Dig a Pony – The Bar Has Been Raised
We are now approximately 6 weeks off our scheduled opening here at Portland bar, Dig a Pony. For the casual passer by at 736 SE Grand it may look like just a collection of dull grey boards, but behind the boarding some exciting work is afoot.
Building a bar is an intense and energy-consuming process, but slowly but surely the bar is beginning to take shape. Many heads make light work, as our master builder Nick Musso demonstrates…
Many Heads Make Light Work
It’s amazing how quickly a blank space can turn into something very tangible. The following shots should give an idea of how things have developed over the past few weeks.
A Blank Slate
The Bar Begins To Take Shape
Getting There
Ready For Business
More photos and updates to follow soon. To keep track of our progress and news and be one of the first to step foot in our bar when it opens please visit digaponypdx.tumblr.com.
The first little grave at Blizzard Gulch
Chokecherry enjoying an after-lunch scratch.
Yesterday we buried little four-week-old kitten Chokecherry in the bushes behind the outhouse.
Chokecherry lived with us for two days after she was found, in the height of chokecherry blossoming time, in the road near a colony of feral cats. Her eyes were infected and she undoubtedly had other issues. Just a plain gray kitten with creamy toes and muzzle, she was snuggly and trusting. She ate eagerly. It was easy to hope for a better future for her. It was tough to find her cold and limp in her crate, even tougher when the vet said she must be put down immediately.
So I arranged her in a box with some bubble wrap. John dug a grave in a place where it’s unlikely any further digging will occur, and he brought up a big flat white rock to mark the spot. Tears were shed. And thus our emotions, our very lives, became even more bonded to this place.
Chokecherry's rock
A kind woman I’ve never met in person sent me a poem her mother recites at times like this. From an old magazine, author unknown, title unknown.
Futile the doctor’s great patience and skill —
Somebody’s kitten lies lifeless and still.
Hot tears are blinding somebody’s sight
For a little grey kitten was killed tonight.
But outside another wee kitten looks in,
So small and alone and pitifully thin.
So somebody mourn not the one who is dead
But give of your love to the living instead.
***
Look! One room is finished! (the outhouse)
This is the place.
Company was coming so John built an outhouse for them. Okay, so it was a bunch of earthy blacksmiths from the Rocky Mountain Smiths, here to watch John give a demonstration in the shop, but we couldn’t have them doing all their business in the woods. (There are no toilets in the house yet.)
Door stays closed but needs a slide bolt inside.
Conforming to rural tradition, the biffy is built mostly of scrounged material. Lumber is either salvaged or milled from dead trees on a small Wood-Mizer sawmill. Corrugated roofing is left over from the house. A friend sold us the Sun-Mar composting toilet after he moved on to something else. Door, window, carpet on the ceiling, and clothes hooks are from the Beulah Inn cabins that were demolished some time ago.
This privy is powered by a composting toilet, not a hole.
Salvaged carpet gives acoustic properties. Or something.
Finishes used:
- Siding: Lifetime Wood Treatment chemically weathers and evens the color without looking coated like ordinary stain; may eventually turn silver. A very similar, if not identical, product is Eco Wood Treatment. Both of these products are claimed to have preservative qualities but I have not been able to confirm this.
- Door: Benjamin Moore MoorGlos semi-gloss exterior paint in Raccoon Fur, a deep slate gray.
- Interior: Benjamin Moore Regal semi-gloss interior paint in Daiquiri Ice, a pale seafoam lakeside bathhouse green.
- Moon: Fine Paints of Europe MV65 Epaulet. Left over from something else. Exceedingly good paint.
Painted popcorn can keeps mice out of the TP.
Speaking of tradition, people used to practice Halloween outhouse-snatching here in Beulah. EveryNovember 1 someone’s privy stood in the fire station intersection, at Grand and Pennsylvania. I suspect most were hauled to the dump, subtracted from Beulah’s stock of vernacular architecture.
Battered old faucet accomplishes at least as much here as it did in the odd-parts box.
In some parts of the American West a constant water supply can’t be counted on. There may be times when this “necessary room” becomes a real necessity.
Read about outhouses:
Wikipedia (includes the history of the term, Chic Sale)
Outhouse books available at Amazon
Biffy books available at Amazon
Privy books available at Amazon
You're always welcome at our "house".
We are Dig a Pony
Dig a Pony is an impressive barroom and culinary alcove, located in the heart of southeast Portland. The space is open and warm, inviting socially-lubricated citizens to engage in casual conversation, measured indulgence and aggressive leisure. A place where friendships, schemes, and alliances take form, it is at once a forward-thinking clubhouse, a rendezvous point, a sanctuary and an event center, designed to host both public and private gatherings in all forms and varieties. It is a place where Portlanders can create, engage, unwind, and most importantly enhance their own creativity and sense of commonality.
Dig a Pony’s offerings are inspired by an unabashed enthusiasm for local and regional taps, prodigious liquor, exceptional wine, and simple seasonal comfort food, but without any of the pretension or prices often associated with such fare. If customers aren’t comfortable with our surroundings, samplings, or service, we’re not doing our job. There should simply be no reason to leave.
The minds behind Dig a Pony see it as reflective of the ever-changing mosaic of Portland cultural life. Our philosophy is one of open arms, welcoming all positive producers and paying homage to the city’s rich, rain-soaked history. Its timeless aesthetic respects and caters to the community’s immense D.I.Y. culture: whether youthful creatives, savvy business types, bike geeks, tech enthusiasts, individualists, wanderers, or anything in between, all are treated to top-shelf service.
We’re dedicated to supporting and enhancing Portland by lending stability and visibility to our budding neighborhood, by creating jobs, by acting as a community business anchor and by using primarily local products and services. The space’s build-out utilizes locally sourced, re-purposed materials whenever possible.
A photo taken in February 1929 of the building as Potter's Drug Co. 736 SE Grand Ave
Bathroom color paralysis and the Habitat ReStore cure
Are there too many paint colors these days?
Nearly every major paint company has thousands of colors. Most of them are willing to go even further, offering to color-match anyone else’s color chip, and sometimes they’re pretty successful at that.
Professional designers and artistically inclined people may have no difficulties finding the right colors in all this abundance, but I do. I get kid-in-the-candy-store syndrome and will spend weeks, even months, pondering the choices for any one room. Paint store palettes and magazine pictures help but after a while it becomes no fun to just copy the trends. (John, being the easy-going diplomat that he is, keeps his opinions pretty much to himself as he sweeps paint chips off the table to clear space for dinner. Usually he says “that’s fine” to whatever scheme I have going at the moment. If he gets real quiet I know he thinks the scheme is horrible.)
When color paralysis sets in it’s time to make a commitment to something that will limit the choices. Go buy something colored that’s expensive enough to make you feel like an idiot if you don’t use it, then go from there. I am only half-kidding.
Habitat for Humanity provided the focus I needed for the main floor bathroom. In their Cañon City, Colorado store I found 268 salvaged grayish-blue square tiles, enough for a countertop and backsplash plus a blue band around the tub/shower space. The tiles reminded me of Farrow & Ball’s paint color Borrowed Light, a slightly drab pale blue that I’d already considered. It turns out that the match is almost exact.
Borrowed Light by Farrow & Ball is the best color match I've found for the old blue tile. In the middle is the linoleum tile by Marmoleum that we'll install in the main bathroom. Its color is Moraine, a gray with cream and specks of maroon. Set next to blue, it also reveals a suggestion of blue-gray that I never saw before.
We’ll see what colors this bathroom ends up with, but right now I’m thinking of the vanity painted with Borrowed Light, a white sink and white grout, white tiles with the blue band for the tub area, white towels, natural log on two sides, a golden-varnished beadboard wall and varnished woodwork, and one wooden chair painted Farrow & Ball’s Pale Powder, a very light bluish green, or their Cooking Apple Green. And maybe something orange or coral.
But I could go with a red, white, and blue 1940s patriotic scheme, or … !! What do you think, John?
Edit: a similar color in a completely VOC-free clay paint is Bioshield’s Azur. Clay paint is a delight to work with. It smells fresh and clean as you apply it. You can mix in some mica and, after the paint dries, rub with a cloth to bring out the subtle sparkles. I don’t think I’d use clay paint in a bathroom, though, and that would apply to Farrow & Ball’s high-clay-content Estate Emulsion.
Thanks to Pam Kueber and her blog, Retro Renovation, for the video of her blue bathroom.
You know a remodel has been going on too long when…
After putting the first cabinet back together (see pic below) I decided the color was good to go and went to buy the rest only to discover that Home Depot no longer carries the Glidden Oil Based paint that I was using, or an oil based paint at all the moment… fantastic. After a brief period of panic I called the Glidden store and the guy was fairly confident he could match the Home Depot recipe. Fingers crossed I go pick it up tomorrow. Thankfully the cabinet I painted doesn’t touch any others so I’ll use what I have left on the insides of the cabinets so that the outsides will all be the same and I can touch up if needed later. Phew.
One cabinet done, 16 more to go!
I’m hoping this will be a weekend of great progress. In the meantime though I did want to share one portion of the project that is complete and I am loving it! My spice cabinet…
Ironing board cupboard turned spice cabinet
- Look at all that storage! I can find what I want!
Lehigh Green paint
For those who are looking, then, here is a post about Benjamin Moore Lehigh Green.
I have an old wooden box with a hinged lid, similar to bins that my grandfather kept chicken feed in. We use it for storing kindling. Some of the boards in it are eighteen inches wide. Weather took a toll on its old paint when it lived on the porch so I brought in indoors, but soon there won’t be a good place for it except outside. New paint was a must, even if I will never see that peculiar gray-blue-green-beige color again. There appears to be no paint on the market that truly matches it, probably because it is no longer one single color.
The right new color had to be a vintage sort of green, somewhat drab, more on the blue side than the yellow side, and be a “man’s color” – a green you might see on a worn workbench in an old garage. Whenever we went to Pueblo’s old steel mill neighborhood (for Mexican food at Jorge’s Sombrero, where Barack Obama ate during his campaign) I eyed the old buildings, looking for a green with the personality I wanted.
The screen door turned out to have several shades of green depending on where the eave’s shade falls, but the best match overall was Benjamin Moore’s Lehigh Green.
- The kindling box painted Lehigh Green.
Would you believe a plywood kitchen?
In 1933, when the prototype for our house was being built as the Valley Creek Ranger Station in Stanley, Idaho, they probably didn’t spend much time worrying how the kitchen was going to look. I, on the other hand, have stewed about it ever since the design process began. That was, let me think, four years ago? Nothing I hatched in my mind seemed right once it was translated into drawings.
Just recently, hunting on the Internet for pictures of old ranger stations, I came upon the Clackamas Lake Historic Ranger Cabin near Mount Hood in Oregon. Among the online pictures of this delightful cabin (which you can actually rent for a vacation) was a shot of the vintage Northwest fir plywood kitchen, glossily varnished and deeply colored with age.
Look at those curved supports on the upper cabinets! Without them you'd really notice the disparity between the bottom edge of the cabinets and the window trim. The materials may be rustic but the craftsmanship is anything but.
The Clackamas Lake Historic Ranger Cabin, located on the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon, was built in the same year as the Valley Creek Ranger Station in Idaho.
Finding plywood as pretty as this has proven to be difficult. If what we are currently finding is any indication, modern plywood has a looser, less elaborate grain. Maybe that’s because it is no longer made from old-growth timber. Does anyone know for sure? We did learn that it pays to check all your sources. One lumber yard’s plywood may have so many “footballs” that it’s unusable for cabinets, while another place will offer very nice stuff.
I presume that the deep color of the old cabinets is a result of age. To attempt to duplicate this look, I am going to try varnish tinted with a red-brown dye from Woodcraft. Another way that would work, but might not hold up to moisture as well, would be a thick-cut (dissolved with minimal alcohol) garnet shellac tinted with brown wood dye. Directly staining the plywood doesn’t seem to give quite the same effect that you get with a colored clear finish.
That old white sink with backsplash would be just the thing if we could have planned for it, but we have a new Kohler Bakersfield sink already waiting. It does have a Hudee ring (a metal mounting ring, now rapidly going extinct) instead of being self-rimming, so that makes it look relatively old. Also, the kitchen window sits too low on the wall for an integral backsplash to fit. Oh well. But we do have a fairly old white Roper gas stove, fifties era probably, given to us by a friend.
At one time we thought we would more-or-less pattern the kitchen after the one in the Valley Creek Ranger Station, now the Stanley Museum, in Stanley, Idaho. However, that kitchen has no log or wood walls at all so everything is painted. Although I had been mulling over painting with Valspar Spring Botanical and Fine Paints of Europe’s Mount Vernon Palladian White, in the end I just wasn’t quite willing to do that in our own kitchen. It has two log walls and having all these different surfaces seemed too complicated.
One thing that both of those 1933 ranger station kitchens have in common is a wood countertop. John’s been wanting one all along while I’ve vacillated between wood and laminate (Formica’s Virr Varr).
Formica’s Virr Varr laminate in White. I just found out that Formica has discontinued Virr Varr as well as all but one color of their Boomerang laminate. I get so aggravated by these myopically trend-oriented companies. If you think you want any of these patterns, order NOW before the warehouses run out. Laminate is inexpensive so you can overbuy if necessary. Good luck finding Boomerang in coral.
Seeing wood countertops in both of these historic buildings allowed me to settle on Virr Varr for the utility room and wood for the kitchen. If the wood ever turns out to be impossible to live with it can always be covered with laminate, I suppose, but by then there will be nothing available I’d consider compatible.
Laurii Gadwa tells John about the Valley Creek Ranger Station kitchen. Like the Clackamas Lake cabin, this kitchen has a wood countertop. You can’t see it in this picture but the right-hand side of the countertop was grooved to make a drainboard. I believe this was pretty common at the time. How did they do this without modern routers?
Maybe some future owner will overhaul all our work, painting everything pastel and installing granite countertops (ewww!) and stainless appliances (yawn), but during our tenure we will enjoy lots of wood, including wood countertops, and our old white stove.
Thanks go to Shannon Hopkins and Mike Hamel of the United States Forest Service for permission to use these photographs of the Clackamas Lake Historic Ranger Cabin. To read more about the history of this building and how to rent it, check it out at the USFS web page, Recreation Rentals of the Pacific Northwest.
Thanks also to Pam Kueber who writes the blog, “Retro Renovation” (www.retrorenovation.com), for the information on the Hudee ring and for posting the regrettable news that the metal-rimmed Kohler Bakersfield sink has been discontinued. I thank myself for worrying about just such a thing happening and ordering the sink long before it was needed. Ditto for the Formica laminate.
First light fixtures for the log house: outdoors
They don’t work yet, because we’re still running on temporary power, but we have some light fixtures in place! Thrilled at having reached this stage, we recently put up porch, yard, and flood lights. No real ranger station ever had so many fixtures, I bet. With great pride I introduce to you:
The skidsteer is the tallest ladder we have for this situation. I hope the inexpensive gray barn light weathers well because replacing it would not be easy.
The Klamath Falls porch light from Rejuvenation was chosen for the roofless deck because it is waterproof. It has the caramel and white art glass option. Imagine how pretty it will look once we can put a bulb in it and switch the power on. This was the easiest outdoor light fixture to install because there are no logs here and no conduit was required.
Vintage flood light, probably from the seventies. An auction find, it came from a small apartment building in Oregon. There are four of these scattered around the exterior. No, we are not going to leave them on all night. I dislike that fad.
This Appleton explosion-proof light has an enormous white shade that, sadly, will not fit here under the porch eave. There are two of these fixtures and I paid a lot for them because of those shades. Had I known I could have bought two new fixtures without shades for about ten dollars apiece.
Shallow white porcelain barn light, one of two on the south side of the porch. I do not know what brand they are. The shades and sockets came from two separate auctions. Conduit is as thick under the porch roof as snakes in a nest. Bending it is quite an art.
For the west side of the porch I found two vented white barn lights with cages, made by Benjamin. There is a third fixture nearby that looks similar (no cage) but I believe it is an Ivanhoe.
At the front door: a little red-painted porch light with bubble shade. Another auction fixture. Because its base conflicted with the logs we built the electrical box out, then chinked over the resulting weird assembly.
At the side entrance, over the steps, hangs this small deep green porcelain fixture. The manufacturer is unknown.
At the side door we have this little copper lantern fixture with a nice patina on it. It came from Oregon. Was it one of your auctions, Chris? As with the little red fixture, the base did not sit well on the log wall so the electrical box was extended and chinked. Chinking is good for hiding a lot of things.
A Year Later…. I’m back in the kitchen, finally
Well I’m finally back in the kitchen after many months of distraction cleaning up after the tropical storm and the projects necessitated to get things back in order. I have a new driveway, new back steps, a new little tree planted, and some other landscaping started. Now, embarassingly almost a year later, I am finally back in the kitchen!
I sanded and primed my first cabinet last weekend and this morning put the first coat of paint on. I spent almost as much time cleaning up from using oil based paint as I did painting. I might have to come up with a new staging approach, but I have such limited climate controlled drying space for the doors…
I’ll have pictures to share soon I hope!
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