The Fixer Upper House and Garden

Men At Work!

I have no idea how I survived the mayhem of the past year, when we ripped the back off our house, gutted the interior and began the laborious job of putting it back together. Never a quiet moment; never an empty in-box on the cell phone; never a to-do list with fewer than 20 things on it. I actually loved  the process but when the bulk of it was over and we moved back into the house....I wanted it to be over. As in complete. Finished. See ya later! The End.

This week has been like old times, with a parade of dented vans and pick-up trucks lining the street in front of my house. We returned from the north woods on Saturday with tan children, nervous dogs and four duffle bags filled with dirty laundry. When C and M brought

the bags downstairs to get the laundry going, their bare feet sloshed and sunk into the play-room carpeting: a crack in the air conditioner unit caused a leak that saturated the w-to-w carpet.

The brand-new w-to-w carpet.

So Disaster Relief Services arrived on Sunday with massive fans and dehumidifiers. Along with GC and HVAC guy, they've been in and out all week seeing to things. Meanwhile, the Italian stoneworkers are back working on the front steps, which also required the services of two carpenters. And I'm bidding out the landscaping and fretting over what to plant on the side of the house in order to screen the direct view we have into our next-door neighbor's kitchen. Ah, seems like old times. 

Almost Impossible Weather

Given that we've experienced every possible extreme weather condition since we moved to the  Midwest exactly 2 years ago, it's with great pleasure and some suspicion that I report the following: Summer has been glorious. I can't recall ever experiencing so many consecutive days of breezy, sun-filled, 80-degree weather anywhere or at any time in my life. Not a single June day was sweltering-hot or windbreaker-cold. We've had rain for sure; strong thunderous storms that wake your dreams and rock the trees (it's storming as I write this). But the spells pass quickly, and we do have that new moat of a storm drain to protect the basement. We also have a new bluestone patio that's perfect for a sun-dappled morning cup of coffee and a bowl of Quaker Granola. With the sun warming my pj's, I hardly notice the stones don't match:

Another Mistake

When you thumb through decorating magazines you see that a lot of people are placing large flat-screen TVs over fireplace mantels. This trend has been going on for a few years and it makes me wonder if there has been a spike in neck injuries since it started. I can't think of a more uncomfortable way to watch TV. If I'm going to be looking up, I'd rather be facing out the window with binoculars and studying the wrens nesting in our birdhouse. Or gazing at stars. Or watching a roller coaster do a loop da loop while praying that my children don't fall out of it.

So when it came time to design our family room, we were of two minds: huge TV in the center of a built-in bookcase and no fireplace ... or fireplace as the center, with a (modest?) 42-inch TV on a corner shelf.

 

Given that we're renovating an older house and that I've never been anywhere close to the leading edge of any technological advance, we went with the fireplace and smaller TV.

And in keeping with the 1920s era of our house, we chose to do a tile surround rather than stone, brick or wood. But the path to a lovely fireplace surround is never smooth and easy, is it?

Mistakes

Given that Friday was "Take Your Dog To Work Day," I'm going to write about mistakes ... and how we can learn to live with them.

Here's one mistake I made: I bought the wrong farm sink for my new kitchen. I meant to buy a single sink, but at the last minute I switched to a split sink because the salesperson told me it's the design most people prefer. Well, most people must not cook with large Calphalon pots. I do ... every night. I'm big into sauteing things in an oversized Calphalon skillet that MIL gave me for a shower gift 16 years ago. I love stir-frying vegetables in extra virgin olive oil and serving them over pasta with a sprinkling of fresh goat cheese. I use the same skillet to poach salmon in lemon juice and white wine, and to brown boneless/skinless chicken breasts in shallots and butter, and to make huge batches of scrambled eggs or pancakes. I have about 10 steady-eddie one-pot recipes that I've been cooking in this skillet for years. I also have a huge cauldron that I use to boil pasta, cook chili and boil corned beef, among other things.

These pots do not fit into the miniscule half-sink of my split farm sink.

Who invented the split sink, and why didn't anybody warn me?

Off The Rocks

We were at a beach party recently and the little kids were having a blast playing on the rocks that line the shore. I am a nervous wreck when my kids go on these rocks, because you can't see them when they dip behind the larger boulders. I'm terrified the rocks will shift or that a child will slip, bump her head and disappear into the lake before anyone notices. I'm simply off the rocks terrified of these rocks and I can't relax if my kids are on them. But here's the thing: No one else worries about the rocks. This is where mankind and I part company.

So at the beach party I couldn't eat, drink or converse in a normal manner while T, my youngest child, was exploring the rocks with a posse of other kids. I was standing in a cluster of adults trying to pay attention to the chatter but my eyes kept following T on the rocks as she dipped down and then popped back up. Someone asked if we were traveling anywhere interesting this summer and I nodded and said yes we were going and then I grabbed the man's arm: Where is she! Oh, there she is. Yes, what? Oh summer...

Soon a security guard arrived and told the kids to get off the rocks because the sun was going down. My friends were annoyed at his presence, but all I could think was Amen.

Then I had a drink.

This is a photo of the kids playing on the rocks.

Here they are moments later when a security guard ordered them off the rocks. After he was finished, one of the kids hollared: "Who are you, anyway?"  

Come Into My Kitchen

Does having the kitchenofyourdreams make you a better cook? If you want to know my thoughts on this, come back another day (I'm running out of time writing this!). If you just want to see my kitchen, here's a panoramic shot of the stove-top wall. Keep in mind that it's still a work in progress; I'm taking my time about the backsplash and light fixtures because I want to linger over these decisions (and also because we are out of $$!).

The Powder Room

When people ask me if we remodeled the entire house, I always say no. This is because we didn't totally change the first-floor powder room.  We kept the funky corner sink, the black-and-white hex tiles and the tall, narrow radiator that keeps the 3' x 5' room toasty all winter. Note the use of "totally". We did make a few changes. We created a shelf-niche where there was once a window, and we removed the sail-boat wallpaper.  It is very hard to photograph this room because it is so small! Here goes...

Evergreens as Pimples

I don't know when these five furry juniper bushes were planted. I am guessing they are 50 years old or older. In the winter when it snows, the bushes look like igloos. Five children can lay across them without sinking an inch.

I feel about these evergreens the way I feel about a zit that is oozing white puss: Just let me dig in and get at it!  

You Scratch My Belly...I'll Scratch My Back

I love bringing Allie to the playground. Whenever anyone reaches down to pet her, she rolls onto her back for a belly rub.

Shades of White

A situation with my painter has caused me to rethink the way I am parenting my daughters.

Last week after the painters had been working on the exterior for 2 days, I realized they were using Brilliant White on the trim, when I had told them to use Dove White. (How to describe the difference? Brilliant White is the color of Oprah's teeth after a visit to the dentist. Dove White is like Half 'N Half ... before you pour it into coffee).

 GC and the painters tried to convince me that even though I thought I wanted Dove White, the brighter Brilliant White which they had chosen was actually a better match to the window mullions. They talked about the importance of maintaining consistency; they said it was the architect's idea; they said it looked really good; they didn't remember hearing me mention Dove White. And they pointed out that they'd already purchased xbezillion gallons of Brilliant White and had invested 2 days of labor into the job.