.
We've completed one of the three rooms that got... well, I don't know which term to use. I'm gonna go with "upgraded." That room has new sheetrock, new tile, new paint, new baseboards and trim, new recessed LED lighting, all electrical problems tamed, etc.
The second room, called "The Fireplace Room" in the local patois, has all of the above except for tile, baseboards, and trim.
The third room, ditto.
So, we're about 2/3 of the way done with the initial "before we move in" renovations. It will be a continual saga that will take at least a couple years to complete, as this house is getting a major multi-thousands-of-dollars-and-many-hours-of-work update, and I've run out of money. But we'll begin moving around the 1st, and probably be fully translocated by the middle of the month.
Just in time for my scheduled jury duty.
-CR
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