Glenn performs some aerial maneuvers as he test fits the fascia board for our fireplace remodeling project. There hasn't been much visible progress on the construction during January, but we spent time obtaining materials needed for the job and came up with a few new ideas for the design. Photos by Roni.
January 30, 2022: It must be a sign that our family is getting older. We just “celebrated” a New Year’s Eve like none other in recent memory. Perhaps it was because it fell on a Friday night, or maybe it was because we’ve been focused on other things amid a busy holiday season whose end came upon us faster than we realized. Whatever the case, we didn’t so much celebrate the arrival of 2022 as we acknowledged the passing of 2021 — may it rest in peace.
Roni eases into a massaging foot bath after a long day. The foot spa was a late-arrival Christmas gift. Photo by Glenn.
We are going to call this month's photo gallery a celebration of things that are round. Here is the second of our two Christmas bread loaves. We broke it out and decorated it about a week after Christmas. It was a little stale, unfortunately, but the flavor was still great and a few seconds in the microwave helped restore its softness. Photo by Glenn.
Happy New Year. It's 2022. Ho hum. Can we go to bed now? Photo by Glenn.
We weren't much for champagne this year, but we still engaged in our traditional eating of sour cream herring. It's for good luck, of course. Photo by Glenn.
Glenn received a mini doughnut maker for Christmas. He prepares his first batch for breakfast from homemade dough on Jan. 2. Photo by Roni.
We've got plain and chocolate chip doughnuts, all coated in cinnamon and sugar. We need to perfect our baking technique next time. Photo by Glenn.
Speaking of round things, Roni has been experimenting with her resin art. This is a geode she prepared using a wood template purchased from the craft store. Tempered glass is used for the clear veins through the middle and bottom, and she painted on accents of gold. We hung it in our bedroom. Photo by Roni.
Yet another geode creation. Roni themed it in shades of blue and white to resemble an agate slice. It was built on top of a three-quarter-inch round of plywood. She swirled the colors as the resin was starting to set, giving it a unique appearance. Photo by Roni.
Work on our fireplace has progressed slowly this month, but in this photo from Jan. 26 you will see that we have now added the cement backer board in preparation for tiling. A few of the large-format ceramic tiles we will be using can be seen on the hearth and leaning up against the wall. Photo by Glenn.
Here is a closer look at the hearth and the tiles. We had to move the fireplace in order to install the backer board, so we took the opportunity to add to the display the driftwood logs that came with it. Photo by Glenn.
This is a junction box for the dimmer switch that will control the LED lights we plan to install in the valence near the ceiling. This angle illustrates how we built the new framework around the existing bricks. If ever we wanted to, we could restore the fireplace to its original appearance by simply unscrewing the various components of the new frame. Photo by Glenn.
Our "construction foreman" Phoenix clings to the screen door for a better look at the fireplace work taking place on the front porch. Photo by Glenn.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger celebrates the final victory of his 17-year career — a 16-13 triumph over the Baltimore Ravens that got his team into the playoffs. It was a brief postseason run, however, as the Steelers were eliminated a week later by the Chiefs in a wildcard game. Photo by Glenn.
We had too much unused wall space in Roni's office, so we made use of it by adding a few more bookshelves. Photo by Glenn.
It didn't take long to fill all that new shelf space. Most of these are Glenn's old books that had been relegated to boxes when we redid the floor a few months ago. The very top shelf was created as a way to display curio items that haven't had a home since then. Photo by Glenn.
Ah, another round object. This is part of the lunch we bought at Mod Pizza while we were out shopping for project supplies at Home Depot. We added salads for a healthy touch. Photo by Glenn.
The pandemic is still with us, so we find ourselves still ordering out too often for dinner. We had cravings for "real hamburgers," which led us to Red Robin. The offerings here did not disappoint! Photo by Glenn.
Roni has friends in high places. They take good care of us with an occasional gift of fresh Dungeness crab. There is a world of difference between this and what comes from the grocery store. These crustaceans were soooooo good. Photo by Roni.
Our celebration of round objects concludes with a bowl of seafood cioppino that incorporated some of that wonderful crab in the previous image. A bit messy removing it from the shell, but well worth the effort. Photo by Roni.
A typical day in the stock market during the month of January finds individual names down 10 percent and worse. Only one word adequately describes the trading month: hideous. Photo by Glenn.
We conclude this month's gallery with a cat picture. Because cats are cute. Because cats rule the internet. Because we aren't quite sure what these two are contemplating, but rest assured it will probably lead to mischief. Photo by Roni.
Ben had to go to work early the next morning, so he had little interest in staying up past his bedtime to watch the ball drop in Times Square — especially if it was a replay of an event that happened three hours earlier, given our different time zones. So Roni had this idea that we could do our New Year’s rituals a few hours early for his benefit. You know, like at 9 p.m.
What? Fire off our champagne cork and eat sour cream herring three hours before the real start of the new year? Sacrilege! But so be it. We put out our smattering of snack foods that amounted to a couple types of crackers and a bit of cheese, then we settled in for what we thought would be our early celebration. Except that things didn’t work out that way. Ben decided to go to bed early. Glenn fell asleep on the sofa. Roni was content to read while she waited for the stroke of midnight.
When Glenn came around a few minutes before midnight, he trundled to the refrigerator to pull out the champagne. “Are you going to have any of that?” Roni asked, “because I don’t really want any now.” Ohhhhh. Well, still being groggy with sleep and not exactly in the mood to start drinking himself, Glenn agreed it would be best to save the champagne for later. Should we wake Ben up, since we didn’t have our party earlier? Wellllll, he’s probably in the middle of dream stage and we shouldn’t disturb him just for a turn of the calendar.
So when the big moment came and the fireworks in our neighborhood started shooting off a minute too early with reckless abandon, we just sat quietly in our living room watching ABC’s three-hours-old telecast of the New York event. 3… 2… 1… happy new year. OK. That’s it, time to turn off the TV and head to bed. We didn’t even bother putting up our new calendars as we normally do; there’d be time for that in the morning. We had a couple forkfuls of sour cream herring and called it a night.
A portend of things to come this year? Maybe perhaps.
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W
E'VE REALLY BEEN enjoying that TouchStone Elite electric fireplace we purchased last month, and we were excited about the prospect of sharing more with you this month about the remodel of our old fireplace and showing pictures of the finished project. Just one little detail: it isn’t finished yet.
In the time-honored Gehlke tradition of making every project more difficult than it needs to be, Glenn has succeeded in turning what began as a simple framing and shiplap job into an involved process that now includes a wall of tile and a valance with LED lights connected by a dimmer switch. Which is not to say the results won’t be amazing when they are done, only that we don’t know when that day will be, given that the bulk of the time has been spent planning and sketching while little actual work has been achieved.
The good news is that we are at a point where most of the materials for the project have been purchased; they are stacked on the front porch and in our living room, leaning up against walls and tucked behind the sofa near the cat tree. Yes, it looks a lot like a construction zone.
The most visible progress has been the addition of cement backer board to the lower framework that surrounds the new fireplace. We purchased a couple 3x5 sheets of the board and intend now to tile everything from the hearth up about four feet to where the mantel will be located. The mantel will have to be constructed last once we get to see how everything else comes together.
To install the cement board we had to unplug the fireplace and unscrew it from the frame. That is because the quarter-inch board has to sit directly under the bezel of the fireplace face. The board is supposedly easy to cut with a utility knife, and we had some experience working with it when we did the kitchen remodel. But cutting with a dull blade makes life more difficult, and so what should have taken a few minutes consumed several hours of a Sunday. But once the cuts were made, we attached the board to the frame with screws — hopefully enough to keep it attached once the heavy tile is applied.
Oh yes, the tile… We’d picked up one 1x2-foot piece from Home Depot last month as we were contemplating the design of the hearth. The gray-and-white tile with granite-like swirl effects grew on us, and so when we decided to do the entire lower face of the wall with it, we returned to Home Depot to buy a couple boxes of the stuff. They must have weighed 60 pounds each, and we struggled mightily to get them from the display onto our shopping cart. It was a good thing we got them when we did, however, because when we returned a few days later the entire remaining stock had been sold. Apparently we weren’t the only ones to like them on clearance.
So now what we’ve got is what we’ve got, as far as tile goes. It looks like there will be some tricky angle cuts involved, so hopefully there won’t be any screw-ups or we might find ourselves short to finish the design.
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HE VALANCE IDEA came about after we originally considered adding windows to the top of the shiplap wall to add some visual interest. We had some glass panes left over from the kitchen cabinets and thought they could easily be incorporated into the fireplace project. But after a lot of looking around at Hobby Lobby, Michael’s and online, we failed to find a framing solution we liked and nixed the idea entirely.
But we still wanted to have some LED lights included in the project because our living room is dark and needs all the light it can get. So we decided on the valance that would extend out from the top of the shiplap wall and support the lighting that will beam down onto the wall to highlight whatever artwork we may decide to place there.
And once again, we made things difficult on ourselves. We decided that a simple long box would be boring, so Roni suggested that perhaps we could design a curved valance. Which of course would involve bending wood — never an easy task. But Glenn liked the idea too and thought he could manage the job.
So we went to Home Depot in search of the thinnest wood we could find in a length more than six feet. Which resulted in finding quarter-inch underlayment in the plywood section. Perfect! Well, almost. We had to purchase a 4x8-foot sheet of the stuff when we only needed a 9-inch strip off the side. But at least the guys there cut it for us on their big saw, saving us from needing to do so.
We also bought a pair of 10-inch wide pine boards that will become the top and bottom of the valance. We laminated a strip of the underlayment to one board, then sketched out an arc on each. Once cut, the two boards will support the curved underlayment and the entire thing will be attached via rafters at the top of the shiplap wall. Well, you’d sort of have to see it to understand how it will all fit together. Maybe next month?
At least with the gray cement board up on the wall we have a better idea how it will look once the final layer of tile is applied. Now we’re getting really excited about the final design. Tiling should commence in the next few days — it has to because we can’t get to the mantel until we do, and we’d like to complete this project before spring, while the nights are still cold enough that a cozy fireplace (or heater) is still appealing.
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HILE THE FIREPLACE may still be in progress, we did actually finish one project on our lengthy list of them — adding shelves to the den. What? You say we already had shelves there? Indeed we did, but nowhere near enough of them to hold all the books we’ve accumulated through the years. And when we redesigned the room from Glenn’s Writing Sanctuary into a full office for Roni to conduct her work and craft projects, books that had been on cabinet shelves were suddenly displaced, stowed away in cardboard boxes that have since been overrunning the room’s floor space.
So back up on the wall they needed to go. We managed to free up about four feet of space between the desk and the door, so there was room for a floor-to-ceiling bank of shelves there. It was just enough to accommodate most of Glenn’s reference, train, travel and NASCAR books. Along the top row, which sits just below the bulletin board that rims the entire west-facing wall, we built an 8-foot curio shelf to hold things that we didn’t want to leave in boxes forever. So we’ve got some ceramic birds and resin art that Roni has made herself. There are few places left in the room where the wall is still visible, except perhaps under Roni’s desk, and we’re still working on that!
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T
HINGS HAVE GONE from bad to worse on the investment front, thanks to a massive correction in the major stock indices that began in December and accelerated during January. Our IRAs have all seen drawdowns, although they are holding up well given our heavy investments in energy companies, index funds and mega-cap tech stocks including Apple, Microsoft and Visa.
Our taxable account is another story, unfortunately, as it is where we do most of our options trades with heavy exposure to the small-cap Russell 2000 index and NASDAQ, both of which have been devastated. We’ve been hit with multiple margin calls and been forced to close trades for major losses that has wiped out about all of the cash reserves we’d built up in 2021. The carnage this month has included 14 down market days out of 19 as of this writing, including 10 in a row. There is a very real possibility we may be forced to liquidate the entire portfolio to save what’s left and restart from scratch — not a pleasant prospect, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
If there is good news — and there isn’t much — at least we’ve booked plenty of losses in four weeks to offset any potential gains we might have for the rest of the year, assuming this endless volatility settles down once the Federal Reserve paints a clearer picture of what it intends to do with interest rates.
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R
ONI HAS BEEN enjoying her office space as a place to do her resin crafts, and she has been experimenting with casting small objects such as succulents and crystals and embedding them in other works. For Christmas she received several new silicone molds, including an assortment of small clock faces that she hopes to turn into a new clock for Ben’s bathroom wall.
She’s gotten better with eliminating the bubbles that form when the two-part epoxy resin is mixed together. She has also found new ways to blend pigments and dyes to achieve more realistic effects in her pieces. We’ve been getting a lot of circular wall hangings made atop plywood rounds. One of our favorites we dubbed “Jupiter” because it features white-and-rose-colored bands that sort of resemble the great planet.
Resin is not cheap, unfortunately, so Roni is continually trying to source quality mixes at bulk and wholesale prices. If you know of any, by all means let her know!
Roni has gotten to know a lot of people in her years working for the newspaper as a correspondent and doing outreach work for various local agencies, and occasionally those contacts pay dividends. Recently she received a call out of the blue from the harbormaster of Lauritzen Yacht Harbor asking if she’d like a few fresh Dungeness crabs he’d caught on a recent fishing trip. Um, sure! How many would you like?
Not being huge seafood eaters, we took him up on three of the crabs, figuring one for each of us. But that still turned out to be a lot of crab meat, even after he had gone to the effort of cleaning and preparing them for us. And because Ben didn’t actually partake in our crab feed, we wound up with enough meat for a couple of salads and Roni’s first attempt at making cioppino. Although the fresh crab meat was oh so yummy, it takes a lot of effort to peel the shell and so we have probably had our fill until next January.
Glenn received a postcard in the mail from the county this week to inform him that he has to report for jury duty in February. Yay. They are keeping him in suspense until the evening of Feb. 22, when he will have to call in to find out whether he’ll be needed at the superior courthouse in Pittsburg the following day.
January saw the conclusion of this season’s football picks contest between Glenn and his brother Sean, and while Glenn faded late to lose the championship trophy for a third straight year, Ben put together one of his best seasons in more than a decade and finished second overall, just a couple of games behind his uncle.
Win or lose, in the end we’re all San Francisco 49ers fans when it comes to the playoffs, and we were holding out hope they would find a way to sustain some late-season magic to make it to the Super Bowl for a 40th anniversary rematch of their first title against the Cincinnati Bengals. But alas, the luck ran out on Jan. 30 when they fell 20-17 to the Los Angeles Rams.
So now that January has ended with a thud, maybe we can clear the deck for better luck in the next 11 months. Our fingers remain crossed for now.
