Adventures in Domesticity

Happy House-iversary

It's been a busy couple of months for us, as evidenced by our rate of posting.  Work has been busy, we haven't done much worth illustrating, and we've finished it all up with twin bouts of the Flu That Swept the Twin Cities.  I finally feel good enough to do more than read trashy novels, sleep, drink orange juice, and cough, so here's the post I've been meaning to make for weeks. 

It was about three years ago that we closed on our house.  People keep telling us that we've done a ton of work, but it doesn't feel that way to me - probably a side effect of seeing too many before & after Cottage Living remodel features that are completed in the space of a few pages.  So here's my personal retrospective of the world's slowest low-budget house transformation.  At the three-year mark, that is.  We're far from done.

When we moved in, the exterior of the house was a lovely shade of baby-poop brown.  Landscaping consisted of some low juniper bushes and hostas in railroad tie planters.  Before

We refinished the front door, had the house painted in the summer of 2006, and have added more interesting plants in the railroad tie planters, created a new bed on one side of the yard, and added a tree ring planter.  Now we're just waiting for everything to grow.

The biggest changes made in the living room are sunny yellow paint, the addition of my beloved bookshelves, and Roman shades.  The house came to us with more drab brown paint on the living room walls.  I think that painting the living room was our first real project in the house - I distinctly remember painting while watching the NCAA basketball tournament, which means it was still March 2005.  Before and More Before

Big changes are coming in this room, though.  The furniture that's there now (and the giant TV) will probably be moved to the basement, and we plan to replace it with chairs that match the scale of the room a bit better, and hopefully a piano.  We also hope to finally get rid of the infamous Bone Lamp, which dates from a garage sale during college.  New lamps are expensive.  Sigh.  No word yet on where Craig's favorite ugly blanket will wind up.

The kitchen featured 1950's pine/birch/some sort of wood cabinets that had achieved a lovely orange patina, and plain white walls.  It was generally inoffensive, except for the horrible condition of some of the cabinets.  Before and More Before

Generally inoffensive didn't cut it, though.  We got a new schoolhouse light fixture for over the sink, painted the walls red and cabinets cream-ish white, and changed out the hardware on all the cabinets.  I hope to get Roman shades made in the near future. Still to come - new dark brown Cambria countertops, undercabinet lighting, some sort of non-vinyl flooring, and, down the road, new appliances.  Until the basement and the backyard are done, though, I'm stuck telling people that we painted the cabinets to match the countertops we want, rather than the ones we have.

The bathroom on the main floor hasn't changed at all.  Three years ago I didn't like the window treatment, and I still don't like it today.  Maybe I'll get that changed out by the end of the year.  Our wish list for this room includes a new floor with octogon tile and a different paint color on the walls (one that doesn't need to match the vinyl floor).  A tiled bath and shower area would be nice, too.   

There's not much to say about our "dining room."  I don't even have a "before" picture anywhere.  It's really a second bedroom, but currently serves as a dining room on the rare occasions we dine at home with people other than ourselves, sewing room, and storage room.  We plan to move the dining table downstairs when the basement is done, and this room will hopefully find another use.

The only change to our bedroom is fresh paint in a lighter shade of green, and the addition of floaty white curtains.  I don't forsee any other big changes, but I would love to find a way to organize the furniture we have (or find new furniture) that doesn't make it feel like everything is squashed in there.  Before

(See?  The funiture's all squashed together.)

I've written plenty about the basement, and have plenty more to write, so here's just a quick peek.  Before and More Before

Semi-current shots with drywall up.  The texturing has also been done, but that's another post...

The back yard will also be covered in excruciating detail this summer (I hope), so I will leave you with a photo of Projects To Come...our second story, which hasn't changed at all since we moved in.  This room functions as another storage room, and is host to most of our embarrassing mess.  The office type mess will be moved to the basement, and this will become a bedroom of some sort.  Right now, I intend to paint over the wood paneling with a light gray paint and switch out the light fixtures for halogen track lighting, but I'm open to ideas.  In the meantime, yikes!

The Basement Chronicles, Part the Sixth

In Which We Spend Far Too Many Weekends Hanging Drywall Piece by Piece.

I've been a neglectful blogger lately - it's been almost a month.  The lag in posting has a lot to do with starting on the drywall in the basement, Brian and Chrissy's return to Minnesota, discovering I like to knit, snow, and the impending Christmas season.  We honestly haven't done much worth writing about.

The significant thing that we have managed to do in the last month is drywalling the basement ceiling and have gotten a full corner section of wall done.  (Credit where credit is due - Dan and Brian helped out a lot.)  I think our building permit expires at the end of the year - we're not going to make it.  We should only be a month or so late, I think (read: desperately hope).  Then we can start on the fun of painting and flooring and making this an actual ROOM.

I was just looking over the last post I made about the basement, and got a little nostalgic at how nice it looked all tidy and clean.  Drywall has destroyed that, leaving a layer of chalky gypsum dust all over everything.  My eyes have been simultaneously dry and weepy for weeks. There are tools strewn all over the place.  The trash has not been taken out.  We are renovation slobs.  See?

I've been enjoying the work overall, but I think I'm ready for the heavy stuff to be done.  Bring on the girly projects, please!  Craig was making fun of me a couple of weeks ago - we did a bunch of drywall work in the afternoon, and then I sat down and sewed a case for my knitting needles.  If you need me, I'll just be preening my Renaissance Woman badge.

The Basement Chronicles, Part the Fifth

Hey, remember way back when we were renovating our basement?  Turns out we still are.

Over the summer and the first part of fall, we took a break from the really intensive work and concentrated on things like gardening and grilling and going on vacation.  We worked in the basement every now and then, though, and got the insulation done.  We passed the insulation inspection this week, and are ready to start hanging drywall.  It looks more like a room now than ever!

We have R-13 insulation in the walls, and R-28 in the ceiling, primarily for sound-deadening purposes.  The wood floors on the main floor don't provide much in the way of a barrier.  You can also see our makeshift setup for a flat screen HDTV that we don't yet own.  All the cables go through the wall - there will be some sort of bookshelf or console to hold the TiVo, DVD player, and whatnot down below, and then the television will be mounted on the wall, with no cords in sight.  Sweet!

Looking the other direction, into the dining and office area.

Even though not a lot of work has been done, the bathroom gets a shot for good measure.

And to refresh your memory (and mine), links to The Compleat Basement Chronicles:

Part the First

Part the Second

Part the Third

Part the Fourth

Baby Steps in the Backyard

What was intended to be a break from the basement that lasted a month or two turned into a full-fledged summer vacation.  Summer was what summer should be - gardening, long family weekends, vacation, grilling, and baseball.  We didn't ignore the house completely, though.

I should also note that this summer's CSA experience ended with a whimper rather than a bang.  Things got really busy in August, so we weren't cooking as much as I might have liked.  Our CSA farm also suffered extensive flood damage as a result of heavy rains in SW Wisconsin, so the boxes got a bit smaller.  There's really nothing to say about the last few weeks, so I won't.  We're probably still on board for next year, though.  (And they might be starting a cheese program - that's my kind of community agriculture!)

In preparation for what we hope will be next summer's big patio, fence, and regrading project, we made a couple of changes in the backyard.  Be forewarned - they're less than glamorous.

One of the trees in our yard suffered an untimely death last summer.  We went through a week of temperatures over 100 in July or so, and all of the leaves dropped.  You could almost hear a "whoomph," it happened so fast.  The arborist we had investigate said that the roots had curled around themselves, essentially choking the tree to death.  So that's a cautionary tale - make sure to break the roots up and spread them out really wide when you're planting trees and shrubs.

Here's the tree, as it looked this summer.  Dead indeed.

So we bit the bullet and had a tree service come out and cut it down.  This had the unanticipated benefit of slowing the stream of guys coming to our door and asking if they could cut down our tree.  Maybe we're just over-cautious, but letting a total stranger with no references come onto our property and operate heavy machinery just doesn't sound like a good plan.  There seem to be plenty of people who think that they'll make some money that way, though. 

The yard feels pretty naked now.  Eventually we'll have a privacy fence put up, and we plan to plant a few lilacs close to the fenceline.  For now, I just feel exposed.  The stump will be ground down in a few weeks, so at least we get some free wood chips out of the deal.

We also had our air conditioner replaced and moved to the corner of the yard.  I don't know quite when the old one had been installed, but it had olive green plastic trim, which makes me think it was at least as old as I am.  The real problem, though, was that it was installed right in the middle of the back of the house, making any sort of patio installation a problem.  When we had our landscape plan drawn up, the designer placed a patio on the corner of the house.  That was great, except that anyone sitting on the patio in summer would have loud AC noise directly behind them.  When the system started to take six hours to cool the house by about 4 degrees, we decided it was the perfect time to get the darn thing replaced and moved.

There's a lot of painting and tidying up that will need to be done, but at least everything is in the right place now.  You can see the location of the old AC unit just to the right of the hose.  The new location will be much better for everyone.

So, things still look a bit patchy, but we are READY for the men with the bulldozers to come and make our backyard an inviting green paradise, a sylvan glade in the city, a refreshing private oasis!

Now, about the cash for the men with bulldozers...

Speak Softly and Display a Weird Vase

We have a new friend here at home.  Some might say he's weird, ugly, or tacky.  I prefer to think of him as a conversation piece.

This little guy came to Craig for his birthday, via my mom, via my Grandma Black.  Grandma had bought this pitcher for her own father many years ago, because he was a fervent Republican and an admirer of Teddy Roosevelt.  Apparently this isn't just any moose - this is a bull moose, as in the Bull Moose party.  A note inside the pitcher (from the antique store where Grandma shopped) explains that this was produced while Roosevelt was running for president on the Bull Moose ticket - just what every progressive politco of 1912 needed!

I have no idea if this story is true, as my repeated Googling for similar items hasn't turned up anything.  Tableware doesn't seem like the most Roosevelt-esque antique, either.  Maybe if it were a gun...  On the other hand, Craig and I are self-admitted history nerds (both family and otherwise), and I have a great fondness for Teddy Roosevelt (based in large part on Sarah Vowell audiobooks and The Alienist).  So I'll buy the story, and to hell with the grain of salt.

He lives on the bookshelf, in the history/humanities/college books we never got rid of section.

 

And the bookcase, in all its glory, because I like it.  I really try to keep our library confined to these two cases, but it tends to spill over at times.

Seniors, Seniors, on your feet! JSPC can't be beat!

My ten year high school reunion went on without me this weekend.  I'm a little conflicted about this - I probably would have gone if it hadn't been for my sister's wedding this coming weekend.  Two weekends of car travel in a row do not make for a happy Ellen.  I would have gone, and probably would have enjoyed myself, but the whole reunion concept is kind of squicky.  Does anyone really *need* to confirm that I'm still not gracefully thin or classicly beautiful?  And who cares what my husband does or what he looks like?  Or what our reproductive status is? 

The further I get from high school, though, the warmer and fuzzier my memories of it are.  (Junior high, though, that I've blocked out altogether.)  It's a generally happy blur of movies and pizza and dumb jokes and riding around the county in someone's messy car.  I don't remember the awkwardness or the acne or the painful social uncertainty.  I certainly don't remember why our mascot was a ram, since there aren't many majestic mountain-climbing rams in central Iowa.

Whether or not I've attended, the reunion does give me a perfect excuse for some self-indulgent reflection on the past 10 years.  A lot has happened - I bolted for college, met the man I'd marry, got my BA, got married, went to grad school while working 35 hours a week, got my master's degree, moved out of state, and bought a house which I proceeded to rip apart.  My parents no longer have access to my bank account, and I don't have a curfew.  So, naturally, I'm asleep by 11 almost every night.

It's come as a surprise to me, my parents, and probably everyone who knew me in high school that I've become a homebody.  My mother remembers me at sixteen declaring that "I want to be with people all the time!"  These days, I cringe at going to the mall or the State Fair because of all the people that are going to be there.  I'd much rather stay home with a book and a Westie cuddled up on my lap.

Not only have I become a homebody, but a domestic one at that.  I cook from scratch, I sew a little, I like the smell of Windex, I go outside in the evenings just to look at my garden, and I relish line-dried laundry.  I can understand the Victorian ideal of the home as a lovely, serene sanctuary, and I get a little thrill of thinking of myself as the chatelaine of my own little castle.  (Ring of keys on the belt optional.)  If you'd asked me in 1997, I probably would have imagined that I'd be more into my career than the domestic, "womanly" side of things.  I like my work just fine, but all the really important things happen at home.  Things like dancing with the dog to the Powdermilk Biscuits song.  (Shut UP.)  Like watching the white gauze curtains billow in the breeze on Saturday morning, or like spending a quiet, companionable evening with Craig reading and watching baseball.

So, there I am.  A homebody in spite of myself.  Will you still be my friend?

Lest I get any more maudlin, here are some shots from this weekend, which I spent not going to my reunion:

Astilbe blooming in the front yard.  (Must get a better camera.)

Fresh laundry in the breeze.  (Ha!  Suzy Homemaker strikes again!)

Here's how the vegetable garden is looking these days.  I've added notes that label everything on my Flickr account, so you can see exactly what we're growing here.  I think the only thing that didn't get labeled are my chives and broccoli romanesco (or as it's known around here, fractal broccoli), which are behind the garlic.  I'm kind of scared about the broccoli - I read that it can get very large, and there's not much space around it here.  I may shuffle it around, but have to figure out how.

My pole beans are really climbing fast.  I had to extend my trellis with kitchen twine.  This morning, one of the vines has already reached the twine.

Below is a closeup of all my tomatoes and strawberries.  The tomatoes against the shed wall do get some sun eventually - it's full sun from about 3:00 on.  The tomatoes are already needing to be suckered, but I don't think we'll be getting any strawberries this year, more's the pity.  Immediately to the right of the tomatoes on the trellises are some Egyptian walking onions, which aren't doing too well.  They were pretty battered when I picked them up at the Friends School sale, so I'm hoping they're just concentrating on developing roots, rather than dying.  The tomatoes on the trellises are an assortment of Amish Paste, Brandywine, Polish Linguisa, and Cherokee Purple.  The ones to the right (which I need to get cages for) are Principe Borghese, Costoluto Genovese, and Roma. 

Overall, things are looking pretty happy in the garden.  I just wish the neighbors would weed their fenceline.

Our Secret Shame

We've only been hit with one truly hideous room in our house.  Sure, the main areas of the basement weren't great and the living room (and the entire exterior) was painted baby poop brown.  But the only place that makes me throw up my hands and turn around is the basement bathroom.

This gem features three walls at strange angles, and no fourth wall.  When we moved in, the fourth wall was curtains that hid the space under the stairs and the back of some paneling in another room.  The previous owners took the curtains with them.  The flooring is beige peel and stick tiles, accompanied by glossy black peel and stick baseboard.  The vanity is a pressboard affair with a beige top, featuring a built-in seashell-shaped soap dish.  There's a robin's egg blue shower stall with a light in it, and the paint color on the walls has been meticulously matched.

The bathroom is also home to the air compressor at the moment.  And the lightbulbs have been replaced, although it only adds to the charm.

This is looking into the bathroom from the doorway to the family room area.  The vanity is immediately to the left.  There will be a storage area under the stairs.  This won't make the room any less of a weird shape, but it will at least qualify as a fourth wall.

At first, we were going to simply leave the bathroom alone, and maybe put up a coat of paint.  The more time I spend around the room, though, the more it bugs me.  So I've taken over.  And because I'm me, I have a Plan:

1. Finish off the DriCore throughout the bathroom floor.  The step down into the bathroom from the hallway is just too weird.  I've already ripped out the crappy faux baseboard, and I plan to use the leftover scraps of DriCore to finish off the bathroom floor.  It won't take a lot, but there will be lots of measuring and trimming involved.  Since these are scraps, the tongue-and-groove functions won't work.  I see construction adhesive in my future...
2. Give the walls a coat of fresh white paint.  This will be necessary as we blend in with the new drywall in the areas just being finished.
3. Find new hardware for the vanity, and probably give it a coat of white paint as well.  The top and the seashell will just have to stay for the time being.  If I can find a nice looking faucet that's fairly inexpensive, that one is definitely going away.
4. Work with what I can't change cheaply.  Namely, the robin's egg blue shower stall.  Luckily, this color of blue is pretty trendy lately.  (Just look at Martha Stewart's background!)  I'm planning on using some FLOR carpet tiles in blue and brown, with coordinating fabrics for a curtain and towel edging.   This just means we need to finish things up before this goes out of style.

I'm pretty excited about all of this, especially the carpet tiles.  It's not often that I can work up the courage to be funky and stylish. 

First things first, though - I'm going to have to move the air compressor.

The Basement Chronicles, Part the Fourth

Our weekends have quieted down a little bit, so it's back to the basement for us.  We finished the framing a few weeks ago, and have moved on to the electrical work.  After a snow-related delay, the fireplace guys came by for the first stage of installation.  It's almost like we have a room...

Storage area.

We'll have a window-type opening between the stairwell and the basement room.  Once we tore down the wall that was here, we really liked the extra light that it brought downstairs.  We've got an old TV downstairs to make the work go a little faster.  NCAA basketball makes electrical work just that much more interesting.

This will be the computer/office nook.  Some sort of storage for Craig's baseball cards will also go here.  I don't know what we'll do for a desk, but I know I want a green-shaded banker's lamp here. 

Here's the doorway into the laundry room.  We're still considering what to do with the Lally pole that's halfway in the wall and halfway outside of it, and right at the end of the stairs.  I'm thinking that we might be able to use half of a pole cover and make it into some sort of column feature.  We can't box it in with drywall without obstructing the stairs a little too much.  (This didn't stop the previous owners.)

Here's the fireplace as it is today.  We have to do the electrical connection and put some drywall on the upper half of the wall, and then the installers will come back to attatch the top half of the mantle.  We can also wait to have them do that until we've got all the mudding and taping done, so we don't have to worry about messing up the wood.  I don't know how long I can wait, though...

Here's the upper half of the mantle.  We're responsible for staining the wood.  I know that I want white woodwork and doors down here, but it seems a shame to paint a really nice surface like this.  A nice light stain would probably look all right with the white trim, though.  I think.  At least I have plenty of time to obsess over this.  (Bonus in this picture - nascent electrical work!  We're still figuring out how to measure accurately and minimize the excess cable.)

Little Projects Everywhere

Life ground to a screeching halt on Thursday and Friday while a particularly nasty winter storm worked its way through the area.  We were planning on driving to Nebraska for Craig's grandfather's funeral, but all the interstates and highways between St. Paul and Omaha were closed due to blowing snow.  Craig hopped on the last flight out of MSP to Omaha on Friday night and rode back with his parents on Sunday, so it was just me and Phoebe at home all weekend. 

I took the opportunity to do a lot of reading, watching movies, and lounging on the couch.  I also planted a few cells of alpine strawberries to be grown inside.  I tried to balance all the recommendations I'd read online - germinate in the dark,  cover with plastic wrap so they stay moist, and keep things cool.  The end result is a few fiber pots in Ziploc containers, covered by a towel to keep out the light until germination.  After they've germinated, I guess they'll go under the grow light in the basement.  This all makes me a little nervous, but I have to remember that alpine strawberries are supposed to be very slow germinators and growers.  I can always use a good exercise in delayed gratification.

I also broke out the sewing machine to try my hand at a little craft.  I had fabric left over from draping the open back of the TV armoire to keep out the light, so I decided to put it to use by making a gardening apron.  I got the instructions out of Gayla Trail's You Grow Girl book, which is a fun resource for smaller scale urban gardeners (it's also a great website).  All in all, things went well, and I'm ridiculously proud of my little apron.  And I totally match the living room.

The successful experience has inspired me to try some other sewing and crafty projects.  I'm constantly looking over craft blogs for inspiration (see Folded Gingham for a gateway to all sorts of creative people).  Next up may be a skirt or apron.  Off in the future is learning how to knit.  For now, though, I'll just have to settle for learning about electrical wiring as the basement project gets back on track.

Backyard Dreaming

Landscape Plan
Originally uploaded by Craig and Ellen.

Last summer, we had a landscape plan drawn up.  The idea is that it will help me avoid some second guessing and worrying about plant placement over the years.  I probably won't follow it exactly, but it will at least give me something to work from. 

The landscape plan has given me a visual representation of what I'd like our backyard to be - a green sanctuary where we can have friends over to grill, read a book, or have a glass of wine without feeling like we're on display to all the neighbors. 

Unfortunately, the necessary components of this vision - a small patio and a privacy fence - come with a pretty hefty price tag.  A five figure price tag, and that's not even counting the plants.  I don't think we're quite up to patio physics, so this is a contractor job. It might be do-able, but would require superhuman feats of saving money and delaying gratification.  In the meantime, our backyard is really bare and depressing.  There are no flowers or shrubs, just a rectangle of grass being taken over by Creeping Charlie.  (My vegetable patch is by our carport, and isn't shown on the plan.)

The gap between money and desire is nothing new, but it brings up the question how much money we can reasonably put into a 1,300 square foot house in a nice-ish part of a city (the -ish is pretty key there).  What if we need to move in five years?  I can just see myself sobbing over the new basement and beautiful new patio that consumed most of our disposable income for the past few years. 

We don't intend to leave any time soon - we don't anticipate feeling the need for a McMansion in a suburb 70 miles away the moment we have kids, but things happen.  Is it really responsible to pour so much money into one aspect of a house many would consider a "starter home?"  What if the real estate market tanks and we can't get any of our money back out of the house if we have to move?  What if the neighborhood goes to seed?

Unless we win the lottery any time soon, we'll be exploring lower-cost options to make our backyard a place we'd like to hang out, as well as to help those Big Homeowner Questions rest a little lighter on my shoulders.  Any input from experienced budget landscapers (or anyone, really) is much appreciated.

In the meantime, I'm just dreaming of a green space, as it keeps snowing at a rate that makes shoveling seem futile.