The Fixer Upper House and Garden

Good Morning, Sunshine

Despite early wisps of clouds, my town was treated to a spectacular sunrise on Thursday morning. Here's a view from the beach near my home, at 5:50 a.m.

Stuff

Getting Rid Of Stuff has been a major theme for me these past two years. After a lifetime of being an accumulator, I now love throwing things away. Today I threw away a scratched Teflon skillet, thus liberating the pots-and-pans drawer (as well as my family ) from a potentially poisonous cooking utensil. I also gave away our cream-colored dining room rug, which I once loved but whose color I always regretted, especially after Milo used it as a poop mat when we were on vacation recently. I gave the rug to a man who came to haul away the bricks from the front yard. I gave it to him on one condition: That he must absolutely clean the rug before presenting it to his wife. I'll never know if he does this, but I tried.

Here's another thing I gave away today: a ton of bricks and bluestone shards. Well maybe not a ton. I'm not good at judging things like tons. It seemed like a ton to me. But the thing that really puts today on the anti-clutter radar is that at long last, I got rid of the ugly evergreens out front. Except for a few gnarly juniper stumps, the front yard is as naked as new construction. 

Ahhhhh.......

For a progression of photos of the front of my house, click below

Blog Updates

Dear friends and readers,

I am as un-techy a person as you'll ever find, but a little thing called "widgets" is making it easier to navigate the blogosphere. Just six months ago, I grappled with how to start a "favorite houseblogs" sidebar to this blog. Now I can link to other blogs very easily (if you're a blogger who reads my blog a lot, let me know!). Widgets also have made it easier for me to connect with you, dear friends and readers. I've just added "feedblitz" (upper right corner), which allows you to get my posts delivered to your e-mail address if you so choose. And I've also added a "search" function that lets you find stuff on the blog.

So if you want to revisit last summer's flood,  or read about soapstone, or get some tips on mudroom design...search the blog!

Now if I could just find a widget to fold the laundry...

Quiet ... At Last

I am home and there are no workers digging in the yard or hammering in the basement. The phone is not ringing, the kids are out with Husband and the sleeping dogs are not even snoring. I vacuumed every day this week, because it's shedding season for labradors and visiting season for T.F.U.H. (people kept stopping by and I kept inviting people to stop by). So in addition to being quiet, it's also very tidy here.

Ah, blessed peace; how I've missed you.

This is the first time since we moved that I feel relaxed. I've been so busy...and am having so much fun in the house. Last night we hosted dinner for a progressive party, which is a remarkable way to entertain. I must remember to volunteer for this type of thing more often. In a progressive party, everyone meets at one house for cocktails; then you break up into groups of 8-10 people at various homes, and after dinner everyone gathers for coffee and dessert at another destination--in our case, our church.

If you're a dinner host, here's what's expected of you: You set the table and provide wine. You do not cook. You do not mix martinis. You do not bake an interesting dessert. But if you're like us, you do install light fixtures an hour before the party, polish your silver for the first time in 15 years, and hope darkness falls before the guests arrive so no one notices the backhoe in your yard. Here are some photos:

M helped set the table and took these photos; C kept replenishing guests' water goblets; T was polite but shy and Milo didn't throw up on any shoes:

The morning of the party, my friend Ginny invited me to a flower-arranging seminar, where I made this centerpiece:

 

I will never forget unpacking, drying and repacking my crystal and china on the driveway last summer, after a flash flood dumped 18 inches of water into our basement (where all of our belongings were stored). This is the first time I've used the "good goblets" since then and I was sad to realize how many we lost during the flood. Hand-blown crystal is not very sturdy! And, yes, it was dark by dinner but it still was hard to miss the construction equipment in the yard (which was used to dig a storm drain earlier in the day). I think it even added a little charm to the evening.

The Dining Room

We had our first dinner party on Friday night and one of the dogs threw up on our friend's shoe. Actually, the dog threw up under the shoe when our friend, Pieter, had his legs stretched out beneath the dining room table. Later as he crossed and uncrossed his legs, the vomit got pressed deeper into the rug, which, I must point out, is cream with a lovely blue border.

(Note to daughters: do not buy cream-colored rugs for your dining rooms when you are grown up)

We all laughed nervously when Pieter noticed a large, clumpy, brown smear of something underneath his feet and on his shoe, oh, about the time I was serving dessert. "What did I drag in?" he asked in a melodious Dutch accent. Husband and I immediately suspected the dogs. Well, I immediately suspected just one of the dogs: Milo, who absorbs stress like Bounty paper towels pick up juice spills. At first I thought he had brought in a clump of mud, because the brown smear had no odor. But when Husband took a closer look, he found an intact, undigested nugget of Purina One in the mix.

OK ... so ... yuck.

In a situation such as this, we can expect Husband to remain calm and non-chalant, which is His Way. For me, remaining calm in the face of dinner-party vomit requires enormous discipline and a huge amount of reserve, which I amazingly was able to summon, at least while our guests were in the house. But later that night, after an exhaustive and unsuccessful search for vacuum cleaner bags in unpacked moving boxes...well, let's just say I experienced a different set of emotions.

Fortunately Husband saved the rug...and the weekend...by renting a Rug Doctor at our local grocery store early Saturday morning. The rug cleaned up perfectly, and he used the machine to clean several other area-rugs that have been in storage for 2 years.

So all was well at The Fixer Upper House. All is well. Here are some shots of...and thoughts on...the dining room:

The original dining room was almost a square at 10' x 11', and Husband and I considered turning it into a den/office. When we hired Miguel, our architect, he convinced us to use it as a formal dining room, because that is what the house intended it to be. We bumped the wall back about three feet into what was the old kitchen and is now a butler's pantry/mom office, which we're calling "the butler's office." I'm so glad we did this, because the new dining room is beautiful.

(Regarding unpacking: In addition to not being able to find vacuum cleaner bags, I'm missing a few things from the dining room, among them one shade for the chandelier, 7 china tea cups and a chinese urn filled with my dead cat's ashes):

My mother bought the mirror (shown below) in the early '70s, a year or so before she died. When I was growing up, I thought the mirror was "too modern" and wondered what my mother had been thinking when she hung it in our foyer. Years later, when my sisters and I divided our parents' things, no one wanted the mirror, but my younger sister took it and kept it unboxed in basement after basement after basement for years and years and years, not wanting to hang it but unable to throw it away because it had been our mother's. When I decorated my last home, I started thinking about the mirror and "getting" what my mother had been thinking. I asked my sister if I could have it, because her husband didn't like it much, but the mirror was so heavy that mailing it to New Jersey would have cost a fortune. So it continued to sit...and collect dust...in two more of my sister's basements ... until last summer when she and I settled into houses that are 20 miles apart, and she gave it to me, and I had the glass replaced because it was cracked, and then I renovated T.F.U.H., and Husband hung the mirror on the dining room wall. I absolutely love the mirror, and I love my sister for giving it to me, and my brother-in-law for not liking it, and Husband for hanging it, and Miguel for convincing us to bump out the wall and turn this old square room into a proper dining room, and ...

This is what the dining room looked like before the renovation:

                                                  ...............

Well, I can't find a "before" picture of the dining room! It was a small, almost square room with pink wall paper and blue carpeting.

Photos Of ...

The floors looked spectacular for the 15 minutes that I saw them last week. The next day, GC taped a sign on the front door that said "Remove Shoes: Floors Just Refinished." This prompted the painters to tape heavy craft paper over the floors, so they could keep wearing their boots. This is good for the feet, good for the floors and good for the olefactory system.

Here are several photos of the work that's been going on recently. Great thought, care and effort went into every one of these projects by all involved--and not a little bit of agonizing!

The kitchen is shrouded in plastic:

Painting the bricks lightened up the kitchen a lot--the wall was once the exterior of the house. After we built the addition, Miguel had the idea to place HVAC ducts on both sides of the stained-glass window, creating a little desk-niche.

Here's what the refinished floors look like...under cover:

White snow, blue sky, new addition:

 

Before the recent spring snow storm, Nawkaw came out to stain the new bricks. I think they look good but Husband says "there's not enough red." Oh well.

The mudroom is multi-functional, including cubbies, a coat closest, nooks for dog beds and lots of shelves for stuff (opposite the cubbies). The Dutch door will come in handy when muddy paws need to be contained. To maximize light in the kitchen, we decided to not use the top half of the door.

This next photo shows what happens when you trim Motawi tiles. I will post about this in detail later, but if you're considering using hand-glazed tiles, just know you can't trim the field tiles that have variations in shading. Instead of trimming them to fit, you can order custom-sizes from Motwawi for just $4 more per tile:

The "Shaker Beige" paint on these plaster walls frames the old door and windows:

No matter what's going on in life, you still need to walk the dogs ...

 

... And dance!

Floor Refinishing

If not for the Polish music drifting from the basement, I'd think I was alone in the house. It's so quiet, so empty. So ... very ... foreign. Sunlight mingles with dust in the living room and I wonder what's more striking: sunshine after a dark winter ... or is it the floor?

GC and his crew have cleared out the house. Gone are the ladders, saws and cans of paint, the scraps of wood, piles of molding and plastic bins over-flowing with trash. The house has been emptied for tomorrow's appointment with the hard-wood floor refinishers.

The bride is donning her veil.

I'm very nervous. I OK'd the floor stain weeks ago based on a four-inch test area in front of the refrigerator. We tested several colors, with the end goal of having very light floors but not so light that they look naked. We tried cherry, golden oak, natural, driftwood, early American and some other stains whose names escape me now. We also tried 50-50 blends, but I didn't love anything. How do you love something you can't envision? Emmanual, the floor-refinishing overseer, was adamant that I go with natural, which looked fine on the new floors but yellow on the old. A decorator urged me to blend natural with "just a touch of brown but no yellow or red." The painter suggested cherry to match the cabinets, but to my eye it was too matchy-matchy. Miguel the architect liked early American. I felt it would be OK if it was lighter, but when GC mixed early American with natural, the blend came out yellowish on our old, yellow-oak floors. In fact, none of the blended stains turned out well. Adding to the dilemma is that old floors take color differently than new ones.

So I decided to move on. I OK'd early American and let it go. But now, as I stand on dusty floors in this sunny room waiting for the floor guys to arrive on a day that's so bright my head hurts, the worries creep in. What if it's too dark? Too brown? Too mottled? What if I hate it?

Well, whatever goes down this week will be better than what's there now.

The hallway floors are a dark stain and are in dubious condition:

Since we expanded the dining room, it has both old and new floorboards:

The stairs are a very ugly orangish-yellowish stain that doesn't match the rest of the house:

Fireplace Surround, Day 2

Some more pics of the progression of our fireplace surround. Leon will grout it today:

from another angle:

Here's Leon, who installed every type of tile possible in our entire house, including porcelain, ceramic, glass, marble and these hand-glazed tiles from Motawi.

On To The Next Thing: The Fireplace Surround

I am coping with the shock of the half-inch overhang fairly well today. Pushing up the leg posts is going to be an ordeal, given that they are nailed to the new floor, so we are going to fill the gaps with a strip of wood that's flush with the leg posts. This is different from placing scribes over the gaps, an earlier suggestion that left me colder than the ice on my front stoop because the scribes would stick all the way out to the edge of the overhang.

Enough about that.

Now it's time to focus on the fireplace surround. The lovely hand-glazed Motawi tiles arrived yesterday, so this morning I had another pow-wow with Bert and Miguel to go over the order. I think everyone was worried about one thing or another---that the tiles wouldn't fit within the just-built mantel, or that we wouldn't have enough pieces, or that Leon the installer wouldn't know what to do with them. Fortunately, our worst fears have not materialized and things are working out fine. Here are some pictures of the morning's progress.

Miguel examines options for the tile pattern beneath the soapstone hearth:

Here's Leon, the tile installer, making some suggestions:

As of about noon today, a work in progress. Leon was very busy!

A corner detail emerges. The photo really doesn't do that soapstone slab justice. It's black with a lot of green swirling around. Very cool:

One ... Half ... Inch

I expected to be blown away by the Costa Esmerelda counters after they were installed in my kitchen Thursday afternoon. I should have swooned, because the counters are graceful and lovely, with just the right depth of color and veining. But instead of swooning, I gasped in horror at the sight of a narrow gap between the island leg posts and countertop. While invisible to some, this gap is so obvious to me it's as if flashing arrows are pointing at it.

"What is that GAP?" I asked Edgar, the counter installation guy who is about the age I was when I graduated from college. "The countertop is too small!" Nervously, Edgar got out the order.

"Ma'am," he said politely, "These are the dimensions you signed off on when the counters were measured last week."

I looked at the order. The island counter was measured from the rail and not from the leg posts, which jut out a couple of centimeters beyond the rail. What this means is that while most of the counter has a one-inch overhang, the overhang at the two leg posts is only about one-half inch. The gap between the posts and the counter exaggerates this one-half-inch deficit.

Hysteria started lurching from my stomach. Or was that lunch?

I called Miguel.

"What is that GAP?" I asked Miguel.

He didn't seem too worried.

"Yea, I noticed that. We just have to push the leg posts up and it will be OK," he said.

"But what about the OVERHANG?" I asked, gripping the cellphone to my ear. "It's only one-half-inch at the leg posts!"

"It's supposed to be like that," Miguel said, trying to reassure me. "It's supposed to look like a farm table."

"It looks like a man who arrived at his wedding in tuxedo pants that are too short!" I cried.

Now Miguel was starting to get worried---not about the counter but about my state of mind. "It's not that bad!" he said. "I'll come by and take another look."

I called Husband.

"The counters are in and the island top looks like it shrunk in the dryer!" I wailed.

"It can't be that bad!" he said. "I'll get off early and take a look."

That day, Bert the GC, Carl the carpenter, Mark the kitchen designer, Miguel the architect and Husband the husband all came to the house to see the patient I mean the island counter top. None of them felt the overhang was an issue. They offered various solutions, ranging from using a scribe to fill the gaps to placing "buttons" at the foot of the posts so that the leg tops are flush with the bottom of the counter. They tried to assure me that once the gaps are filled, the overhang will not be an issue.

"But that's because you don't think it's even an issue with the gaps!" I said suspiciously. I calculated the height difference between Husband and me, which is about seven inches.

"You can't even see what I'm talking about!" I cried.

I demanded another solution. All reluctantly agreed that in addition to filling the gaps, we could adjust the island by pushing the legs in one-half inch at both sides. This sounds easy, but it's not without repercussions because the leg posts are already nailed into the floor boards, and if we move the leg posts forward a half inch, the holes in the floor might --- or might not--- be exposed. We also would have to cut and move the rails, exposing nail holes in the island that would have to be filled and stained. Plus, these adjustments would affect the symmetry of the overhang, making it deeper than one-inch at the rails.

I asked my brother-in-law Chip, who's a woodworking guy, to evaluate the island overhang, and he doesn't think it's a problem. My sister agrees, and my kids think I'm crazy to actually talk about something like: "The overhang? What's the overhang?"

Part of me worries that everyone secretly believes the overhang is a real issue, but that they don't want to say so because of all the work that's involved in fixing it. But then again, maybe it really is a non-event. Maybe I'm just too close to the situation. Maybe I'm just a little looney.

Either way: It's bugging me. Here are some more pictures:

from the left side:

from the right side, with a piece of wood shoved in the gap to show what it might look like when the gap is filled: