forty-five

coveted modern ranch

2008-08-31T15:21:00.012-04:00

between dealing with the ever-clogging eaves and all the "trees of significance" around here, ted and i are hatching plans for our dream house. he wants a modern ranch, something kinda swank, i think, befitting his smoking-jacket and martini tastes; something with a roof he can fall off of without killing himself. i'm all for it, so long as we can have an interior courtyard.

my current plans for the home of our dreams derive both from mies van der rohe's tugendhat house and newark ohio's own baker house, the short-time location of my former employer, osu-n's department of physical facilities. (it's now home to some labs and the Newark Earthworks Center). the picture above is one of the ceramic peek holes in the oak wall behind the front door. it's like mies's onyx wall, just in a different place, and not translucent, and not onyx.

here are a few other images:

a portion of the facade. it's wide, even for a ranch. i couldn't stand back far enough to get it all in.

in addition to its interior courtyard and greenhouse (this used to be full of salmon colored geraniums), the baker house had an interior lap pool. the earthworks folks have added a sweat-lodge and native garden out back.

this used to be the living room. the tile fireplace with bench, some of the modern light fixtures, and the courtyard are visible. the door leads to the greenhouse.

the statue (from one of the paris expo's, i'm not sure of the year) was added when osu-n took over the property -- and the healthy looking boxwood shrubs, sometime later.

modern architecture

2008-08-23T19:22:00.005-04:00

not much new with our architecture lately, so the next couple posts will be of other architecture.

we used to pass this place in milwaukee on our walks with scout. it still makes me smile.

click on the picture for the full, creative, effect.

pataskala street fair weekend '08

2008-08-21T19:13:00.020-04:00

our view of the festivities: close, low, and somewhat impeded.

linda and faye, enjoying the weather and several "cold ones." (link to video of linda answering faye's e-mail [note: linda wears disguises and calls faye "dan waters" sometimes], followed up by one of faye's cross-stitches.)

kelly and old friend from high school (and miami u), corey. caught up on 18 years in an hour or so.

kathy displays her signature drink, the "shirley temple black." or was it the "shirley temple. black."?

bob, faye, and a heated game of pinochle.

bill and ted's excellent glider.

saucy jack: a play in one, interminable act

2008-08-21T19:01:00.010-04:00

scout, in a cockney accent: food please.

people: stop begging.

scout: food please.

repeat.

how the garden grows

2008-07-14T09:24:00.003-04:00

like the yard, the garden is really small. even still, there's enough to feed two from time to time. this year we have oregon snow peas, mediterranean cucumbers, 2 types of tomatoes, french green beans, red leaf lettuce, parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, lavender, rosemary, cayenne and jalapeno peppers, and on rare occasions, a single perfect strawberry.

mundus / thonet / kohn

2008-06-30T14:00:00.016-04:00

ted and i took the egyptian disco fabric off the new/old chair and found nothing special (i.e. nothing clean) underneath. we're not even certain that the seat is original. if it is, the chair would seem less old than the manufacturer's mark suggests (pre-1914). covering the wooden base and the horse hair padding was a dirty yellow, texturized, plastic (?) coated upholstery. for the meantime, we just tacked a bit of canvas over it.

but here's all of what we've found out, starting with the maker's mark:

what you see is the name "mundus" stamped inside the rim of the seat. i love the eastern european art deco lettering -- jugendstil, or youth style, if i remember (and guess) correctly. (check out the "d".) i also love the name, mundus. (this is also if i remember correctly, now dredging up dr. howe's old english.) mundus is latin for world, from which we speakers of contemporary english get "mundane," meaning "of this world" -- opposed to the world of the sacred from which come other things, though presumeably not this chair.

as to the company that produced the chair, it was very much of this (well, its) world.

in 1856 the thonet brothers (Gebruder Thonet) patented their process for making bentwood furniture which involved wetting, steaming, and forcing wood into iron casts to dry. they let the patent go in 1869 by which time a number of other companies were already making and improving on the bentwood process (and disputing their patent), most famously the father and son team Jacob and Josef Kohn. in 1914 Kohn merged with Mundus. in 1923 (or 28) Kohn-Mundus merged with Thonet, and the conglomerate company is still making furniture. somewhat like the Bauhaus, and Target, the companies teamed up with famous architects and designers to provide stylish furniture to the middle-class -- we of this world.

because there are no other marks on the chair, i'm guessing it's older than 1914. other people writing in with queries on the web have mentioned dual marks, j. j. kohn and mundus for example, but there's nothing else on ours except "made in poland" (krakow, most likely, where several of these companies had factories). it's possible a paper stamp might have come off, but i found no evidence that one had ever been there.

of all the Austrian bentwood furniture makers of the period, i've found out the least about Mundus. it's only ever referred to as a company that merged with the more recognizable figures in the bentwood story, and that may be because there are no figures associated with Mundus, the "Viennese holding company" and third "largest Austrian manufacture[r] of bentwood furniture" -- no one to fight over processes and patents. some forgotten manager probably just saw a bentwood cafe chair and decided to start making knock-offs at Mundus.

in my little research, though, i haven't found another chair that looks like the one we found in Brattleboro. i did come across a claim that the Thonet chairs fetch higher prices because Thonet is presumed to be the originator of the process.

the hammock district

2008-06-21T08:59:00.003-04:00

here's a before and after sample of a photo run through photoshop elements:

"la maison du hamac" (homer simpson would recognize that we were in quebec's hammock district, le quartier du hamac) shot at dusk with the night portrait setting. and again, after a little cropping, no sharpening, and correcting for the night time color cast:

now it's morning in the hammock district.

driftwood warthog

2008-06-19T21:18:00.013-04:00

one evening we had an excellent dinner on the avenue petit champlain (above) ((the night before we had another excellent dinner)) and came across one of the world's more fantastic private entryways:

nevermind the driftwood seal pup with electric blue eye, the driftwood warthog is a masterpiece. notice the aggressive ear, keen yellow-glass eye, protruding tusks. how the whole body forms a snarl. and how that angry little body contrasts with its generous offer, a gift of potted petunia.

quebec, ca

2008-06-19T08:24:00.012-04:00

we stayed near the quebec armory, at chateau laurier, so this was the view out the front door of the hotel. a fire destroyed the roof of the armory and caused significant damage, but the exterior walls seem mostly in-tact. builders were working with cranes when we left.

between the stone and the skies, the pictures look fairly grey. it sprinkled off and on while we were there, but despite a really poor job packing for the weather (we packed when it was 97 degrees, hazy and humid) we managed to walk the city for two full days, ducking into shops when necessary. all the museums were closed on monday, the rainiest day.

ruins of the old city. the ground here may be about 4 feet below the pedestrian street from which the picture is taken.

a view of chateau frontenac from the old port. we took shelter on a bench under the trees to the right. there were a lot of school kids touring around on monday. it seemed like we were well in advance of the high tourist season, though. we didn't have to share the hotel hot tubs with anyone.

the city from the citadel. the place des armes is behind the row of buildings on the right. there were a lot of cute boutique hotels there. it seemed like a good place to stay next time.

the citadel, canons -- walking back to the hotel.

moosehead lake region, me

2008-06-18T08:57:00.013-04:00

as promised, the moosehead lake region of maine provided us a glimpse of moose. she's not in this (or any picture), but we saw her nevertheless by the side of a lonely, rainy stretch of road. kelly said, "is that real?". ted thought, "it's a horse. it's a moose. it's a horse. it's a moose." she turned her head. it was a moose. ted said, "yes. it's real."

northwest maine is utterly desolate. almost as soon as we crossed into canada, the forest gave way to fields. after passing a few lumber mills, there were only farms and small towns. moose crossing signs changed to deer crossing signs.

the difference in land use between canada's southernmost and the lower 48's northernmost regions may not be as stark as it is out west, but it's a still difference one can see from space.

brunswick, me

2008-06-18T08:42:00.008-04:00

now that we're home, a brief flurry of posts.

in brunswick, ted conferred with the hawthorne scholars. we bought a tiny statue of the ancient dog-god of the underworld, and ate lobster.

assorted pictures, ma

2008-06-11T17:30:00.011-04:00

we're off to maine tomorrow. the next pictures should have fewer dogs and more lobsters in them, that is, if all goes well.

brattleboro, vt

2008-06-10T15:47:00.008-04:00

i wasn't looking for one, but found a bentwood chair in brattleboro. the woman who sold it didn't know much other than it's stamped "made in poland" (probably in polski) on the bottom. she guessed it dates from the 1940s. someone recovered it in vintage fabric, a disco-egyptian pattern (gold threads, anhk, head of nefertiti, etc.). i'll recover it in a black or tan linen, though it would probably look best in cane or rush. it's sturdy and in good shape.

we also found ice cream in brattleboro: blueberry yogurt and heath bar crunch.

not much luck yet with the fish photography. the most colorful fish are either the speediest (see below) or very, very shy. this was taken on the sports setting, which led to a visible image of the clown fish, but a grainy one.

watson continues to be photogenic. scout and annie are pleased, i think, that i mostly pester the puppy.

elementary

2008-06-09T09:57:00.005-04:00

we're puppy sitting. here's beth's watson on the woodpile, and watson doing his landshark impression:

i'll spend part of the day reading up on this camera. we may get to brattleboro later to look into antique shops and, hopefully, an ice-cream parlor. it's in the 90s and incredibly humid.

new camera

2008-06-03T16:33:00.008-04:00

graduation money went into a new camera. here are some early pictures. it's straight out of the box and a cloudy day.

mint julep

2008-05-03T17:14:00.004-04:00

the weather's been uncooperative for gardening, so i've limited myself to small containers for the moment. one not pictured houses peppermint "kentucky colonel." with the derby less than an hour away, we're getting set to muddle some. here's the recipe for a classic mint julep:

3-5 mint leaves
t powdered sugar, muddled together
add 2 t water and muddle some more
2 - 2.5 oz good bourbon
pour over crushed ice, in a julep cup if you have one

cheers!

good fortune

2008-04-23T18:52:00.001-04:00

spring in ohio

2008-04-17T08:42:00.002-04:00

we're a few weeks behind in massachusetts, so in the meantime, here's a picture of mom's daffodils in ohio.

vaguely promising

2008-04-08T10:05:00.006-04:00

A number of the Geum seedlings look as though they might just pan out after all. I added Zinnia "Green Envy" to the nursery. They're coming along, for the moment, as well.

dryloking

2008-03-24T18:03:00.004-04:00

Not much new to tell. Spring Break is coming to a close, and we mostly read books and graded papers. We did manage to get in a visit with friends, a good meal, and springtime tromp through the woods with dogs. There was some fleeting notion of a freshly painted, water sealed basement within the week -- a notion that was dispelled on the first day. It's a harder job than it seemed and there was just too much other work to do. But we have one, nice, dry section of wall, much to our subterranean delight. More will follow ... avant le déluge, if we're lucky.

twig basket accomplished

2008-03-02T14:14:00.008-05:00

Here it is. The living room is very nearly done, and months in advance of the two year anniversary of the onslaught on 45 Perkins St. There's just a little trimming to do at the ceiling and a few touch-ups along the windows and doors.

Some other photos to document the progress, these from the "closing" and "day 5" folders:

Some 664 days later:

inauspicious

2008-02-19T14:50:00.005-05:00

Geum "blazing sunset." We shall see.

rite of spring II

2008-01-27T09:23:00.001-05:00

It's come early this year, my need for green, and the reason is clear -- we've enjoyed the same blanket of snow for more than two months. Thanks to Scout, it's taken on a yellowish hue. And sadly the snow seems to be going nowhere soon. At best we can hope it gets refreshed from time to time.

Of last year's gardening attempts we got two poppies that produced leaves off and on between dying back, but no flowers. These were purchased as young plants -- nothing at all came of the thousand poppy seeds. Of the seeds, only Jacob's ladder produced a fair number of healthy plants; a few of the Irish moss seeds amounted to something along the order of the microscopic.

Current plans include waiting patiently until well into the spring and buying plants. Eventually, I'm hoping to see the Geum "Blazing Sunset" of May and June give way to the Echinacea purpurea "Raspberry Tart" of July to the first frosts -- a dramatic swath of color out in the front yard between the blueberries (which did very well) and the Chinese juniper.

I'll keep the poppies, "Beauty of Livermore," in there in case they manage to do something in their second year -- a scenario not wholly unlikely if they've made it this far.

In the back yard we're just planning to put in some ornamental grasses so there's something to look at next winter, and to move the hosta and Siberian irises around. For its part, the vegetable garden did very well. We've been enjoying the tomatoes and cucumbers as sauces and soup throughout the winter. It does make for a big, bare spot out in the snow, though. Some grasses along its back border should soften next year's winter landscape.

twig basket

2008-01-26T10:03:00.000-05:00

Living room renovations are at last underway. What you see on the half wall under the stairs is Behr's Twig Basket, rounding out the first floor's strange array: Leapfrog, Camel, and Wooden Swing.

the sunshine and palm trees of florida

2008-01-14T10:14:00.001-05:00

Some photos from Gatorland, in Orlando, Florida. Chester, the big guy in the center photo, was adopted by the park after eating too many neighborhood pets.

the kitchen sink

2007-10-18T13:42:00.000-04:00

One of the more recent projects has been the kitchen counter-tops. We replaced the gouged, burned, and scored, once-"fancy" looking Formica with Corian's value Bisque. The fellow who came out to measure the template told us (and only week before heading to Milwaukee for Kelly's defense) that we'd have a lot of work to level, reinforce, and generally prepare the cabinets lest the Corian break once we put in the cast iron sink. Happily, we did well enough. The installation crew commended our novice efforts and heaved the new sink into place.

Here's phase one of the prep:

And the almost finished result:

The Kohler sink is a beauty (thanks cousin). And plumber Ted is a fine plumber. We just need to rehang the doors and we're done.

hello again, world

2007-09-07T18:32:00.001-04:00

the bugs of summer

2007-08-08T12:06:00.002-04:00

mantidfly in juice glass. here, with foot in mouth.

borer beetle on the move. spent a lot of its time upside down.

Yes, a new post. We built a patio.

2007-07-31T17:49:00.000-04:00

Hello readers

It's been quite a while since our last post, but we've just completed a photogenic project, so it seemed like a good time to put something online.

Faced with an otherwise useless part of our backyard, we decided to build a patio alongside the back of the house, in the corner created by the breakfast nook and the dining room. It's been a trouble spot as far as drainage, so we also wanted to try something that would improve that too.

So, we set out to build a natural stone patio, figuring that it would allow more margin for error than a tightly-packed patio of brick or stone pavers. This did turn out to be true, as the job was essentially simple, but hard work.

Step one was to dig a hole. A big one, several inches deep.

The gray stuff on the right is a crushed stone and gravel mix to keep the big stones from shifting around or compacting the dirt.

Incidentally, the job of ditch-digging deserves its less than glorious reputation. I suspect it was the inspiration for oppressive systems of labor. As in:

Digger 1: This is hard!
Digger 2: I'll say - let's get someone else to do it for us.
Digger 1: But no one else is going to want to do this either.
Digger 2: Right, but if we can make someone else do it...
Digger 1: I'm listening...

With the hole dug, the next step is to fill the hole with the gray gravel stuff pictured above, followed by a layer of more sand-like stuff. We hauled the gravel ourselves in the trusty PT Cruiser (2 trips). We had the sandy stuff delivered to the house along with hundreds of pounds of rocks. Our guess is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 pounds, give or take.

Scout's back half provides a bit of scale in the first picture below.

Last step: carry rocks. Reminding ourselves that the ancient Egyptians must have been much smaller than we modern humans, we carried these big rocks from the driveway to the carefully prepared pit.

Then, with level and trowel we get the stones stable and at a consistent height, leaving room to pour in bags of 3/4" gravel as the finishing touch. (I suppose the hauling of 10 50-pound bags of gravel might count as a step, but who's counting.)

The final result is below - we're pretty pleased with it.

Bye for now.

screen door

2007-03-25T14:28:00.000-04:00

Spring Break allowed us to get caught up on a few little projects, including repairing and painting the screen door. When we moved in we found it in the basement, utterly warped and very loose. We put it up last summer and it barely performed its doorly duties. It didn't close fully, an important failure Scout took advantage of on several occasions.

But it turned out nicely. With new hinges, glue, wood patch, and some heavy duty belt sanding it fits like the proverbial glove. Does it make you thirsty for Turkish Coffee? I'd be surprised if it does, though that's the color. It looks more like melted milk chocolate. We'll strip and stain the front door also to a brown sometime over the summer, so it will match eventually.

We also finally got started on the guest room which might be the last difficult room to do. The walls are in bad shape--layers of glue, paint, and patch. After that we have only the living room and our bedroom to do. The walls in both rooms will be much easier to get ready for painting.

rite of spring

2007-02-22T08:03:00.000-05:00

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, spring is in the air. The time has come when it's just necessary to believe it.

In what's become a more-or-less annual event, I've ordered a few packets of seeds and will (if things proceed as they usually do) nurture them a while before learning that after too many day's neglect they've all died. If nothing else, it helps to pass the time until the last frost. By then the commercial nurseries will be fully stocked and I'll go out and just buy the healthy young plants I'd wanted all winter.

It's mostly the dream of poppies that is sustaining me through these dry, cold days. I've ordered the Beauty of Livermore, pictured above, which promises "crimson-scarlet blooms up to 6 inches across on sturdy 3-4 foot plants." And, in an overabundance of confidence: coral bells, anemone, jacob's ladder, foxglove, and Irish moss.

dining

2006-11-19T09:20:00.000-05:00

We'll finish touching up the last rough edges on the dining room today. The color is "camel," chosen as the closest approximation to the aged and thickly applied wallpaper paste that adorned the walls for weeks. Guess it grew on us. The color looks good, though, and bridges the green and brown of the adjoining rooms nicely. Because the first floor is relatively open, we've had to choose colors that work well enough together. When you start with "fig," that presents a challenge. At this point we're thinking we'll use camel in the living room and figure out what to do in the upstairs hallway when the time comes. The stairway is open on the north side of the living room; since those walls flow into the upstairs hallway, it's hard to tell where exactly the living room color could stop.

After yesterday's work, we were beat. We sat down in front of the fire and dined on steaming bowls of chili, with a good view of both the dining room walls and the OSU/Michigan game. Happily, Ohio State rewarded us with a relatively comfortable win.

Upcoming projects include putting up a new fence in back, figuring out the source of the strange noises we keep hearing during the night, and opening the door to the guest room. Daunting.

rainy weekend

2006-10-28T17:12:00.000-04:00

We've abandoned some projects, begun and completed others. On the holding side is the guest room which once must have seemed like an easy "do." The walls behind the white and crayola print wallpaper were in rough shape, like those in the upstairs bathroom before the stripping, sanding, and so on. In some areas the paper actually seemed to be load bearing. We're leaving the room in its partly ruined state for the time being, looking faux classical -- a bit like an Olive Garden.

The dining room promises to be easier, so we'll give that a go. Ted installed a spark screen in the fireplace and replaced a faucet today. It turns out that drilling into brick is enormously statisfying, especially after hours of trying and not managing to drill into brick. As every job goes, though, the small improvements tend also to make something worse (the sink leaks) or reveal a bigger problem (the chimney leaks).

Happily, Scout reminds us to play.

fall planting

2006-10-14T19:37:00.000-04:00

A good portion of the front landscaping is done. Now that the house is painted and extremely bright in the fall sunlight, we've had trouble getting a properly exposed picture. As soon as we do, you'll see from left to right: china boy holly, coral bells, blue rug juniper, cotoneaster, another holly and a different holly, a peony, blueberries -- one low and two highbush, a space for poppies and a chinese juniper on the end. Soon to follow, naturalized daffodils.

primer white

2006-10-07T09:07:00.000-04:00

In the next few days we should have the house painted, just in time to get the holly and blueberries we bought for the front yard in the ground before it freezes.

After all the consideration of color for the exterior, we're going with the same light grey that was on the house most recently. In Sherwin Williams speak that's a Repose Gray body with what else but Dorian Gray trim. (If that means we keep a grotesque painting of the house in the attic in order that the paint actually last its guaranteed 25 years, so be it.)

abraded house

2006-10-04T09:20:00.000-04:00

what's the holdup?

2006-09-28T16:18:00.000-04:00

Why, you ask, no posts since our trip to a Pittsfield swamp?

What's going on with the house? Last I heard Dan was painting it.

Indeed, as the story of the house left off, Dan the painter was at work sanding away in preparation for painting the house. Since then, that part of the story has turned grim, with new hope appearing only in the last few days.The basic story is that Dan, the subject of praise three posts ago, is now the subject of disappointment around these parts, having decided abruptly to quit our contract to paint the house for the price he'd set. After some struggles, we have our new painters here at work, and as I write, the sweet, discordant, grating sound of disc sanders being applied to the walls outside the window rings out. They are now on day 3 of their work, which breaks Dan's previous record of two days, so it feels like things are moving in the right direction.

Fingers crossed - pictures of the abraded house to follow.

out of the house

2006-08-19T21:05:00.000-04:00

Tilden Swamp in the Pittsfield State Forest. We saw either a fox or a coyote on our way home--jury's still out, but leaning foxward.

the floors are done!

2006-08-18T09:32:00.000-04:00

Here's that "before" picture again. And here's the "after":

We're going for a hike in the Berkshires so we don't spend the whole day just staring at the floors.

thanks be to dan

2006-08-16T17:47:00.000-04:00

I didn't jinx it. The painter, Dan, showed up this morning and began scraping. Here's proof:

It seems at some point the window trim was forest green, and at some point (perhaps at the same point) the body of the house was an electric sky blue. We've ruled both of those out as reasonable possibilities. As Ted said to Dan, "we're not that committed to historical accuracy."

as I type ...

2006-08-15T12:41:00.000-04:00

Burke and Son Hardwood Flooring is working hard on our hardwood floors. At last, the hired contact workers are beginning to show up. It's enormously helpful to know, especially as the semester draws closer, that progress on the house can be made without us.

Take a good look at the "before" pictures:

In other news (and I almost don't want to type this and jinx it ...) the house painter may well show up tomorrow to begin sanding the exterior. We've had an especially wet summer and he's been put well off schedule. (If you look back at these posts you'll notice one every month that claims excitedly "the painter is coming!")

Of course, he was going to come today, but it rained.

patio plans

2006-08-15T12:33:00.000-04:00

We've roughed out an area for a patio--a 15' foot circle at the back of the house. The current plan is to get reclaimed brick from The ReStore and try to lay it ourselves.

rhodo rooted

2006-08-15T12:17:00.000-04:00

Some nice weather encouraged us to move on to outdoor projects. In preparation for a patio, we moved a rhododendron that was growing too close to the back of the house.

At the side fence it should still get the dappled sunlight it requires and provide the back of the yard with a bit more privacy. We're trying to keep the woodland setting of the back yard ("woodland" currently translates to "overgrown," "chipmunk infested," and "skunk visited") and add a few evergreens for winter interest.

Next to the rhododenron we'll move the only surviving shrub from the front lawn, a purple azalea. Between the weeping cherry, the mountian laurel, the rhododenron, and the azalea, next spring will be a spectacle of pink ... but we're working with what we've got.

little things

2006-07-30T09:10:00.000-04:00

Little things accomplished, but important ones. We've put the kitchen cabinets back up, freshly painted with some new and some repainted hinges. Eventually we'd like to replace the cabinets and counter tops, but in the interim these will do.

Ted installed a ceiling fan in his office. It took longer than the instructions promised (as does most everything around here, especially electrical things) but it works, it doesn't wobble, and it looks great. Here's a shot of it in action:

And last, after two months we finally settled on a mirror and light fixtures for the bathroom. That it's been two months of grooming in the dark and without a mirror may explain why we've lately come to resemble Dan Rather and Jason Biggs (see below).

i love craigslist

2006-07-30T08:59:00.000-04:00

Not only have we sold 2 out of the last 3 cars on craigslist, we just got rid of an old, dirty, (soviet?) "Teknika" air conditioner that has been in the garage since we moved in and all 4 of the aluminum shades on the exterior of the house. A quick, free ad posted to the local, internet-going community and some lucky strangers are now the proud owners of our junk!

It's gone! Thanks Jared, whoever you are.

celebrity twins

2006-07-26T08:46:00.000-04:00

We haven't done all that much on the house in the last few weeks. Instead, we visited family and friends in Wisconsin and New York, and then had a friend here. Nice visits all.

While we're working on renovations to photograph and post up, here's something slightly different. The website www.myheritage.com will run a facial algorithm and let you know which celebrity it thinks you most resemble.

I've always thought Ted looked like (a much cuter) Keanu Reeves. Alas, the man of my dreams looks most like Dan Rather. Here's proof:

Lucky, though, all things considered. When Ted looks at me, he just might see this:

Jason Biggs, star of American Pie, my number one match.

That I look also like Grace Kelly, Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts and William Shatner is indeed cold comfort.

curious

2006-07-09T09:09:00.000-04:00

The new view from our front door. The sign in the neighbor's yard reads, "Springfield the city of homes... you can almost afford to live in."

indoor pool

2006-07-09T09:03:00.000-04:00

On the morning of the day sandwiched between my [Ted's] last day of teaching and our trip to Wisconsin I headed down to make coffee.

I heard a noise – diffuse, but loud.

“Is that the street sweeper?” I wondered?

A quick check outside suggested that it was not. Could that be coming from the basement?

A quick check down there revealed that the noise was in fact coming from the basement. I rushed downstairs to investigate a situation that was clearly a bad one, only to discover that we had in fact crossed into the realm of disaster.

My steps picked up pace as I realized that the sound was in fact being caused by water was jetting out of a broken pipe connection...

thump thump thump went my steps, picking up pace.

thump thump splash went my steps as I moved from the stairs onto the basement floor which was, my shoes and feet discovered, covered in about 4 inches of water.

At a nearly irrecoverable state of dismay, we did manage to recall that our next door neighbor had required the services of someone to remove water from his basement, and that our neighbors across the street had recommended a plumber who helped them out of a similar situation.

Phone calls followed, and by 10 a.m. we were visited by a disaster restoration squad who Kelly watched arrive at the house as if rushing to a fire. Hoses went into our new swimming pool and removed it into the tanks of the two disaster restoration vans. (They were welcome to it.)

Next came the friendly plumber, whose van featured a reassuring smiley face. He identified the source of our problem as one of the many corroded-looking basement pipe fixtures. Sadly, the one that broke was by no means the worst of the bunch, so, in the interest of avoiding future basement adventures, we commissioned (and are now the owners of) a new plumbing system for the basement. The highlight of which, from my perspective, is that the refrigerator’s icemaker is now hooked up very nicely, and is producing the ice for the drinks required by this whole mess.

updates

2006-06-22T10:38:00.000-04:00

The camera battery is dying so no pictures, just some quick updates. We lined up someone to repair the kitchen floor and finish the kitchen, laundry room, and sunroom floors in July. The painter is also contracted to start work in July, just after we get back from a week in Wisconsin. No real idea on exterior color yet, perhaps a sage green or a light grey close to the current color. We're thinking of doing the dining room in a brick red to match the hearth tiles. A dark, slighty orange red should complement the brown kitchen and bronze-green sunroom.

On the "actual work" side of things, Ted emptied one of the downspouts and Kelly did one of the gutters. The downspout was packed full to about 5 or 6 feet of what turns out to be rich looking soil, and the gutter was an ecosystem in itself -- soil, earthworms, tiny trees ...

Thus we continue to reclaim the house from nature and the ravages of time.

color

2006-06-18T17:17:00.000-04:00

Mountain laurel in bloom.

it's beginning to look somewhat like something

2006-06-16T18:47:00.000-04:00

At last, some "after" photos:

Above is the sunroom in early spring, before we'd closed on the house.

Here it is as of today, carpet and curtains removed, and freshly painted. The color is "fig" (Pratt & Lambert) aka "leapfrog" (Behr), though "the color of certain bugs when smashed" and "yellow bile" might be more apt. Alas, they didn't ask me. It may not come across on the computer just right -- it looks slightly off on all 3 of our monitors. In reality, though, it's really wonderful.

Visible in the backyard -- Adironack chairs and a fire bowl. We had a roaring little fire last night, thanks to Ted's Boy Scout training and all the brush we've cleared in the last few days.

Ted's office before. This has been the easiest room to prepare thus far. The Senders (or whichever previous tenant) went lightly on the wallpaper paste. For a family whose motto went something along the lines of "that oughta hold it," this was an uncharacteristic but welcome move.

Ted's brown study, his "Bison Brown" study.

The upstairs bath "Bejeweled" in green. Just one of the many nonsensical color names we're working with.

back in contact

2006-06-10T09:07:00.000-04:00

Much has happened since last we had access to the internet, and we'll begin to fill in as we get pictures of the new work. Ted emptied the hot water heater, all 40 gallons of it, 2 gallons at a time. He also installed a dishwasher (which you can read more about here) and has replaced and grounded most of the electric sockets. Kelly finished painting the bathroom and scrubbed, stripped and sealed the tile. She pulled out a kitchen window, figured out how it works and promptly put it back. Ted's office is painted, though, a deep "bison" brown, and the computers are up and running. We haven't achieved normalcy by any strecth, but there are reminders of it here and there.

A long term plan had been to remove the shrubs in front of the house, but a knock on the door last night changed all that. Neighbors were having a patio installed and came over to offer Chris -- the landscaper -- and his Bobcat. Since he had the equipment at the ready, he offered to do it for next to nothing. It happened just about as fast as it will take to look at the pictures:

This last picture is an aerial view of the destruction, taken from the front bedroom. After the painter is finished with the house (hopefully by the end of June) we'll put in the new shrubs. Currently, we're considering some combination of burning bush, boxwood, daphne, mugo pine, compact Japanese maple and possibly red twig dogwood.

moving

2006-05-28T19:41:00.000-04:00

Not much work on the new house over the past couple of days. With the 1st of June quickly approaching we decided that we'd better dedicate ourselves to moving. Inevitably, this activity coincides with an unseasonable heat wave - tomorrow will be a stupefying 90-some degrees.

In any event, we've moved out a lot of stuff. No pictures of either of us moving, but here are a couple pictures proving that progress is being made:

Empty room!

This area will be empty once Scout lets us move his little sheepskin rug. He laid out on it while we moved the table from over top of him.

Tomorrow we'll try to clean and paint some places to put all the stuff we currently have piled up in the living room of the new place.

coming soon

2006-05-26T21:35:00.000-04:00

It was too late and too messy to take pictures tonight, but we've made some progress in actually making rooms look like they will when we're living in the house. The bathroom walls are painted (the 1st coat anyhow), as is the walk-in closet, which will allow us to move some clothes over.

Tomorrow - more painting, lots of moving and some pictures.

"half bath"

2006-05-24T09:02:00.000-04:00

One of the nail rows we removed from the laundry room floor. This was anchoring little vinyl tiles that were already glued down. Why?

Newsflash: Calamity Ted Busts Out of the P P Corral!

(For those of you who, quite understandably, miss the high humor in this caption, previous owners had placed a toilet and sink behind a half-wall and swinging saloon doors just off the kitchen in the laundry room.)

We're not exactly sure what to do with it next. Now, as you enter the house from the back door, you're standing in a small room with a toilet in the corner. (Before we took the half-walls out there was at least a little mystery, if not privacy exactly.) We might replace it temporarily with a utility sink and decide later whether we want the second bathroom. If so, we'll build real walls.

progress on several fronts

2006-05-19T08:27:00.000-04:00

We've been too beat to put up photos after our working days, so I'll make up for it with a bunch of pictures this morning.

Wood floors in the sunroom. The wallpaper is practically leaping off the walls. We'd hadn't meant to do any work in here until the high priority jobs (bathroom, kitchen, fixing the stinky hot water...) were taken care of, but every now and then it's nice to walk in and do something easy.

The kitchen floor is mostly uncovered. It's fine except for two "repairs" (done with ill fitting 2x4s), made by someone who clearly knew they'd be covering it up with tile. Ah well, looks rustic.

Progress in the bathroom is slow and painful. We've washed the glue off the walls and now have layers of paint, primer, and plaster. (Plus, we replaced the tile with newspaper!) We're using a chemical stripper, to tedious and caustic effect. Chipping it off with a razor blade is actually more efficient.

Looking out the window, that's Debbie and Linda's house across the street. They have 2 greyhounds and an Australian cattle dog.

These are the ferns, about 3' high, and the hostas coming in at the back of the yard. The fence, like most everything else, is rotten and falling over. That's Tom's yard behind ours, which we'll begin to annex ... very slowly.

We found this message under the wallpaper in Ted's office: "To those who wonder who lived here between the years 1956 and 1969, it was the Senders!"

I imagine we have the Senders to blame for the half-bath, and the kitchen cabinets. I'm just going to go ahead and blame them for the kitchen floor too. Curse you Senders!

back to work

2006-05-16T19:21:00.000-04:00

The semester ended yesterday (more or less), so there will be more time to work on the house from this point on.

Today, some progress was made on the bathtub (removing old caulk and experimenting with grout cleaning/replacing) and on the kitchen floor (exposing more of the old wood floor underneath). No pictures from today's efforts, but we'll post some tomorrow.

Here's a safety tip from Ted: (I actually discovered this last week) When you switch modes on your ShopVac from vacuuming to blowing out, keep in mind that any debris in the vacuum hose will - immediately upon restarting the ShopVac - shoot out of the hose at the same wonderous speed with which it shot in. Plan acordingly.

Note: If you're Macaulay Culkin and robbers are attacking your house the previous safety tip is actually a plan!

what lies beneath

2006-05-14T08:40:00.000-04:00

The tentative plan had been to pull up the kitchen floor and prepare to lay down porcelain tile, which we'd actually talked ourselves into doing ourselves. Thankfully, we may never get the chance to rue that day. Underneath the grey vinyl tile we found a layer of baby-girl pink tile. Underneath the pink, a tenacious layer of backer-board -- truly foul in places and nailed down by a maniac (some edges have something close to 20 3" nails. Did he think it was going somewhere?). Underneath that -- jackpot! Hard wood floors. We're guessing it's yellow pine, and so far it's in pretty good shape.

Before and after pictures to follow just as soon as we get a pry bar and some time to finish the job.

paint colors

2006-05-10T07:57:00.000-04:00

This is one of the colors we're considering for the house, the geographically unlikely "short grass prairie." It's only recently edged out "carriage door" which looked too muddy in sunlight. A favorite among the color names, but not the color itself so much, is "porpoise." We'd probably regret choosing a color for its name alone, even if we could say "we painted it Porpoise on porpoise."

Click here for a page of other possibilities.

One of the painters we talked to told us that the Period Eclectic style, the trend to build houses in the 1920s with French Provincial, English Tudor, Spanish Mission, Mediterranean or otherwise international features, took off because of the movies. All of a sudden a variety of architectural types and periods were visible across the country. It does make sense. A lot of those houses look more like they were designed after movie sets than actual historic buildings.

As far as the Period Eclectic goes, ours is a tame example. Only the hinges on the front door and the modest stained glass window in the dining room suggest that the builder was aiming for a Tudor. There is one down the street, though, with awnings in a sort of Renaissance Fair style. It's something to see.

the old manse

2006-05-07T17:55:00.000-04:00

the story so far: we bought this house. it needs a lot of work. for the next few months, our answer to the questions "what have you been doing?" "how are you spending your time/money/blood/etc." "why won't you answer the phone?" and "where are you?" will be answered right here, on the virtual page of this blog.

for more pictures click here and here.

beginning with the bathroom

2006-05-06T19:16:00.000-04:00

here's the bathroom before we got started. sadly, it looks much cleaner in the photo than it really was.

scrubbing bubbles, scrubbing.

the vinyl wallpaper came off fairly easily. this is what's underneath. it looks as though the original paint might have been an avocado green. we're planning to go with some sort of white.

dining room window

2006-05-02T15:35:00.000-04:00

We discovered a similarly sized, 8 pane window in the garage and now suspect that the buffet window in the dining room isn't original. It doesn't match the style of most stained glass windows in the East Forest Park neighborhood where we live, nor those in nearby Forest Park, though the houses with stained glass tend to be Victorians and tend to be 20-odd years older than ours. It reminds Kelly of a certain fish & chips restaurant, or a restaurant near a fish & chips restaurant, and therefore, of fish & chips.