Thoughts Redacted

Okay, so it took about ELEVENTY more coats of yellow paint. (And with each can of paint I buy, this project gets less and less cheap…)

But finally I managed to spray on enough yellow to eliminate the patchiness, as well as to coat my driveway and my arms semi-permanently. And look how shiny and yellow it is!

I’m not bothering to spray paint much of the HIDEOUS BLOCK O CEMENT because it’s going to be under a shelf. Also, before you ask, I have no idea who (or what) TW is.

The next thing I did was take my snazzy oil paint pens (thanks to my sister!) and re-color each of the griffins from the “Griffin Daily News” logo. I like the design, but also I like that it highlights the history of the box. I felt like I had to get rid of the actual text logo because it was going to confuse people too much; I don’t want people thinking I’m actually selling newspapers. But I liked keeping the griffins. So I did that on each side, plus a little doodling/stenciling to get a feel for the paints.

Yesterday was a fabulously typical southern day: oppressively humid alternating with actually pouring. Fortunately these are oils and they dry pretty quickly. So I’d cover the project with a tarp when it got really really rainy, and then get right back to it as soon as the sun came back out.

I stenciled for about six hours.

On the right side of the box, we have dogs/cats/farm animals on the lower panel, and birds on the upper panel. Plus what I hope came out as a cheerful clown as opposed to a scary killer clown.

On the left side there are dinosaurs (I love how these came out!) and robots.

And on the front, so far we have sea creatures and seasonal icons. The upper door will probably need some art too, but I want to install the official Little Free Library charter sign before I do too much up there.

I feel like it looks a little chaotic right now. When I finish outlining everything and adding the quote, and when I finally feel safe enough to remove the paper and tape covering the various windows, I think it’ll start looking a lot tidier.

But that may have to wait a while. Not only is it back to the work week, but I’m not sure how well I could even hold a paint pen today! Turns out that six hours in various contorted positions on gravel (albeit also on a yoga mat) does weird things to your wrist. So it may be next weekend before I get back to paints.

In the meantime there are things I plan to do with plexiglass, springs, and cat toys. Also, of course, the tentacle.

Yay! Unlocked machine! Now the real renovation could begin.

Firstly I wanted to remove several things that were ugly. The sample-copy rack had to go. The crosspieces popped right off when I applied a little pressure to the solder holding them on, but the main frame was stuck down beyond my strength.

In that picture you can also see a bendy-metal… wait, no, let’s go back a second. You know what you can see in that picture?

You can ALSO see the bendy-metal shelf thing inside that I could just bend out of the way, but that was ugly and kind of sharp. I don’t want neighborhood kids cutting their wrists.

Clearly it was time for Husbands With Power Tools.

I will say here that I’m perfectly capable of handling tools myself. This is not a gender issue. I just don’t like things that make sparks, and I suspected that this was going to make sparks.

See? Sparks.

So that stuff is all removed. With the help of a vacuum cleaner and about six rolls of paper towels, the dead bugs and dirt were all removed too. I sanded down the roughest rusty spots and then it was TIME FOR PAINT!

Or primer, at least.

I had grand plans involving leftover house paint and rollers and brushes, but after I was half done getting a coat of primer on this beast, I knew I wanted to spray the base color.

I’m also not a fan of delayed gratification. So I was standing there, sweaty and gross and covered in primer, and I did the obvious thing: I sent my husband to get the spray paint. I said “Get two contrasting colors, for the inside and the outside.” He said “How will I know which colors?” I said “Two NICE colors!”

He looked terrified.

A little while later he came back with a rocking fluorescent orange for the inside and a flat-looking yellow for the outside. I will admit that I was a little disappointed. It didn’t look all that exciting: just yellow. Then I noticed the name, which is “John Deere Farm Equipment.” That? Is awesome.

Here’s what it looked like after two coats. To the right you can see the cap of the fluorescent orange, which unfortunately just didn’t work, so it’s actually yellow inside and out now.

And honestly, after a third coat, I am in LOVE with this color. It’s shiny and bright and it will definitely attract attention.

Now, if it will just not rain after 6pm one darn day this week, I’ll get the last coat on and get started on the FUN stuff. Like stencils.

And tentacles.

So I found myself in possession of a big old newspaper vending machine. It took me an hour to figure out how to open it, which I did mostly by sticking my arm in the available crack and seeing if I could find anything that felt like a latch. That was fun. I definitely did feel things that felt like dead bugs and spider webs!

Eventually it occurred to me to see if the thing just worked. I grabbed some quarters and discovered that for the low, low price of $.50 I could open the door! The locking mechanism worked perfectly. And it was even fairly self-explanatory; with only a few minutes’ consideration I was able to set the price to $.25, or to $1.50. What I wasn’t able to do was set the price to free, which is kind of important in the making of a Little Free Library.

Obviously I did what I do best and turned to Google. I discovered that the maker of the whole thing still exists — in case you’re in the market for a brand-new newspaper vending machine of your own. (I will add that they do NOT respond, at least not quickly, to frantic emails saying “Help! I need to take apart a lock you sold in 1976!” So thumbs down on that customer service, Kaspar Wire Works!)

I discovered the patent for the lock mechanism (here, if you’re bored). It had fun patent drawings and one of them was clearly my exact device. But there were a lot of parts labeled!

Unfortunately… I mean, I’m a word person. I looked and looked at the lock itself and at the schematics and the only real result was that I am now absolutely in awe of lock designs. I know there are digital versions out there now and I can’t believe they can be half as beautiful. I put a quarter in this thing time and time again and I watched the little switches and arms move and they moved gently and with no force. And yet somehow at the end the whole operation depressed a latch-tongue that actually takes a good degree of pressure to depress by hand. I have no idea what’s going on. But I’m glad Mr. Knickerbocker and his kind exist!

I am, however, laser-focused when I encounter Very Important Problems like this. (Just don’t ask me to clean my closet.) I wasn’t going to give up, even when it was pretty obvious that I was in over my head. I’m smart! I have technology! Specifically, I have an 8-megapixel camera on my phone! I closed the door as far as I could, so as to enlist gravity in the operation, and wedged one arm into the machine and under the lock. I took pictures. Then I inserted a quarter with my other arm and took more pictures. I did it again with video.

I got a couple great pictures of my nose from underneath, and some stills that might make interesting desktop wallpaper, like this:

But at the end of the day they didn’t make a whole lot more sense to me than the patent drawings and they definitely didn’t unlock the door.

One friend suggested leaving a container of quarters next to the machine. I’m still laughing about that one. I suppose the guy who checks out local pharmacy-by-mail packages to see what’s in them (he always returns my thyroid drugs!) would be pleased, but I’m not convinced it would actually help people in the neighborhood have easier access to books. So that wasn’t on.

In the end, I resorted to a skill I picked up way back in my days at Kalamazoo College Recycling, where our basic MO was to locate anything that could be unscrewed and unscrew it. (Hi, Rob!)  I unscrewed lots of things. I’ll admit I also had to bend some bits and bang on some other pieces but finally the whole lock mechanism came off. The door’s heavy enough that it sits shut without a real latch, so that’s the plan for right now.

And there was much rejoicing!

Here is a new law of the internet: Craigslist transactions are weird, 100% of the time. Even if they end up going off more or less without a hitch, they’re WEIRD. This is a truth.

My sister found the ad for this sucker and mentioned it repeatedly while I shopped online for something that would make a good Little Free Library. I had this fun idea that I was going to make a library for cheap. Hahahaha.

So after a dozen emails and texts I had more or less arranged to go buy this newspaper vending machine. I drove south and my GPS had me get off the highway much sooner than I’d anticipated, with like an hour left to drive. Not a great sign. But the weather was lovely and I was in a great mood so on I drove. In my Honda Civic, because that’s relevant later.

I managed not to stop at ANY of the yard art and folk art places I drove past! Somebody please give me some kudos for that.

I finally ended up at what my phone assured me was the right place, which was halfway between nowhere and nothing as far as I could tell. Seriously, I was driving along amidst nothing, and suddenly there was an airport and a couple neighborhoods. I love remembering that America is full of these places. I found the correct house and found a tall gentleman working in the yard outside.

Y’all, this guy was SOUTHERN. And not in the redneck way that television would like you to understand Southern. He reminded me of high school football coaches. He had the accent and the vibe and I wanted to hug him.

He took one look at my car and he said “Is someone else coming with a truck?” And to his credit, although it must have been immediately apparent that I was totally clueless, he didn’t even make fun of me.

See, it turns out that when they installed these vending machines back in the day, they kept them from wandering off by putting them where they belonged and then FILLING THEM WITH CONCRETE. This sucker weighs over 300lbs if it’s an ounce. And there I was with my Civic and my two hands!

Bless his heart, dude helped me figure out how to wedge the horrible beast into the back of my trunk, heavy end first, using the bumper as a fulcrum (the paint is fine, Mom! haha! totally fine!). We cleaned out everything that might blow away on the long drive home and threw it in my back seat. And I tied the trunk shut, sort of, using the rope that my father insists on leaving in the trunk of every car he’s ever owned. (I should add that this is not the first time that rope has come in handy. So thanks, Dad.)

I wasn’t too worried about the trunk coming open or the machine falling out because 300 LBS, PEOPLE. I was more worried about my rear axle. I kept telling myself that I must have had 300lbs of passenger before, this couldn’t be that bad, right? and I drove home very slowly. And in fact I spent the whole drive home trying to figure out how the hell I was going to get this beast OUT of my car. I knew I couldn’t do it by myself, so it was rapidly becoming a real possibility that I was going to have to leave it there for two days until my husband got home. I was envisioning picking him up at the airport with the rear end of the car looking like this:

Haha! Welcome home, honey! Please wedge your suitcases into the back seat because VENDING MACHINE!

Fortunately, one of my lovely soon-to-be neighbors was home and came over to find out why there was a vending machine hanging out of the back of my car. With the help of gravity, simple physics (the fulcrum again!), and brute ladystrength, we managed to wiggle the beast out of the trunk… and onto my foot.

Ohhhhh yeaahhhhh.