It’s hard to count the times I’ve started to watch a documentary film on a topic that I’m interested in only to become uninterested just over half way through. I’m am becoming quite a fan of Gary Hustwit though. Unlike a lot of documentaries Hustiwt’s films don’t seem long and drawn out. I finally got around to watching his documentary about Helvetica. Listening to all the quirky designers talk about the type face and what they think about design in general was a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed segment with Erik Spiekermann who seemed to constantly and purposely contradict himself. You get a little design history too. If you’re a Netflixer you can already watch it on demand.

This is a very simple and very amazing video by Jul & Mat for Ratatat’s Party With Children. I really can’t say much more about it. It has a certain perfection that I exceedingly enjoy; a common trait in Jul & Mat videos.

I attended the Westfield International Air Show this weekend. I thought it might be interesting to take some photos of typefaces on the planes.

I’m a recent convert to Netflix. We’ve had it about 4 months now. It’s a bit of a blessing and a curse. A curse because there are better things to do than watching movies every night. A blessing because you get to see some gems on demand. I just finished watching The Art of the Steal, directed by Don Argott. The documentary tells the story of how the largest privately owned art collection (created and owned by Albert Barnes) was stolen by the city of Philadelphia and the Pew Charitable Trust. Watching the documentary I was amazed by how happy these money loving people were at doing the exact opposite of what Barnes put in his will for the Art that he owned. If you’re a Netflix person I highly recommend watching this, even if your not interested in art.

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

As a followup to my previous Arcade Fire post. This is a great video. After watching it I think they just became one of my favorite bands. They have a great energy and play so many instruments. They switch up who plays what a lot too, even durring a song.

I took the second part of a recent off so that I could tear apart the bathroom and Meg could tile the kitchen. As I had guessed, renovating a bathroom is a lot of work. Above is what our bathroom looked like before taking the ceiling, tub walls, tub and vanity out. You can see that I already made an exploratory hole in the wall above the tub. I wanted to make sure that I could manage the can or worms I was about to open. I was glad to see that the inside walls looked good. Our plan was to open us the space a bit by having the ceiling be continuas instead of boxing in the shower like it was.

Tub walls and ceiling removed.

I had to to re-insulate the ceiling with r30 fiberglass. The previous insulation was loose blown in. I won’t go into how messy taking the cielg down was, but picture 2′ thick @ 40 square on the floor. This is me adding air vents that the insulation butts up against. Doing this allows air to flow in and out behind the insulation preventing mold and moisture. You can also see that added some furring strips along the ceiling to give myself a better surface for sheetrock.

After installing the light with a little help for our carpenter friend I tacked the sheetrock. Meg and cut the pieces but I was on my own when it came to hanging it. The small pieces were easy. For the largest piece I went out and grabbed a random kid I saw picking up rocks in the field behind our house. Never seen him before and may never see him again but he was a strong looking lad and a big a help for about 15 minutes as he held and I screwed up the sheetrock.

This is Don, a friend we hired to help up get the new tub in and do the plumbing. I figured it would be better to have someone around who knew what he was doing for that type of thing. It was good to work with him, I learned a lot and feel confident that I could do a lot of my own plumbing work in the future. Don also let us stay in his carriage house for a few days while we didn’t have running water.

Originally we we’re going to but decided to tile around the tub. I made two shelves so that we have the option of storing some stuff if we ever want to and then insulated and hung cement board. You can see our new sink in the lower left.

So that’s it for this post. We’ve done some more work but I have yet to take pictures of it. Check back for those and for pictures of the kitchen. As always comments are welcome.

This summer has been great for music. The new Arcade Fire is an album that has started to grow on me. They have always been a band I liked but really didn’t listen to that much. After hearing The Suburbs I think I’ll be going back and re-listening to their other albums a bit more. You can listen to The Suburbs in its entirety below. Make sure to check out the song Wasted Hours, which is a bit of a stand out on the album to me.