Beach House?

Maybe I'm writing this blog under false pretences. After we signed the contract but before we moved into this house we used to go down to "our" beach, the one we are deeded to, to check out the views and pinch ourselves that we could have ended up in such a perfect spot. Then while we moved in and we were in the thick of opening boxes and cleaning up we walked down every evening to relax. After that we went regularly a couple of nights a week to enjoy the sunsets and most early mornings to walk the dogs.
Last summer we went a few nights for the sunsets and to most of the events held at the beach: lobster bake, bbq etc. We walked the dogs on the beach in the winter when it was mild enough.
This year we have been zero times. Zero. I can't believe it. No sunsets, no bbq, no lobster. We've hardly taken the dogs down there either. Halfway through the summer and we haven't taken advantage of the natural beauty of the area or the facilities that we pay for. It's not like we have to drive to it or make any big effort. I'm not sure what the reason is but I'm certain of one thing: this won't do at all.

Crazy Batcave Bathroom Tile in Boston

07-22-06_1052.jpg
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

Whoa, you go on vacation to the historical city of Boston to escape the renovation mania back home and what happens? On the Freedom Trail of all places? We spy the same bathroom tile we have in the 1970s boys' bathroom in a North End appartment entrance. They also used it on the floor and walls. I thought ours was unique and maybe should be preserved as such but now we'll definitely have to redo the crazy batcave bathroom.

Mr Fix-it

Yesterday was set aside for fixing those little things that have been on the melon list for months. (We're not American so we say Honeydyew, which makes no sense). Steve put three screws in the side gate latch so that it's no longer hanging off, I used the wood hardener on the bridge and I'll fill the hole with epoxy sometime this week. Steve fixed the girls' WC that has been running for months by turning something 180 degrees: zero cost and almost no effort, his favourite kind of repair.
Then we examined the garden gate in daylight. It wasn't a pretty sight: the bottom and one side have almost rotted away and several uprights are looking pretty dodgy too. Steve rebraced it and added some extra pieces to strengthen it but realistically it's due for replacement. The question is whether we make a new one now (or get someone to make it for us) or wait until we re-fence the property. Eventually the posts will need replacing as they all have some rot and there is some old termite damage at the end farthest from the house.


The fence was custom made on site, probably not very long ago but it has some quirks. On the inside of the part with termite damage the original owners put a second layer of fencing in a different style to strengthen it. On each side of the property the fence stops twenty feet from the property line but there's some rather attractive blue nylon chainlink linking the fence to the neighbours' fences. I can't understand the rationale here - you pay a carpenter a bundle to make a really nice fence, then you leave the original chainlink in the corners why? So you can push it down and haul stuff through rather than going through the gates? Because the blue nylon is a nice accent? Because the neighbors have different types of fences and you weren't sure how to tie it together?
I guess I'll never know but I 'm working on a solution to the different fence styles now so we'll be ready to roll when the whole thing eventually falls down. Mr Fix-it thinks we will have to re-think the project timeline and move the fencing up to next year. The question is what do we move down?

Fixing the Gate

Managed to do a temporary repair to the temporary fix on the garden gate last night. Rushed out to the Mom and Pop hardware store before it closed at 6 pm so I wasn't forced to waste an hour looking for what I needed in Home Depot. $10 worth of brace plates, extra long screws and some gungy stuff to harden rotted wood seemed to a bargain. Didn't used the gungy stuff but the brace appears to be holding the pieces in place. Had to stop when darkness fell and someone was in danger of getting their finger screwed to the post. Must buy a flashlight next time I go to the hardware store.

Redoing the renovation Part II

And when I went out back to check the new gutters, and to make sure the guys had closed the gate behind them, I discovered that the gate had finally fallen to pieces. This is the gate we turned upside down because the bottom was rotten on one side and re-hung, attaching the hinges to the "good side", thinking the temporary fix would last a couple of years. It did. Two years exactly to the day.

Redoing the renovation

In a previous life this blog was called So Not the Money Pit because although at first glance it looked like it needed a lot of work the house was far more forgiving than we first thought. Ha. That was based on the engineer's report. A $925 catalogue of obvious statements and omissions that was supposed to tell us what we were getting ourselves into and so save us from severe financial hardship down the road. Spend close to a grand but save yourself from possible ruin. Cheap at the price.
One of my favourite passages concerned the roof, which the engineer said would last another five years. But his contract did not allow for him inspecting it at close quarters i.e. going up on it or looking at it with binoculars, so he was not responsible if it failed at any time. Hum. So his inspection was as good as mine but a lot more expensive. Then there were the gutters. As these were hanging off, he suggested we should replace them. Rocket science.
We, poor simple house owners, followed his advice. Thinking the roof would last a few more years we replaced the gutters as soon as we moved in. Well here's the thing. The roof failed the first winter and ice dams formed cannonballs that rested on the new gutters and buckled them.
I know I should have got the guys to come in and fix it then for free but I knew we had to have a new roof so I thought I'd call when it was all done. Then the roof couldn't go on until the gutter guarantee had expired. When the guys tore off the roof nails and bits of asphalt clogged the leaders. With the torrential rain this spring and summer water poured over and behind the gutters so I called for a repair. Repair, which was free, meant large amounts of caulk that totally failed to solve the problem.
So today I am replacing the gutters and leaders at the back of the house with 6" ones because the gutter guy is convinced that with our large flattish roof we need the wider ones. He's giving me a discount because I asked him if I needed the larger width two years ago and he said not. But it's still costing me almost as much to replace this side as it did to do the entire house last time.
This is why I blog. So I can remind myself never to trust a piece of paper no matter how much it promises; that when renovating you work from the top down: roof, siding, gutters; ceiling, walls floors. So I can vent my frustration without harming anyone. And to let my friends know that renovating houses, be they forty years old or a hundred and forty is always surprising and usually costly.

When are you going to finish?

This post is for my friend Fikirte over at The Concoction who asked me yesterday when we were going to finish the house i.e. stop spending money on it already.
Here's what we've done so far:
2004 Replaced refrigerator.
2004 Taken down 70s vinyl vertical blinds in den, dining room, living room and kitchen
2004 Taken out the faux 70s paneling in three rooms.
2004 Removed the mirrored closets in the master bedroom (mirror on the ceiling I can live with, mirrored closets, no).
2004 Replaced skirting board in master.
2004 Shortened the pantry in the mud room so I can get into my office without turning sideways.
2004 Rewired lights on drives, dining room, kitchen and master closet.
2004 Replaced light fittings in master closet, bath, landing, bedrooms, foyer and dining room.
2004 Removed 70s shag carpets from six bedrooms.
2004 Installed hardwood floors on landing and balcony.
2004 Installed bamboo floors in bedroom.
2004 Removed carpets from front and back stairs and back hall.
2004/5 Refinished stairs, installed bamboo on back hall floor.
2004 Capped the chimney.
2005 Replaced corroded faucets in bathroom. Rebuilt one toilet, fixed two more.
2005 Replaced 15 windows.
2005 Stained 15 windows.
2004/5 Stripped wallpaper from foyer, front stairs and back hall, bedroom
2004/5/6 Painted master, office, two other bedrooms, dining room, kitchen, back hall and the interior of all closets.
2005 Primed foyer and front hall.
2005 Re-roofed house.
2005 Stained siding and painted original windows and doors.
2004 Replaced guttering.
2004 Removed dead and dangerous trees from yard, pruned back other shrubs.
2004/5/6 Replanted, planted, weeded ad nauseum.
2006 New window treatments den, office, dining room, master, bedrooms.
2006 Replaced dishwasher.
2006 Replaced 5" replacement guttering with 6" guttering

Here's what is still needed, with approximate timeframe:
2007 Renovate master bath.
2007 Replace another 7 windows.
2007 Replace flooring in den and dining room
2008 Bring gas to house and replace oil burner and water heater with gas boiler.
2008 Renovate kitchen and laundry room.
2009 Replace fencing.
2009 Marble dust pool and replace pool heater. Replace steel doors on bar and barbecue.
2010 Finish basement.
2011 Sealcoat drives.
2011 Plant up north side of yard.
2012 Whatever else we've forgotten/overlooked.
So my friend, I think the answer to your question is, possibly never. The chores never end and are constrained only by our limited finances.

That's One Way to Get a New Washer

I think I've finally killed the washing machine, or at least made it terminally ill.
I spent all morning power washing the slime off the slate terrace and the brick patio (again, the last attempt was not up to snuff) and when I'd finished I tossed my cruddy clothes and sneakers straight in the machine. I guess there was a lot of sand and grit mixed in with the moss because the washer started making a squeaky grinding noise like a mouse got caught in the agitator and the clothes didn't wash at all.
I'm washing them for a second time but the machine is still squeaking so I'm not hopeful for a happy outcome. Or maybe the happy outcome will be finally putting the thing out of its misery and getting a new one.
On the other hand the new dishwasher washes cast iron pots and delicate stemware and leaves them sparkling, no pre-wash required.

It's here

The new Bosch dishwasher is installed, just finishing up its first load and it's soooo quiet. All this a day earlier than planned. Thanks Appliance World and Harvey the Installer who phoned at 11 am to ask if he could perhaps install the dishwasher today rather than Saturday morning. Could he? If it meant I didn't have to wash any more dishes he could.
I'm waiting for the beep noise to tell me its cycle is complete, I can't actually tell if it's on or not because it is sooooo quiet. I hope the dishes come out clean too.

I bought the appliance

No, not the washing machine. Even though it's July and the new Bosch Nexxus model came out it really isn't much different from the old one. It's still big and ugly-looking and I keep hoping that a new 1200, or even better 1400 rpm, super efficient but cute model will be launched on the market so that when I skip into the appliance showroom it will call to me "Modernemama, buy me and I will answer all your laundry demands with ease while satisfying your need for clean lines and cool design".
No, we had a dishwasher crisis. On Wednesday the 38 year-old cream coloured Maytag dishwasher clicked off halfway through a cycle leaving behind a couple of inches of dirty water in the bottom of the machine. There is no drain programme so Steve had to bail it out with a spoon and a cat dish. Then he took off the bottom plate and discovered that the drive belt had broken. That's a $16 part but he didn't think he could reach in to slip it on and I didn't want to pay a service charge for something so simple (I know, flaky economics) so I seized the moment and rushed out to order this beauty:

OK, so it was $1000 but after thirty eight years I think the old dishwasher has earned its retirement. They deliver the new one on Saturday and I'm sure it will be more efficient and quieter, and it will certainly look smarter. And I'm another step closer to the dream kitchen.

Yet another rhododendron

rhodo
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

Happy Fourth of July, American friends.
I'm celebrating with this photo of the rhododendron that I moved from another part of the yard a month ago.
It's obviously a special kind as it's blooming in July and it hasn't bloomed before so I guess it likes its new home in the dell in front of the dining room.
Taking that photo is the most taxing thing I'm going to do today. Yesterday I powerwashed the brick patio around the pool and the walkways and it tok four hours. My back is killing me and one muscle in my right arm is still clenched but at least the moss is gone. Most of it ended up on my legs but I had a fair amount in my hair too. Had to rinse off with the hosepipe before I could get back in the house for a shower.
Next job: washing the windows but that can wait until the weekend.

Kitchen Planning

We've already been through one kitchen remodel in the recent past (2002 in our old home) so we are really aware that the more planning you can do the smoother the process will be. So, although we probably are 18-24 months away from starting the BIG project on this house, we have been designing and refining the design since we moved in here two years ago. We want to stick to the original footprint of the kitchen and all the appliances will stay where they were originally with the exception of the refrigerator that used to be under the stairs. This was not salvageable and had to be replaced when we first moved in and as no one makes a five foot high fridge anymore we had to put the replacement next to where the old fridge was. We knew this was a temporary placement and now we have a plan to have one wall of pantry units with the fridge/freezer and double ovens in the center of it. We feel confident enough of the design that we are now looking at kitchen manufacturers to bring the dream to life.
Last evening we were invited to the opening of the new Poliform showroom. I'm really attracted to the clean lines of the Italian kitchen designers so I was excited to test drive their Varenna kitchens. Despite the complimentary ice cream and white wine I wasn't really feeling that the kitchens were right for us. They were a little too cool for this house which has a lot of warmth from all the stained wood trim, ceiling and floors and I wasn't thrilled with the quality which I felt was only acceptable and not wow. When I looked at the price tags -$75,000-$105,000 for the display kitchens, I was even less impressed and I felt that we wouldn't be being true to the spirit of the house which refelcts Andrew Geller's affordable leisure philosophy.
So we're still looking for a streamlined, modern quality kitchen at a reasonable price. This could take some time.

Two Years On

Two years ago today we moved in to our dream house. We were so nervous about updating it, knowing that it was designed by a well-respected architect does that to you! No pressure, but it was rumoured that when Andrew Geller learnt that one of his clients had slightly altered his original design while renovating, he was so displeased that he never spoke to them again. We felt totally responsible for continuing the original vision: great practical design, first class but reasonably priced materials, simplicity in everything. Our mantra was "Do no harm". I swear for the first two months we held our breath most of the time.

Gradually, we learnt to relax and we appreciated the house more and more, for example the siting of the house on the property and the placement of the windows keeps it cooler in summer and increases the amount of sunlight in winter. Hardly a week goes by without one or the other of us walking through the door and saying out loud "I love this house".

I searched for a suitable way to celebrate our second Cool House anniversary and hit upon the perfect project. I have been asking nicely at regular intervals for the person with long fingers (pictured above on moving day) to take a kitchen drawer out so we could replace the cup partitions in it with the cutlery holder. I decided that this would be just the thing, it would cost nothing and make my life a ton easier. With two barbecue skewers to push back the pins holding the drawer in place and standing on one leg while balancing the drawer on my raised knee I got the sucker out in fifteen seconds. Twenty seconds to remove the partitions. Putting the drawer back took no time or effort at all and sliding the cutlery divider in was a cinch. Time wasted waiting for someone else to do this job: two years; time spent doing the job myself: two minutes. Amount of satisfaction? Incalculable.

Soaking wet post

One of the best things about living in the US is being able to put your outgoing mail in the mailbox, raise the red flag and have it taken away by the mailman six days a week. No walking miles to find a mailbox or driving around with the bill in the car that you finally unearth from under the dirty tissues and expired coupons five days after it should have been paid. It's a wonderful system and I enjoy walking to the mailbox in the early morning and posting whatever mail I can't deal with online.
This morning I dodged the thunderstorms with letter in hand and two dogs on leashes only to be totally thwarted by an enormous puddle that was much deeper than my trainers and stretched across the road from my property to my neighbor's. The only way I was going to get to the mailbox was in an SUV.
Now we have drains on this part of the road and I know that they aren't blocked because the five home owners on the cul-de-sac had the drain pumped last year and I took a shovel and cleaned the road of all the debris last month. The problem is that these drains are only designed to take an inch of rainwater and can't deal with a basic thunderstorm. God knows what will happen when a hurricane hits.
Anyway there are always solutions to any problem so I turned round and crossed the lawn and approached the mailbox form the back side. I had to walk through a shrubbery and hang on to the post (that supports the mailbox) to avoid falling in the puddle but I achieved my objective and stayed relatively dry. I don't know what the contractors working on the house opposite thought though.

Tidying Up

front border
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

I know it doesn't look like much but this bed represents hours of work. From the middle of the photo all the way to the centre of the left edge there used to be a berm - a man-made mound of silt and mud that our landscaper had collected each time it rained. It had washed down our street for years until the village put in a 6" berm on the roadside of our property in 2004.
The amount of stuff that had collected made a pile 15" deep, 12' long and over a foot deep. For the last two years I have been raking, digging and pushing this mound around, I have used the soil to plant new trees and shrubs but I didn't seem to make any impression on the pile. Meanwhile, the ivy and weeds threatened to take over that half of the dell while the other half was a desert.


I was determined to improve the look of the front of the house and I started by adding small, low shrubs to the rockery last fall. These are now a good size and lift the eye up past the wasteland, but obviously more was needed. I moved three big rhododendrons that had been doing nothing under the hemlocks and put the in the bed. Then I planted some hostas between these, but I'll need to plant some more when they have the half-price sale at the nursery.
Last weekend I spent five hours moving earth with a shovel and a rake and got the berm down to level along 4'. I cut down one unwieldy rhodo to about 15" and moved another that I think was once half of a huge bush. The next day I couldn't move. But everyday after that I spent an hour or two chopping at the remaining berm, hoeing and pulling weeds. This weekend Steve did the heavy weeding and removed all the ivy, and I replanted all the pretty vinca we came across.
The berm is gone, the soil that has been revealed is dark and looks nutrient rich, so all that remains is to plant it before it gets covered in weeds again.

More colour

Before putting the house on the market the listing agent made previous owner have the entire house repainted Navajo White. We know that the house was originally painted a bright blue in the dining room and den. The bedrooms were originally funky late 60s oil blue, gold, green and yellow, and pink and purple. We discovered that early on because the painters didn't bother painting the insides of the closets. The mud room, maid's room (now my office) and the hallway and stairs were once wallpapered. We have found some of the original wallpaper behind light switches and when we replaced the thermostat in the foyer. I wish I could have seen the house in all its original glory.

Apart from the Bronzed Beige customised walls, we have decorated the dining room, which we painted with Benjamin Moore Titanium on the walls and Cloud White on the ceiling and baseboards and the master suite with Ralph Lauren Blue Mesa. I also mixed Cabot Wood stains in Ebony and Walnut to get the colour I wanted on the replacement windows. I have touched up around the new windows in the den, Verity's and Fliss' rooms with the Navajo White. Although Navajo White is really not our style I'm not planning to paint there any time soon because the paint is new. The kitchen and foyer have only primer so far, and while it's bright, it's kind of boring, but there doesn't seem much point in painting until the kitchen project gets underway. I'm getting impatient here, can you tell?

Personalizing those custom colors

Checking on my site visitors with StatCounter this morning, I was fascinated to find someone had linked through a Google search on "Bronzed Beige" the Benjamin Moore paint color. I posted a year or so ago that I had bought two gallons of the paint the previous November (2004) and had yet to slap it on the walls. I never did post what happened to them.
Apparently you are supposed to toss paint you haven't used after six months but I abhor waste so that didn't happen. Last October I did open one can, stirred it really well and slapped a coat on the mud room wall that had previously had the wallpaper that looked like mold. Unfortunately on the wall the paint looked like mold too, sandy mold but not something I could live with. I decided something a little brighter would be better and bought a can of BM Yellow Highlighter and mixed a pint of that with a pint of the Bronzed Beige. It was too yellow for the mud room but worked really well on my office walls. I made up another batch of the mix, but this time 75% Bronzed Beige and 25% Yellow Highlighter and used that on the mud room. It's better but eventually I'll repaint it, probably when we do the kitchen. The kitchen project seems to be turning into an entire first floor decorating project!
The remaining gallon or so of Bronzed Beige I mixed with two gallons of Super White and painted the fern bedroom and, after a brief flirtation with an accent wall in Ravishing Red and a replacement from our local dealer who had given me Red Oxide by mistake, Steven's office, too.
Four rooms, three different shades from a couple of gallons of oops paint can't be bad. Of course I still have a gallon of Ravishing Red I need to find a use for before it hardens in the can.

Just another one of those things

Nothing much positive to report houseways (or housewise). The washing machine, a large toploading Whirlpool from 1984, started making an odd whistling sound and depositing about half a cup of water on the laundry room floor. The water wasn't a big deal except that I do the laundry in bare feet or socks so I was getting a little damp every day, but hey, there's a floor drain so no big deal. But the whistling was getting on my nerves and the knocking that periodically accompanied it made me think the bearings were going.
Now, I have zero knowledge of the workings of top-loader washing machines other than they do a great job of swirling the clothes around in dirty water and a pretty poor job of actually cleaning clothes, but I know that I associate that sound with bad news in a front-loader so I figure it's much the same. And given its advanced age I didn't hold out any hope that parts would still be available or it would be worth paying a service engineer to come out and tell me the inevitable. We were planning to replace the appliances when we redid the kitchen so it seemed sensible that we go out and buy a new front-loader and have done with it.
Huh. As other housebloggers have noted there is no such thing as an easy replacement appliance shopping trip. Our road to hell, however, started out promising only good things. A personal invitation to attend a "previous customers only sale" arrived serendipitously from the local appliance store where we bought the elephant in the kitchen. All we had to do was turn up between 5-9 pm, chose a washer, hand over the Visa card and we would get a working, cleaning, more environmentally friendly machine, and a rebate from the local power company. I was so psyched.
On the appointed day we showed up, picked out a Bosch and were just about to fork over shedloads of money when the sales guy uttered that wretched sentence: Are you sure you have the space?
This is where you see the difference between an optimist (my husband) and a realist (me). An optimist yells: We have a huge laundry room, the appliances we have now are monsters, of course it will fit. The realist says: Why are you asking me this? Have other people had problems fitting it in their homes? How big is it anyway? Of course you have all guessed the ending to this sorry story. The space needs to be 56" deep to accommodate the open door. I don't think we have 56".
Although Steve was willing to take a chance rather than have to come back to the store we left empty handed. (He was also willing to consider a bump into the garage if we bought them and they didn't fit, until I did the projected cost of construction versus the inconvenience of going home, taking measurements and returning to the store - not so much an optimist more an irritating cloud cuckoo land dweller!)
Anyway, in order to accurately assess the space I spent the next day disassembling some plastic shelving added by the previous owner and doing a major clean up in there. Then I measured. We have 58" depth. But do I really want it to be that tight? And we would have to swap the position of the washer and dryer because all the machines except one have the washer on the left. That would mean maybe moving the dryer vent, and extra hoses. Even more inconvenience.
Now, guess which machine has the washer door on the right side? Correct mes amis, the most expensive one. And guess where we would have to go to look at one? Yes, Expo hell. A store where they never have what you want, have no idea how to get you what you want, hell, probably don't know what you are talking about, certainly don't know what they are talking about. But that's where the nearest Miele washers were so we made the trip.
Oh god, it was a true Sabena moment (Such A Bad Experience, Never Again). The salesman first tried to tell me that the doors on FL washers could be swapped. So I took him to one, opened it and said "show me how". Then he said they could be swapped on top-loaders 'cos he used to do that for his last job. Great info. Then he couldn't find the Miele catalogue and started whistling for it and blaming other salespeople for moving it. We'd been there only fifteen minutes and I was beginning to freak out. We did eventually look at the Miele washer, which was not a sexy design, and cost $2000. If I'm gonna pay two grand for anything I want it to be HOT and to do a lot more than just get my clothes clean. And it would take a minimum of three weeks to be delivered. For $2000, I'd want it yesterday. Once again home empty handed, but at least the Visa card is still intact.
Two days of extensive research on the web and I've decided that all washing machines suck, that a little water on the floor hurts no one and learnt that Bosch are coming out with a new model in July. Procrastination is today's favourite word, and at least I have a neater, cleaner laundry room to show for my efforts.

Paul Mayen table

Paul Mayen table
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

I've been searching for nearly two years for a coffee table to go with the original sofa in the living room and I finally found one one ebay. Hooray for ebay! I'm thrilled because it fits right in, especially with the chandelier, which isn’t surprising as they are both by renowned designer Paul Mayén. 

Mayén was a protegé of Frank Lloyd Wright and designed the gift shop at Fallingwater. My next search will be for a rug to replace the one in the photo, which is a little too small and classic for this room. After that maybe the 70s track lighting will have to go and we can call this room "done". No major renovation, just a little gentle updating.

Need some landscaping done

I'm trying to decide what to do with the yard to the north of our property. It used to be fairly heavily treed with a couple of beautiful azalea borders but years of neglect have led to about a foot deep of accumulated debris, tree branches and weeds. Last year we got the tree guys in to take out the dead and decaying trees and they also took away the heavy branches and tree limbs that were on the ground. We then weeded and got rid of the debris: sprinkler hoses, bricks, bluestone pavers (we recuperated those by extending the path) and dead bushes still wrapped in hessian that never got planted.
What remains is ivy, smaller branches and some old tree stumps. Now what we need is a digger to come in and haul away the top 4-6" of ground so we can get a clean start. This area is about a tenth of an acre so it ain't gonna be cheap. What I was wondering is if someone were to tip off the FBI that Jimmy Hoffa was buried here would they dig over my yard for free? And could I sell souvenirs to finance the new landscaping?