Summerising

That's what May is for, getting ready for Summer.
We got the pool open on Saturday. It took five hours to drain off the water on top of the yacht sail that serves as our pool cover. Apparently a new cover runs $2,500 or so and the last homeowner didn't want to part with that sort of cash, so she went to the sailmakers down at the marina and got them to make a cover for the pool. It does a great job of keeping the debris out but the winter rain and melting snow collects on it making summerisation a time consuming task.
After the water is off we rake up the leaves, tons of them, and allow them to turn to mulch. Then we roll up the cover and put it away and bring up the pool steps and diving board. Add 30 lbs of what is effectively baking soda and we're good to go. Except this is New York not Florida and the water temperature is an uninviting 62 F. That little issue won't be solved this year, the heater didn't repair itself and we didn't win the lottery, so no heated pool for us this summer. Still the frogs don't seem to mind.

Flooring frustrations

Last week we had the carpets steam cleaned to get rid of the kitty pee and poop stains, and it worked fairly well but the cat must have snuck back in the dining room and peed again 'cos it smells awful in there. So we decided we would have to take up the carpet and put down hardwood floors.
That was the start of the process. Our first choice would be BR111 Brazilian redwood which is what we put on the landing two years ago (see photo). When we tried to order more of it then our supplier said there was a problem with quality and we'd have to wait a few months to get it. Well, it turns out the problem is more than a temporary hiatus in production and there is no more Massaranduba to be had.
This leaves us in a quandary. Do we continue to wait in the hope that more will be released at some future date? Do we pick another hardwood? If so, what?
We liked the redwood because it goes with the house (that's a close up of our Californian redwood siding that forms the background on the banner on this site). It is exceptionally hardwaring hard wood, and that's important with two big dogs and cats that are prone to throwing up and peeing in the most inappropriate places. The other issue is it has to fit with the parquet in the foyer and great room that is oak and mahogany. Light wood won't work, there is a lot of wood in the house: beams, stairs, railings, doors and moldings and it's all dark or red toned. And it has to be of the right depth so there won't be a huge step from the foyer to the dining room and the dining room to the kitchen.
I really didn't want to do anything about this carpet until we did the kitchen remodel so that at least we could tackle the floor level in one go. But despite copious amounts of my usual secret weapon Nature's Miracle the smell just won't go. I suppose we could just not use the dining room for the next couple of years until we're ready to redo the kitchen but that seems kind of limiting, and getting rid of the kitty and replacing the soiled carpet with new carpet is a no go.
So to sum up: we can't get what we want; we really don't want to settle for an interim solution; we can't live with the yucky carpet any longer.
Any suggestions?

Big landscaping project

front yard
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

Extreme gardening this week. We had to move a huge maple that was sitting on top of the fir tree. This was a seedling from another maple in the back of the property that had grown 4' in the two years we have been in the house.
It was the lesser of two evils: we could move the japanese maple or chop it down but it was compromising the 100' conifer that the house was designed around, and we don't want to lose the big specimen tree, it's the focal point of the yard.



(that's a view of the fir towering over the chimney from the other side of the house).

It took all Saturday to dig out a pit 6' diameter and 3' deep to accomodate the rootball and all Sunday morning to dig out the maple. The soil is great though, all loamy from the leaves that have decomposed over the years. We've had the soaker hose on it since we moved it to its new home and we can only cross our fingers now.

Parkour

It's sunny and warmish outside so we're planting and transplanting, hoeing and weeding. Of course this is what we'd rather be doing



Parkour
Pub Rush-Hour BBC - David Belle. Don't you want to have a go too?

Mailman's here

Normally our mail consists of junk: offers for credit cards we don't want and catalogues we'd never buy anything from, but a few times a year we get something that is so exciting I have to stop whatever I'm doing and read it. Today was one of those days. The Frontgate Catalogue had arrived.
I don't know how we got on the mailing list for this but it has changed my life. Never before have I had the opportunity for so much mockery, and it doesn't cost me a dime. I read it from cover to cover and pick out the most unnecessary item that I could, in fantasy Frontgate world, purchase for my house. In winter it had to be the mobile Popcorn maker, then there was the 7' Papyrus in Urn, a faux plant that would set me back $599, but the winner this issue was the Remote Controlled Pool Shark that apparently speeds through the water just like the real thing. Gotta have one of those.
The best thing about the Frontgate Catalog though, is the "lifestyle articles", where they feature a newly built luxury house, usually around 10,000 sq feet, and interview the proud owners. My favourite? The couple who bought a 1995 house and decided it was too aged, so they tore it down and built a newer, shinier one.
The laughter keeps me going so I can go back and tackle this:

Wildlife

This is what I found while raking up weeds in the yard this afternoon. I rubbed my eyes a couple of times but it was what I thought it was and it was alive. No more than 3" long with an orange swipe on the side of its head it was looking right at me. I shot into the house to get my camera because I knew no one would believe me, and of course, when I got back he had disappeared. There was a fair amount of scuffling from inside the dell but I didn't want to go poking around in there in case I trod on him and squashed it. I've spent the afternoon looking up turtles on the internet and I think I've identified it as a bog turtle. It's strange because the yard isn't boggy at all, although the dell acts as a flood barrier (see below) and it is well shaded with tons of pachysandra and other low growing plants (and a few weeds). Also according to NYS Department of Conservation they aren't found on Long Island, but then again coyotes aren't usually found in Central Park.

Spring blossom

pink azalea
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

The pink azalea on the front drive is in full bloom and it's so arresting. It's at least six feet tall and has many more blossoms than last year. Can't wait for the huge white one that should flower in the next week or so.

"Dora Amateis" Rhododendron

"Dora Amateis" Rhododendron
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

The azaleas and rhodendendrons are coming into bloom. We are spending our time mulching and weeding and generally enjoying the Spring sunshine rather than tackling the icky caulk in the bathroom. You've gotta smell the flowers sometimes, no?

Cherry Blossom

cherry
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

The cherry tree, magnolia and forsythias are in full bloom.

Forsythia

forsythia
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

Not much going on inside the house but Spring has definitely sprung in the yard.

WWTT

or, what were they thinking?



Can you guess what the door on the right leads to? Remember that this my kitchen. So it would have to be a pantry? No. Stairs to the basement? No. Panic room?
Nope, it's....
wait for it....... yes, it's a powder room, also known as a half bath here. Just what you want in a kitchen.













Actually, it makes great use of the space under the stairs and it's directly under the master bathroom so the plumbing must have been a breeze. What really makes me wonder is they used carpet as flooring. Carpet? In a bathroom? In a loo that's in the kitchen? It's got to go, especially as the little overflow pipe thingy inside the cistern keeps jumping out of it's mooring when the WC is flushed and spraying the wall and the carpet. Soaking wet carpet. In the bathroom. In the kitchen. Lovely.

Oh no, we made it worse

The master bath used to be quite cute. Not the same standard of workmanship as the rest of the house because it was remodeled in the 80s or early 90s but bright, white and clean. That was before we got our clumsy mitts on it.
First off, we needed to redo the caulk around the bath and shower. A visually challenged, fingerless eight year old could not have done a worse job. Then Steve "tidied up" his vanity, and opened the medicine cabinet door so hard he cracked the glass door. Then I tried to replace a bulb on the light fitting over the basin and cracked the fitting, which fell down, narrowly missing my head. It weighs 2 lbs and corresponds to the crack in this basin , so I'm sure this had happened before.
But the latest, and most disgusting? All that caulk around the shower pan has gone grey and moldy. Yuk. I asked Steve if he had a solution to the problem. His answer?
Demolition.

sunflowers

sunflowers
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

It's spring, although it's so cold outside you wouldn't know it. What is more cheery than sunflowers, though?

New windows are worth it

We just got the last oil delivery of the winter so I was able to do a definitive comparison between winter 2004-5 and winter 2005-6. Although this winter was much milder than last and we would have expected to use a lot less oil, March has been colder than normal. Our lovely oil guys, Dole Fuel, also do a projection of gallons you need based on the temperature and use last year. We used 312 gallons less than they predicted we would. We spent $153 less on oil this winter than last, and this despite an average price increase of 50 cents per gallon. I feel this is worth repeating: fuel prices increased and we still saved money.
Of course the windows were horrendously expensive and we would have to have savings of this level for the next twenty five years to pay for them, but we are much warmer than we were last year, and now I've got used to them I can see they are rather nice.

Cleaning up

after

before

One of the big advantages in replacing the psychedelic seventies shag carpets with hardwood and bamboo floors is that when you stagger out of bed with a streaming cold to find that the cat has thrown up on the landing and in two of the bedrooms, you can take a piece of kitchen towel, squirt a little detergent on it, throw it on the floor, and slide it over the cat sick, and it will all come up, guaranteed. Even the dried-on stuff. And you can do this all while holding a tissue to your streaming nose. Bliss.

New old table

New old table
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

The den has been needing something to prevent those over 6' tall from a nasty chandelier related injury. I finally found it, on eBay of course.

It's an original 70s glass table with chrome legs in fantastic condition and the glass alone would cost 3x what I paid for the table. I love a bargain.

At last, the end of the Window Saga

At last, at last, the roman shade for my office arrived though not without one last drama. I got a call from a neighbor to say she had my shade: the Fedex guy (not the usual Fedex lady who can read an address label, knows what's what and more importantly, who's who), had left a package outside her house, and luckily she's a nice lady and also luckily it had my phone number on it as well as my name. She phoned my rather than phoning Fedex to come pick it up and deliver it correctly 'cos goodness knows how long that would have taken. Anyway, I jumped in my car and drove to pick it up, and eureka: it fits, it works, it is the correct shade. Hurrah.
And I got to meet and chat with a new neighbor so thanks Yvette, Fedex and smithandnoble.

Feline frustration

I thought the dining room was done but Wilba the Cat had a few other ideas. Wilba is ten years old and cross. I have no real idea why she is miffed, although it might have something to do with the two male kittens who joined the family a year or so ago, then again she isn't very keen on Sadie the big dog, but it could just be that she prefers salmon to cat food and she hasn't been getting any recently (salmon? we have a house to finish, you know).
Anyway, she likes to punish us by pooping in inappropriate places. For the longest time it was the bath, yucky but a cinch to clean up; we had a sparkling bath from scrubbing it down twice a day.
Now, though she has taken to using the dining room carpet as her personal litter box. The white dining room carpet. Except that it's not white anymore, no matter how much we scrub with carpet shampoo and Nature's Miracle the stains persist.
And because the drapes almost touch the floor and I'm paranoid about them being stained, today I made Steve move the curtain poles up four inches to avoid any kitty contamination. He is unamused: twelve new holes to drill, twelve old holes to spackle and paint over, and we still have to find a solution to the kitty poop problem.

Bye bye blind

The nice UPS man has just been to pick up the roman shade that smithandnoble sent out without a locking mechanism, the one they sent to replace the first one without a locking mechanism. The customer service rep assures me that they have identified the problem and I will be getting a new working shade without further delay. We shall see. So far nine blinds sent out, six returned for one defect or another. It all adds up to a lot of wasted materials, labour, shipping and MY TIME and PATIENCE.

no rest yet

no rest yet
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

I'm sitting updating my flickr photos as it's too cold to do anything else and I came across this one I took just after we moved in. A year later we would trim these bushes back and discover a pond, a waterfall and a pebble stream flowing under the bridge.
I can't wait to get out there again in the sunshine. Roll on summer.

The revenge of the leaking toilet

This is why I don't undertake plumbing repairs.
I got so fed up of the phantom flush on the toilet next to my office and the outrageous price the plumber wants to charge ($350 for a basic fix that involves $20 of Home Depot parts or what he would really like to do is to take out my nice one piece toilet that matches the tiles and replace it with a cheaper two-piece in white that will look hideously out of place for the amazingly low price of $750) that I downloaded the instructions from ehow.com and prepared to tackle it myself. Reading through my eye was caught by the following tip:
Check the bowl-fill tube if you're still getting "phantom" flushing. If the bowl-fill tube is below the water level in the tank it can result in a siphoning action that sounds a lot like a leaky flapper. Adjust or trim the tube so that it's above water level - this will provide an air gap to break the siphon.
Aha I thought, that's the cause. So I pulled the hose out a little and replaced the cistern lid and went off to get changed to go to dinner. All dressed and ready to go, I visited the bathroom before venturing out in the February cold, flushed the loo and watched as water poured out of the cistern. Stupidly, I wrenched off the cistern lid, allowing the hose its freedom to spray cold water all over me, and the bathroom floor. Darn, darn, darn.
I think I need another fix.

It's really finished this time

I know I said we called the dining room done but soon after this photo was taken Magritte fell off the wall and cracked his frame. This poster from the Surrealism: Desire Unbound holds great memories for us. We bought the poster in 2002 after we had seen the exhibition at the Met in New York, we also saw it at the Tate Modern in London and we lived in Belgium for many years and saw the Magritte exhibition there too. So I had to get it professionally framed and for three weeks there was an empty space on the dining room wall. But today I picked it up and re-hung it, and all the drama has returned to the space. And now we are definitely done.

The Phantom Light

We have a spooky light problem in the den. I kind of noticed this a while ago, but put it down to not switching the lights on properly. Although really it's either on or it's off, no?
The track lighting is controlled by a three gang switch. One turns on the socket to the left of the den, the other two control the track lights; you can have them all on, just a spot that lights the picture on the east wall, there's one that lights all the spots on this wall and another that lights the south wall. And then there are the dimmer options. Oh yes we can micromanage the lighting in our den.
When we first moved in, we worked out which switches did what and then we only used the one that controlled the socket where we plugged a table lamp. Easy. Then one evening I wanted some extra light to illuminate the laptop and I turned on that spot. Nothing. So I turned the switch the other way.(They are rocker switches). Also nix. Then I went to the basement to check the fuse. It was on. I came back to the den and the spotlight was on. I decided I was crazy and forgot all about it.
Then on Monday we were putting up the last curtain pole at dusk, so Steve asked me to throw some lights on and nothing. I switched it one way, then the other. He was convinced that the fuse had gone so he sent me to check. When I got back having touched nothing in the fuse box the lights turned themselves on, then off, then on again. I guess that was the order I had fiddled with the switches but the expression on Steve's face was priceless.
Anyway I am not crazy, we have a forty-five second delay on the switch that wasn't there a year ago. So my question is: Is this dangerous? Or is it merely quirky and we should plan to put the lights on a while before it gets dark?

Things that go flush in the night

One of the less well known universal laws is that one problem solved causes three new ones. For example, when we moved here eighteen or so months ago the engineers report noted that there were minor plumbing issues to take care of.
Like the leaky downstairs shower and the powder room wc with the phantom flush. Easy, I thought flush with my "building fund", I'll call a plumber. The adorable original house owner left me a list of her responsible service people and I duly called her plumber. He arrived, looked at the problems and left promising to call back the next day. Case One: the disappearing plumber.
A month later the builders were here tearing out closets and paneling. They noticed the dripping shower and offered to fix it. Great. Super. They bought a new shower head, cleaned out the accumulated yuck and proudly presented it to me. "It still drips, though" they said "but we'll fix that". A week later they were gone, but the shower still leaked, and the toilet flushed unaided.
Fast forward six months and the second contractor was looking for things to do while his spackle dried. Your shower's leaking. Very astute these builders. He fiddled with it. "I've cleaned it, but it still drips a bit".
Meanwhile, the phantom flush began to keep us awake. I decided to tackle it myself. I bought a new flapper and fitted it. Piece of cake. Didn't stop the flushing though. Finally it was enough to wake us up at intervals throughout the night and another shower starting gushing rather than dripping. I caved and called a second plumber.
This one came, looked at the gushing shower and decided it needed a part that would have to be specially ordered. He promised he would fix the loo at the same time as the shower. A week or so later the plumber phoned, the part was in but the plumber was busy so they were sending a different guy.
OK plumber and part arrived. Plumber Two or is it Three's verdict on the shower? Didn't really need a new part, just needed cleaning. "You got a lot of debris in there, ma'am". He installed the part anyway, I'd ordered it so I had to pay for it. And the loo? He left saying it was fixed, but all he'd done was put on a new flapper! This actually made matters worse, but I didn't notice this until after he drove merrily away. Instead of flushing quietly every fifteen minutes, it now flushed like Niagara Falls every five minutes.
A phone call to the firm and couple of days later, Plumber One (or Two) came to fix the toilet, spent fifteen minutes and voila no more noise. Three plumbers, two contractors, three call out charges for the last two plumbers, time and parts for five guys and the loo is fixed. It would have cost $20 at Home Depot if I had done it myself, huh!
And the dripping shower? I forgot to ask the plumbers to fix that one. Probably a good thing or we would be bankrupt by now.

Rant, rant

I do not believe it. Really I don't. I feel like Victor Meldrew, a British sitcom character beloved by grumpy old Englishmen for his incredulity at the spanners life threw his way and the incompetence of everyone he came into contact with.
Why am I so miffed you ask? Smithandnoble's replacement shade arrived at lunchtime today. Those paying attention to this saga will recall that in October I ordered four red silk roman shades for the dining room. When they came, three had white splotches on them so I sent the whole lot back and ordered three shades for the den in one fabric and one for my study in a different fabric. The den ones weren't great quality but at least they functioned as shades i.e. they went up and down but the fourth was lacking that essential part of blind structures- a locking mechanism. So it went back and I waited for another shade and guess why I am exasperated today. No, go on guess. Correct they have delivered a shade with exactly the same defect. When I rang them they were incredulous, this never happens they assured me. I think they think I am some sort of imbecile who cannot operate a roman shade. But wait I have three others and I can open and close them so maybe the fault lies with their manufacturer. Or as I believe, they opened the package that I returned, looked at the front side, thought well it looks ok, I don't know what the problem is, and RETURNED THE SHADE TO ME IN A NEW BOX.
My reason for this suspicion? One of the rings that the shade hangs from is bent in exactly the same position as the shade I returned a week ago. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Coincidence?

Does smithandnoble read my blog entry or is it just coincidence? I checked my email just after I posted the last piece and weirdly enough there was an email from them saying the missing shade will be her tomorrow (FedExed no less)!
I hope it's the right blind, with a locking mechanism, and no pins, threads or wobbly bits on the seams. As the rod is already up I should be able to just slot it in place when it arrives.
Can't wait, I'll post a pic when it does, in the meantime a daylight photo of the den with the shades up.

Done den

Steve's finger has almost healed, although he hasn't had time yet to get the stitches out and I'm beginning to worry that he's grown permanently attached to them. What are the consequences of leaving them in forever?
It's President's Day, and that means he works from home instead of going to the office, so betwwen calls and emails and presentation writing he decided he could spare an hour to put up the curtain rods. We actually set the kitchen timer for fifty minutes to ensure he wouldn't miss his four o'clock conference call.
I'll take what I can get so I laid all the tools out, charged up the drill and did the measuring so all he had to was drill the holes.
Here's the result, and this is what it looked like when we moved in eighteen months ago.

I'm still cheesed off with smithandnoble for several reasons. The quality of the product versus price is dreadful: The seams are not hemmed, simply pressed and unsurprisingly there are threads hanging off the raw selvage; the edges aren't straight and the bottom rod that weights the fabric keeps sliding out. Their customer service sucks almost as bad as the product. I still haven't heard when I will get a replacment blind for the replacement blind for my office. My rule of thumb for an acceptable job is always: Could I have done it better myself? On this project Steven could have done a better job. Rats.

the old window dressing

the old window dressing
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

July 2004: this is what the windows looked like when we moved in, all vinyl, all over. The windows were single hung, 6'x4'1" and the heat transference was tremendous. Now we're snug and the decor is improving too.
I love my house more every day.

what next?

I sometimes get freaked about the things we are doing to this house. My mantra when we were in contract to buy it and thinking about all the things that needed to be done was: Do no harm. Every so often, I second guess a decision we have made, usually about paint colour, and think: Am I making a terrible mistake and hurting the house? Then I come across photos from when we moved in, and I'm reassured. We are doing more good than harm.
The old kitchen has 70s decor and needs updating but it is so functional: all the cabinets have roll out drawers, the upper cabinets have roll out plate racks. Either side of the island there are: pull out chopping boards, one for meat, one for bread; a pull out toaster; can opener and electrical sockets. I can't even imagine how much it's going to cost to get this quality today

The shade saga

suntanned never cease to amaze me with their customer"service". Despite their promise to ring back with a detailed instructions re the replacement of the non-locking blind I heard nothing for eight days. Then this evening while I was sorting through the credit card offers I will never take up, flyers from supermarkets I never use and coupons for $10 of sealcoat for the driveway, in short the sort of junk that passes for mail these days, there was a knock on the kitchen window.
And there in the cold stood the hunky UPS guy. It is Valentine's Day so I was kind of hoping for a decent prezzie. No such luck. He had been detailed to pick up something form a company I had never heard of, but turned out to be the manufacturer of smithandnoble blinds. As I wasn't expecting a pick up, he had to wait in 24" of snow while I found the blind, put it in its box and taped it up. Then he stuck on the return label and exclaimed "look at that, they send it out FedEx and pick it up UPS!"
I'm betting they take the blind, stick its locking mechanism on it and return it to me  via UPS. What are the odds. These blinds were ordered in October to be in place by Thanksgiving. Well they missed that deadline, Xmas and New Year, Velentine's too. We are shooting for Easter now or 6 months after they were ordered. Unbe*******lieveable.
Anyway, here are the various transformations my office has gone through, and eventually I hope to post a photo of the blind that should go in here.

Window dressing

The roman shades saga continues: On Monday last week I received the replacement roman shades from smithandnoble. After the last experience I knew I had to get them up as quickly as possible to see that they were in perfect condition, so I rushed out and bought four poles to hang them from. (The reason I had ordered from smithandnoble was they offered a ring top option so they could be hung from a metal rod and would be sleek and modern, rather than bulky and fussy.
I sped back home with the selected black curtain poles and spent a good hour drilling holes in the wall to put them up. I thought I'd try the one in my study first and then do the den where there are three windows and I hoped Steve would take over with the drill. (It's man's work, you know). The blind looked ok coming out of the box, and on the pole there were no funny marks or pins left in the material, so far so good.
Then I tried to lock the blind closed, and I pulled one way and then the other, then I checked the back and guess what? They had left off the locking mechanism. I could not believe it! I phoned them immediately and they promised a new blind, which they would confirm by phone within 48 hours, leaving a detailed voicemail if I wasn't home. Really?
I'm still waiting for that phonecall, people, and FYI, four defective blinds out of eight is a really bad average.
So this blind is one of those that will go in the den (and yes they are all ok, I checked). That won't be for a couple of weeks as an accident with a bagel has left Steve with four stitches in his left index finger and I'm too mad to tackle any window dressing right now.

Bye bye funky flowers

At last we found a replacement for the 1960s orange and green flower chandelier in the bamboo room. We bought an ecru drum shade from the Conran shop in Manhattan for forty bucks and remarkably we remembered to get the ceiling converter kit (designed by Noguchi, no less) to go with it.
Even more remarkable, instead of leaving it in its box for several weeks we installed the light the very next morning, with no fuss and just before we left to go to the theatre. Amazing.
We also ran into Lighting by Gregory and ordered a wall light to go on the landing. As it cost substantially more than $40 and won't arrive for a couple of weeks this was less exciting.
The play was fantastic: Rabbit Hole starring Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, it officially opens this week. Go and see it if you have the chance. And Tyne Daly had dinner in the same restaurant as us after the show.
A pretty darn satisfying weekend.

We pronounce it done

Finally put the curtains up in the dining room this morning. We had ordered roman blinds in October but when they arrived they had bleached out splodges on each of them so we sent them back. It took until January 11 for smithandnoble to tell us that this was normal on silk dupioni and we could either have them remade or choose a new fabric. Huh!
I've seen silk dupioni samples and fabric bolts from many sources and never seen a splodge on any of them, this looked like a bad dye job to me. Anyway, would you trust them to make up a new batch? I thought not. No explanation for the six dressmaker pins left in the fabric either.
So I gave up on the idea of shades and after three weeks of looking I found these red silk dupioni panels and while they are more formal than I wanted, the colour is great - better than the shades, in fact and the best is that there are no weird marks on them. Ha!
Anyone need a reminder of what the dining room looked like eighteen months ago, before the new windows, furniture, paint and curtains? This is it Finally put the curtains up in the dining room this morning. We had ordered roman blinds in October but when they arrived they had bleached out splodges on each of them so we sent them back. It took until January 11 for smithandnoble to tell us that this was normal on silk dupioni and we could either have them remade or choose a new fabric. Huh!

I've seen silk dupioni samples and fabric bolts from many sources and never seen a splodge on any of them, this looked like a bad dye job to me. Anyway, would you trust them to make up a new batch? I thought not. No explanation for the six dressmaker pins left in the fabric either.

So I gave up on the idea of shades and after three weeks of looking I found these red silk dupioni panels and while they are more formal than I wanted, the colour is great - better than the shades, in fact and the best is that there are no weird marks on them. Ha!

Anyone need a reminder of what the dining room looked like eighteen months ago, before the new windows, furniture, paint and curtains? This is it.

San Diego Harbor

We had to update our cellphones and got quad bands so they work in Europe as well as here. Steve got his with a camera and this is what it does if you press the wrong button.....
We were on the harbor in San Diego as the sun was setting, very nice and a short break from the house. We are getting along well with the decorating. The dining room is finished and new roman blinds have been ordered for the den and my office, then they will be finished for now. We have decided to leave the rest of the den decoration - carpets and the built in unit until we do the kitchen and get the same finish for them as the kitchen cabinets. The cabinets will have to be custom made because of the angles in the kitchen (it's a trapezium) but I'm hoping we can still do them for a reasonable price. Still I don't think we'll be tackling this project until 2008 at the earliest. Next big project - our leaky, cracked shower pan that will require an entire bathroom makeover. Fix one job, create three more.............

San Diego Zoo

There are two things that you have to do when you visit San Diego: walk along the marina and go to the Zoo. And when you get to the Zoo you have to have lunch at the Prado and see the pandas. The bonus for us was that the five month old cub was outside and becoming bolder every day. We got to the Zoo before it opened and went straight to the panda exhibit and there was the cub - stuck up a tree like a black and white wombat.
I refused to leave until it came down and after ten minutes or so the mother panda became uneasy and started to call the cub down. The cub tried to climb down but it was a fir tree and the branches went out and the only way down was to climb to the end of a branch and drop off. The fall was about four feet but the little cub let go, hit the ground, dusted himself down and walked it off. His mama cuddled him, then went back to stripping bamboo. This is the cub exploring again.
We left then, but according to people we met later the cub went into his pen and didn't appear for the rest of the day.
Friday January 13, 2006 - 06:58pm (EST) Edit | Delete | 0 Comments |

Abbaye de la Cambre

abbaye
Originally uploaded by modernemama.

We had a great time in Brussels with the kids and all our friends. Now we are homesick, so here's a photo I can look at to remind me of surreal Belgium. The sign on the left of the building reads "Cult members enter here".

Xmas in Bxl

The Grand'place in Brussels two days after Xmas: lots of gilt, trees in spheres and gluhwein; a light dusting of snow to complete the magic.
PS there is a huge yellow diamond ring (or maybe it's a citrine) in the window of De Greef the juweler on the street from the Grand'place to the Bourse if anyone wants to know what to get me for Xmas 2006.

Too nice just to eat in

We just had the dining room painted (Benjamin Moore Titanium and Benjamin Moore White Cloud) and it looks beautiful. The painters were really impressed with the colours, too. It seems no-one had chosen them before, there seems to be a lot of magnolia, or Navajo white as it is called here, around, otherwise it's pale yellow, sage green and coffee colours: espresso, capuccino, mocha.
Anyway, it looks excellent and would look even better with the crimson shades we ordered but when we hung them we noticed that the dye process had gone wrong and there were bleachy splotches all over them. They have been returned, and we are eagerly awaiting the replacements. Until then a photo of the window hardware..........

Snowfall

This isn't the first snowfall we have had this winter, but it's the prettiest so far. The nice thing is that the new windows have made a significant improvement to the draughtiness of the house. Double glazing much better than single glazing, oh yeah. Although who knows how much warmer it would have been last winter if we had worked out how to put the storm windows in!

This is where the money goes

Actually it's on the food, but this is what we pay for when we stay at Renaissance hotels. Cute, eh? This is Austin, Texas where we went to listen to music in "the live music capital of the world". This is the replacement trip for the one we had to postpone to SXSW in March. I'm still inclined to be snitty about that but a break is a break, no? At least we had the opportunity to change the tickets and it is nice to have somone pickup after me for a few days
PS There is more live music in Huntington, NY than we saw in Austin, and it wasn't nearly weird enough for us, but we did eat snake, bad bbq and NY chocolates. Go figure.

Watertight

We have a new roof! It was supposed to go on a couple of weeks ago but the rains delayed things. This morning, however, Tom the roofer and ten of his best men turned up bright and early to begin stripping off the old roof. This is the bit where you hold your breath in case they discover soggy boards or other costly problems but we were fine. Fine that is until the police turned up and ordered them to stop work. It seems we woke someone up with all the banging and they complained and it transpires that there is an ordinance prohibiting work on a Saturday in our village. Unfortunately, nobody told us about this policy.
Anyway by the time the police got here (we are two doors down from the police station) the roof was off and there was no way that Tom was leaving us exposed to the elements over the weekend. So, a call to the Chief of Police and another to the neighbour who made the complaint and Tom got a citation but work resumed. Can I just say to the person we annoyed that we are truly sorry. If the police had let us know who it was we would have apologised in person and sent you a bottle of champagne. Why don't they give you a rule-book when you move to a new area? It would make life so much simpler. We apologised to all the neighbors who came out to look at the new roof but they disclaimed responsibility and only a couple knew about the no work on Saturday rule.
The roof looks great; pewter grey shingles that match the bluestone around the house, not too blue and not so dark it looks squat. We have had some rain since and high winds and we seem to be watertight and windproof, which is what we were aiming for. It also seems to be quieter when it rains. Can anyone explain that to me?

More staining

A year ago I finished the front stairs and I joked that I would get around to the back stairs in the New Year. Well at least I got there before this year ended.
Inspired by the beauty of the newly stained siding I finally got on and stained the back stairs. They were the most hellish job as some joker had glued the carpet to the stairs and carpet adhesive sticks really, really well y'know. I started this job with Verity's help in July. We sanded and sanded and then the humid weather kicked in so I had to leave it for a while. When it got cooler and I could open the windows I started with the adhesive remover. Several coats of adhesive remover, which you have to remove after it has worked its magic. Then I stained, and I realised that the stairs were still sticky so I stripped them again and again and again. Five different products and four months later and hurrah the back stairs match the front stairs.Two nights later Sadie fell down the back stairs and gouged a big track in her effort to hang on. The work never ends.

Beautifying

I can't get over the difference that the paint and stain has made to the outside of the house. The redwood stain has hardly changed the colour but has added a depth and richness to the siding while enhancing the variations in the wood. We opted to match the colour of the replacement windows on the windows and doors and you really can't tell which is old and which is new. A bizarre but really attractive thing has happened with the garage doors: when the sun shines it projects a shadow of the trees onto the doors - we have our very own movie show each evening. How cool is that? I presume it has something to do with the bronze tone in the paint but I'm guessing here. It certainly didn't happen with the horrible "cedar tan"

Weatherproofing

Summer is almost over and winter will be here before we know it, so we are taking advantage of the unseasonably clement weather to waterproof the house. The painter was keen to start power-washing the house while the weather was still warm and last week they washed away seven years of mold, moss and dirt to reveal the beautiful redwood beneath.
We had no idea that it would come up so beautifully - from grey to amber in two days. I almost wanted to leave it at that but I am persuaded that a coat of Cabot Clear Pacific Redwood Stain will actually protect the siding for the next 3-5 years. The staining process began this morning and already three of the twelve sides have been stained. So far so much better.
Can't wait to see it with the freshly painted windows and doors, and then we can get the roofers in to make us completely watertight.

Sticky stuff

Humidity is a real pain when you're trying to stain windows. You have to have them open of course but the inside temperature is 80F and humidity level is 89% meaning that they take forever to dry and sweat runs everywhere making the process way beyond unpleasant. In the end, although it broke my heart, I had to put the air-conditioning back on. It's September for goodness sake!
Still, I have finished nine of the windows, hurray. And I have put one coat on the back stairs. At this rate I will have finished sometime in January 2006. And I do not want to have the windows open when it's below freezing either.

More repairs

I can't believe it's been almost two months since I last posted here. It's not that I have been away or seriously incapacitated, more a case of a fantastic summer encouraging long days in or by the pool and evenings watching the sun set over the Long Island Sound. In contrast to last year when we had cool weather followed by the remnants of three hurricanes, this year has been hot and dry.
The sprinkler system chose this arid period to play up. We extended it earlier in the year and it had been running fine but it suddenly stopped altogether. A phone call to the irrigation guy and we had a bunch of advice: try the battery, the fuse and the transformer. We replaced all three and thought we had it up and running again. But walking across the lawn one morning I realised that I wasn't getting wet and I usually play dodge the sprinkler at that time. A closer inspection revealed that it probably hadn't worked since the system broke down a couple of weeks before. If it had been any other part of the yard I would have left it until the winterization but I didn't want to lose all the grass so I called the guy and he came out, did everything we had done, replaced the timer and then came up with the bad news: we needed a new valve. He's an honest guy so he suggested we get a quote for a new system on the basis that as it was thirty years old things would break down more often and it might be cheaper just to replace it. He also offered to get a quote for a new valve. Two days later I had his quote $275 for the valve installed, and the new system $6500 with free winterization (a $150 value) the first season. Guess which one we went with?
The sprinklers are working again and we still haven't had any rain, forecast is 90F tomorrow - I hope this holds a little longer as we are having the siding power-washed and stained this month and the painter likes it to be warm when he works. I'll keep you posted.

Too humid for me

he past week has been so humid it's been horrible: grey skies, dripping trees and the occasional violent thundershower to liven things up. We haven't seen the sun in so long we've forgotten what it looks like. Even walking the dogs in this weather leaves you melting and breathless, so we've severely curtailed outside work.
The other reason that we are not chopping down trees or clearing undergrowth is that Steven broke the loppers taking down a maple and I can't summon up the courage to go to the Home Depot and buy another pair. HD is too big, badly laid out and the lighting is terrible so I go into it as little as possible, which is still way more than I want to.
I have spent the time when I should be outside enjoying the sunshine painting around the new windows and touching up the walls here and there. Thanks to central air I can do this any time, and I feel guilty that it's taken me several months to get round to it. In my defence I can say that it is fiddly work and I was hoping that a painter would come and do the job for me but that doesn't seem to be happening.
We now have nice new asphalt on the cul de sac side of the property that matches the asphalt the village put in on the road last autumn and the neighbours on the other side have paved their drive too. I don't think our drives need doing yet but they are a different colour from every other piece of road around here, and I guess it's something we will have to do before too long.

Apologies to the neighbours

Late spring and early summer here are marked by the sounds of power tools being wielded by contractors and landscapers as everyone races to get the heavy stuff completed before the heat and humidity set in. We haven't any really big projects to do before autumn but we have managed to get quite a few small jobs completed: the rotten window sill has been repaired and as I chopped back a huge holly and arborvitae we have a better view of the west side of the property. The landscaper spent a whole day pruning and trimming all the shrubs so everything is clean except for the north side. I spent an hour pulling weeds there and have the poison ivy scars to prove it.
I also cleaned out a piece on the NW side about 10' x 10' that I wanted to plant up, but we discovered that the irrigation system wasn't working on this patch so I had to get the guy out to fix it, otherwise nothing would grow up there. I want to put in some sun-loving plants as this area is always sunny whereas most of the rest of the yard is filled with shade tolerant plants. Hopefully we can go to the nursery to look this weekend.
We had the bloc party and decided on some priorities for sprucing up the road. The electrician came and ran a new line from our yard to the lights on the cul-de-sac, and they look great, too. I suggested that he put in some lights at the turning circle up the court and they ran with that idea, I think it may be Christmas every evening up there: sparkling! Now we are waiting for the paving crew to asphalt the road and then I guess I'll have to lose my trees because they do block the lights a little. I'm feeling better about the idea (and, neighbours, I'm sorry I was a bitch about chopping them down) but I'm still waiting to see what they want to replace them with.