The Fixer Upper House and Garden

On The Road

Given that our borrowed house is occupied by its rightful owners for the week, and given that our owned house is being dry-walled ... Husband, children and I have taken off in a rented RV. At this

moment we are peeling out of a KOA in Flagstaff, Arizona, where the temperature has taken an onerous turn for the worse, to -4. We're prepared for the cold clothingwise, but the RV isn't "winterized." Who knew about these things before today? Since there's a chance the water tank could freeze, we're heading to Kingman, Ariz., where it's supposed to top off at 35 degrees. Maybe we'll do the Hoover Dam tomorrow.

We wish you well!

PS to Kate in Phoenix: Hello!

Happy Holidays

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE FIXER UPPER HOUSE!

To the readers of this blog at this holy time of year: Thank you for sharing the highs and lows of renovation with me. Thank you for reading and listening and sharing your opinions. Thank you for praying for my loved ones who have been ill or unfortunate. Thank you for sending positive vibes my way. A year ago, I didn't know  beans about blogging. Now, I don't know how I would have survived this year with out it! Whatever your beliefs or rituals this time of year...I wish you all the very best.

Kitchen Counter: Dramatic Turn Of Events

Friends and readers may recall my obsession for finding the perfect kitchen counter. Over the past year I explored counters of every variety and material, and I was set to splurge on soapstone until a grey morning in October when I realized it was too dark for the new kitchen. At that moment--literally--my new friends George and Linda stopped by and suggested that I look at their counter, Sensa Perlado honed marble. I did, and for many weeks I was determined to go with this lovely cream and tan stone, which Husband and Miguel agreed would lighten up the kitchen and look swell with the cabinets.

Then reality set in.

One night last week, the darling and effervescent 10-year-old C did the dishes in the borrowed house and helped get the lunches ready for the next day. She whistled and sang and chatted and did a fine job on the chores save one thing: She forgot to wipe the counter. In the morning, raspberry jelly, chocolate frosting, orange juice and a chili-covered spoon were congealed to the Formica. Fortunately, the cleanup was a snap, and no one was worse for the wear, including the white Formica. Had the counter been marble, it would have had to be refinished.

I'll save honed marble for the empty nester years.

This brought me back to the beginning, much to Husband's dismay. An active participant in the counter hunt six months ago, he now was willing to agree to anything ... anything...so long as I made a decision.

"You've got to pull the trigger on this," he said.

"Please stop talking about counters," the children added.

By last week I had eliminated soapstone, marble, wood, tile and counters made of recycled paper, as well as Corian, Silestone, Ceasarstone and all other solid surfaces. Where did this leave me? It left me with granite. 

I don't like granite because it's overused, but I've realized there's a reason for this: It's durable, affordable and nature-made. If you can overcome an aversion to speckles, it's not even too ugly. So I went back to Stone Habitat in Mundelein (www.stonehabitat.com), which has the best prices in my area, and I picked out a light-colored, speckly granite in cream, grey, tan, brown and black that's called either Santa Cecelia or Venetian Gold, depending on the slab. (I later changed my mind ... again ... and went with Costa Esmerelda!) It looks good with the cabinet door sample, it coordinates well with the fireplace tiles and the best part: it costs less than soapstone and honed marble. To mix it up, I'm using soapstone for the butler's pantry and on the raised hearth in the family room ... and I'm still coming in under-budget.

In fact, the only things that are coming in under budget are those that I'm pricing out myself.

Peomtecl

Can you unscramble the title of this post? I couldn't, my fourth-grade daughter couldn't, and the Franklin Crossword Puzzle Solver couldn't, either...at least not until the gizmo worked through nine other jumble possibilities.

"Peomtecl." It's like you were typing really fast with your fingers on the wrong keys.

How about this word: can you get it? "Bypaolrb." Or what about this: "urosce." It isn't rescue...which was what I thought at first ... and needed. These were part of C's "SuperKids Word Scrambler" homework, and I was quickly realizing neither of us was a very super unscrambler.

C nodded in the direction of the end table, where her grandfather keeps a stash of crossword enablers. "Should we try Baba's Unscrambler?" she asked.

"It's too late to call Baba," I said, misreading her cue. "It's 9:30 in Florida and he's already in bed."

C nodded to the end table again. "No, we don't need to call him. I mean the electronic thingy he uses for crossword puzzles."

She reached beneath the table to reveal a handheld gizmo that's about the size of a Blackberry. Clearly more familiar with this little prize than I, she flipped it open and said somewhat innocently: "Look, it does jumbles, too."

To use it would be cheating...I know. It was worse than using the calculator on my cell phone to help her solve multiplication problems. It was worse than calling my FiL and asking him to do the unscrambling...But we'd been out for 13 hours due to school, after-school activities, and C's younger sister's Winter Fine Arts Show. It was getting late for honesty.

I grabbed the gizmo. "If we're going to cheat, I'm going to be the one holding the evidence," I said. I typed the letters for one of the offending jumbles: "Bypaolrb." And do you know what came up first?

"Bipolar."

Not noticing it wasn't even the correct use of letters, I exclaimed: "This can't be a word you know!" I showed the answer to C, who raised her left eyebrow in confusion (she can do a really dramatic single-raised eyebrow).

"What does it even mean?" she asked.

"It's a disease!" I said ... and didn't add: It's a disease I might be catching just this minute!

We scrolled several more words until we landed on one that made sense: Probably.

We used the Franklin Crossword Puzzle Solver to help with two more words (In C's defense, she got 17 of the 20 scrambles on her own). "Urosce" is "course." And "peomtecl" is "complete."

And now that this day is complete, I'm probably going to become bipolar, of course.

ps: it's snowing again, and really lovely.

Right On, Target!

When I picked T up from school this afternoon, I noticed pellets of salt on the parking lot asphalt. This was my first clue that snow was on the horizon. My next clue was the sweat beading down my neck: our boots are in storage. No boots=no recess. No boots=wet feet. No boots=morose children. New boots=gobs of money. What to do? I took the plunge and drove to Target. Under normal circumstances, going to Target with three tired kids is a high-risk operation. Going to Target for boots with three tired kids at the outset of a storm is even riskier. Inevitably one will leave empty-handed while her sisters march triumphantly through the aisles, clutching their new boots like trophies won in competition.

But today we hit the jackpot ... I mean target. We found $30 boots for everyone, including me and Husband, who has not had boots since he left his in a room at the Washington Crossing Inn back when when we were redoing the kitchen of our last house, um, five years ago.

When we got back to the borrowed house, the kids tested out the new boots while snowflakes fell like confetti from invisible clouds.

It was a good day.

Nooks and Cronies

The stucco is up; the kitchen nook looks great...but the brick is ugly.

From the side:

From the back:

In the kitchen:

One of these things is not like the other. Unless you're colorblind or reading this blog on a b&w computer, you'll notice the new bricks don't match the old bricks. We knew the pallette we picked out wasn't going to be a perfect match, but this isn't even close: There's more orange here than in a pumpkin patch. At GC's suggestion, we've hired NawKaw (www.nawkaw.com) to stain the new bricks to match the old ones (cha ching!). A nice young man from Naukaw came by this ffffrrrrreeeeezzzing morning to get started, but it was too cold to get much done. I'll report more on this as the events unfold.

Commuter Blues

I have never loved driving. Walking, swimming, biking, riding the train: These I love. Driving: blech. If I didn't have kids and dogs I'd move into the city and live sans wheels. Sans car insurance. Sans parking space and Easy Pass. But I do have kids and dogs and at the moment we happen to be living in a borrowed house that's gobs of miles away from the one we own. I'm spending a minimum of 2 hours, usually 3, in the car every day, driving. Blech.

I ... know. I have no right to complain. A lot of people spend two hours just getting to work in the morning. And two hours back. And during the day they drive crowded freeways making sales calls and getting to the airport. Not to forget the renovators who are living not in borrowed houses but in their own messy, kitchenless homes eating microwavable meals and shaking dust off their toothbrushes every morning. So yes, I AM LUCKY. You won't hear me complain about the driving again. It's just that today I ALMOST KILLED A WOMAN AND/OR MYSELF AND CHILDREN as this woman drove out of her driveway without looking to her left, which was the direction I was headed with two of the aforementioned children singing Christmas carols in the backseat. I swirved, causing the tires to screech, the children to scream and loose carerra marble tiles to slam into the dashboard. I missed the car by about two feet. An hour later, I'm still shaking.

I know there are terrorists to worry about and a war abroad but here at home the thing that scares me most is my peer group: the SUV-driving/cell-phone wielding woman of the suburbs. When she's in a hurry, you better watch out.